#155: How to get rich in HVAC // Victor Rancour's $65M Story // Next Level Pros Podcast

In today's episode, we're sitting down with Victor Rancor, an absolute force in the trades in HVAC world, who scaled from scratch to multi-million dollars in just a few years. He breaks down the exact moves that he makes when acquiring new businesses and the systems he installs to drive top-tier profitability. If you want to learn how to dominate your market and build a real machine, this one's for you. Super excited to have Victor. Welcome to the show, man. Good to have you. You know, I'm excited to be on Chris. I'm actually more excited to be here, man. It's kind of cool. Obviously, I've been talking to Trent back and forth and kind of watching you guys from afar. And dude, if you guys haven't been out, you've got to get a chance to come out and check out their building. It's a phenomenal, beautiful place, very accommodating. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be on the podcast and hopefully excited to share some knowledge and help some people. Very cool. Well, for those that don't know who you are, so Victor's got to background in the HVAC space. He's now doing, playing the acquisition game all across the U.S., doing an incredible job in that. But tell us, share us briefly your story. I know you built a pretty big organization between 2018 and 2023. Yes. I mean, Mike, I talked about earlier, I really kind of started back in, you know, living in Ohio 12 years ago, doing oil changes. And I was talking to Trent and Chris and telling him like, you know, I, 12 years ago, I was living in Cleveland, Ohio, and I was working at a place called Lube Stop. And I was a guy down the oil pit changing oil, right? And I was making like 675 an hour, never in a freaking, my entire world, I think I do what I'm at now. So like, you know, for the people that are out there that are struggling right now, you have a whole chance of turning it around. But I moved back to California a couple years later. And I answered a craigslist ad to become an HVAC technician for a company called service champions out of Southern California. It's ran by a great guy, Leland Smith, who I consider a good mentor of mine. And I had no idea what HVAC stood for. I went to the interview, I'm telling you, there's 100 people there, right? In this room, I'm like, what is HVAC stand for? I have no idea. Nobody knew. I was one of the only guys that showed up in a suit. I really needed the job. I mean, I was, I had a five month old baby, we're living in a room in a house, like just like there's a party house, like I had to get my kid out of there. And I saw this opportunity. First thing they did is they kicked out everybody didn't have a suit on. And I'm like, well, I'm glad I wore a suit today. Right. And they said, and they said, hey, can you guys get a felt this paperwork out of you asked for a pen, you got kicked out, I happened to bring a pen that day. So I ended up getting, you know, we'd, we'd it down from 100 people and they put me through this whole rigorous process. But very quickly I found out how much they pay you in home services. And I was like, too, like, they're going to pay me this much money to do this. Like I call my girl, I literally, I always tell people this thing, it's true story. I said, you're never going to have to work in today. Keep in mind, I'm driving a 9200 cord. I got the window doesn't work. It was on the way to the interview was raining. So it was like sprinkling through my window. Okay. The car wasn't even mine. I couldn't even afford to buy that. So this is on the way there. And I'm telling her this and she's like, dude, whatever, do you like pound sand, right? But anyway, so fell in love with it. And she's never had to work another day in her life. And, you know, even if we're not together, I still take care of her because that's, I believe that you should do as a man anyway. I was like, God, take care of your people. But long story short, moved became fell in love with being a technician. And then I fell in love with the sales side. And I always believe you got to learn the trade before you can really sell the trade. I believe that. But you know, obviously there's different ways to go about things. But became a selling tech, became the number one, became the number one salesman in the country. And then end of 2017, this guy comes to me and he's like, Hey, I want to talk to you. He was like, is this, you know, sorry about the language, finally, who is this guy? Right? He started going to breakfast with this guy. And he's like, Hey, I heard all these things about you. I heard you're like, you're one of the best guys, blah, blah, blah. He's like, I want you to come work for me. I was like, I mean, I don't even know you. So he takes me to his office. And I tell the story only because it's kind of funny. Takes me to his office, shows me around. And I go to leave and he's like, Well, let me know when you're ready. I was like, Well, you never made me an offer. Right. So he's like, Okay, well, how about this? He's like, Go tell your family pack your bags and the fly to Hawaii. So he puts me up first class flies me to Hawaii, we're in the North Shore, Kauai puts me in a presidential suite, gives me his Range Rover. And this is a he's run another HVAC company, a competitor. And I remember my wife saying, So why does an old fat man want to invite you to Hawaii? Seems a little creepy. A little creepy, right? But anyway, so he ends up inviting me out there and, you know, spend a week with him and his family and he hires me. And that's when I got to really understand that there's a whole other side of business, right? So I went from just being sales, like Leland was very focused on departmentalizing every part of your business of your salesman, your salesman, your tech, your tech, if you're an installer, you're an installer, vice versa, he didn't want you to learn any other parts because you didn't want you to know everything because then you can know too much. Right. And anyways, I went there and I was the service manager, sales manager, general manager and the sales guy, like I was working from 6am to 11 o'clock, sometimes one in the morning. This is in Hawaii. No, this, he moved me back. This, he had his company in California. He lived in Hawaii. He wanted someone to run his company in California. Got it. Got it. So he gave me a bunch of money. I go back there and find out really quickly that I'm pretty much his indentured server at this point, but I was making a lot of money. Yeah, you got a free first class ticket. So that was cool. That was the first time I've been to Hawaii. I never, you know, coming from where I came from, like I didn't come from nothing. That was a big deal. And that was like, that's good Hawaii. Like that was freaking awesome. But he gave me an opportunity to really learn the inside of the business and I was there for about nine months. And I realized like, Hey, I can do this, right? Well, everybody thinks you can do it until you go have your entrepreneurial seizure and all of a sudden you're out on your own and you've got to figure out everything. What is it? How do I start an LLC? How do I come up with a name? How do I get my licensing? How do I do my financials and all that stuff? So that was in August, 2018. But I know I've leaned back on sales. So we took it from five, you know, zero to five million our first year and then the 12, then every year we kept growing until 2023. We exited that. That's that's phenomenal. You know, I think one thing that I just love about your story was, I mean, you really came from nothing. I mean, making six bucks an hour, a lot of guys are handed a lot of opportunity along the way. You clearly went and created it for yourself and just hustled your way and did it the old blue collar way. Yeah. And I'll tell you back, you know, back in the 675 hour day, like I was, I thought I was never going to be much of anything. Right. Like I was pointing to my life where I've wanted to take my own life and all these things where I was like, dude, I thought I was just going to be a loser forever. So, you know, that's why I talked to a lot of people and I tried to tell them like, dude, like no matter where you are, if you decide to do something and you go put all your all into it, you can have an opportunity, right? Like, and that's what I love about the trades. You don't have to go to college. You don't have to do anything. You get one opportunity, put your foot in the door. All of a sudden you go and you bust your butt. Like maybe you're an installer. Yeah. Learn the trade, get your foot in the door. Like, and that's what's really hard about the generation now. It's like a lot of these guys, they don't want to, they don't have to go through the grind work to get where you need to go. They want to just be all of a sudden, they want to, they want to come in and be a sales guy and make 500 grand a year, right? It's like the reality is there are steps to everything. If you can't put the steps and you don't, you don't deserve the outcome. You know, it's, it's, you're, how old are you now? 36, almost 37. Awesome. You know, the irony of the whole thing is like back in the day when I was in high school or whatnot, like those that were going into the trades were very looked down upon, right? And it is literally become the world that is rammed by the trades in the future of basically our economy is either AI robots or in the blue color space. And it's one of the last things that it will be remained standing, you know, here in 10, 15, 20 years. I just did a workshop for this guy. He's like, he's got like a big doctor position in Texas and he bought an HVAC plumbing and electric shop. And I was like, dude, like why, why? And he said, because my job is going to become obsolete and I need, I need the protection of the trades. And that was like, I never heard it like that way. And that's a reality. And that's why private equity is coming into the space and all these things that we can talk a little bit about that. But like, he's just, they know where it's going, right? It doesn't matter what, what, what you're presenting a dentist is going to be replaced. All these things is really, that's what's going to be replaced. I saw a tooth removed. I don't know. You wait till that's robots. You think? Oh yeah. It's all going to be replaced. I mean, either by robots or somebody controlling a robot that just works from home, you know, and so yeah. I like the small talk of a dentist. You know, like the bedside manner. I like the bedside manner. When someone's in your mouth, you like the small talk. Just dentists. Just dentists. All right, all right. So Victor, I mean, clearly you mastered sales and marketing and that was like one of the big aspects. And, you know, so you got really, you did really well at digital marketing. What are you seeing today in 2025 as far as what's working in the marketing space? I mean, obviously, like we're just talking about, you know, private equities come in and a private equity knows how to do one thing and that's spend money, right? And so when you guys look at, you know, we're just talking like in 2017, 2018, you know, Facebook ads, we're getting 15 or 10, $5, $10, $15 leads. Beautiful day. Now those leads are gone more expensive than not as targeted, not as good. Obviously, you go to Google and Google's just, you know, they're just eating cash, right? You put money in a PPC. You'll never compete with a big guy, right? You're not going to compete with the 800 pound gorilla in your market. Same thing, all these different verticals you go into, they just keep throwing money at it, right? And I talked to like a lot of my clients and I said, look, we got to get back to hand to hand combat because private equity ain't going to go out and be in your community. Private equity is not going to do these things that are like more of a long-term investment, right? And how do we get back out in front of that? So like some of my companies, like we've really leaned heavily on direct mail. We do some like direct response radio, like, you know, like some really old, like we all ran out of radio station for an hour every Saturday and Sunday, we do really, really well with that where we're talking to the demographic that we want to work with, you know, the Paramount Plus, all these streaming services, like we were just talking about, you could actually hyper target people. Like I could find out, you know, Jewish people and, you know, just give us some more, like give us some more in depth. Like what kind of, what type of cost of acquisition are we looking at with direct mail right now in 2025? So obviously there's two different types, right? There's post cards, which I've never seen much success, right? You find a postcard, you take it, toss it in the trash. Like so with my clients, I teach them to do these, we do like letter style and it's like full blown letter in there. It's an envelope, it's got their name on it, stamps on it. We're getting this. So look handwritten? Looks handwritten. We're getting the leads for about $180 a lead. And we lead in with so like most companies are waiting for an air conditioner to break or whatever it is. We lean in on service, right? Like, hey, let's get it taken care of for service beforehand. So we're going in, I always say we're going in the front door, leave out the back door, right? Like they're inviting us in for service. I think they need to tune up. We've, we obviously, we have a process. We find all the, we diagnose all the things that are really going on because most people, I always say like people look at, you know, technician like almost like cancer in their house or their body, right? And when you get cancer in your body, what do you want? You want them out, right? So like they want you out as quickly as possible. So we have to find a way where they're not already in a bad position when you get there, right? When you're coming in for a broken system, they've already Googled every day and they've already with you go in there for a tune up. Most of the time they think, you know, they're, I always say they're, they're engines blown, but they're joined for an oil change. Right. And they know there's a problem. They don't know what it is. They want to spend 49 bucks or a hundred bucks to get in the door and just to diagnose if you got what's going on. They hope and pray that it's nothing big. Right. So we get to go in there and we get to educate and go through a process. And by the time we're done, if you create a good sales process, we're leaving with, you know, 25, $30,000 tick. So what, what percentage of your, your news or your system switchouts are coming from an upsell versus like a free estimate or a service call versus like my systems bus that I need this completely replaced? What percentage? It is over 80, 20. Wow. Over 80, 20. So 80% are up. So yeah. And so like we're getting to them before, before our competitors ever get there, our customers, our competitors are waiting for the unit to break down. Well, we already sold the units before they even got there. And that's what we found in the markets that we're going to is like, we're, these other guys are getting starved out in like every market that we go into, we're growing exponentially. These other guys are starving because they're just waiting for the broken ones. They're not broken anymore. So what percentage of the, what, what are you spending on marketing? So I, I'm a firm believe that it's between 5% to 7%. If you're over 7%, your operations are messed up, your sales process is messed up. Okay. So like if someone's like, you know, it's been 15%, no, you're spending 15% because you're not captionally properly, you're not answering the phone properly, you're not getting there and converting it running a proper process. So my company's ever over 7%. I know that my KPI is off. I got to go figure out what's going on. So a lot of people say you have to spend more. I've been there, I spent a bunch of money, but I wasn't calling every leadback following up doing rehash. And obviously we, we have software now that we have top of funnel software that we use with RP1, follow up, rehash, all that stuff. That's an interesting piece. So what is, what is your rehash strategy? So it tech goes in, runs the full call, doesn't get the close, presents the options. What happens after that? So we actually built, me and my partner built the software about a year and a half ago. We built it for my business. This RP1. This RP1. And then we started selling it to contractors, but so we're integrating with all the different, you know, CRMs and Almservice space. And as soon as they leave, most people make a buying decision within 72 hours, statistically. Okay. You got a 72 hour to win, win, no, to get it done. So when they leave, we're hitting with the follow up right away with a text message. Hey, thank you so much for having our technician in the house, how, you know, asking how everything's going more like a customer service side, like just follow up, happy call type of deal. And then from there, it starts continuously over the next 72 hours, you're going to turn more into, into sales, sales, sales. And then by the end, we're offering them a discount by this, by this third day, you're going to get off. Is what, oh, sorry. I was just going to say, what are your, what are your thoughts on training technicians to only get a decision, whether it's a yes or a no and not, you know, walking out with a maybe or a follow up? I try very hard. So, you know, my background sales, if most of the time, I would have the, so I always joke, I'm like, yeah, at a 90% sign rate, you know, 20% might have canceled afterwards because I don't like to leave until they sign. Right. But like, I think that's a different approach nowadays. I think the clientele have learned a lot about that and you can try it. Right. And you better have, you better reinstall it right away if you're going to hard sell somebody. Right. We found that, you know, we can, we can lean in and we do get a lot more follow up than I ever used to, even though we're expensive, as long as you guys can create a great sales process where they trust you like you and all that stuff. But obviously, I ideally want closers. We want you to sell while you're there. You should be able to do that, but you're going to, you're not going to get all of those. Right. But for sure. So, are you going to ask, yeah. So the CSR, the happy call. So after they don't get the deal, the happy call is just about customer service or is the CSR also asking why didn't they move forward with us? So they're leading with customer service. Hey, this is Victor with, you know, fiscal heating and air. It looks like my senior technician was out there. I'm just calling to see how everything went. Right. Let's talk to him as a friend first, get him introduced, you know, open up and say, Hey, it looks like, you know, you know, I looked some of the pictures, it looks like this thing in pretty rough shape. Looks like you left you some options. Is there a reason why you didn't move forward with it? Right. Yeah. And then from there, we were leading in. So, Hey, just so you know, I know it's not like a lot of money. We do have some money down options because you never know if they're offering financing or not. So you always want to offer financing on it. And then obviously from there, they're like, well, if they still don't show any interest, well, Hey, look at, I'm working directly with the owner inside the office, you know, is it, is it the price or whatever it is? I can go right to him right now. So like our revenue recovery person is trying right away. And sorry, is the revenue recovery person somebody separate from the CSR? Or is it that's all they focus on? Okay. So this is a revenue recovery person in your actual overhead of your company. That's all they do. Yeah, very interesting. Okay. So they're obviously commission based, for the most part, they have small hourly just to follow up, get reviewed and stuff like that. And then most of it's commission based. Can you share do they get the commission from the technician? It comes out of that. Yeah, whatever the commission, the commission, the technician left, he was supposed to get 10% or whatever, if he doesn't sell it, and they take and say they take four or five, whatever it is, they come down and what is so he'll still get paid because you don't want your internal and your external finding each other. Sure. You know, Bob, it's like, hey, you got to close. If you don't close there, you have 72 hours. That's a cool model. So, so I think we're quite a bit aligned as far as like pricing our product. Tell us about your theories and models on pricing. So I prefer like for me, I'm going to price everything at 65% gross margin. Because guess what? If you start high, there's an old saying, right, is, is quote them and I look them in the heart, quote them high, look them in the eye, drop your pants and watch them buy. So you start high. If you start, if you don't start, if you start at 50 and you go down, you're going to end up at 40, right? And that's not, they're not, that's not sustainable. If I started at 65 and I go down 10%, I'm still at 55. I'm still got squiggle room, right? Yeah. But most of the time we're going to hold that 65% margin, not everybody's asking for discounts or a little bit of discount. But if you start, if you start low, you only have nowhere to really go, right? And is the, I know we're getting into the details, but I think it's important for the, the viewership. If they go from a 65% gross profit margin down to 55%, is it the company that takes the hit or does the commission of the technician also decrease? So this is how I, how I do it is, it's a sliding scale, right? But I have what's called built in drops. So say if, if they sell that job and they do have no discounts, they'll actually get, so every 5%, they say for me, I'll give them 1%. So if they don't discount at all, perfect. You get for those first two discounts, that's going to hit you 1% in the first one second, and then you're only going to get 10 if you stay there. Anything below that, then it's going to stop, start dropping in commentaries. So if you go below 10% discount, now we're going to start dropping multiple percentages. So the first ones are built in and some of my high end packages, I'll have four built in. So you can get, if you go, you sell it at the discounted the four, the 20% off, you still get 10. But if you hold that, you'll get 14. So what it does is incentivizes them and you show them the check and say, look, dude, you're losing an extra 4% by discounting every day, 10 to 14% commissions, dramatic difference, right? But if I can hold that 20%, I'll give them 4%. And that's how I look at it. So we built it in as we structured to where that's a sliding scale, but they get down to where they can sell a $20,000 job, but margins are right, they're making 250 bucks just for going out there. And then we had, we talked about three different people that go out into the market. You have your sales guys, then you have your installers, and then you have that middle area of the sales tax. You are in favor of having a very strong sales force like Chris going out there, capitalizing on all the deals, and then just having an install crew come and complete the work. You don't want the same guys that are selling it as installing it because at the end of the day, it's really hard. I can, you know, I can go get installers, right? At the end of the day, a lot of people don't like communicating like the technical side of it. That's what they want to do. Now getting a sharp, amazing sales guy is very difficult. And as much as everybody wants to heat on the sales guy, nothing happens without a sale. That's right. Right. So like, you're not, you can't go create me overnight. Like you can't, if you want me, I'm becoming your business, you're not going to get five of me. Right. So if I'm tied up doing the sale and I'm doing the install, then I can't go sell more jobs. So I want my sales guy focused on killing the next target, killing the next target. And that's how we aim on it. And then obviously, install crews are right there right behind it. You know, and my top guys that are the hard guys that are hard sellers, like we don't, we're not installing three days from now. I have one guy in my sales team in Arizona. I have a demo crew that follows behind him. He goes to the job, they're down the corner waiting for him to sell and they're going to go demo that job and we're going to start it right away. Because I know that when he sells, he's pushing all these people to sell. Right. So you have to get that job in as quickly as possible. I think it was you that was telling me a funny story with the alarm systems. Oh yeah. Man, I'm a big same day install guy. Right. So like I would not leave a home. So I come from a background of door to door sales. And I would not leave a home until there was a whole beam punch in the wall. Like that was literally my criteria. Like as soon as the technician punches a hole through the wall with his drill, I'm out. Right. But until then, dude, I'm building rapport. We're talking about baseball, football, like we're doing whatever. I learned. Yeah. I'm the same way. And that's where I learned from Leland. Right. Like we would wait around until the installers got there or whatever the next, the next guy was or the demo crew or whatever. But it's like, yeah, you want to make sure you get that job spiked. No matter what. And sometimes like I was a technician. So I'd sell it and demo on my damn self. I'd be out there and like, Hey, the crew's going to come pick it up right now. I'm going to start cutting the unit out. So I wouldn't, but sometimes I would leave and I would make videos in our sales chat. I'm like, Hey, I got another one. I got a fan spin in the back of my truck. Have the customer help me lift it up into it. Yeah. So when you go and pick up a $2-5 million shop right now, what are typically like the top three things that guys are missing? Is it the fact that like sales tax or everything? I mean, what are some of the major changes that you make right away into a business like that? First thing we got to do is sell. I don't care if your sales team doesn't know how to sell yet. We're going to teach them right. Like we got to go in and they can say they don't like to sell perfect. I need some warranty guys. I call them the cleanup crew. I'll take one or two of you guys that rest. You got two guys that can take that spot to most of any company I'm have. Everything else has to be sales. If you don't want to sell, you're going to be out. So the first thing I do is I recruit. Right. If I'm going to go in, you got to find a high level sales person, whether it's a sales manager that can bring a team with them or it's a high level technician. I always say, if you want to start winning, you got to get one. Get one from that big company, that company that you hate, you talk crap about, they all they do is sell. Get one of those guys. If you treat him good, he'll bring the rest of them. So like this is what we did in Arizona. The same thing we're doing in Alabama right now. We actually built our office right next to the biggest company in the market. And he's growing now. Just last week, we're like, we want to launch plumbing. We have like six of their plumbers coming over overnight because we say, let's go. Let's take it. Right. So you have to recruit the sales guy. And a lot of times, the other thing is you got to find the people that are good at things you suck at. Right. If you're a business owner, you suck at sales, bring someone in that can sell. You're going to get in the way. Right. And if you're, if you're good at finance or whatever, whatever that position you suck at, you got to fill it. Right. So figure that stuff out. And obviously, how do you get leads? I mean, you have to, if you can't get customers, you're not going to retract. Me and Chris ain't working for you. You can't get a customer to sell to you. Right. And obviously, we can go out and try to find our customers or whatever it is, but you want the big dogs, you got to have them. Right. So first thing we do is we got to hire the sales streaming team. I'm a big process person. Like, I have a step by step process. We teach it. We teach it in markets and pretty much every state in the entire country has learned. And even in Australia, we have some clients over there. They follow our process and they crush it. Now, if you don't hold these guys accountable, right, then your business is going to fall apart. Like I run my business, like my sales team's ran like a McDonald's, right? Same thing over and over and over again. And I can tell through my KPIs when my guys are skipping steps and what steps are skipping based on what, what they're not selling, what they are selling. I said, Hey, look, let's talk about this. Let's talk about your process. My favorite part, and you probably had this Chris, right? It's like someone comes in and they're like, I tried everything. You're like, did you try this? Well, I didn't do that. I'm like, dude, come on, brother. Like, you know, which I know what you're missing. And my, even my manager able to identify what we are. They keep guys, what they're missing in the process, but we train often. So some of these small companies, they may be trained once a month, twice a month. Terrible. We're in four to five days a week for an hour a day. And I believe that if you're going to bring your, your team and your sales team, do not bring them in to beat them up on numbers, bring them in to teach them something that day. My guys can come and we look over the numbers. The numbers think I need to be changed overnight, but we can do is every, I found that like whatever subject you focus on that day, they magically sell. If you got, you bring a financing guy in today, they're going to all of a sudden sell everything on financing. So are you doing sales training four to five days a week? Or is it just general training or you focus straight on sales? So you, you personally are still involved in these trainings? No, no, I have a team that does it. But like, obviously, if I go out to a business, I'm going to be running the meetings, right? Like, I get the team pumped up. Like that's what I do. I get people excited, right? But we do, I have guys that do that for me that run the sales team, whether it's virtual or in person, but we're meeting four to five days a week. I don't care if it's a hundred degrees. Sorry about the language. I don't care if it's a hundred degrees outside. We still train. Yeah. Because that's when you lose the most money because that's when you start skipping processes and most opportunities. A drunken monkey can sell in the summertime, right? But a smart guy like me, I'm going to get my average ticket doubled because now they're, they got sweat beads coming down their face. I want to maximize the ticket. I'm not there to sell basic. I'm there to sell the best, right? So that's, I think that's what kind of separates us from everybody else. So you're there like in the summertime, they're just telling basic. I always tell people like my technicians, like, would you put a basic arc niche in your house? They all say no. I said, why are you selling one then? I would never sell something I wouldn't put in my house. That's not the right thing to do. So like, we don't sell basic and we do everything's top down pricing. Most companies leave from this, from the bottom, and they go up. We start from the top, just like if you went to the Ford dealership today, right? You want to buy a base model, maybe a Lariat or whatever the Ford, I don't know what the base model Ford truck is, right? They're going to show you the Raptor first. I'll be showing you the Raptor. Hey, have you had a chance to try a Raptor? Put them in the Raptor. Once they leave the Raptor, they're not going to, they're going to leave with a limited, right? Or either Raptor or a limited, they're not going to go down to a freaking roll in their windows down with their hand. And that's, that's how we teach it. So it's top down sales process. And then that's the first thing we go in. We give these guys sales presentation books and all the tools they need in the house. And that's what separates us right away. You know, it's interesting. There's a, there's a terminology called anchoring. It's in negotiation, right? And negotiations and sales are very similar as far as aligned and similar principles or whatnot, but like, nothing was like more powerful to me than when, when I, so I took a negotiation course at Harvard. And, and we were taught this, this principle, like, you know, we've always, as sales, the dogs and business owners, we, we've done a lot of things, but like understanding exactly why it works, the psychology behind it, everything like that. And we, so we did this mock negotiation. And it was essentially where there was a buyer and seller of land and we were both given different parts of the story. And then we had to come together and negotiate. And so it was like, it was a real negotiation. And basically, you know, the range that this land sold, so it was a land deal that you're doing. And the range that this land deal sold for, it was anywhere from 32 million to 65 million and everything in between. The crazy thing was, is everybody after they finished the negotiation went and when they turned it, they had to turn in their numbers and give a report, right, of like what, what they ended at, everybody felt like they got a good deal. There wasn't one person that didn't feel like they got a good deal. And it was for the same exact negotiation. And like this, this, the power of anchoring that you're talking about, like, when you anchor with that Ford Raptor, right, like when you end up with a Laria, you're like, you're, you're feeling good or whatever else, I got this good deal on this, whatever else. And like, that's ultimately the power of anchoring is so, so, so powerful. And if you don't anchor, like, the guys that negotiated the sellers that were in the 32 to 38 million, it's because the sellers did not anchor. It's because they came in, they love the buyer to anchor and determine essentially where the anchor was. And then wherever you anchor, you end up close to what it is. And so in a negotiation and sale process or whatnot, wherever you put the anchor, you're going to end up real close to there. And so if you're coming in, you know, with a $25,000 system, chances are you're going to be in the ballpark of $25,000 at the end instead of coming in with the $10,000 product. Right. Well, I had this, I had this sales rep out of Utah and I was working with him. He asked me to work with him one on one and I rarely do that, right? He was just client of mine. So I said, he's like, I can't, they're having this competition and I cannot sell this 26 year, the highest end unit. And I said, Oh, cool. Can you walk me through your sales process? Right. We go through the sales process and he does, he's doing top down pricing, but the top two, he says, these two are kind of like overkill for your house. Like if you can forward it, they're great down place. This is the one that most of my customers go with. And I said, well, what's when are they buying? He's like, well, the middle one. I said, how about you change this? How about you say, Hey, look, start with the best one and talk about how amazing it is, how it's the one you have in your house and how you wouldn't live in the house without one of these units and just talk about all the bells and whistles. And then he started talking about the things you lose by going to the next one. And then let's see what happens. Right. So we went through the whole process again, and he did a really good job. He calls me back. He's, I sold six of them this week. And he got this big old bonus and he's like, you're not making more money than I've ever made before. I said, look, you just had to change the way you're talking about it. Why would I buy something where you say it's overkill and I don't need it? Right. And so that just really changes everything. So that obviously the psychology behind it is massive. Yeah. And the, the recency of sales training, what you said is really important. It's like a lot of owners or managers will say, well, we trained on that last week. Six months ago. Okay. So Dr. Amber, who, who's a frequent guest for us, she, she increased her average ticket selling orthotics. And she does it because she's talking about orthotics all the time. And there was a positive correlation between when they do the sales training on orthotics and when the doctors are offering orthotics. So if you, if you train in the morning, they do it in the afternoon. That's, that's the same thing. Every meeting we have, we have, we actually have it planned out a month in advance. We know what we're going to train on that day, unless there's a major issue that's happening when we're not selling something to sell, then we'll change it up and pivot, right? But I like the same thing. Yeah. And it's financing one of them, right? If you're not leading with financing and especially in 2025, I mean, the price of everything is so expensive. The average consumer has less than $5,000 in their savings account. You're going to expect them to spend 25, 30,000 without financing. It's impossible, right? So most, almost probably over 90% of our job, I don't know the exact statistic, but it's at least over 90% of finance. And you can't just go in and you have to lead with financing, right? And one thing that we got really good with is step financing. So our highest end product has the longest term and lowest payment, right? And then as you get by, you're going to get the lower to the lower term, the five year term at the higher interest rates. So the payments are going to be kind of close to the same. So if you're, it's only like a $10 difference between the top and the bottom, which one are you going to go with? That's what you're talking about, the Delta. So yeah, so, you know, this one's 15 years, this one's five years, but at the end of the day, when they look at it, they look at payment, right? So when you go in, you're not buying a Ford Raptor for $150,000, you're buying it for, you know, $1,300 a month or whatever that payment is, right? You're not going to talk that way. But the problem is I found a lot of reps, they'll go in, they'll give a price. And after they give the price of customers, him and ha, they're like, Whoa, we have finance. I said, you got to lead with it. Now you're telling the person they're broke because they can't afford it. You want to, you want financing now, Brokey? You know, in 20, like in 2025, it blows my mind when I talk to a business owner and they're like, Oh yeah, 20, 25% of our deals are financed. And like, dude, what are you doing? Right? Like, you're not in the high 90s of percentage of finance deals. You are missing the mark. Like, I mean, this is the easy. I'd like to buy that business. Anybody interested? I mean, dude, but so many of these companies, it's the easiest way to move the, move the needle in sales. Yeah. Offer zero down financing, payment plans. I mean, the American consumer, like we are the largest consumers in the world, right? Our savings rate is negative 2%. You know, like, like we have to provide that type of finance. I mean, there, I mean, you can actually finance Uber Eats now or don't. You can finance a freaking burrito, right? So people are used to it. That's the way you just talk about financing is the way that we talk about financing too, when it's not front loaded. Yeah, it becomes the, it's, it's like, you have the objection. This is too much money. And then the bad sales guy will go like, is it because you're poor? Like, because you can't afford it. We have something we could do versus if you, it's front loaded, which is, hey, Victor, 99% of everybody finances, even if you have the cash, this is going to be the best option for you. Then when the objection comes, they've already had 60 to 90 minutes to process the financing. Yeah. So a lot of times I'll ask, obviously, I always tell me you can use our money. Now, you can actually use our money instead of yours. And the one thing that I'm really good at, and we do with my stale staff is we don't ever talk about buy company financing. Hey, right now, it's an, I can't even believe it, but the manufacturers offer these crazy rebates and incentives or even offering some no money down options right now. Normally it's cash check or credit card. Obviously it depends on what you qualify for, but almost every customer I'm talking to is using this because they don't ever offer it. You can get something where you don't have to make a payment on it for 12 months. And after that, it goes into a super low payment like under $200 a month. I've seen people get this for right. Would you be interested in that type of deal? And I get them and I always have an end date to it. It ends on this day. See everybody sales is urgency, right? If you don't build urgency, you're you have an infinite amount of time you're going to take forever to choose. So that is what's very interesting about what you started with, which is the marketing channels. So if you're marketing to the digital side, those people are making decisions like if your HVAC unit goes out 24 to 48 hours, you know, 72 hours, they're making a decision. I have no heat or cooling in my house. I need to make a decision. What you're doing is very interesting. You're saying, Hey, I'm going to go OTT streaming direct mail. And you're before there's an issue, you're able to solve the issue offer the financing so that they don't end up in this position. We put them on the market before our competitors ever talked to them. They're almost every customer that buys from us never met with anybody else. So they meet with everybody else. They realize we're the most expensive and obviously we can win those battles sometimes, but the statistics go way down. I want to put them on the market and take them off the market. That's why having a dial-in process is important. But also just training how to build urgency. So like when my guys are in the house, I don't just tell them, Hey, we have a promo that's ending. My guys every, every day or every day of the month, they have a promo in their hand that already expired either expired on the 15th or expired on the 30th. What I mean by that is like, if it's a 17th of the month, they're using the one that expired on the 15th, they're going to call their boss and see if they can get that promo because you have to get it today. If we don't get it today, I can't honor it. I'm actually pulling strings and get this for you. So I like to give my guys sales tools that happen in the house that they can use to obviously just like any other, any store you ever go to on the planet has a sale going on. Hey, this sale ended. Let me see if I can get it, but it has to be something we make a decision on today. If it's not what you want to do, I can, there's nothing I can do. There's just no way I can get it after you call me tomorrow. Right. So I want to give my guys all the tools and I think that's one of the big failures in companies that they don't give their guys in-home sales tools. Now, keep in mind, some sales guys are lazy. If I didn't have them and I worked for a company, I'd make my own. Okay. Cause I like money. I've never been an hourly guy. I've been commissioned only one time. 675. I've changed an oil, but I haven't been hourly since I got in the field. I was a commission only guy. I eat what I kill. So like, I have no choice. I'm not going to go home and tell my wife that I just worked, you know, 16 hours and I came up with no money. Okay. That's just not, and I also believe that I don't want to go to work to make less money than humanly possible. So I want to sell the best of the best. And that's what I, that's how I strive to be. I want, if I sell like a basic system, I'm not even excited. So based on your sales process, so based on your sales process, obviously you guys want to be the only one in the home that they're pitching the highest price and everything else. So what is your messaging around from your, in your targeting with your marketing or whatnot to get in the home that's going to allow you to do that service call and then complete the upsell. So even like on our marketing, there's urgency builders, right? There's only a hundred of these spots available as we have 40. It's a $49 tune-up. We're offering this to the introduce you to our company, but we only have a hundred spots where we can take on new customers type of deal. So it's all about, it's all about tune-up service, 49 bucks, something cheap to get it, get in the door. Yeah. Some of our guys are running, you know, some of our specials like on social media, I'll run a $20 tune-up special. I don't care because you don't make money at 19, you don't make money at 49, you don't make money at 200. So are all your sales guys trained on being able to do a tune-up? Yeah. Got it. So we do have, we do have, people call in for estimates, we have no charge estimate guys. And I have guys that technicians that are not sales savvy, right? But they're good technicians that turn leads. So we'll have, I mean, that's the easiest way. So if I can get a good selling tech, which is, is rarer, right? But the selling tech, I'll let them do everything from beginning to end. Most of our guys are turnover tech. So, you know, I have 10 guys, I call my Trojan horses, they go in there, see what's going on, they fill us out. We have a call by call manager that's monitoring all day. So like, if my tech goes there, it's a first time out tune-up. He's got a 20 year old unit, he's got both homeowners there, he's got some things going on. He has to make a call within 15 minutes and say, Hey, I got this going on. So we're probably going to send a manager out there for a buddy check or a training visit, right? Right. He's going to show up there and I always tell my technician is like, let the customer know it's time for your quarterly review that someone might show up. So in that, in that situation, so just say it's a 20 year old issue they called you out because it's not starting, you know, it's a capacitor issue, but it's R 22 system. You're not, you're, you're doing an authority close. The tech is calling a sales guy or a manager. It depends. So I have some guys that are good enough to be selling techs that can handle forgetting to hand, right? But that's harder to train. Once they get to that point, that's great. Those are the best because I don't have to pay two people. I don't waste gas, trucks, all that stuff. But if I got, I can train guys from scratch within 10 week course, then I have a whole step by step course, what we train on every, every week, every day, to get that guy from knowing nothing, to be able to run a tune up and actually know how to flip it. So, right. So that's how we build our sales team. And once they get good enough at flipping, then we allow them to start selling their own stuff. We don't just go say, Hey, you can start selling. If you can't consistently turn a lead that turned into a replacement. So just the tech get because there's some, you're essentially creating no customer acquisition costs. If you can upsell them there, what's the, does the tech get a, They get a spiff. They get a spiff. Yeah. So you get three to 4% depending on what the sales guy sells on. And the sales guy loses 2% of his. So he's still, we, those tickets we found that the a service to replacement is a way higher average ticket than a straight S. So what is it? What is your total sales commission stack look like? Are you 15%, 20%? What are you the revenue? So I really, my, my KPI ideally is 20, my 20% direct labor throughout my whole from install this to sales. Right. So if I could stay below 20% throughout the business on, That includes the direct labor, Installs, labor and commission, all of it included. So my goal, that's our KPI in our business below 20. You know, sometimes some months as 21, 22, depending on if we got to discount things like that or whatever, but we stay pretty close to that. So if my installers getting five, I got 15% to wiggle them, right? So it just really depends on the job for the most part, but 15 is like the math and that's that for splitting. So you're not, when you talk about having a 65% gross margin, you're not, you're taking 20% off that or you're saying that's included. That's including your cogs. We build all that stuff in there. So when I get to your 35%, you take commissions out of direct labor. Yeah, everything goes in there. So it's actually cool. If you go to my website, call profit rocket.com, I have a pricing calculator, you punch in the commission, labor, everything into it, it'll actually tell you what the charge. So cool. So yeah, it's way cool. Yeah, we're definitely a lot aligned as far as like the methodologies from pricing and gross profit margin and sales practices and stuff. So yeah, it's really cool. The other thing we build, I knew it Chris, is we build, so everybody looks at financing as a loss, right? We build it as, we don't have, financing is not a loss for us. It's actually a profit center. So every job, and like I said, on my pricing calculator, every single job that we do, we price in 7% for financing. None of our, none of our financing costs seven. Everything's below six. So we always make a point on it, even if they pay cash, I'm still talking seven. Right, make seven. So dude, we are 100% aligned. That's exactly how I run my business. Yeah. So it's, it's actually a breath of fresh air. Not a lot of guys that, that align with me on most of my principles there. So that's great. It's cool, man. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, having that conversation around financing. One other thing that I would add in just from a training aspect is when customers want like are persistent about paying cash. One thing that we train our people on is just what a cash buyer, a Dave Ramsey guy or whatever else, really what they most want to be recognized for their ego is I am a cash buyer. Right. It's not necessarily that they want to pay cash, but they want to be recognized as you can pay cash. Right. And so one thing that we do from a, from a training aspect is when somebody is like persistent about, Hey, no, I only pay cash. We say, Hey, look, that's great. This is what all of our cash buyers do. And then, and then we show them how cash buyers actually pay for, or do the financing. And then if they ever want to just pay it off, they can pay it off at any time, but it's better to use that money and invest it. And so we, and it's so funny because we convert so many cash buyers over to finance people because we recognize them for what their ego wants. Well, so everybody, and then you say that I prefer a finance buyer over a cash buyer, right? Especially in today's market is scary to trust anybody with that's going to pay you cash after the job. Yes. And so like, and the other thing is an emotional disconnect when someone emotionally separates from $25,000 cash is completely different than $200 a month. Right. 100%. So the cancellation rates higher on a cash buyer that says they're cash buyers, right. And I always talk to them just the same way. I say, look, you know, the cool thing is you get to use our money instead of yours. We have a 12 month no interest, no payment, rolls into a small payment, no prepayment penalty. We don't know what's going to happen with the economy. Right. So God forbid something happens tomorrow. You lose your job. Now you can't afford to pay off that thing. Now you spent all your cash. You don't have your cash in hand. Now what are you going to do? Yeah. Right. Especially the deal that you're running, which is no payments, no interest for the first year. That's what Goodleaf runs. Yeah. And you pay on day 366. No, they have to do that. Service finance has a hybrid. You get 12 months, no interest, no payment, then it rolls into a 10 year 9.99 when no prepayment penalty. It's literally free money. Right. Free money. And you know, the thing about financing is like, I don't care how much cash you have, like you can have a billion dollars. It still requires a mental hurdle to come out 25 grand if you had a billion dollars versus the couple hundred. Like it's the name of the game is ease. Right. Like the more easy you can make it for the consumer, the better. You don't want to over complicate anything. You don't want them questioning anything. You don't want them talking to anybody else. Make a decision right now. Give them a payment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the difference between the small guys, the big guys. Like I, I, I just very rare to find people that actually want everybody always wants cash. And I'm like, dude, I just don't, I just don't see it. I try to finance everything. And texts that really understand the financing game and are confident about financing, they win because when you, when there's any ambiguity about like whether this person knows or not, doesn't know, it goes to the buyer. Well, that's what I talk about. You have to know financing like the back your hand. Like we trade on financing a lot. I wanted to know the difference between a, you know, secure loan on secure loan. What, you know, what's the, what's the HELOC mean? Cause everybody's like, I'm going to go get, I'm going to go borrow money. Well, let me explain how a HELOC works. Right. They can't explain that. And the customer is like, that's her out. A lot of times that's their, that's their, hey, I got to go to the bank and get some money. Well, let me explain how that works for you. While you can use our financing for 12 months, during that time, go get whatever loan you want from your bank. Let you know this is an on secure loan versus secured all these things. So we could paint the picture. So like now that excuse goes away. Now the real excuse might come out. Right. But you have to train your guys on financing and everything about it, right? Back to front to back. I got to tell you something. So I've drawn this comparison before. Last time I was in Washington, I cracked a tooth. I ended up having to get it removed. So I go to the dentist, the CSR, you know, hey, come in your appointment. Well, what's phenomenal? They send the nurse over. She's, she builds rapport with me. The doctor comes out, you know, washes his hands. Hey there, big guy. How's it going? Seems like you had a tooth, right? Spike's dopamine does his diagnosis of the mouth and then shows you the picture. So now I understand exactly what the issue is. And then offers financing and the payment plan. And you're sitting there and I never thought I need to get three quotes. It's like, I believe the doctor. They've run the process perfectly. I understand the issue and he knows about financing. So I have no reason to get up from this chair and he absolved me. Well, that's what me and Chris were talking about before. There's the similarities between that field, the medical field and the home service field. And it's true. Like if you can run a process where you don't leave a shadow of the doubt, right? Like you have to know how to like close all the doors along the way. And that's what we teach our guys. Keeps them a simple process, right? I could take, we had this kid, 19 year old kid in the business we just acquired in Alabama, right? Never sold anything his life. The kid made $20,000 his first month, $20,000 a second month, and then $30,000 a third month in the field at 19 years old. I said, trust me, follow the process. It's gonna work. He's like, he works every time. I was like, dude, all you have to do is follow the process. Yeah. And as you can create a related like a repeatable process with your business. Now, if you go hire guys and that everybody's doing it a different way, there's no, there's no predictability in your business. Yeah, no cowboys. There's no cowboys in my business, right? And then keep in mind, there's some people I don't want to know what the hell they're saying sometimes. I don't know what they're doing, but they sell a lot and I don't sometimes, but they still follow my process. Yeah. And we use things like Rilla and other AI stuff where we can analyze and listen to it and see what they're saying in the house. And I think AI is a big part of like, if you want to be able to ramp up like Rilla has been massive, you'll be able to see that from a, from a just operation standpoint. Do you do you have managers? Actually, I know you have Rilla, but do you have guys gone to the field and still do one on one's in person? Not very often to be surprised. I found that if you need to manager your systems are broken. And so I try to think and people like tell me crazy. I think the service manager, the biggest waste of position in the whole business, I just don't see they don't make you money to lose you money. They're just they usually don't have bad habits most of the time. So I think if a business needs managers, there's something broken. And I try to run my businesses as lean as possible. Okay. I'm not interested in 10 or 15% net. Like we got to be over 20% or I'm not even, it's not worth my freaking time. So like, how do I, you know, in rich, real rich, rich people will talk like, so poor people talk about how many business, how many employees they have in their business, rich people talk about how many, how much they get done with as little amount of employees, right? So when I look at operations, I'm trying to cut overhead. I'm not interested in adding it. Right. So I don't, that's my two cents. And that's why you're so invested in AI companies because AI is the future of efficiency. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out a way to cut overhead. And it's just, you know, obviously, I love employees. There's going to be other purposes for them, but there's things that we can cut out. We can cut, then I can make more money. That means I have more money to spend and grow the businesses and do all these things that are going to help provide for a better future. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Victor, well, we, we appreciate you having the show, man. It is a breath of fresh air. Like I've, you know, I don't come from a background of the HVAC world. And so it's been really awesome. Like the last couple of years diving in, you know, getting to know different guys in the space. And very few, I can say that I have really close 100% alignment and you are, you're one of the ones. So appreciate your, just your theories, your thoughts, your, your direction on business and for everything that you shared for us on the podcast. Now I'm excited, man. I'm also excited. And I know we got, both of you guys are going to be at our, we have a sales training event in Ohio in November. And I'm bringing, so like, I believe in bringing everybody together. Like I don't have competitors. I bring, I used to be able to try to separate people. I'm bringing the best sales guys. I can think of the best guys are going to be able to help you guys change your, change your processes or change your mindset on sales. So I can't wait to see you guys out there. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe November 10th and 11th, outside of Columbus, Ohio, we got a beautiful facility. We're going to have about 300 people, max. I got probably 10 of the best sales trainers I could possibly find in the home service space, whether it's roofing, HVAC, pest control, solar stuff like that. And we're going to really just dive into processes. I told them, Hey, you guys can all have as much time as you guys want, but teach people that's something that can implement to go take home in their business. It's not a pitch fest. It's, it's actually down like step by step processes and how to dominate. So I'm excited to have you guys and excited to work with you guys a lot going forward. And yeah, that works. I got one, one, one quick little thing, you know, one little, one little thing. I told, I told this to you before he walked in, but I just want to say it on air. You are really one of the nicest people. Like you, you don't have an ego. I know you have like an internet personality, but you're just like a really nice guy and really smart and really dialed into your processes. Very hard to find high level entrepreneurs that know, you know the numbers, you know the business, like you are an actual operator. And it's been really nice getting to know you. And if you think, if you own a business, you need to know the numbers. That's all your last year. I used to tell myself, I used to tell myself, I'm just the sales guy. I'm just this. No, you're the operator is your job to know every little in and out of your business and how it works. If you can't read your financials, get what the next level, they'll teach you how to read the financials, teach you how to understand how to, how to really grow your business. Because the longer you push it out, the longer you're going to struggle, the longer it's going to take you to get where you want to go. So thank you guys for having me on. It's been, it's been a pleasure. Cool. Guys, you heard it here first. Focus on your marketing. Get better at that sales process. Implement AI. Know your numbers. Let's go.