Home Services Success Stories

Build People, Then Build Revenue

• Peakzi • Season 1 • Episode 15

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Peakzi Podcast: What does it take to turn a two-bedroom startup into a multi-trade home services leader without losing your soul? Adam Bardi with Bardi Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing Inc. in Norcross, GA pulls back the curtain on the journey from his father’s immigrant grit to a people-first growth engine that doubles down on culture, training, and systems.

We get into the lessons earned the hard way—earning every role, leaving the business to find maturity, then coming back during a recession to start from the warehouse. Adam explains how he bought the company, expanded beyond HVAC, and built a recruiting machine that matches rising demand. You’ll hear how Bardi University trains techs on communication first and technical depth second, creating field pros who educate customers and deliver consistent five-star experiences. He also breaks down their six-step service process, from meticulous prep and clear expectations to whole-home exploration, written options, and spotless wrap-ups.

Staying privately held gives Bardi the freedom to play the long game: protect reputation, invest in people, and serve the Atlanta community through partners like Habitat for Humanity. To stabilize revenue beyond weather-driven HVAC swings, Adam details the push into plumbing and electrical, including a near $3M first year in electrical alone. On the tech front, he shares how Peakzi’s marketing analytics, competitor benchmarking, and AI-optimized website help the team show up where homeowners are searching now—inside AI assistants.

If you lead a shop or want to build one, this conversation is a blueprint: hire for heart, train for skill, codify your customer experience, and use data to amplify what already works. Subscribe, share with a fellow operator, and leave a review with the one hiring tip you’ll steal for your team.


Powered by: www.peakzi.me

Learn more at: https://bardi.com/

Peakzi Podcast: Home Services Success Stories

Julian Placino:

Welcome back to the Home Services Success Stories podcast, powered by Peakzi, the number one AI platform for growing your home services business. And on the show today, we have Adam Bardi, who is the owner and president at Bardi Home Services. Adam, good to have you on the show. How are you? Excellent.

Speaker:

Excellent. Glad to be here.

Julian Placino:

Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and jump right in and start getting to know you and your company. So tell us a bit about the founding story of Bardi and specifically how your father, Alex, turned adversity into an opportunity and ultimately led to the founding of the business.

Speaker:

Sure. So yeah, my my uh father uh is an immigrant. Um my grandparents and him immigrated uh to Marietta, Georgia, um, from Italy, and you know, grew up in Marietta and uh started working for uh a heating and air company uh out of college and uh had the opportunity. He worked there about seven years and had the opportunity uh to start Barty in 1989. So, you know, started it out of a two-bedroom apartment, uh, which is a pretty cool story uh from the ground up, and you know, grew the business. Uh, one of the cool things that I learned about um kind of the first year of him starting the business when I was older, is uh he went uh through a divorce. So uh him and my and my mother broke up and went through a divorce, got diagnosed with cancer, and started Barty all in the same year. Oh, that's some adversity, right?

Julian Placino:

Yeah, I'm curious what was his mindset if you were to observe his behaviors, the way that he was thinking, like diagnosed with cancer, divorce, starting Barty, what do you what do you think was all the motivation behind that?

Speaker:

Uh you know, I I think when you when you're an immigrant and you're an entrepreneur at heart, uh, that's a recipe for success. So um, you know, it's just persevere, right? You know, persevere through through whatever you're going through and and get to the other side. And uh, you know, he's uh he's a a man of faith. So I'm sure that helped him uh through the process as well.

Julian Placino:

So you are your your father's son, and you are now the president of the company, right? So growing up alongside your dad, seeing him start the business from scratch, what are some of those lessons that you have learned from him from leadership, business, and otherwise?

Speaker:

Man, so many. Where where uh where do I start? Ton of ton of lessons. So, you know, my father, you know, he did a really good job of giving me uh an opportunity. Uh, and I feel like there's in my experience, there's really uh two types of owners that bring their children into businesses. Um, one is uh the way that my father did it, didn't give me uh, you know, any that it wasn't an easy road, made me earn everything. I had to be the best just to be considered average, right, in the business. Uh, and then there's the other type of owner that, you know, kind of gives their kid uh, you know, puts it on a silver platter, gives them titles, whatever. So I'm just very thankful that my dad made me earn it. Uh and you know, I had my first summer when I was uh 12 years old, uh earning money to buy my first car because he told me he wasn't gonna buy my car for me. Uh, you know, I was crawling under, you know, houses, uh, doing installs, put putting in HVAC equipment. And um, you know, I progressed, you know, uh until I was 16 and saved my money and and and bought a 1991 white Honda Cord four-door uh, you know, Honda Cord, right? And got my and got my freedom. So, you know, hard work, uh, you gotta earn it. You know, the other thing uh that you know he really um drove home with me was you know making sure that you are surrounding yourself with the right type of people, uh, and not just personally, but professionally. And uh he would always tell me that you're the average of of your friends, right? And you know, I'm I'm sure you might have heard that phrase uh or that cliche. Uh, but you know, he told me that when I was 12, you know, 30 years ago. Uh so you know, I feel like he was always working on himself and you know, trying to get better and and putting himself in the in different rooms to learn. He is uh or he was um very involved in a CEO group uh called uh Tech Group when he joined, it's Vestige Now. Uh so you know I have uh followed in his footsteps uh with with that to surround myself with you know great people. And I've been in a vestige group for 10 years now. We meet once a month. Um that's you know, it's non-industry specific. And um I'm a member of Nextstar, which is a best practice group for our industry. Um, and I meet you know once a week with five other operators uh that are in Nextstar, and we talk shop and help each other. So, you know, uh surrounding yourself with the right people uh is is a is a big one for sure.

Julian Placino:

So those are great. I think the first thing I heard was number one, he let you earn it. He didn't just give you anything, he didn't raise you with a silver spoon in your mouth, but really to to work, to earn, to live, to grow. And I think that's great. The second piece, of course, surround yourself with great people. And you have been very intentional. You mentioned vestige, next star. So not just business development, but specific industry as well. So being the average of the people you hang around most, I think those really great points. Um, so I I know that you have kind of a leaving and a coming back story. You you left and you came back in 2018. So, first off, what was that? Why did you leave the business? What what caused that?

Speaker:

So, you know, I I grew up in the business um for the sole purpose uh, you know, to earn money to buy a car, right? And I got my freedom. And I I just didn't, I didn't want to live in the shadow. I didn't want to there were big um big shoes to fill. And looking back on that, real simple. I wasn't mature enough to be able to handle that responsibility at the time. Um, so I went and I started a painting business, did some other things in life, and uh got the opportunity to come back uh in 2000, call it 10, uh, somewhere around there. It's been about 15 years since I've been back. And, you know, came back uh for a for a number of reasons. One, it was an opportunity. Uh, two, we were going through, you know, the the country was going through a pretty big recession, and I had started a business, uh a painting business, and we were focused on primarily new construction. So I was painting new construction houses, and we all know what happened in 2008. Uh, I went from, you know, uh having plenty of work, things were great. I was in my early 20s, mid-20s, uh, to literally there was no work. Um, so I had to pivot. And, you know, going back to Barty was uh a good opportunity for me at the time for sure.

Julian Placino:

How was that conversation with uh with your father?

Speaker:

Uh it was it was interesting. So he initiated it and um we went to lunch and he said, Hey, you know, I'd love for you to come back and learn the business. And and uh I thought about it for a while and you know thought it was a good opportunity. Um, but again, he made me earn it. I had to go interview and you know go through the process, right? Just like any other um, you know, team member or employee that came to work there. So, and I got to start at the bottom. So uh I was the job that was offered to me was a uh a a warehouse manager. We I pretty much you know drove materials around to commercial jobs and and uh you know supported the project managers and took out the trash and did that for a while to kind of earn earn my stripes uh to get back into the business at Bardi.

Julian Placino:

I think that's great. And you know, and that also tells me that you became the president not because you are your father's son, but because you had to earn your stripes and make your way into that role. Um, so so when you came back, part of the story is you helped expand Barty from from purely HVAC to full-on home services. So, how'd you go about doing that? And you know, what drove that growth? Tell that part of the story.

Speaker:

So, you know, I had the opportunity, um, my parents wanted to retire. So in 2018, I had the opportunity to buy the business, um, and which which we did. And we were um primarily HAC, and my dad did have uh the vision to uh start plumbing um a few years before, uh, but it was a very small piece of our business. Like we had one plumber. Uh, so you know, I knew that uh we wanted to grow the business. So really my first focus as being an entrepreneur is and my um where I lean where I'm most comfortable is sales and marketing. So I'm like, man, we got to make the phone ring. And that was really my focus in the beginning. We did that really well uh the first couple years, we doubled the business. Um, but we came up into the next challenge, which is people building a team, right? So I had to figure out how to recruit and build that recruiting machine, uh, which I did, but it took some time to uh to learn that process and hire our first uh you know in-house recruiter and figure out Indeed and you know all the different things around hiring and and whatnot. So those were kind of the two you know big uh stepping stones and things that I had to learn to expand and grow the business uh you know to where it is today. And really now uh we are I'm focused on just growing the team, right? Building a team. That's it's really what we do, right?

Julian Placino:

So to give us a little bit about that, you know, we talk about culture, we talk about values, we talk about team, right? So, what has been some of your key to success in terms of hiring and attracting, retaining and growing the best people? Because, you know, at I'm speaking to the choir here, it's tough to find great home services folks, especially in the field, that have a blend of like technical and consumer facing. So, what's your best advice on that?

Speaker:

Well, you know, I I think the best advice is you have to start and kind of look at yourself and do that evaluation of your business and say, does somebody really want to come work here? Is it fun to work here, right? Is it fulfilling? Um, can people make enough money? Can you, you know, provide enough opportunity for someone to come in and uh create the life that they want to live, right? So uh day one of uh, you know, any new hire, we when we do onboarding, I get to talk to all the new hires for a couple hours. And you know, one of the first things I do is I give them my phone number and I want them to text me their name and so I can lock them in and so they can reach out to me anytime, right? So we have that open line of communication. I think that's super huge. And you know, there's you know, there's a lot of different people that you can hire and build in your business, but uh we feel that if we can start with someone that has uh you know very good communication skills and that is comfortable around people, then we can teach them the technical stuff, right? The technical piece is the easiest part. Uh, and as we've grown the business uh in 2024, we launched our uh in-home or in-house academy called Bardi University. And we we graduated 11 HJC technicians uh like January 3rd of this year, which is really cool. I'm excited about that. Uh and those guys are doing, gals and girls are doing great, uh, you know, and helping us uh grow our team and you know, helping us, you know, take care of customers.

unknown:

Yeah.

Julian Placino:

So it sounds like the first thing is like you personally have a relationship with each and every individual on the team. You give them your personal cell phone. So there's like communication accessibility, even though you're the president. So building that piece. And the second that I heard is the the ongoing development, Bardi University. So it sounds like a kind of a school within the organization for constant development. Is that right?

Speaker:

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And you know, I I also take time, you know, during that first day to tell my story uh and how I got to where I am today. And, you know, most people that, you know, just most people assume that, you know, my parents started the business, uh, you know, now I'm running the business that they they might assume that I never turned a wrench, right? That I don't I never ran a service truck, that I never fixed an air conditioner, right? So um I think that's important to tell my story and and to tell the you know the story of the business and really how we got here. Uh that's you know, it served us well for sure.

Julian Placino:

Yeah. Well, you know, Barty's values, they are honesty, family, respect, and a can-do attitude. So, what are some examples that you can say that sort of point to the implementation of those values within your culture?

Speaker:

You know, can do attitude is probably one of my favorites. Um, that's the one thing that you can control even when the day's gone bad or something's going on that's frustrating. Uh, so you know, we we want to make sure that you know our team is supported, right? And they've got everything they need. But, you know, uh when I get in front of the team, I just want to uh I try to reinforce that can-do attitude, right? Um I say a lot of the time that you know, try is not in our vocabulary, right? If I hear somebody say try, nope, we don't try, we do, right? That's that's very important. So just you know, rearrating that and making sure that people have that positive can-do attitude, I believe will you know, just it it gets you through the day, man. Because there's there's always gonna be uh things that come at you that might be disappointing, but if you wait long enough, you're gonna get some good news too.

Julian Placino:

Yeah. And I think it's cool how you sort of habitually help change the language. We don't try, we do. I know that sounds like just kind of a small thing, but psychologically, over time and through repetition, that begins to kind of change the attitude. So I think that's great. So um, Sabardi's known for customers talking about like how your texts make them feel like family, even mention them by name. So, what's been kind of your secret to creating that customer loyalty and delivering that great customer experience?

Speaker:

Well, it's all around, it's all around the team, you know. And when a new person uh joins our team, um I I simply tell everybody that, you know, my goal, my one singular goal in life right now is to make Barty the best place to work in Atlanta, the best home service company to work for Atlanta. And if we can achieve that, we can have fun, these guys can win, right? These gals and girls can win, then they're gonna take care of our clients, right? They're gonna go above and beyond and do whatever they've got to do to make people happy, right? Uh, so you know that's first and foremost. The other thing that I believe has has got us there is all of our line managers, all the the guys and gals that are supporting our field professionals that are managing a team, they put a uniform on and they go in the trucks and they go ride with these guys and they you know train them on the spot, they teach them, you know, and they reinforce, you know, our six-step process on how to run a service call. And I believe that's very important that we inspect what we expect, right? And we go out there and we we you know show that that that we can do what we're asking our team to do.

Julian Placino:

So it sounds like ultimately it comes down to take care of your people so they can take care of your customers. There's kind of a trickle down, right? Can you share a bit about uh the six-step process, something that maybe your future customers would like to know? Like what is what are they gonna get if they hire a party, right?

Speaker:

Right. Well, you know, I would say the thing that they're gonna get in our six-step process, right, is that we have to be prepared for the call. Okay. And what that means is as you kind of think about it, if you if if I was single and I was looking forward to going on a date, right, with um this beautiful young lady that um someday I would want to marry, right? I would take a shower, brush my teeth, right, trim my beard, I'd probably wash my car. I would do all these things, right, to prepare, to make sure, maybe even get dinner reservations, right? So I would prepare to make sure that the the this date goes really well. So we want to do the same thing as a technician, right? We want to make sure that we're we are groomed, right? Our breath is fresh, our our uniforms clean, our trucks clean, right? All those things that our truck stocked, like that we know about the call. We've done the research on the client. Is this a first-time client? Is this a member? Is this someone that's been with us for 20 years, right? So that we can make sure that we're set up for success, right? And then uh when we when we uh you know knock on the door and we get into the home, that we set the agenda and that we tell people what's gonna happen today, right? Like we give them expectations of how we're gonna run this process and what they're gonna get. And you know, at the at the end, uh we want to know if we provided a five-star service or not, right? So that's step two. Uh, and then we go through the explore process and we don't only look at maybe the problem at hand, but we want to take a whole home approach and because your home's a system, and we want to make sure that we're covering everything uh and that we don't miss anything so we don't have to come back, right? That's frustrating for clients. Uh, and then once we've figured out what's going on, uh, we want to present options to our client, right? We want to present written options with warranties, uh, with payment options so that it's real, right? Written's real. And we want the client to pick what's best for them. Before we get anything, before we do any work, you know, and that so they approve that work, they're comfortable with the price, what we're gonna do. Then of course we execute that work and then we wrap up, right? We clean up, we show the client, you know, what we did, why we did it, uh, the work that was performed. Um, you know, we collect the money and make sure that we provide a five-star service and go to the next one.

unknown:

Yeah.

Julian Placino:

So what it sounds like you have a very definitive, kind of a proven process, a method that's sort of homegrown from Bardi. Um, it's systematic, it's something that you do with every customer. Therefore, you have kind of a scalable customer experience. And also, I know your technicians are known for educating the customer. That's what you mentioned, right? Giving them the different options and sort of giving them the power to choose, right? It's not just like, here's the thing, this is how much it's gonna cost, right? To sort of incorporate them into solving their own problem, which I think is really cool. Um, so staying family owned for 35 years is is pretty rare. So, how has being local in a family run uh operation shaped your approach to business and how you deliver your service to customers?

Speaker:

So, you know, us staying privately held um has uh you know been able to it's it's given me the luxury that every decision we make isn't just about profitability. Really simple. And you know, we can focus on our reputation in the market, one, which is and home service is pretty much the most important thing, not only for attracting clients, but attracting uh great staff that wants to come work here, right? Um and lastly, or second, is it lets us play the long game, right? It lets us, you know, entrench ourselves in the community and we're playing the long game. We're not trying to, you know, create enough EBITDA this quarter so that we can go to market and transact, right? So we can take care of our customers, take care of our team members uh and our community. You know, um giving back to our community and supporting our community uh is something that I learned from my parents uh and it's very, very important. And we, you know, support Habitat for Humanity, uh our Norcross Cooperative Ministry that's right down the road that nice, you know, helps people. So, you know, those are that's what I think about um when I think about the pros of of staying private.

Julian Placino:

Yeah, so really controlling your reputation within the marketplace, long game. You don't have to sell out to some private equity firm or something like that. Uh, and also community to service, the opportunity to choose the organizations that you support with the business. I think those are great. So you mentioned reputation. We'll switch gears for a little bit. This this podcast is is brought to you by Peaksy, powered by Peakzi. You're a Peakzi customer. So share a bit about in your experience, what is Pick Peakzi and how has it benefited your business?

Speaker:

So Peakzi, um, it's been really cool, right? It's been a role, it's been fast. I think we've been a client for four or five months now. Um, you know, I do want to give a shout out to Sean, our rep. Um, he's awesome, right? He's always taken care of us. Um, there was a lot of questions at first, uh, but he's done a really great job of helping us, you know, get the platform um, you know, really going that we can maximize. What I think's cool, uh, or kind of the three things that um attracted me to it was first the marketing tools. Really cool marketing tools uh from data trends, market trends, um, you know, our AI uh visibility, right? Those those things are really cool. The AI website, never heard of an AI website uh until uh we became a Peakzi uh customer and we've got that launched, and that's that's live. Uh, so that's really cool. The competitor analysis is awesome as well. Um, you know, to be able to, you know, compare yourself uh with a tool to competitors in your market as many as you want, uh, and pick the ones that you choose. I think that's uh a really cool feature. And then last but not least, the recruiting tool, right?

Julian Placino:

And the recruiting tool. So I I heard like the the marketing pieces of things, right? So uh visibility and also the AI website, competitor analysis, like how do you stack up against the marketplace, right? What were the gaps that you need to improve upon? And also the recruiting piece. Tell us a bit more about the AI website. What exactly is that?

Speaker:

So the the AI website, uh, to my understanding, uh, and this is not like my specialty, but uh it is a website that is specifically created um and it allows the LLMs or you know, Chad or Gemini um to be able to crawl that website and to recommend um you know companies like Bardi uh to you know homeowners that are that are using LLMs to to find information about our industry or search out uh a service.

Julian Placino:

Interesting. Okay, so instead of like a website that's meant for Google, it's a kind of a a site, a digital space that specifically will come up on AI search, right? Grocks. My understanding, all those things. Okay, interesting, very cool, very cool. Anything else you'd like to share about Peakzi?

Speaker:

You know, I'm I'm I'm curious to see where the you know where Peakzi goes as far as the technology. And then, you know, every time I talk to Shawn, they're working on something new, a new release. Uh, you know, so it's it's moving super fast. Uh, but I, you know, I'm excited to be a client and uh, you know, see see what other cool features that are going to come out that we can use in our business.

Julian Placino:

Love it. Well, I mean, you've definitely got the right team. You mentioned Shawn, Pawan, the entire guys out there. Um, not only do they know tech, but they know home services. They have a real love for the industry. That's part of why we're doing this podcast is to sort of give home services a voice, you know what I mean, and have them be seen and recognized within within the marketplace, which is great. So, well, well, Adam, begin to kind of close us out here. So, so what is what is your vision for for Bardi? What is it that you hope to accomplish in the future?

Speaker:

So, the you know, the goal that we're really focused on, and I'm really focused on right now, is we want to double the business in the next three years. Uh, and we've had incredible growth uh up to this point uh in the seven and a half years that I've owned it. We've been on the you know, Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies twice. Nice. Um yeah, we want to double the business. And what really what that means is we've got to double the team. Uh, so we're we're in the team building phase of continuing to build the team, you know, and the people I say all the time, the people, it's the best part and maybe the hardest part of a business. Um, so that's that's what I'm focused on. We did launch uh electrical uh about a year ago. I'm excited about electrical. Um, you know, the team's doing a really good job of growing that business. In our first year, we're gonna do almost $3 million in revenue. So I'm proud of that. And you know, we we want to continue to focus on uh growing non-seasonal revenue. And what that means to me is uh, you know, we're we're an HVAC primary business, uh, and HVAC is weather dependent and a little bit of an emotional roller coaster. So uh I love plumbing, I love electrical, and we want to continue to grow those pieces of our business, you know, the non-seasonal uh revenue pieces of our business.

Julian Placino:

Well, that's a very inspiring vision for sure. And it sounds like you are a tremendous leader and you've got a great team behind you. So certainly wish you all the continued success. Oh, thank you. Um Adam, close us out. What's your website, social handles? How do people get a hold of you?

Speaker:

Yeah, so uh Bardi.com, B-A-R-D-I.com. Uh and you can find me on LinkedIn. Uh so I'm on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. Uh, I'm on Facebook as well. So, you know, Adam Bardi and uh, you know, reach out. I'll be more than more than happy to to help any way I can.

Julian Placino:

Awesome. Well, Adam will make sure to have all your contact information to the show notes. And this has been really awesome to get to know you and your story. Um, and thanks so much for your time.

Speaker:

Awesome.

Julian Placino:

Thank you. Well, everyone, that's it for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Home Services Success Stories podcast powered by Peakzi, the number one AI platform for growing your home services business.