Profit & Grit with Tyler

He Sold His HVAC Business After One Bad Customer Call - Joshua Griffin

• Tyler Martin • Episode 17

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Joshua Griffin shares his journey from humble beginnings in a trailer park to building and selling a successful HVAC business while growing a YouTube channel with 150,000 subscribers. He openly discusses the challenges he faced as an entrepreneur, his innovative marketing strategies, and the ultimate decision to walk away at the peak of his company's success.

• Growing up in a trailer park where his entrepreneurial inspiration came from seeing the trailer park owner struggling less than everyone else
• Starting Griffin Air with just $1,200 and a utility trailer pulled by a Jeep Wrangler
• Using YouTube and free marketing strategies to build his business before it became standard practice
• Growing to 12 employees while maintaining extremely high quality standards
• Leveraging distributor relationships and co-op dollars to maximize business growth
• Creating educational content for homeowners to help them avoid common pitfalls when purchasing HVAC services
• Selling his business to a local competitor to ensure his warranties would be honored and employees taken care of
• Building a mastermind community for HVAC professionals at different career stages
• Expanding his reach through two successful YouTube channels: HVAC Guide for Homeowners and HVAC Guide for Pros

Visit newhvacguide.com to access all of Joshua's resources, including his guide for homeowners, warranty checking tools, and information about his mastermind groups.


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Speaker 1:

I think that there are, just like any other business owner and or business, you know, there's going to be ups and downs and I had gotten to a point where, for me personally, it was so hard for me to disconnect and compartmentalize, even on the weekends and nights and so on, and that's why I empathize with other business owners, especially when they are getting quote unquote burnt out or they're just dealing with things. But for me, the last year I was in business, I was actually approached by a company and they asked me if I'd be willing to sell mine and I was like no way.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We'll dig into their journeys, from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big. Here's your host, the blue-collar CFO Tyler Martin.

Speaker 3:

Joshua Griffin didn't have a roadmap. He didn't grow up around business owners. He grew up in a trailer park, dreaming of owning the trailer park itself. But through grit and hustle and no shortcuts mindset, he built and sold a successful HVAC company, launched a YouTube channel with 150,000 subscribers and turned his industry know-how into something bigger. In this episode we dig into why he walked away from his business at the top, how he used YouTube before it was cool and the one customer phone call that pushed him over the edge. And oh yeah, there's a wild story involving a secret room in a strip club. Let's jump right in. Hey, josh, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing today? Good? How are you doing Good? I'm so excited to have you here. You know we just had a chance to chat a little bit and you've got so much to share here. Before I get excited too much, start peppering you with questions, I do want to learn a little bit about you. One, what you're doing professionally, and then two, I'd love to know a personal tidbit about you.

Speaker 1:

So what I'm doing professionally. So I sold my heating and air business a year ago. We did heating and air, plumbing and crawl space encapsulations and then I took a job with a distributor an HVAC distributor and I do all of their tech support and training. So we do classes and all that fun stuff. And then recently, very recent I'm taking what I've learned from growing my business and using YouTube, specifically, and other social media that I use to grow my heating and air business and I just got my real estate license.

Speaker 3:

Wow, and I think you even dabble in marketing, don't you?

Speaker 1:

I own a marketing business. We have a couple of clients. It's not the biggest stream of income right now. I normally take on clients that if they just you know it's not my main thing and as long as they understand that up front, it allows them to get the job done. I mean I dominated my market so I just do for them what I did for myself job done. I mean I dominated my market so I just do for them what I did for myself, and it's. I'm not a full on marketing agency so I'm not charging them the same fees that others are. So that's. That's actually called Larry the bear marketing Cause I love bears and I was like nobody's going to remember if I call it like grizzly bear or something like that. But who's?

Speaker 3:

going to? Who's going to forget Larry Larry?

Speaker 1:

the bear Never going to forget Larry.

Speaker 3:

That's right, and you know you're being humble. You also, and part of my research about you and learning about you and why I was so excited to have you on the show is you do have a handful of things going on and it seems like you're being very successful at doing them. The other thing is you have a guide that tries to help consumers, or does help consumers just be aware, when they're doing HVAC related service, what to look for, how to make sure, make sure they're treated ethically and responsibly by the company. What I still want to talk about that personal thing. But since I brought it up, what propelled you to write that Like? Why did you come into situations a lot of times where consumers hadn't been treated necessarily the right way?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I'm sure we all have war stories.

Speaker 1:

But my biggest thing was when I started making YouTube content, it was totally meant to, you know, compliment my heating and air business and I would use the videos and proposals and on our website. And as time went on, I had folks in other markets that would reach out and say, hey, no one has told me what you're sharing on your YouTube channel. And so it actually morphed into what it's now called, which is HVAC Guide for Homeowners, and there was a lot of videos being made of heating and air guys making videos for other heating and air guys, but nobody was making videos for mom, if mom's about to buy a heating and air system. So I took that one step further and instead of writing a book that would become outdated, or instead of doing some of the other things that you can do out there, I just simply authored everything on a website that homeowners can go to and get that same guide, step-by-step guide, to buying a heating and air system and hopefully avoid some of those stories and issues that we've all heard about.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. And then personal tidbit about you. I know we like, we know you like bears, but you got anything else. That's a little personal thing about you.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, I think when we first ever made contact, I kind of told a little bit about my story, and you know, I grew up in a trailer park. I didn't know any other business owners. In fact, the richest guy in the trailer park growing up was the guy that owned the trailer park, and so I thought as a child that I wanted to own a trailer park someday, because he didn't seem like he was struggling as much as the rest of us. And so, yeah, we've come a long way. I don't claim to be rich, but I definitely live in a much larger house than I grew up in and my wife and I own several businesses. She's a bookkeeper by trade and it's been a crazy, crazy adventure so far.

Speaker 3:

I love, though, as you're kind of humbly telling me your story here. The word that pops into my head is how gritty you guys are. Like it's grit when you, you know you kind of have humble beginnings and you just kind of keep pushing through, you keep making things happen until you build something for yourself. So it's kind of cool to hear that. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1:

I would and what I would say to someone that's out there. You know I have a lot of friends that they have lots of hobbies and they have lots of things they like to do, and I do too. I mean, I'm not saying I don't, but you know, I always envy them that they can enjoy, you know, taking a day off and going and playing golf. Right, and the analogy I always use is you know, and I've actually I remember having a heart to heart with my mom and saying you know, mom, I thought she, she did a great job raising us, she did the best she could. But the difference between mom and me and it's just something God put in me, or maybe my biological father's side of the family, who were all entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1:

But I can't go to bed at night, I can't go fishing, I can't go play golf without thinking of what's that next thing of what? You know, I'm not just going to go work a nine to five and just settle and I think you're that way too. Just a little bit of time we've talked and to me that was just settling and I love my parents, but I wasn't going to settle. I still am hungry and it's and I love getting around other people that are the same way Right.

Speaker 3:

There's definitely, you know, multiple types of people. Some people and there's nothing wrong with it, some people, you know. I look at a family member that I have. They worked 40 years at the same company pretty much doing the same thing. Nothing wrong with that, but for me I would kill myself like not literally but figuratively, it would just drive me crazy Like I cannot. You know, I need the somewhat of a, and I'm sure some of you you kind of need something to feed you, to keep you pushing and goals and driving you, and that's you know. It's just how we're wired, I guess we're all. Everyone's are wired a little bit differently.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, and nothing to say about the any of those folks. I always say, as long as you're happy, I just can't be happy in that situation.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, Exactly, so, so true. So take me so humble beginnings. I love how you said you wanted to own a trailer park. It's just kind of funny, you know, when we're brought up and we see something without really knowing all the deal details, how we can kind of like form these opinions. But where did it come in that you were going to actually start your own business? Cause that's a pretty big jump for some people and it doesn't sound like you really had any mentors or upbringing in having your own business. So where did that come in?

Speaker 1:

So I was working at a company. I'd had other jobs where I was fixing air conditioners and doing all these different things and I ended up at a property management company and I did all their heating and air and also I was the manager of several others or whatever. But while there I remember hearing a guy talking about how you need to dig your well before you're thirsty, and I wasn't thirsty. They gave me a free apartment. You know, for a fellow that was 26 years old, I thought I was living pretty good. But I went and got my master's license for HVAC and, you know, moonlighted those first two years and and just started building a business. And then, thankfully, after those two years, they let me go and I thought I was.

Speaker 1:

Everybody thinks they're irreplaceable. Until they're, until they're let go. Right, and looking back, I probably deserved to be let go. You know, I was a young kid with with, uh, you know, handled some situations poorly, but thank goodness I was already chasing. I was already digging that well, because I lined up another job interview the next Saturday and that first week that I was on my own I made more money being self-employed than I would have at my job and my wife said okay, you don't, you don't have to take that job interview. You know, because I begged her, I was like, please don't make me go, and you know. And the rest was history.

Speaker 3:

So basically, your foray into entrepreneurship really was kind of out of necessity to some degree, because you got let go and then that kind of pushed you into being self-employed and then it kind of had legs of its own after you did that. Is that correct?

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, and especially having a spouse and another decision maker she may have. I don't know that she would have ever let me make the leap had I not been forced into it.

Speaker 3:

Wow, it's interesting too. I had a similar thing happen to me when I was in one of my first jobs while I was going through college. I worked for a CPA firm and I clashed with one of the partners and I thought I was I mean, I was, you know, I was for a staff member. I was one of the highest performing, so I definitely thought I was great and unfortunately, my attitude didn't match my. You know, there's a there's a tax to employees how much you contribute versus how much of a pain in the butt you are. My pain in the butt factor exceeded what I thought my deliverables were and I got let go. It was a very humbling experience. Thank God it never happened again. It calibrated me at a young age, but it's funny how those happen and it's funny it sounds like you went through the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely yeah. I think there's a lot of folks out there that are going to learn that the hard way if they think they're irreplaceable.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, it's just part of you. I know for me it was youth too. I mean it was well, you have to learn it. You have to learn the hard way. I mean, someone probably in fact my dad probably did at the time tell me hey, man, you got to, you know, kind of stay in line and I, you know to do, and wasn't obviously, but anyway, that great story on your part. Hey, so take me through building Griffin Air. Like I think you did that for, if I have the timeline right, 11 years. You started in 2013. You said you exited in 2024. Kind of take me through that journey. Like how did that start out? You were probably started out as a solo technician. At what point do you start adding staff? How big did you ultimately get? Things like that?

Speaker 1:

So, starting out, I had very little money again, right? So even as working at that company, I had accumulated a little money and I scraped together $1,200 and bought a utility trailer that I pulled around with a Jeep Wrangler, my first year self-employed, being full time in it. And that's the words I'm looking for. And so I think you know I don't know what triggered the first employee, but you know you physically can't do everything when it comes to heating and air, just simply because some things involve a second person. So I remember having a helper or two and then, finally, I had hired this guy that had experience and I remember him selling his first job and I went wait a minute, I don't have to sell everything, like not absolutely everything has to go through me and that changed everything.

Speaker 1:

So from then on for the next, you know, as you said, 10 years I was on a mission to. You know I live in a rural area, so I would try to scoop up every good employee I could. In fact, I ended up hiring a guy about five years after all of that that stayed with me until the end, who is one of the that stayed with me until the end, who is one of the. I'm blessed to even know the guy. He's in his 60s, now late 60s, but he'll run circles around any other technician I've ever met. I mean, he's just a rabbit, in fact, that's what we called him at times. Calm down, kenny, you little rabbit.

Speaker 1:

But we were not hiring. When Kenny walked through the door, we had but you know, a good one when you see one Right and so I grabbed him and you know, thankfully he was just an amazing guy. But anyway, to finish up the answer to your question, I think we got up to 12 employees at one point. Wow, we were doing, like, say, crawl spaces and plumbing, and I felt like if we were in a metro area, we would have been even bigger. Sure, small labor pool to pick from here, but our standards were really high too. So that was something I never wanted to compromise on, and if you just weren't with it, you weren't, you know, we just didn't have a place for you, unfortunately, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So take me through when you first started out. How are you getting leads? How are you getting clients? Where were they coming from?

Speaker 1:

Starting out well. When you're starving, you'll eat anything. So I was doing the home warranty thing, I was doing the home advisor thing, I was doing the you know, you name it. I've always been very you know very good about ROI and very frugal with our marketing dollars. So until I got co-op money from dealers years later, I didn't do any of that stuff that I didn't see much of an ROI on. I have a guy and we have a little mastermind group on our website of pros and one of the guys. He's just throwing money at things. He paid I think it was $1,600 to get t-shirts made at the high school and not one single call from that and he was asking me if he should do it again and I was like no, you can take that same amount of money and go on Facebook or Google and sell a system tomorrow. So what are you doing?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So when you say you were frugal or you were cost-conscious, you were aware. Did you ever end up using agencies during your growth where someone helped you maybe optimize your Google advertising campaigns or get you more out in search, or were you using flyers door to door? What kind of marketing strategies were you using? That kind of got you to 12 employees? That's a decent company size.

Speaker 1:

So I did everything myself. I built my own website, wow. And the other thing was, if it was free, I did it. So I had my own podcast of the local area. We had a ghost hunter on, we had local business owners, we had a murder mystery. I mean we did all kinds of cool stuff. But guess what? Halfway through the show, today's show is brought to you by Griffin Air. So that was one thing. And then, of course, I was doing the YouTube stuff and anything that was free. That's one thing I think a lot of business owners miss out on is they would rather pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to put a billboard on the side of the street, but they won't grab their cell phone camera and say, hey, we're out and about here today and so-and-so neighborhood putting in a heating and air system. Give us a call, it's free, you know, and you could post that to Facebook. And it literally took 20 seconds.

Speaker 3:

Right, yeah, it's a big deal and it kind of all evolved. Then to my next question, because I think you're bringing it out is you do a lot of personal branding? Well, you have your YouTube channel that has 150 something thousand subscribers, which is a crazy number. You're very visible. That's how I got to know you. As I, you know, you came up with my feed and I'm like, oh, this guy's cool, Started going down the trap of listening and watching everything you're doing and then, before I know it, I'm like I got to talk this guy into having a conversation with me. But my point is is like, where, talk to me a little bit about because you just brought it up what about your own branding and your own being online and your own development? Talk about that. And then also how, since you now have had experience owning an HVAC shop, what should others be doing? Like how often should they be doing those little 20-second clips and things like that?

Speaker 1:

I tell you, youtube is the second most searched website in the world, second only to Google. Yeah, yeah, and you would not believe, I bet, if somebody's listening to this right now, I bet if they searched their trades and their city and did that on YouTube instead of Google. It is still the wild west frontier there is, and I've showed that guys in our mastermind. I show that to them and just to show them. It's so wide open and if you do enough of it I don't know if you've ever searched something on Google, but there are times when the videos will even pop up there. So if someone searches, you know profit and grit on Google, you know there's your stuff popping up there too, you know.

Speaker 1:

So I think a lot of guys are missing the boat on that, and that's what I leaned into when I first started making YouTube videos. They weren't for HVAC Guide for homeowners, they were for Griffin Air. The channel was originally called Griffin Air and at the end of every video I would say if you're outside of our coverage area, go to our website. If you're in our coverage area, call us here at Griffin Air.

Speaker 3:

Wow. So you were kind of a little bit ahead of the market, I would argue. I mean because we're talking like 10 years ago to be doing kind of like that local search video marketing. I think that's don't think I'm off too much timing, but I'd say it's really been mass, a lot more mass in the last five, six years. So you're kind of on the cutting edge to be doing that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the cool thing about the internet versus, say, billboards, where ones can be larger than others or other forms of advertising, the internet doesn't care. The internet doesn't care if you have two employees or if you're a private equity firm that owns 20 businesses, they don't care. They want to give the person searching what they're searching for. Don't care, they want to give the person searching what they're searching for. And if you can be that, if you can, you know, hey, today we're putting a garbage disposal in and so-and-so neighborhood and then title it that way and post it and not be afraid to be in front of the camera or even behind the camera. You can have a faceless channel the opportunities, and there's so many opportunities that you could have 20 other people in your city doing it and still do it and get business from it. You know it's just nuts.

Speaker 3:

That's crazy. So talk to me a little bit about your own kind of adventure now in the world of YouTube. So it sounds like you started out naming it after your shop and you were doing it for reasons of creating business for your shop. Now you do it more to educate the community. How's that changed your life, Cause you have a pretty big audience How's it changed your life and what's your vision on in terms of your own YouTube channel and growth?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I never thought it would be that big right. I thought I was just helping folks. I, weirdly enough, I'm in my forties now, but before, when I was still only enough. I'm in my 40s now, but before, when I was still only 39, I was selected to top 40 under 40 by ACHR News. So that was kind of fun, and that would have never happened had I never made a single YouTube video. I would have just been still a guy here in Virginia that was good at fixing air conditioners. But yeah, I think, well, remind me the question again.

Speaker 3:

I'm so sorry, I was just like you know. So you built this incredible YouTube audience. You've got 150,000 people. You've got two channels which we'll talk about. I'll put them in the show notes. We'll talk about that in the show. But my point is like how has it changed your life? Where do you ultimately like see your vision?

Speaker 1:

no-transcript with a few companies that I never thought I would have been able to get in. So I think, as far as long-term, I don't know if I'll ever be the guy. I don't think I'll ever be the guy when folks are like there's this thing happening in the heating and air industry, what does Josh think about all of this? Right, but I'd like to be a guy. You know I have a few sponsors on the YouTube channel, but I'm clear with them up front. You're not going to restrict my First Amendment, right? I'm always going to be honest. I won't just post any brand on our site. If they're on our site, I actually like their products and so I just want to be a place where, like I said, if mom's buying a heating and air system, she can get good, unbiased, third-party opinion on. Here's the truth. Sometimes that truth hurts. And then we now have a channel called HVAC Guide for Pros where I'm doing the same thing.

Speaker 1:

If Bobby is new to the heating and air industry, I want Bobby to have a place he can go to and we're not just going to teach him how to fix an air conditioner, because there's some of that. But there's also times when I might just jump on the camera and say, hey, here's 20 things you need to be doing to grow in your career. I do. I have a literally have a video called that. That way, bobby can make some better decisions than I did. You know, I think I did one on how to do a proper resume. You know, because I get all these resumes and it's like you know you could really be at the top of the someone's list if you just put a little effort into it and try to stick out a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's good stuff. So I want to go back to Griffin Air. In my research about you I've seen how you've used the approach that doing things right even when someone else didn't, so quality was high, it was important to you. Can you talk about that a little bit Like how did that come across in your actual business?

Speaker 1:

I literally I'm working on a video as we speak, a YouTube video where we're talking about this concept. Because you know our industry is. I think our industry is a little screwed up and it's not the, it's not the heating and guys' fault, it's the homeowner's fault on this. And I'll tell you why. We have an industry that you are almost penalized to know what you're doing. You almost get punished. If you are really good at what we do and if you get really good at troubleshooting systems and you can get someone back online and you can fix it.

Speaker 1:

You are worth less to companies in some cases than you would be if you could sell that customer a new system. And the reason I say it's the homeowner's fault it's because when someone does get them back on and they were able to get them fixed in one hour the homeowner's almost thinking you're charging me how much for only one hour of work. And I've heard it said best where some guys are like well, would you rather me take six hours to fix it Because I can turn your system back off and spend six more hours on it and you can sweat the whole time and then I'll give you that bill again. So we're almost penalized at times to just be really good at this. I think that's something to point out. And at the end of the day, you got to figure out how to wave through the sea, you know, and be able to navigate that with your customers and so on, if you're in the trade.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, were there like conscious things though that you did in terms of trying to get things right, like how did you train your staff in terms of you know, really it's. You know, just my research indicated man, quality was important to you. Like delivering a high, top-notch service was really important. What were you doing? Kind of take me in there as if I'm in your business with you what were you doing to be able to meet those standards?

Speaker 1:

Well, training was big. I now have a job training and you know, I had a friend of mine who had a much larger company and he told me he was meeting with his guys every single morning. Now I don't think we did that. Honestly, there were mornings where I was busy and my guys were busy and we would. We would just, you know, get to our first job sites.

Speaker 1:

But I do think, getting face time, taking the time at least I mean at least minimum once a week where the entire company gets together in one room, you know, if you got a bigger company, get a bigger room, you know, but put everybody under one roof and talk about things and talk about struggles, how to handle this, how to handle that.

Speaker 1:

Getting back to the scenario I just said a moment ago, explaining to that, educating the homeowner on why it did only take one hour and the bill is what it is. We would have trainings on how to fill out an invoice properly and, you know, put the CYA things cover your butt, things on the bottom of that invoice and recommendations, and that way, if they do call you two months later because that other part failed, you could say, hey, I have on an invoice here where I told you, I told you it was it could fail. We should get that replaced. And yeah, just, you know, constant communication it's. I've been exposed to companies outside of mine now and you know, just hearing how they do business. I think just having that face-to-face and training with their guys would go a long way, if nothing else, for culture too. You know, just to get in front of them and, you know, try to make sure everybody's on the same page would go a long way for a lot of companies.

Speaker 3:

Okay, it's time for this week's Marketing. That Scales tip brought to you by Service Scalers Now posting once a week and hoping for results. It's just not going to cut it. The brands people remember show up often and consistently, so don't overthink the content. Just keep showing up. And if you're not sure what to post, that's where Service Scaler comes in Be sure to tell them. Tyler sent you.

Speaker 1:

You know, try to make sure everybody's on the same page would go a long way for a lot of companies.

Speaker 3:

Now that you've had your business, you've sold your business and now you're sometimes seeing other companies, what's your impression? Like do you because I know I've done this after I sold my business Like do you go, oh man, I was doing things so great. Or maybe you go, hey man, these people are not doing things so well, or maybe they're doing things way better. I hadn't really thought of that. Like what's your? You must, there must be some of that going through your head, or at least initially.

Speaker 1:

You know, I'll tell you the one thing and if any of our customers hear this at my new company, I'll say this to them. I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about the other companies. Perfect. But it has been amazing to me that some of the folks that I'm meeting I used to lose jobs to and I'm like we are not comparing apples to apples here I had, I literally would put my guys, my team that I had, I'd put Kenny, the guy I was talking about earlier, and a few you know, ryan, a couple other folks. I'd put them up against anybody as far as taking care of the customer and never cutting corners and doing the job the right way.

Speaker 1:

So it's been amazing to me seeing how many folks in our trade don't even read the instruction manuals. And I don't know what your audience is like, if it's mostly business owners or if it is, I'm sure they deal with that too. But it's just amazing. I bet they all probably have a lot more employees than they realize that, because once they get my phone number as the distributor, tech support, they're calling me, not calling their boss, because their boss is going to be like read the stinking instructions. Now they're calling me and I'm over here like I can't say read the stinking instructions. But I want to. I want to shake them and say you know, I found that on page six.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's tough. That's good feedback, though, because you know, even in my world, when before I we sold the staffing and recruiting business that I had it was an engineering services company I started this program where we were monitoring salespeople's calls just so we could understand and help them, train them and get them better, and I was mortified the first time doing it, because things that some of my staff were saying to clients were just blowing me away. They were so unprofessional, heavy breathing, just comments things, and you just don't, unless there is some level of awareness, you just don't know, as an owner, that these types of things are happening. It affects your affects how consumers look at your business, your customers look at your business. It could really hurt your business and you don't even know. So I think it's interesting that you bring that up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I used to work for a company years ago that would do the secret shopper thing and I never did anything like that. I don't know if you did, but I do think that that's interesting Just hearing you know how some customers are being treated and so on.

Speaker 3:

I've never done the secret shopper, but I have had someone a guest on the show who was very open about it. He does gutters and I can't remember what else, but I think it was gutters and he has a secret shopper come up four times a year. They go out. There's a setup.

Speaker 2:

They come up and write up a review on how their staff handled it, how the technicians handle it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I don't know that. I think it's, in concept, it's cool. I'm not sure how staff would perceive that Cause, even like the call thing recording, I had to be very, I mean, I had to be and I had to live this too. It wasn't to be punitive, it wasn't to be micromanaging. It was truly about helping them become better at their craft and ultimately make more money. So and you have to be true to that in you can't just say it and then do something else. You have to be like hey, it's really is about trying to make a better business and I'm not going to attack you, I'm not going to, you know, come down on you.

Speaker 3:

And I had to be very careful and even when I did find things that blew me away, how I presented that, because I didn't want it to be like you know, hey, knucklehead, you can't be doing this. It had to be like hey, I think there, let's talk about this, is there maybe different ways we can do it? Let's role play it, or stuff like that. So, and I imagine you probably I mean when you were doing your training you probably were approaching that kind of the same way I think it sounds like Kenny, by the way which is very similar to a Larry the Bear name to me. But Kenny had kind of probably the same mentality. He probably really cared about what he did.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, especially in a trade like ours where it's hard enough to find a good heating and air technician, you definitely don't want anyone to feel like they're being micromanaged. You know, some of the companies have GPSs in the trucks now and things like that, and I was always careful. I mean to me, if I had a guy that made $8,000 for the company that day, I don't really care if he took a long lunch, you know. Oh, you took a 32-minute lunch. I mean, come on, stop it. So I think there's some of that. But I think you're totally right If you're using it as a tool to get better and and understanding, because if you're not there, you're not there and you don't know exactly what, how folks are being treated or or so on. If you've got somebody that's really good at playing the game of smooching on the up to the boss, then you know, maybe you don't have the best perception of of exactly how your business is being run, but it's a good point, it's a very good point.

Speaker 3:

Right, and you know you interesting, you bring up GPS. I'm with you all the way. But it's funny. I had a client conversation this week on that exact topic. They have GPSs and we were going over. We have allocated targets of where we think mileage will be based on the routes that we have and the number was 142%, where we're ideally want to be in the 95 to 105%. So it was interesting because the conversation, what came out of it, was well, we need to look at the GPS, we need to figure out what's going on that we're so much over in our mileage of where we would think we would be relative to the routes. So you know, there are probably really good ways to use it and then there's probably some ways to use it that could be counterintuitive to building a good culture.

Speaker 1:

This is why you're the host of the show. You look at everything the right way. I don't know about that.

Speaker 3:

Trust me, maybe it's just part of being the host of the show it sounds that way, but anyway, so good stuff. I love our conversation so far. So I want to talk about just the whole growth of Gryphon Air and then what ultimately led you to sell it. So let's talk about first. You hit some stumbling blocks, I think, and you were very transparent about it. You said hey, we're in a rural area, we're having trouble always finding people Sounds like that kind of put a cap on your potential growth. If you can't find people, no sense in going and getting more business because you can't service it at a high level quality. Talk about that. And then how did that morph into you ultimately selling?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I think that there are, just like any other business owner and or business, you know, there's going to be ups and downs and I had gotten to a point where, for me personally, it was so hard for me to disconnect and compartmentalize, even on the weekends and nights and so on, and that's why I empathize with other business owners, especially when they are getting quote unquote burnt out or they're just dealing with things. But for me, the last year I was in business, I was actually approached by a company and they asked me if I'd be willing to sell mine and I was like no way, this is my retirement plan. You know, we were doing. I didn't sell because we weren't doing well, we were doing great. But finding good help became a really big challenge, you know. And then, of course, companies come to you and they start throwing money at you. And then, you know, I was doing the YouTube thing and I was making more money doing YouTube videos than I was fixing air conditioner. So it was like this perfect storm doing YouTube videos than I was fixing air conditioner. So it was like this perfect storm.

Speaker 1:

And then finally there came a you know, I think it was like a Friday and this customer called me because they had signed up for an upgrade. They wanted a whole house home filter paired with a furnace and my employees had put the furnace in and I had forgot. It was my fault, I had forgotten to go from the proposal where he had selected it into our CRM and say he wants it. And we're talking about a 20 minute job. All my guys need to do is go back, you know, refabricate the ductwork a little bit, put the whole house home filter in there and 20 minutes in and out. And the guy said I voided the warranty and, uh, you know, basically screamed at me and said you know, I ought to take you to court. And I said you know what? You know, tyler, you want me to be transparent. This is about as transparent as I can get.

Speaker 1:

I said you know what I'm done. You know I'm, I'm, I've got these other things going and and, uh, I don't need that right now, and so that was the final straw, if you will. I think it was an accumulation of things, but that was certainly. That didn't help the situation, you know. Well, maybe I should better. The better way to say it is. It helped me make my decision, for sure, and you know, the rest is history. We sold the company. A couple of months later, we closed and I got a job teaching classes.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I can so relate to you. I'll make this really short. So I used to have a CPA firm and I had it built it up to about 200 business clients. After five years it was a pretty vibrant firm and I actually acquired a small practice. Towards the end, unbeknownst to me, I didn't do a good job at due diligence. They were the other CPAs all their headache clients, and so basically, I had this little utopia practice I had built as people I love to work with. I was charging really fair fees, making good living. Also, I had like 12 really pain in the butt clients join my firm and they were just wearing me out and I never forget to this day.

Speaker 3:

I was going. I went to Hawaii with my wife and we were in the plane and I thought I had made a mistake on one of these pain in the butt clients. Well, at the time you didn't have iPhones and you could search and look everything up. This was about 20 years ago. I literally ruined the whole trip because I was stressed about making an error because of this pain in the butt client. When I got back, I said you know what I'm done. I'm going to sell this. I'm tired of dealing with tax problems with clients and I sold my practice and I went and took a piece of ownership as another client. The engineering services company ended up even running the company and taking a larger piece of ownership. So it was a great move. But I can exact same thing as you. I was just it wasn't necessarily the main reason, but in factors of everything put together it was like made it a lot easier decision.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no doubt, man, the way you told that I'm like you hit me in the fields right there.

Speaker 3:

Cause it was tough. It was something that I mean like I just shared it with you. I mean, even 20 years later, however many years later, it still sticks with me. But anyway, I'm sorry to go off on me too much, but I do. What about the sale? Like after you had the sale and it completed, were you like, yeah, right on this, is it feels totally perfect? Or was there ever a period where you're like, hey, that was my baby, kind of I don't know if that was the right thing.

Speaker 1:

I second guess, sometimes, right, it was my baby, I built it from nothing. And there are days where I miss. I call it the game. I miss the game and I tell you, the other thing you miss, even if you get promoted from a technician to a service manager, is you miss that dopamine hit that you get every time you fix something, especially if you're able to fix something that the last guy couldn't. And so I do miss some of that.

Speaker 1:

But I certainly don't miss, you know, some of the, the challenges, some of the. I have way less stress these days and, and that's nice. I think that if anybody's in the same situation, I'm not saying they need to sell their business, but you got to find a way to leave it, leave work at work, and you know we only get one shot at this, this thing we called life on this ball of mud and make the best of it as you can, and you know your kids are only going to be that age once and just make as many memories as you can. My daughter's four now and I'm going down a totally rabbit hole and I'll stop in just a second, but I don't even feel worthy to get to be her dad, and every decision I make, including selling my business, was because of her. 100% no doubt.

Speaker 3:

Wow, that's really cool. And when you sold it, was it to private equity or was it just a solo owner, like an ETA person? What was that profile?

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said that because that gets back to whether I regret it or not. The company I sold to was another local competitor. They're much larger than I was. They sold the same brand I did and it's why I selected them, that I didn't want to bump into customers in a grocery store and feel awkward, feel like I kind of pulled one over on them and I could have gotten more money had I went with a larger company out of Northern Virginia. But I wanted to stay local. I wanted them to honor our warranties, I wanted them to take care of my customers and ultimately I wanted them to take care of the one employee that stayed.

Speaker 1:

I remember bawling my eyes out, telling him that I'm selling my business because I was like, dude, I care about you. You know, everybody says it's like family and I'm not disingenuous in saying that my employees were as important to me as my family was. But he had become quite important to me and uh, I was like I, I'm selling to the company I'm selling to cause I think it's the right move for you too, and uh, so anyway. So I don't know if that ultimately answers your question, but I do think they've done a good job of of honoring all of the promises they made.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's awesome, and there was only one employee towards the end there that ended up going on with this new company.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they offered jobs to several of the employees and he was the only one that stuck around. Wow, yeah, I felt like some of the other employees made a mistake. They could have made more money and they were good at their jobs, but everybody's got to make the decision that's right for them. That's what I did, so that's what they should do too.

Speaker 3:

Yeah yeah, they definitely have to decide what works for them. That's good stuff. So I got a couple more things you had mentioned co-op. When you had your own business, you were getting it sounded like advertising reimbursements or advertising promotion from vendors. I'm sure there's people out in the audience that don't do that and it probably. If they caught it, how do you set up a relationship like that? And then, who's typically applicable? How big of an HVAC shop do you have to be? How do you set that up? Any thoughts around that?

Speaker 1:

You know I'm probably hopefully my employer doesn't hear this because I'm going to give you a little bit of behind the curtain but I can tell you that one of the biggest differences I've seen from some of the smaller companies versus larger companies is a lot of the larger companies are really good about navigating that negotiation of who you're going to do business with and some of the perks that come along with that. And now that I'm on the other side I work for a distributor I wish I'd have done more of it. I felt like there was a lot of money that was left. On the other side, I work for a distributor. I wish I'd have done more of it. I felt like there was a lot of money that was left on the table. But you know, a lot of people choose what brand they sell and what equipment they install and all of that sort of stuff for a lot of different reasons, right, because maybe they love their supplier, maybe because of the relationship they have with someone. But even in those cases, I think it's healthy, especially as a good business person, to have those conversations. What perks am I missing out on?

Speaker 1:

And I remember when I switched brands about halfway through my journey. I remember going to the first company and saying hey, the second company is offering all these cookies, all these perks, co-op dollars. They had a lot of great programs. What do you offer? And I remember saying to him I haven't even gotten a free t-shirt since I've been selling your stuff. You know, he gave me a free t-shirt. The next week A free t-shirt.

Speaker 3:

One t-shirt. The next week a free t-shirt.

Speaker 1:

One t-shirt you should have got all box Right. What a slap in the face. I'd sold their brand for almost six years. And he? His answer to my question was well, we give free training, and so they made my decision easy. I think you want to be with a brand that they want you to win. They want you to dominate your market. Even if you don't want that, if you don't want to grow big, you still should be aligned with someone that wants you to be the best in your market, and you know there's lots of perks out there. I think you should shop around, even if you're not interested in switching and seeing what some of those perks are. You know, shoot. I mean, my wife and I have been on free vacations now because of that, and you know I'm not saying that that's the only thing that should affect your decision, but there's just a lot of programs out there you may not be aware of.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, just like you said, it's a perk, it's a byproduct of having the working relationship, it's not the reason. So I'm with you a hundred percent. That's it Sounds good, that's good, great advice for folks that are listening. And then I want to. We're almost coming up here on the time. I don't want to go over too much. I do want to talk about the. So you had a story related to Strip Club and you found a secret room. I just can't pass up on the story. So if we could spend a little bit of time talking about that before we wrap up. What's the story? I got to hear it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so one of the things I do on my live show which I'd love to have you as a guest on, tyler Sure, I'd love to. So I have a live show on my YouTube channel and it's usually just homeowners, heating and air questions and we try to answer them. I don't know everything, but we'll have some other pros in the chat sometimes and one of the things I'll ask my guests sometimes is what's the craziest story you can? You can tell me, and my answer once they tell me theirs, I'll usually say well, let me tell you mine and I was working for a company and we were in this strip club. The company I worked for did electric work and I've got. I actually went to school originally being an electrician, so I'm putting lights in this strip club and I'm the only person in the entire building at times, which was kind of eerie in itself.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And so you know I'm putting lights up, and there came a day where my boss and I were tracing a circuit. We were trying to find what fed what we were working on, and chasing it and tracing it, we found this secret door to this whole separate side of the building that we didn't even know was there and it was where all these bedrooms were, with beds and all these weird things. And you know, we were definitely in the secret part of the building and probably you know. So you know and the Lord knows what happened in those rooms.

Speaker 3:

but anyway, you gotta be the platinum, the platinum card holder to get into that section.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So that's the craziest thing I think that's ever happened to me, and you know it was just a crazy experience.

Speaker 3:

That is crazy. It's funny, though it does make you pause a little bit and go I'm sure that's a lot more common. We just probably don't know about it, but it's a lot more common than we think, probably in those types of places, right, probably. Yeah, that's funny, that's a good story, okay, so, in terms of wrapping up, I want to share some websites in case people want to reach out to you. So your YouTube channels. What do you think is the easiest way to find that? Is it the link, or is it just by searching the name of the shows?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we have two channels HVAC Guide for homeowners and HVAC Guide for pros. So I think if you search HVAC Guide, you're going to find one of them. And do you want me to share the website and everything too?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, your main website, or one of your main websites, is newhvacguidecom. Now I imagine on that it probably also has a link to these YouTube shows or YouTube channels, is that correct?

Speaker 1:

Probably, probably should be. I don't know if there is or ain't Okay.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so I'll also put these on the show notes. So I have the new HVACguidecom. Feel free to tell me if I'm leaving anything out. Is there anything else you want to share?

Speaker 1:

No, I think a lot of folks hear that and they think we're saying guy, it's HVAC, new HVAC guidecom and just real quick, not only do we have the guide for homeowners, but we also have a place there that anyone can check a warranty. So if you have any brand of heating and air system, you can go on there and check your warranty. We've got all the links on there. We also have our mastermind for pros. That's something we built out a year or two ago. We also have financing on there. So if someone's buying a heating and air system, even if they're a pro and they're not set up with one of the programs, there's no dealer fees. I hate, I despise that. It's one of the things I hate in our industry. If you watch, enough of my YouTube content. And then we've got a bunch of other things on there, like calculators, some of the energy savings calculators and links to that sort of stuff on there too. So all of that, including the guide itself, can be found at newhvacguidecom.

Speaker 3:

And that is actually one last thing I want to talk to you about is that mastermind. Who's the right fit for that mastermind?

Speaker 1:

Who would fit in well and you didn't get a lot of value out of it, I think so.

Speaker 1:

We have some more seasoned professionals that are in there, but you know, my bread and butter is helping guys that are in their first year or maybe they haven't even started yet but they want to own their own business someday and helping them through that, helping them through some of the things that maybe, to guys like us, is normal. I just showed a guy last week how to use Facebook ads and he's like no one's ever showed me this before. So just some of the marketing things, like Google business profile and your website and all the different things that any decent business, even a mom and pop, should have. We cover that in those groups. So anyone in their first five years, for sure, but even seasoned guys we've got a few of those and the other thing we just rolled out a few weeks ago is any old timers that are. They have no desire to build a business, but they've been in the trade. They've forgotten more than I'll ever learn. We are letting them in for free.

Speaker 1:

So if they want, to come join our groups, share some war stories and share some wisdom with guys that are starting out. They can come and join our groups and impart some of that wisdom and have a place to shoot the breeze too.

Speaker 3:

That's such a genius move because those guys have so much wisdom and it wouldn't really make sense for them to pay for it. So to get them in and they usually love to share their wisdom. As it is, I am such a big believer and call it whatever you will, a mastermind or whatever but getting people of equal mind, equal professional or similar professional and we're all thinking about the same thing it's just so powerful when you get that matching done really well and it sounds like you've got a good community.

Speaker 1:

We're trying.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's always a work in progress, right? Yes, sir, I'm sure you probably vet, you know how those people come in and are they a fit and are they on the same, are they aligned? I mean, it's just a necessary part. Unfortunately, when you're building a community, you got to make sure everybody's kind of on the same page, or else you don't get that. You don't get everybody gelling.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean we've certainly vet. We've even had I had a guy that was in the manufacturing side in one of our groups so we've had all kinds of different folks in different walks of life and you know that see value. And it's not me, it's not a coaching program, I'm not some guru that you know has never even been in the trade. I hate those guys. You know they've never even owned a heating and air business and they're going to teach you how to grow a company. But what it is is it's a way of getting around other people that are fighting the same fight you are.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's great. That's cool stuff. Well good, Did I leave anything out? Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up?

Speaker 1:

No, I do want to thank you, though. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and hopefully, you know, somebody got something out of this and blessed them in some way.

Speaker 3:

Oh, 100%. You have an awesome story and it sounds like you still have many more chapters that you're going to add to it. So I love it, man, I love you being here and I love having the conversation. So I'm going to end it with thank you so much. Thank you. Joshua's story is a reminder that grit doesn't just build businesses. It builds options. He didn't sell Griffin Air because it was failing. He sold it because he created enough leverage to choose what came next, whether it was using YouTube as a lead machine, training his team with intention, or sticking was using YouTube as a lead machine, training his team with intention, or sticking to high standards in a rural market. He built something real and he did it his way. What hit me most, that one bad customer call didn't break him. It freed him. It made him realize his time and energy were worth protecting. So here's my question for you what are you holding on to that's already run its course and what could open up if you made space for what's next? Until next time, keep building you.

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Tyler Martin

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