There is the old saying about being a jack of all trades, but the sub-heading to that is master of none. I want to be able to tell our customers that we are masters of our trade and that our people are well-trained in the HVAC area, and that is the only area in which we specialize.

We’ve found many systems are delivering only 50 percent of their rated capacity into the indoor conditioned space. Combine poor installation and service-related issues with inconsistent maintenance practices or, even worse, a run-to-fail scenario, and we find that many systems operate far below the manufacturer’s Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) laboratory rated efficiency.

Leading a team is like trying to harness together wild horses to pull a stagecoach. You have to be a very powerful leader because the horses all want to go their separate ways. If you don’t lead them effectively, they’ll wildly pull your business off track.

How do you know what’s the right thing to work on at the right time? You need to create a master project list. This is a giant list of all the projects and habits you need to work on at your company. Typically, when I do this work with clients, the first master project list is somewhere between 100-150 things.

We have an interesting, well-paying industry, we just need to make sure we’re educating people about the opportunities it offers.

Making decisions as a business owner is one of the most important things you’ll do, so it’s imperative that you step up and learn to make better decisions faster and have the confidence that those decisions will serve your company.

What I discovered when implementing systems in my family’s plumbing, heating, and cooling business was that there weren’t really a million things to master. There were just seven. Seven “power” concepts that enabled me and my two brothers, the third generation in the company, to run it with a lot less stress and a whole lot more success.

This article covers important parts of the process for service calls, specifically the beginning and the end.

There are four stages of customer service. Each stage corresponds to a level of service you provide your customers. Interesting to note is that each stage also corresponds to a different level of profitability generated by your business.