Power of Consistency and the HVAC Business

First, let’s talk about the MINDSET.

When I talk about the prosperity mindset, I’m talking about a mindset that is geared and programmed to thrive in the face of adversity, a mindset that understands that you are the master of your own destiny and that your results in life, business or sales are not a reflection of the economy or your competition or anything else, they are a reflection of your MINDSET.

As you know, over the years I’ve owned several HVAC companies. I want to share with you a few things about how I run my company. I like my service technicians and comfort advisors to approach their job every day as if it’s their own little business. They are the president of “You Incorporated”. And every single day in your little company, you’re going to get 24 hours every single day and you’re going to get a set number of calls. And it’s completely up to you how you spend that time and how you handle those calls.

Time is the great equalizer because everybody gets the same 24 hours. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos get the same 24 hours as the Skid Row bum. The question is, what do they do during those 24 hours? Some people get out there and take their 24 hours and create massive results in their life and their business. Other people get the same 24 hours and don’t do much with it. They go through the motions while waiting for some miracle to happen.

You have to make those 24 hours work for you. You have to go out there, take that time and create the wealth and prosperity that you and your family deserve. And I’m going to show you how to get better at it.

The most important thing is to create THE RIGHT MINDSET.

In our business, we get compensated based on the number of problems that we solve for homeowners. We can’t just arbitrarily double our prices. That doesn’t work. What we have to do when we go into a house is to look for other opportunities. The more solutions you offer to your homeowner, the more likely they are to buy more solutions – it’s as easy as that. Your homeowner is not going to call you and say: “My furnace is making noise. It needs to be replaced. I’d like to get the hot, high-efficiency furnace… And I think I want to do a dual fuel system on a high-efficiency heat pump. And oh, by the way, little Susie has allergies. I need some indoor air quality and I’m losing lots of efficiency. And in my annex, I need you to replace my ductwork.”

They’re not going to call in saying that ever. That’s not what people do. What do they do? They call in and say: “My furnace is broken, or my AC is broken.”

Your job is to make sure that you fix the problem they are calling you about, but you have to make them aware of the other problems they may not be aware of, and offer solutions. It’s not complicated. It’s easy to do it. It’s just a little bit easier not to. It is easier to drop off a bid and walk out of the house. So what I’m going to ask you to do is take the high road. I want you to do the things that are a little bit easier not to do. And when you do those things, you’re going to see massive results. I promise it. We have to generate more solutions and more revenue on every single call. We have to maximize our productivity.

So let’s talk about the mindset. In my book called The Power of Consistency, I talk about how a lot of times we go through life operating under the misconception that the big decisions in our life determine the outcome of our life.

Big decisions like, should I take this job? Should I marry this person? Should I buy this house? But the reality is neuroscientists estimate that we make 30,000 small decisions every day. Those seemingly inconsequential decisions are actually extremely consequential.

We just don’t see it. Let me give you a couple of examples of how little decisions can make a big difference.

How long have we known that smoking is bad for our health in this country? About 100 years now, since the 1920s, they started suspecting that there were health problems coming from cigarettes, and here are where 100 years later in this country and people are still smoking.

Ask yourself a question. Why do people still smoke knowing what we know about the health impacts of smoking?

The answer is very simple. Smoking won’t kill you today. Whatever impact smoking has on your life, it’s going to be 20 or 30 years down the road. And human nature is such that it is if there’s no immediate consequence or no immediate benefit of a behavior, we don’t pay any attention to it. So we smoke those cigarettes one at a time for 20 years. It just takes longer to make you sick.

So this phenomenon that when we have the big decisions, like a would-we-smoke-2,000-cigarettes-at-once decision, we make the right decision because the consequence is immediate, and it’s very, very obvious what it is. But when you break that down into the little decisions, we do the opposite and say yes to every single one.

The same principle affects our jobs.

Let me give an example. Suppose it’s December 31st, the last day of the year, and you just ran your last call of the year. You go out to your vehicle, and you look in your vehicle, there’s a brown paper bag sitting there in the driver’s seat, and it’s full of $50,000 in cash. And that $50,000 represents all of the things that you had to do, all the extra effort you put into your job that year, the extra calls, the extra time you committed to role play and training, the commitment you made to your homeowners to extend yourself emotionally and professionally to serve them. And all that extra effort, all that extra work went in to make you an extra $50,000. And while you’re sitting there counting your 50 grand, you start thinking about all the great stuff you’re going to do with it. You’re going to buy a new house. You’re going to invest half of it. You’re going to buy your wife a new car, all this good stuff you’re going to do with your 50 grand.

And while you’re sitting there counting it, your homeowner comes out and knocks on the window and you roll the window down. You say, “What’s up, Mr. Homeowner?” The Homeowner says, “Hey, I heard you got 50 grand.” And you’re like, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.” And what if the homeowner said, “Well, can I have it? Can I have your 50 grand?” What would you say?

Not no, but “Hell no. That’s my money. It’s my family’s money. I worked my ass off of this money!” What if your homeowner asked a second time? Would you give it to him? Of course not. What if they started negotiating with you? “Come on, just give me half of it. You keep half all take half.” Would you give your homeowner half your money? Of course not. You would make the right decision and keep the 50 grand.

Why? Because it’s a no-brainer. It’s a $50,000 decision. It’s like a 2000 cigarette decision. The correct answer is obvious.

But here’s the crazy part. Even though you would make the right decision to keep your 50 grand. If you take that 50 grand and you break it down over the course of what you got to do every single day to make an extra $200 because an extra 200 bucks a day is a thousand bucks a week.

And we do the exact opposite and we give the $200 to the homeowner in the form of discounts or worse yet products and services that we never even offer.

We give our money away $200 at a time. Now, if you wouldn’t give your money away 50 grand at a time, why would you give it away $200 at a time?

Well, the answer is simple. Same reason people smoke won’t kill you today. It’s only 200 bucks. So the reality is we got to look at the individual choices we’re making every single day, one cigarette at a time, one service call at a time, one sales call at a time, and you have to make the same decision as you would if you accumulated the results of that behavior for the full year as if it was 50 grand or 2,000 cigarettes.

This is the key to success in life. You have to figure out where you are with your income, and where you want to go, and then you got to make the right seemingly inconsequential, the right small decisions every single time.