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Dr. John Sherk, owner and president of Operations Laboratory reveals all of his HVAC technician career happiness strategies, income improvements and killer tech-happiness tips and tricks so you can get ahead of the curve with your HVAC technician career. Discover how you can create a quality negotiated agreement with your manager that works for you so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love, whether it’s coaching your kids’ teams, getting out there for hunting season, or just living comfortably at home with your family. Since 2010, he’s been consulting his many HVAC clients on how to develop and manage a culture that is friendly to tech-happiness, and here he openly shares his wins, his losses, and all the lessons in between with the community of energetic but humble HVAC techs, managers, and owners who follow him. Self-proclaimed “Technician Happiness Guru” you’ll learn about getting paid what you deserve, building genuine and loyal relationships at work and at home, recruiting winners (tip: they all already work for someone else), building a tech-happy culture, quality communication, skills mastery, optimizing performance, negotiating compensation, professionalism, , and productivity tips so that you create an amazing, tech-happy life without burning yourself out. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from John you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Hey everybody,
welcome to the HVAC JoyLab podcast.
I'm your host,
Dr.
John Shirk.
This podcast focuses on creating more and more conversations about what optimizes life for an
HVAC technician.
My goal is to produce the most helpful content available for tax full stop.
Today you're going to meet Greg McAfee.
Greg is the author of Build and Grow Your HVAC Business,
host of the Greg McAfee show on YouTube and owner of McAfee Heating and Air in Dayton,
Ohio.
Greg and I had a great conversation about how he got started as in making hundreds and hundreds of
telephone cold calls just to get a checkup appointment with a customer to what is today the
premier residential HVAC company in Dayton.
Greg hires for attitude and trains the rest.
It's exciting stuff if you're trying to figure out how to get up and going as a tech.
Okay,
let's get started.
Welcome to the HVAC JoyLab podcast.
We're joined today by Gregory McAfee.
You go by Gregory or Greg?
Greg's fine.
Okay,
Greg.
Well,
welcome,
Greg.
Thanks for having me,
John.
Appreciate it.
Absolutely.
So,
Greg,
let's introduce yourself to us.
Tell us about you.
Tell us about your
company.
Sure.
Well,
I'm Greg McAfee.
I live in Dayton,
Ohio.
That's somewhere between Cincinnati
and Columbus.
And we are in what we call the Midwest where weather can be anything from,
well,
zero to 95 or so.
But what we get used to operating out of is about 75 to 80 degrees.
So,
we've got to be very creative how we stay busy unlike 120 degree weather in some areas.
So,
Like me in South Louisiana,
we get there.
There you go.
It's 86 today.
So,
oh,
wow.
Yeah.
So,
I started McAfee heating and air conditioning.
And I'll back up just a little bit.
In 1990,
I got married,
we bought a home and I started McAfee all the same year.
Oh,
okay.
So,
I started with $274 in a used truck.
And I had zero business experience.
And I just barely had enough heating and air experience,
to be honest.
And but I did have
the tenacity to stick in there and go out and knock on a lot of doors.
I wore out a lot of shoes.
And I made a lot of phone calls back in the day when there were no cell phones and or very,
very few cell phones.
And I had the landline phones.
We used to have what was called a crisscross
directory that had every landline phone number in the area.
And I would just start going down
the page and calling every landline per the same street,
which was kind of neat.
And I'd make I'd make a hundred or so calls before I got one person that was interested in a
checkup or a cleaning or something like that.
Wow.
Wow.
You are my personal hero,
Greg.
You are
the man.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
I just kept doing that.
And then on the off days
of not calling,
I'd go visit shopping centers and I'd just walk in and say,
do you guys need any
thing for heating in there?
Filter change,
belt change,
anything.
And like same way there,
I'd
probably have to go in 50 places before somebody said,
yeah,
I think we do need our filters changed.
Can you take a look at it?
And I'd go up there and try to find something,
you know.
And that's just how it took off.
It was a very slow,
very slow takeoff,
very solid takeoff,
but extremely slow.
And,
you know,
I teach today how to do it a little bit quicker,
because you just couldn't do it that slow.
I was one man for a year and then I hired
one person a year for the first 15 years.
And today we've worked our way in Dayton,
Ohio,
we've worked our way to number one in our market top of mind in the residential HVAC
market.
And we continue to stay number one since about 2016.
And we just take care of people.
And take care of our team,
which is people and try to serve,
which is we're going to
talk about service today.
You know,
the word service is serving people.
We have to serve
equipment,
but we have to serve people first.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I often tell technicians like
deep inside yourself,
which do you love more?
Do you love the people more or do you love
the technology more?
And if it's if the answer is people,
you're a residential tech.
That's the you have to you have to be competent with the technology,
but you can be a commercial
tech and just really love the tech.
And,
you know,
there's never an end to all the new equipment and
all the new stuff that comes out.
But I think to be a great residential career wise,
to be a
great residential tech,
it's just what you just said,
you have to love serving people.
You have
to love that look on their face when they hear the air kick on.
And they're like,
you know,
you did it,
you know,
or that that moment and you get two of those a day and you could live on that
for months,
you know,
absolutely.
Yeah.
That's what it takes.
And to be a good technician,
you got to know your stuff technically,
but you got to also know it takes a week train.
We first trained today on soft skills,
because if we can get the soft skills down
and they're mechanically inclined,
we can train the rest.
Yeah.
Yeah,
for sure.
Yeah.
And I think that
it's a it's a it's a kind of story that needs to be retold about what it means to be an air
conditioning technician.
Because I think people who aren't in the industry,
they don't understand how
people centered the business actually is,
because it sounds like it's not at all.
But but in fact,
and it's probably true of any more technical business.
But
and where you're face to face with a customer,
that is really that's that's the business.
You
got to you got to be able to handle yourself technically.
But you can know how to fix anything.
But if you can't handle yourself in front of a customer,
we can't what we do with you.
I mean,
we're going to,
you know,
send you to an install or something,
but you can't really go have
a career without that.
You know,
and thinking back when when I serviced some of those older units
were the first came out with those 90 I units and all that stuff.
You know,
I didn't have the
resources like we do today where we have people here to help anyone at any time.
Or now we've
got AI on our phones that we can pull up a troubleshooting problem.
I was there and I had
to figure this thing out.
And sometimes it took an hour or two for me to troubleshoot
and figure it out.
But if the customer liked me,
they were fine with that.
And it's all about
serving people.
People do business with who they like.
And they liked me and they it wasn't a
bother for me to be there sometimes too long trying to figure something out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's
an interesting evolution.
Because if you go back,
how long has it been?
You said it was early 90s
when you started the company?
Yeah,
started in 1990.
So I was doing most of the servicing
at least first three or four years.
Yeah.
That was the in those days.
I mean,
they're talking to the technicians now in their 20s.
I mean,
there's no YouTube.
There's no
not even a cell phone.
There's you got a beeper and manual like paper manuals.
That's it.
Only option was call a friend.
That's right.
Well,
Greg,
I'm curious on your thoughts about what makes a great life for a technician.
Like,
you've been there.
You've been a tech yourself.
You kind of lived the whole journey.
And you're seeing techs who are coming up now,
like in their young 20s who are coming into the
business.
What kind of advice do you have for tech in terms of both career success,
but just also
living a great life?
Well,
first,
I want to say what an opportunity.
I mean,
what an
opportunity in HVAC today like no other time in history.
Exactly.
I think
the technology has come so far to where you're not just changing out pilot lights and
stuff like that.
You're troubleshooting some pretty high tech equipment.
But what an opportunity for great pay.
And if you're with a company that
manages their hours well and you have quite a few people on call and backup,
I mean,
what an opportunity to work anywhere between 40 and 50 hours a week.
And a lot of
times rotate weekends to where you have to work very few weekends on call.
But just
what an opportunity.
And I look at what we offer just our small company in Dayton,
Ohio,
what we offer a technician is the best of trucks,
the best of equipment,
the best of tools like we've
never had before,
the best troubleshooting equipment,
and the best,
like I said,
we've got a backup team
here of resources that at any time you need something or you have a question.
And today,
with FaceTime and all the other cameras and everything we have,
it's just a great opportunity to be in
HVAC.
And then you've got most companies today have to provide to be competitive.
They have to
provide good benefits and they have to provide 401ks and they have to provide all these things.
That a lot of the guys that are coming here,
we've got four,
we hired four people this
week and they're in our training room right now.
And they're anywhere between 18 and 22 years old.
I just popped in and said hello before this show.
And while their friends are still in college
and they're in debt or building debt rather,
and it's going to take them a long time to
make the money these guys are going to make in probably another year.
And so the opportunity
is just unlimited,
I think,
in HVAC.
I couldn't agree more.
I mean,
I had the last,
I don't know when you started feeling it.
I'm a PhD workforce expert.
I mean,
that's part of
what I do is study labor markets,
technicians in particular,
HVAC technicians.
And it was
somewhere around 2018 that some kind of tipping point started happening.
There were already more
jobs available than technicians.
But I,
with me and with my clients,
somewhere in 2018,
I started
feeling it.
And then what really launched it unexpectedly was COVID,
where then it was really
like,
wow,
this is a job you can actually go to work in and be a first responder.
And now
there are so many more opportunities out there than there are technicians.
The wages are going
up like crazy and the opportunities are out there.
And because of that,
it's really the first time,
I think,
you know,
in the history of air conditioning,
where a technician can have an
entire career and make stellar money and be a real rock star and never leave the field.
I mean,
there's this narrative that's gone on for decades that,
you know,
I'm going to be in
the field,
but if I'm really good,
eventually I get to come in the office.
And I think
it's unfortunate because there's only a few of those jobs.
But there's no end to the need for a guy
to be a complete rock star specialty,
all do it all in the field technician.
And the money is there
now.
Yeah,
absolutely.
And most companies,
most brick and mortar companies are always hiring,
always hiring technicians.
It's hard to turn down any anyone who is ambitious,
good attitude.
The rest we can train.
And so we're always hiring technicians.
And it's a great
opportunity to...
And you know what motivates a lot of these young guys is you're just constantly
learning.
You never reach that cap where you've now learned it all in HVAC and you're done
because things are changing every day now.
That's right.
A five-ton split,
it isn't even
just a five-ton split anymore,
depending on how you got to think built.
Who knows what others
controls or whatever else is attached to it.
What are you guys doing right now in terms of the
balance between hiring skill and knowledge that's already there versus developing it from ground
up?
Like what kind of guys are you hiring?
Talk about that a little bit.
Well,
we'd prefer to hire...
If we do hire experience,
it's typically three years or less.
That way they've got their feet
wet,
they've learned a little bit and then they can come here and learn the rest.
Because it's
just the old adichie about learning,
I guess,
the right way.
We'd like to say we're going to
teach them the right way.
And if we can do that,
then we're more successful and they're
more successful.
But the majority of people we hire are either right out of high school or right
out of trade school.
Do you want them to have an EPA license already or is that part of the training?
That's part of the training.
We partner with a local college,
Sinclair Community College,
and they have an HVAC accredited program.
We partner with them,
but we have a full
training lab and a soft-skill lab where they go through weeks or months of training here,
along with Sinclair.
And then when they're finished with that,
they're ready to be in a truck.
Interesting.
Yeah,
see,
I think you're ahead of the game,
Greg,
for real.
I mean,
I think
there's still quite a few people and they call me and some of them are my clients,
that they
really are wanting still to get it all done hiring.
And we'll get a guy,
but I want a guy who
already knows what he's doing,
and then we'll enhance it.
We'll send them to a training for whatever,
but it's like,
we don't want to do any training.
We just want to hire the guy who already knows it.
And I'm not sure that that's the winning strategy anymore.
They just aren't enough of them out there.
I just prefer,
really,
I mean,
there are some we have hired with 10 years experience.
I mean,
they come along every once in a while that we truly want to hire,
unfortunately,
but
that's rare.
It's rare that we would do that.
It's more of a one to three year,
been in the trade,
looking for a company to advance in and continue to grow.
Those are the guys we're looking for.
Or again,
we hire for attitude,
trained for skills.
If there,
we have a few little
aptitude and technical tests that we give so we can just see how well they're mechanically inclined.
And if they've got that and a good attitude,
we'll take it from there.
Nice.
Yeah,
I think
for you guys who are listening and for technicians who are listening,
your buddies who want to get into the business,
going to work for a guy like Greg is the way to
get started.
Even more so,
I think,
than doing the community college two year thing.
Because there's enough people out there that are training.
I mean,
that's two years of,
you know,
going to classes and you're making money selling mattresses at night or whatever.
But,
you know,
you can get started out there.
If you find the right people from day one,
you know,
and for the company owners out there and managers out there,
this is how you compete for talent with culture instead of wage wars.
Because if you want to
do it with hiring today is the wrong time to do it with hiring.
It's just too expensive.
It's just too to pluck that 10 year guy out.
I mean,
the only the guy you tell me if this
is true Greg,
if you get a 10 year guy in the door,
probably here's what happened.
He was the best technician of the smaller company.
They had poorly trained technicians
going out and making mistakes.
But because the boss trusts this guy,
this guy who's
got to go out and miss dinner with his family while the other kid gets to go home and be with
his family.
And he's because the boss trusts this guy and it happened long enough on the podcast.
I
call this guy 10 year Ted because 10 year Ted,
he's the most trusted guy,
but he's tired of
feeling like he's getting punished for being the best guy in the building technically.
And he
has enough and he looks for something else and that's why you can find a 10 year Ted.
But
short of that,
they're just not walking around with signs that say,
you know,
we'll work for food.
It just is not,
they're not out there.
Yeah.
And that 10 year Ted is also kind of burnout.
He's not used to the fast pace
environment.
And you know,
we say and you've probably heard this that it used to be the
big eat to small.
Now it's the fast eat to slow.
So we're very fast paced.
We're a lean
operation that's very fast paced.
We've got to get to people quickly or someone else will.
And that's,
I've been doing that out of the garage and we continue to try to do that today
as fast as we can.
And a lot of guys that have been doing this 10 years,
they're not used to that.
They can't grasp that idea.
So it's hard to train that.
It's easy to train someone 18,
19,
20,
24,
25 years old.
They know it.
They know no different.
And so that's kind of,
that's what we like.
Yeah.
I have a client who likes to joke that
we're not racing.
Our speed to the door is not the other companies.
We're racing
dominoes.
I want to be there faster than dominoes.
That's our,
that's our competition.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
And you're exactly right.
If you're not
fast to the door,
somebody else will be and you're not getting that business.
Yeah.
So a good,
one of my best business coaches,
his name was Jerry Duff and he
taught me,
he did a lot of business coaching for large corporations.
And
he said,
quit comparing yourself to other heating and air conditioning companies and
start comparing yourself.
That was back when Toyota took number one over GM.
He said,
start comparing yourself to Toyota,
read the Toyota way,
figure out how they did it,
and then make Mac if you do the same thing.
Yeah.
And that was great advice.
That is great advice.
Yeah.
There were real reasons why Toyota took over that market,
you know,
and it wasn't cheap parts.
It was process.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So how does it look for you guys?
You're in Ohio,
you're in Dayton.
So when it gets to be cold,
what is your off season?
Is it the winter or is it like October,
March?
What is it like
there in Dayton?
Well,
I'll tell you our best times are basically,
typically May,
June,
July,
those are our three best months.
And then,
and then we've got something like October,
November,
December,
and then everything else,
everything else is either steady or slow.
Right.
So when you get into March and it's 65 degrees,
all every day,
you've got to get
extremely creative to make that phone ring.
You can't be,
you can't be reactive.
You've
got to stay proactive.
And then what do you do?
Maintenance programs or like,
what do you,
what do you do with all that?
We do.
We have,
we have maintenance agreements.
We call them the
comfort family plan.
We figured it was,
we had the comfort club like everyone else for years,
but
would you rather be part of the club or the family?
Oh,
sure.
And people like to be part of a family.
And,
and we have,
you know,
several thousand comfort family memberships.
And that of course
keeps us busy during the off season.
And,
and then continues to keep us busy during the on season as
well,
because a lot,
a large portion of our installations come from our comfort family
members.
Yeah.
So it's,
it's very healthy to have those if companies don't.
Right.
Yeah.
It's,
it's tough because I know they're again,
because I'm a workforce guy.
What I notice is,
if you don't have some kind of a maintenance program,
it's very difficult to keep guys 40 hours a week all
year.
And then you go through this layoff cycle and then you're losing those guys to somebody who
does have 40 hours.
Yeah.
You know,
it's,
if you're going to compete the most baseline
place to begin to compete for talent among technicians,
it's 40 hours a week all year
from you go up from there.
But if you,
if you don't,
I'm just saying this for open
listeners,
if you don't have that,
get start there.
If you want to compete for talent,
figure out how to
get 40 hours a week all year,
then build from that.
Because we don't have that the other stuff
you're offering,
you're just going to lose the best people.
So,
fortunately,
we,
we have never
laid off because of that reason.
And then we try to,
we try to guarantee a certain number of
hours,
whether it's 32 or 36 year round,
just because of that.
Now,
when we do get into the
busy times,
we do,
we do work over,
but we control that much better than we used to.
I mean,
you know,
starting a business,
you work half days,
you just pick work,
which 12 you want to work
and you get used to doing that.
But not everyone who works for you wants to do that nor should
they anymore.
But we do work overtime and some guys want it.
Some guys don't.
So we,
we,
we weigh
that out and give it to the ones who do.
Yeah.
How do you have traditional scheduling,
like normal
40 hour schedule,
then,
then on call in the weekend?
The technicians are actually on a four day work
week.
So they work for somewhere between four 10s.
And then they rotate on call on the weekends.
Interesting.
But they like that.
They like that.
They get that,
you know,
extra day off during the
week and we,
it works out pretty good because a lot of the guys have either their wife's off that day
or they're,
they get their kids that day or whatever it is.
It seems to work.
And we have that.
There are a couple,
we call them blackout months where you may not get the four day,
you may
have to work five or six,
but 90% of the time they're on a four day work week.
Yeah.
I'm noticing that,
that tweak beginning to happen as well with among,
I heard multiple stories about,
you know,
the scheduling.
I've got,
you know,
two guys who only want to work.
They want to be on call every
Friday night and 1212 on the weekend,
you know,
and then,
but they're off Monday to Thursday
or like creating these alternate schedules to accommodate,
you know,
different lifestyle
situations.
Usually it's a custody thing or something like that,
but,
you know,
that,
and,
and in the old days,
no one would,
no one would accommodate that,
but today they're beginning
to do it.
You got to be flexible.
When you have,
when you have good people,
you have to,
you have to fit them in your company and quit trying to,
you know,
fit the company around
them.
You've got to,
you've got to make it work for them because,
you know,
good solid technicians
are always hard to find.
We have to build them up.
We have to train them and,
and then we have
to do our best to make them stick.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit more about your soft skills
training.
Like what kind of,
what are the modules in that?
What kind of stuff are you teaching
them in that?
Well,
we have a program called transformational leadership,
which my,
my son
Travis,
he's 29.
He's a manager here and he trains that.
He's also,
he's still attending
school.
He's working on his PhD right now,
but he's been in teaching for many years.
So he
teaches a lot of our classes and the transformational leadership is a two-day class that
we put every new employee through and we put our whole team through now.
And it just goes
through a lot of soft skills as far as dealing with people and dealing with all kinds of people
skills that we have to deal with as adults.
So it's a,
it's a complete program of that.
And then again,
we're,
we're training for attitude.
Yeah.
How to have a good attitude
when things go bad?
How do you react in this situation?
How do you deal with a customer when
they say this?
So we're,
we role play a lot.
And we,
role playing to me is probably some of the best
training because,
and nobody likes to do it at first.
It's tough,
but if you get good at it
in here,
you're going to be much better in the customer's home.
Yeah.
Yeah,
for sure.
Yeah.
That,
I do a little bit of that soft skills stuff too,
both with technicians and just,
I have a program I call frontline professionalism and just the basic,
you know,
how do you
communicate status to a customer?
Every,
you know,
when I train guys,
I'll tell them,
your customer should never be wondering what's going on.
Always,
there should be a closed loop
from the moment you get to the front door.
They know what's going on.
And it may be,
I've got to go to the parts store.
I think it's going to take me two hours,
but I will be back here in two hours with what I need.
Right.
And if not,
I'm going to call you
and tell you what's going on.
The,
the,
the people who in the absence of information,
people
assume the worst.
And I,
you know,
that,
that,
that loop of status is,
I think,
really important
for a technician to know.
Yeah.
Very,
very similar,
John.
We,
we,
one of my sayings is informed
people make better decisions.
And,
and we also teach a class called the first five minutes of a
service call.
And that's critical.
The first five minutes is critical.
From where you park your
truck to where you put your shoe protectors on and to what you say to the customer,
you know,
and not allowing the customer to say,
I'm in a meeting,
go ahead,
furnace is down the basement.
That doesn't work.
So what do you say?
Well,
you might say,
I'm sorry,
do you have just two minutes?
I just need to go over a few things with you for two minutes and then I'll let you go.
And people always go,
okay,
yeah,
I got two minutes.
And then,
and then you can explain
what you're going to do.
And what if I find this,
what do you want me to do with it?
All these types of things that you're preparing,
you're preparing the customer
and you're preparing yourself as a service tech for success.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This business is
oddly,
it's it is obviously very mechanical in some ways,
but you're really creating an experience
that includes air,
but other things as well.
And it's,
you know,
a really good tech who understands
that.
And they create that experience they want to have for a customer.
Those are all the
Google five star reviews.
They've all it isn't that,
Oh,
I like cold air better than hot air.
So five stars.
No,
it's because they created a seamless experience for the customer.
That from the moment they walked in the door,
that person felt like,
Oh,
thank God,
you're here.
And,
and it just continues till that's all done.
Well,
I just heard something the other day that
the technician went in the house,
the wife came to the door,
her phone rang,
the technician said,
go ahead and get that.
She answered it.
And she said,
can I call you back to filter guys here?
You know,
all she knew was her husband said someone's coming in,
they're going to change
the filter and look at the furnace.
So she assumed we were filter guys.
So that's why it's so important
to get their attention.
The first two minutes of the five is to explain what you're going to do.
And,
and,
and if you find anything,
what would you like me to do with the information?
Because that's critical to the success of a service call.
Yeah,
no,
I agree.
I agree that that I have to say,
Greg,
I'm really impressed with the
program you have put together.
I really,
in my judgment,
you're putting the right first things first.
And by,
by leaning into training more than hiring skills,
you're,
I just feel like when I look across the market,
the things that you're doing
are the right way to compete for talent for customers.
And,
you know,
that,
that training
experience is going to create technicians that are loyal to you over time.
You know,
they're
not going to,
you're not going,
you're,
you're basically eliminating arrogance from the equation
because they're coming in,
not knowing anything and they learn it from you,
you know,
and,
and
in focusing on soft skills,
my goodness,
it's,
it's,
it's almost like you can't do enough of that.
Because the,
it's,
it's the soft side of it that guides a technician into creating a whole
experience for a customer.
It's not their technical knowledge of,
you know,
how to wash a coil or
whatever.
So,
right.
Yeah.
Good stuff,
man.
Now we teach that,
of course.
Yeah,
right.
Sure.
We got to,
but,
but we feel that the soft skills are more important.
And that's why the first,
maybe week or so of training is just that they're not going to see a furnace.
They're not going to
see an air conditioner.
We're going to,
we're going to see if they have,
in other words,
why,
we've learned the hard way and we've spent a lot of money training people that didn't work out.
And the reason they didn't work out was because we spent so much time and money training them on
the technical side.
And then when we got to the soft skills side,
we realized they just weren't
people,
they didn't have the people skills and I couldn't train,
we couldn't train them.
And
they just didn't work out.
So it's not fair to them.
And it's not fair to us.
So we decided
to turn that around and start training soft skills first.
If they get the soft skills down,
we'll train the rest.
Yeah,
that's interesting.
Yeah.
In my,
in my research,
what I've noticed,
and these,
these were in commercial technicians.
So it could be a little
bit different balance in residential techs,
but 85% of them had introverted personalities.
And,
and so extroverts start talking to decide what they want to say.
Introverts create
silence while they form their thought.
And then they speak,
but it creates this weird silence moment.
And it,
it unnerves people who don't understand what's happening,
right?
And so I do a good,
little bit of training there as well.
And don't freak people out while you're thinking,
you know,
because it's just,
it's okay.
That's your communication style.
But it,
you know,
a little bit of silence makes people feel like,
uh,
like what's going on.
And,
and
now you've broken your seamless experience.
Right.
That's true.
Very true.
Well,
listen,
Greg,
we're just about out of time.
Um,
and how do,
if people want to reach out to you,
how can they do it?
Well,
I have,
uh,
we have a Greg McAfee.com
website.
I've been coaching,
uh,
for about 16 years.
I whole,
I have a podcast myself,
the Greg McAfee show,
um,
where,
where basically a rookie added,
I'm on,
I'm on a show number like 134.
And when you figure 134 times 30 minutes,
that's,
we're not to the 10,000
hours yet or anything.
So,
um,
but I've got the,
the Greg McAfee show
and I've got the Greg McAfee.com.
And of course we're on Facebook and all those types of things
in YouTube.
Um,
but my McAfee heating in there,
if you want to jump on there,
just look at the
website.
It's mcair.com.
And,
uh,
that'll show you a little bit about what we're doing.
And we've got,
we've had some of the things that,
uh,
for a while now that people are really starting to get into
is,
uh,
we've had,
we've been doing air duct cleaning for 30 years,
but we've had an air duct
cleaning,
um,
estimate quote,
uh,
page where you can get an estimate online right there,
just punch in your information.
And we,
we have a heating and air conditioning estimator
as well,
that you can get an exact price.
I'm not going to,
you don't have to wait till tomorrow
to get an email or anything like that.
It gives you a on a price right there.
Nice.
And,
uh,
they have found that,
that,
uh,
if you do that,
that people are more likely to trust you
when you have an estimator that actually gives you a real price,
real time.
Yeah.
Because nobody wants to go all the way through that process and then we'll call you tomorrow.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
Especially in a hot house.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So if you're out there,
if you are a young technician,
just making the transition into owning your own thing.
If you are,
you know,
if you hear what Greg is,
is saying here,
you're like,
man,
I wish I knew how to do that,
reach out.
It's not like he's keeping it a secret.
Right.
And that connect with him,
get some mentoring from him,
get some coaching from him.
The people who are out there doing it right are usually not trying to keep it a secret
because there's plenty of business and there's a lot of people not doing it right.
So,
you know,
reach out to Greg and make a connection.
I'm sure it's going to help.
You do.
All right,
Greg.
Well,
listen,
thanks for being on the show and,
um,
we'll just
see you next time.
Okay.
Thanks again.
Appreciate it.