Alec Stevanovski: HomePros

This week, I sit down with Alec Stevanovski, Chief Editor of HomePros, a leading digital media platform focused on the business side of HVAC. Alec shares how HomePros curates content that informs, inspires, and empowers contractors, business owners, and industry professionals. From editorial strategy to industry trends, this episode explores how media can elevate the trades and support the next generation of HVAC leaders.

Whether you're a technician, entrepreneur, or just passionate about the future of the skilled trades, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on the power of storytelling in HVAC.

Transcript

Speaker 00 0:02

Welcome to the Parts Truth, the podcast where the nuts and bolts of the home service world come together. I am your host, Scott Pierson, and each week we dive into the real stories, the trends, the truths behind the trades. From the shifting tides of the economy and supply chain challenges to what homeowners need to know before making big investments in their homes. Whether you're in the industry or you're just trying to make smarter choices for your home, we're here to break it all down. No fluff. Just facts. So grab your coffee, tighten your tool belt, and let's get into it. Welcome back. I've got Alec Stefanovski from Home Pros, chief editor, and really one of my favorite people in the world right now because he's putting together one of the most comprehensive and valuable resources from a media standpoint as it relates to HVAC and an industry that we've been working on for about 20 years now. So welcome, Alec. Thanks, Scott. I appreciate the time. Always good catching up. I'm excited to chat. Awesome. So let's jump into it. Look, I've been watching what you've been doing now for over a year. I'm really enjoying it. Let's give the audience a little bit of a take on how you got here and what you're doing and really what your mission is. Yeah, totally. So I'll do that. And then I'd love to get some of your thoughts too, just giving your insights and kind of where you stand in the corner that you stand in the industry as far as supply and everything going on. So first, yeah, I'm the editor of Home Pros. We run a digital news company and we cover the HVAC industry. So we write about and publish news, just how the don't know wall street journal does for folks in finance but we specifically cover m a deal making regulation what's happening in the economy um you know some technology and we publish that stuff you know a few days a week through email primarily on our website there's always uh stuff going on and we get to write about it and talk about it and talk with folks like yourself so yeah that's kind of what i'm doing but really long term what we're looking to do is build kind of a digital news platform that cuts across not just HVAC, but ultimately other sort of home service verticals. That's plumbing, that's roofing, electrical, et cetera. And then it's how do we do that on different platforms to kind of meet people where they are. So, you know, written text, sort of like article news is one. It's just one thing. You know, the other is eventually video and audio, like what we're doing now. And, you know, social and events where we can get people together and kind of discuss what's happening. And then it's really just do that across, you know, a dozen or so home service verticals. So yeah, it's exciting stuff. Let's go. I know you came from a software background. How'd you get into the home services as a trades-focused media outlet here? Yeah, yeah. So I worked for three years at a software business that sold to, really it was like business management software. So it was kind of your basic CRM, scheduled dispatch, payment processing to field service management, I guess is the term. But They had primarily HVAC and plumbing contractors. We had some roofing customers, primarily HVAC and plumbing. I was there for three years, mostly on the sales team. And I noticed, you know, while I was there, everything that we all know now, which is that the industries are huge, they're fragmented, there's a lot happening. And I'd always been separately interested in the news media business, but I just never had an opportunity to do anything. And so when I started looking around, I just started getting curious about who Thank you for having me. At the intersection of a couple things, the timing made sense to launch sort of a digital-only kind of startup-y news company. So that's kind of how I got into it, but it was really from the software company that I was at sold to HVAC and plumbing contractors. Yeah, how do you think your timing's working out? Well, you seem to have a lot to write about with everything going on in the industry this year. Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I think two things. I mean, I think the timing for the business in general Makes a lot of sense. I mean, so far it's kind of playing out. There's still risk. Obviously, we're an early stage startup, but attendance spans are shortened, consideration spans are shortened. So when people are scrolling on their phone or on their computer, we want to, it's almost like we want things in bullets and in bites and we want to move on, but we want the option to go dive deeper on something that kind of catches our eye. So there's a formatting component that I think, you know, I didn't make this up. I kind of stole it from other industries, but that I thought was timely because that's just how people's behavior has changed. But I also thought At the same time, there hadn't been any competitive forces in this trade media space in 20 years. All the publications that exist have been around for 50 years plus. Business 101 says that when any market that has that setup, the incentives to innovate and to do interesting things go down. Now, to your last point, the timing is good because, I mean, I've learned that, you know, new administrations, doesn't matter, Republican, Democrat, whatever, are good for the news business. So there's, you know, because there's a lot to talk about. So, yeah, there's certainly been no shortage of things happening since January. Now, I think the fact that over the last really 30 years, and I think you hit on this a minute ago, the fragmentation of this industry has resulted in a really inefficient way for the supply chain to function. That's our big thesis is how do we accelerate things and make things easier for people to access true, genuine OEM parts. But I think that tie from OEM to distributor to contractor to consumer, there is a way to encapsulate all those players and find benefits throughout the entire industry. What do you say? Yeah, I think I mean, given what you mentioned, you know, just about the supply chain, I mean, I'd be curious from your perspective. I mean, you guys are dealing with kind of folks at different levels of the supply chain, and you have a big focus on it. How would you, and you can take this either way, I'm curious, like longer term, but then also more of the shorter, you know, immediate term. How would you describe the state of where things are at? Like, I understand, you know, during COVID, there was a ton of demand pull, right? and things globally got really jumbled up. There were long lead times, delays, costs went up. Since then, things have kind of moderated, but now we have this new dynamic of uncertainty surrounding tariffs. Same inflation conversations are happening. I mean, how would you describe where things are at today from a supply chain standpoint? Yeah, I think it's just an amplification of what it's always been. We've got probably the last 30, 40 years of inflation really poorly designed regional boundaries, constraining supply chain across multiple brands. I think of any regular contractor doing HVAC work today, in order to get a simple day's work done, he's got to have relationships with four or five different distributors across town in order to access different brands of products. So I'll unpack that for a second. It's worth considering that OEMs did a great job of partnering with distributors back when demand truly outran supply. Everybody could make money and sign exclusive agreements when it came to marrying a distributor to one brand. But as a result, it creates an inefficiency because now a contractor can't access the multiple brand marketplace with one distributor. distributor who he likes the distributor who he has the best credit line with the distributor who he trusted the counter um to id parts for him so as a result we've got you know probably the last 25 years of distributors trying to take care of contractors in that space and the only option they had to to manage parts and repair was to provide them universal or generic parts so the access to to repair parts to extend the life of an equipment You know, it was challenged by just the poor design of the supply chain in general. To me, that's just a recessive tax on the homeowner. You've got a generic part being used for repair because that was the quickest access over the most advantageous access based on that contractor distributor relationship. And now you've got a homeowner that, hey, because we put a generic motor in, the utility bill went up a couple bucks a month. The life of the equipment is degraded long-term. So when I think about the industry as it is today, you've got that long-term fragmentation now coupled with the uncertainty of tariffs and you drop this A2L transition into place. Things are just a mixed bag. And what I think it creates is a lot of delay. You're going to have a group of contractors and distributors that move fast, but you're going to have a lot of them that we're talking to recently that are slow to transition, slow to train on new products. And what does that do to pricing? I think that's why I'm interested to talk to you today is you've studied how the economy is being impacted by some of these different levers being pulled. What are you seeing from a consumer standpoint? What is the reaction there? Yeah. No, yeah. So I'll take that. You mentioned one thing that I want to come back to and get your thought on. But yeah, I think From the consumer standpoint, it's kind of weird because if you look at sentiment and just confidence and how people are feeling, I mean, it's down a good chunk since December, since the beginning of this year. Now, it's kind of wacky because it goes up and down a little bit every month. There's some months it goes down a little, then it jumps. But overall, from the beginning of this year, it's down. And so you'd say, okay, well, people feel worse about their future financial situation because of the looming possibility of prices going up because of tariffs and everything. and uncertainty around policy, whatever. But at the same time, when you look at the hard data, it kind of is, I don't want to say the opposite, but it paints a different picture where it's like, yes, people are feeling a certain way, but they're still spending. Consumer spending has just shot straight up for several years. FICO scores obviously play a key role in ability to obtain financing, especially now that the cost of an HVAC system is upwards of 13, 15 grand or whatever, are actually a little bit higher than they were several years ago. They haven't crashed or anything. Homeowners are wealthier on paper because the value of homes across the country has shot up. So asset values from a home standpoint are up. And you just have these weird conflicting data points. And so I think what the result is, is you have consumers who are technically... for the most part at least, still pretty sound financially, but they're maybe a little bit finicky. And they're kind of paying attention to what could possibly happen over the next six months, 12 months, 18 months. But they're not in a terrible financial situation, like literally speaking. Yeah, it's almost like they've got the equity on paper to access, but they're apprehensive to access it. Do you think that's based off of just the uncertainty of the industry, or is it Is it a, a trailing you in HVAC in general, they're just not used to making those types of decisions. Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I, I think, um, and I, I, I'm gonna take this from something I listened to the other day, but I think, I don't know if it's, yeah, I think you're right about their willingness to access it. Maybe a little off. I mean, I think the risk, or I think the thing to watch for is. not like are they completely unwilling to access or willing to move and shell out a lot of money for a new system it's just how long do they delay it for if they're delaying it do they just keep on the road you know and and how long do they do that if so because i think longer term like i think the ultimate one of the questions that i'm don't have an answer to but i'm trying to i always try to ask people about it is like does it get to a point in the industry where the cost of a new system gets so high Maybe you don't price people out of the market because obviously HVAC is so mission critical that people are going to have to buy. But at what point does that really start to become a problem just because of how expensive these systems are getting? Because not only do you have tariff-driven inflation, of course, but that affects the manufacturers more so than the contractors. It does ripple down. Then you have new refrigerant. Then you have, at the same time, all the consumer stuff. So I just think about at what point does that equation just start to get sticky for people because of how expensive it's getting? And I don't know if I have an answer on that. I'm curious as to your conversations, actually, if you heard anything. You know, it's interesting. I feel that question from a lot of friends and family when they're in the need for a repairer, potentially replacing a system. Yeah. I know there's some data, and I know that you've written on it, as to how the prices have increased dramatically over the last probably five or six years. And I can recall selling for manufacturers and distributors when it was a lot more affordable to replace the system. Generally, my comment to my friends and family is, hey, are you still comfortable in your home? Is it cooling or heating in the right fashion? And do the math on what the return on investment looks like. You're going to pay 40 grand for the best system. How long would it take you in savings on your energy bill to achieve the return on investment? And typically it's not possible in a lifetime. And so that's really where the genesis of my question comes from a pricing standpoint. And you're leading to is, wow, we've gotten to a point that HVAC is becoming a very expensive category for the home. Always has been, but now it's starting to creep up into the level set point of wait, my mortgage might not be this expensive from a payment standpoint. So yeah, maybe you can speak to the pricing increases that you've seen from a data perspective and how financing plays into that over time. Yeah, I think, I mean, some of the data that, and this is based on obviously the manufacturers, the big public companies report earnings every quarter and they're constantly being asked about it and talking about it. They said even last year, two years ago, whatever, that they think all in kind of over a several year period, the price of their equipment in terms of them selling it down the channel, could inflate 10%, 15%, 20% from those periods, whatever it was, two years ago or a year and a half ago. They've clearly already kind of announced some of this stuff, especially with the issues around 454B. They've announced some specific price increases, some adjustments based on that. So that's happening, and that's kind of the number that they pegged it at. We'll see. They report, they do Q2. So we're talking, by the way, just for context, on July 11th. So I think they come out and they do their Q2 earnings like basically the last few days of July. So it'll be in a few weeks. So I'm going to be obviously watching that and we'll see kind of what they say as to what happened in the second quarter. But I think as far as financing, I mean, there was a data point that came out earlier. I think it was earlier this year. And it was that applications for financing system replacements had trended downwards over a period of time. And I'm forgetting, I think it was from 2023 to 2024. I could be wrong, but I believe it was that time period. But at the same time, applications for repairs skyrocketed. It was something over 30%. And so that goes to show, okay, people are financing these repairs. Not only are they opting for repairs, but they're financing them. So that's something that I really, really would love a bigger data set on. Obviously, every financing provider has their own customer data and they're unwilling to share it, but I would really, really love... a giant data set because that was just one financing provider's data. But that's a thing that's happening. They're going to put out, they'll put out probably this year or the most recent equivalent of that sometime toward the end of this year or early next year. I'd like to see that over the course of maybe five, six years. Because to me, I agree, your data set is somewhat limited in the sense that I don't remember when people were financing repairs. That's a new thing in my world. So interested to see how that plays out over time. Yeah, 100%. I'm curious on your end. So you mentioned earlier this kind of when talking about sort of the evolution of the distributor kind of contractor relationship, you mentioned that there was this sort of shift at a certain point to distributors being more okay, kind of leaning into the generic parts. You know, they're easier, faster, whatever it is. You obviously are in the position that genuine OEM parts are better than generic parts. So I'm wondering how you... is that an incentive issue? I mean, if something is easier and cheaper, you know, from a financial standpoint, they're incentivized to do whatever that thing might be. But how do you, I don't know, how do you think about that in general going forward? Yeah, to me, it's not a matter of cheaper and easier. I think that's how we've always looked at it. Sure. I think the reality is it was more about access. The distributor didn't have access to the genuine OEM part. therefore the contractor to have access to the genuine OEM part. But everybody wants to use the real genuine OEM part that was designed to be in that system, right? You could ask a thousand technicians tomorrow, would they rather use the fake part or the real part? They're going to tell you, I want to do quality work. I think if you asked any homeowner, if they would wait 24 hours for a genuine OEM replacement that was meant to be in that machine or an aftermarket alternative, They're going to tell you, I would like the real part. So I don't know that it's a matter of easier and cheaper and a matter of evaluation from the past. I think it was really just the access. Contractors had relationships with their favorite distributor. That distributor wanted to make sure that they were taken care of all in goodwill. And as a result, they found an alternative solution that they had access to and could provide. Because you got to remember for every distributor, that repeat business to business relationship of a contractor, especially ones that are good customers, you want to do everything you can to jump through hoops to make sure you can find a solution for them. So that evolution over time, just because we didn't have a national solution to really having all the repair parts aggregated into one process or one source, because you got so many manufacturers. It just became a fragmented world, relying on generic replacements as the solution. And a lot of that is driven upstream from the consumer too, right? Mrs. Jones doesn't want to wait one more day for cold air. She wants a system up and running now. You know, you're in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner and you want to make sure that your guests that are coming are going to have comfortable air, but your system went out 12 hours before. So it's a matter of timing and urgency. but then compound that with the lack of availability for true, genuine OEM parts. That's kind of what Encompass is solving for and Barstone is solving for today. It is, hey, we don't sell equipment. Let that stay local. But as far as distributors in the channel, come to us if you want to provide a genuine OEM part in a brand that you don't necessarily satisfy today. Contractor's the same. Define one process with your favorite distributor and ensure that... there's access in 24 to 48 hours to the real part. So yeah, to us, it's a big deal. Yeah. You, you kind of hit on, I was going to ask you, I think that's a good segue into how you guys in Encompass are thinking about this. So I guess you, you clarify for me from a contractor's workflow standpoint, where that fits in, where Encompass fits in when you guys are talking to potential customers. Yeah. We look at the channel as a whole. We're trying to accelerate the whole thing. So distributors become our customer and we, we round out their portfolio. If they're a, let's just say a carrier distributor, we want to make sure they have access to all the other major brands as well. Train, Linux, Dream, et cetera. So that they can take care of that contractor or technician on the other side of the counter. Now, at the same level, we talk to contractors and technicians in the field daily too with the real value prop that, hey, when you want to create predictable, reliable process around your workflows, Start to consider a singular process within Compass or Partstown, meaning define where you're going to buy the product, define how you're going to identify the solution, and we're going to predictably get it to you in 24 to 40 hours. We know that not every consumer can wait that long, but if you can build temporary solutions and find opportunities to delay it by 24 hours for the fix, now you can start to build math around, okay, how many jobs can I get done per day? per technician and start to build out a real workflow. And we combine that with being really the first of, hopefully many in the future, national solutions to that. So when we talk to bigger groups that are really rolling up from a PE standpoint, contracting groups and distributors, one of the big challenges that they often present to us is the need for a national data set. Pricing and part numbers and things change as you move from region to region and distributor to distributor. Which makes it challenging for them to run predictable businesses within their groups, especially as they acquire new relationships and new parties within their portfolio. And then from a contractor standpoint, I mean, there is though this part of that workflow when somebody would sit down and say, I want to standardize my process and I want to leverage something like an encompass or encompass itself to do that, that there is an actual purchasing workflow from the technician standpoint that they can go through. either on the job or either in the office. Walk me through that, I guess, from a contractor standpoint. Yeah, that's a great call-up. And you set me up for telling the cool sales value prop for our group. So we have taken all the OEM information from a bill of material standpoint for every machine that we have access to across a little over 100 brands. So first of its kind and built out one of the most comprehensive databases from a parts ID perspective that exists in the industry today. A lot of groups have built databases, especially for identifying parts, but generally they're left to do cross-reference or alternative replacement, kind of what we were talking about before. Ours is built to give you the exact OEM part number that was meant to be in that machine from the beginning in three seconds or less. So therefore, consider a technician in the field diagnosing a problem. In the past, he would pick up the phone and say, hey, distributor, I need part number price and availability just to get to the next step with that homeowner, right? He can't write up a service ticket until he has those data points. And now with our URLs and compass.com, parts.town.com, he can quickly type in a model number to the machine that he's working on. And in three seconds, he's got the full bill of material with every part that was designed to be in that machine. But as an extra bonus, if he is a customer of ours, he also can start to click into cart, right? It has the transaction available to him. So he can say part number right away, price, define expectation of that homeowner on cost. And then if it's a go, he can say, okay, I'll have it in 24 to 48 hours. Mrs. Jones, it's Monday. Let's get you back on my calendar for Wednesday. And now all of a sudden the ambiguity of when they're going to repair the machine, when the part's going to be available, all that disappears, which is... you know, really to do with the big inefficiencies in the industry today from a supply chain standpoint, it's procurement and scheduling, right? If you really want to try to get one worker job per mandate as a contracting group, you know, how do you start to attack those two facets of the business to make them more efficient and create predictability? Right. And you guys are leveraging maybe, what, a dozen or so physical distribution centers across the country that are placed in certain regions to be able to fulfill that from a 24 to 48-hour standpoint. Is that correct? Yeah. So if you look at the business in the background operationally, and we are a data science business, I kind of referenced that point, but we're also a logistics business. When it comes to small parcel delivery, if you look at the greater Partstown umbrella with Encompass built in there, We are strategically placed on a lot of different channels from a FedEx and UPS standpoint to optimize their 24 to 48 hour ground delivery. So it's not just like throwing it on a plane. It's no, we're going to put it on a truck and it's going to be due tomorrow and it's going to be the most affordable delivery that we can access as a result. Yeah. One thing that I've been hearing from really both contractors and distributors is this. There have been issues in obtaining, not necessarily R32, at least as of now, but 454B. And there's several different reasons behind it. I mean, honestly, I ask one person, they go, it's this reason. I ask another, they go, it's another. So we'll not speculate, I guess, 100% on sort of the root cause of it, but there have been some issues with starting 454B. Really the expectation, at least this is based on what some of the manufacturers and distributors have said, both to me, but then on earnings calls, They think this will basically smooth itself out through the end of the summer, by the end of the year, we'll kind of be good to go. Demand came too early, wasn't enough preparation, whatever. But it's been an issue. And so I'm curious if one, if that is true in your case, which that's meaning like, has that been a big conversation that you've been having with both distributors and or contractors? And then I'm curious as to anything else that you're hearing or you've been hearing from either one of those groups now as it relates to maybe the next few months. Yeah, that's a great question. I think you probably have some insight to share on that as well. I'll say from our perspective, we're in the broken business. The existing machines in the field aren't running off of A2L refrigerants. But it is a topic you can't avoid when you truly care about your customers. So as we talk to distributors, as we talk to contractors, we got the raw information because we're not a stakeholder in that conversation. What we've heard is that There's a lot of frustration at the distributor level on mixed messaging and availability, and they're having to get really creative to support customers in the field. They're trying to buy new machines and having to prioritize customers as a result. So that's challenging for a distributor. But at the same time, it's challenging for those contractors in the field that are trying to adopt to new machines now based off of the decisions made in the supply chain that's working for them. So I think the The frustration has been there. But at the same time, you'll get the attitude of a lot of hardworking individuals in this channel that says, hey, we survived COVID. We'll survive this. It's really just a matter of stick to the basics and get back down to business. And a lot of them have that simple attitude of let's just go do it. So I personally, I speculate that the comments of this will smooth itself out through just general communication. economics of a marketplace, it will. I don't know, what's your take on it? Yeah, I think, so I've tried to look into a lot of like, how did this really start? What is actually going on? I mean, there's a couple different things. Number one, you know, first of all, I forgot what, maybe in April or a few months ago, you know, both Chemours and Honeywell came out and said we're jacking the prices up of 454B or to add a surcharge, you know, whatever. Honeywell added up 42% surcharge for orders that were after right around the time that they announced that. And their logic was increases in raw materials costs. There was also a demand pull part of it. But then on the other side, you have another part of the conversation, which was there was actually not enough physical cylinders. And then within that, like actual components of the cylinder itself. So then it was a hardware thing. It's not a gas hardware thing. I think the reality is both. And I think the demand also, you could argue that maybe there was a lack of, I don't want to say a lack of preparation, but demand also, I think, did really show up pretty fast. I mean, one of the things that I thought was really interesting was and Hardy put this out. November 2024, they put out monthly distributor sales. In November 2024, of central ducted systems, as a percentage of the distributor's total sales represented, central ducted system using A12 refrigerants was like less than 5% of their distributor's total sales for that month. Fast forward to the most recent announcement which came out basically a week or two ago. that figure was 58%. So you have almost a tenfold increase in nine months. So it really didn't happen. I mean, it's contractors, distributors, I mean, they're really adopting it at a fast pace, fast rate. At the same time, there was another report that came out that kind of modeled, and this was based on EPA data, the supply of Fortinet, the existing base of Fortinet. And they projected that Although people are saying, look, the prices are going to go up as supply goes down, we're transitioning to new refrigerants, that's going to be kind of a whole conversation. But their whole thing was, this report I was looking at was basically that there is enough supply to where the demand won't necessarily outstrip supply for several years. I think it was 2028 or something like that, or 27, 28. So the argument was, there's actually this cushion where We might not be in some crazy inflationary price environment from a Fortinet standpoint, at least for several years. And I thought that was interesting. I'd challenge that with go back and look at the last two refrigerant changes we've had in the last 20 years. And did they peg the analytics and supply and timing then? No. You're probably getting similar results with poor studies in the background. I think it's, it's probably one that's hard to predict. Yeah. The simple answer. A hundred percent. I agree with you on the general notion that to your point, the market will sort of smooth itself out, you know, in however many months and things will kind of, things will be fine ultimately. And I think to your point, it's a, it's another sort of business one-on-one, you know, there are ups, downs, kind of things that happen. And at the end of the day, people keep moving. And, uh, and that's, what's important. Um, Which kind of reminds me, I mean, is there, I think some of the big conversations that I've been having recently are obviously around tariffs. There's policy, some incentives are going away at the end of this year as a result of the bill that the new administration, the president signed last week. What do you think, I mean, just curious, like as far as the economy is, are some of the big things to kind of watch for maybe the next six months or through the end of this year, as far as distributors, contractors, like, is it tariffs? Is it, is it, do you think the consumers side of it's more important? Is it, is it something else that I'm missing? Just curious about any thought you have. Yeah, I'm going to say consumers all day long. Um, it's not a touch point that we get to, to really affect, uh, directly, uh, from a supply standpoint. Um, But it's always going to be a consumer goods, right? So if HVAC is a necessity by a homeowner, they're likely not going to live without it in America today. But the reality is, you know, what system will they choose? We've had the benefit of having some great marketing vessels like rebate programs. I use that as the term because I think that's what they were truly was an ability to educate consumers on what would be a more energy-efficient piece of equipment and a justification to spend more money to do it. Now you're taking those away, so you're going to have consumers that may or may not have an incentive to look towards leveling up a piece of equipment to a higher standard. So you're going to have a lot more base pieces. That could result, this is just me being speculative, in some efficiencies built into the manufacturing of equipment, right? If the demand is more on the standard piece of equipment based off of regulations, then it's easier to manufacture and mass produce, you know, one or two systems versus seven or eight in the portfolio. So I think you'll see the shift towards more of a commoditized base unit and probably a little bit of price elasticity in that top, more sophisticated energy efficient unit which I think could go two ways, right? It could come down in price as a result based on the strategy of that manufacturer, or it could create more separation between that base unit and that top tier unit. So that's just my thought. Yeah, there was a similar thing that I read on the implications of what would happen if Energy Star gets eliminated, which has kind of been floated as basically the incentive for the more premium energy efficient systems from a production standpoint. at least in this argument, to your point, goes down. You know, especially because a lot of their, the energy star sort of like base, whatever are used for these rebate programs or incentive programs around the country. And so it's a similar argument. Yeah, I think really the other thing that I'm going to be paying attention to from a tariff standpoint is this exemption on goods from Canada and Mexico, right? Really, particularly in Mexico. I mean, right now, really core products from the HVAC industry have been totally exempt. They have zero percent tariffs because of that exemption. And so, you know, we'll see if that gets removed. I mean, it's been the case since early, you know, for several months. And there hasn't been, at least I haven't heard any sort of like rumors of them taking it away or whatever it may be. But that's something that I think would be interesting just because of how big the percentage of production in Mexico is compared to a bunch of these other countries. around the world, especially the smaller ones. For sure. I mean, and honestly, I feel like every other week I get to read something new and tariffs related to home pros emails coming out. So, you know, thanks to the current administration for giving you plenty to write on every week. I am moving target. I know it's sometimes I feel like a broken record, but then I, then I kind of, you know, tell myself, I'm like, look, this is, you know, we're, we're in the news business and that's kind of the, you know, the job. and let people interpret it however they'd like. But there's no shortage of announcements on that front at all. But yeah, we'll see. It's an interesting time. It's a dynamic time in the industry, I think. I think there's a lot going on and there's a lot of uncertainty. But at the end of the day, it's just like every other industry in history. It's just a matter of executing and showing up at all levels, contract distributor or whatever. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's continue to focus on the simple elements of the business. The things will eventually flatten themselves out and the market will adjust to where it goes to. It's definitely not a fear factor in our world as far as where we sit in the business. So maybe just a nod to the consumer to have some confidence moving forward. 100%. Well, cool. Alec, it's been awesome catching up. I think these are impactful topics that I think the whole industry is really paying attention to right now. If you had to give one or two things to leave contractors and consumers with from our message, what would it be? I would say it's going to be fine. It's probably fine. It's probably fine. Probably fine. That's a good quote. Well, my message would be twofold. One, I do believe it's going to be fine. We're not shooting rockets into third world countries here. It's HVAC. But at the same time, to keep up with all the current trends and changes on a weekly basis, I highly encourage anybody that's listening to this to make sure that they're tuned into Home Pros and getting that weekly email. I know for our teams and our customers, it's been truly impactful and helpful to to maintain confidence and stay informed. So thank you for what you do. Don't stop doing it. And yeah, let us be a part of it. Yeah, likewise. And, you know, it's been great chatting and being able to talk about this stuff. So definitely appreciate it. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks, Alec.