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41 minute read
Chicago isn't an obvious place to build a heat pump–focused business. By Paul Bojko's own count, only fifty or sixty contractors across the entire Chicagoland area are really doing this work, and most homeowners there don't know what a mini split is. Paul saw that as the opening, not the obstacle.
The owner and founder of A-Guy Heating and Cooling, Paul is a mentee of Mike Cappuccio's — the contractor many in the industry consider the go-to mini split guy, and the connection that first linked Paul and Ed. Over the last two years Paul has turned a busy, stressed, jack-of-all-trades operation into a calmer, growing, ductless-focused business. But the throughline isn't really the playbook he followed. It's a decision that shows up in everything he does: be different on purpose, and put the difference in the details everyone else ignores.
It starts with the name
Most contractors treat their brand as an afterthought. Paul treats it as strategy. The name came from the thing people actually say: "I got a guy for that." The dash — A-Guy — is a nod to the A-Team and the rugged, military look he was after. The mascot, Mitzi, is a mini-split head with eyes his seven-year-old won't put down.
It sounds like fun, and it is. But Paul's reasoning is dead serious. During his rebrand with KickCharge, a questionnaire asked how many people out of a hundred in a grocery store would recognize his company. His honest answer: nobody, unless his wife happened to be shopping. That landed.
"There'd be times where sometimes in the middle of the day I was a little tired, I'd take a nap in my van in the middle of a parking lot. I can't do that now. People see me."
Losing the ability to nap in his own van is a strange kind of success — but it's the proof that a brand built to stand out is working. In a market full of interchangeable HVAC trucks, being identifiable is the differentiation.
The load calc is the differentiator, not the paperwork
The mechanical part of a mini split, Paul says, is the easy part. "We hang it on the wall, run some lines, electrical, boom, we're done." The hard part — the part most contractors skip — is answering what size system the house actually needs.
This is where Paul has watched the numbers reset his instincts. Across two years of measuring real Chicago homes, he hasn't scanned a single traditional-size house that needed more than 50,000 BTUs of heating. Homes that had a 120,000 BTU furnace in the basement come back needing a 60, maybe an 80.
"How is this possible?" was his honest first reaction. "I don't trust them. There's no way these are right." And then he installed to the number and watched it work. "Well, holy cow, it works."
What makes this a differentiation story rather than a software story is the customer-facing moment. Paul shows the scan happening in real time — rooms populating on the tablet — and yes, it's a bit of a show. But the deeper point is that almost nobody else in his market does it at all. "Everybody else does the same exact thing except for the load calc."
Standing behind a smaller number
Here's the part worth sitting with, because it's where most contractors flinch. Right-sizing means sometimes telling a customer they need less than they think — and not everyone takes it well.
Paul has lost jobs over it. "We've actually lost some jobs because people don't trust the numbers. 'Oh, these guys have been doing it for 30 years.' I'm like, 'Okay, well, they've been doing it wrong for 30 years.'"
His advice for the conversation is simple and hard: stand by the number. Offer to re-run it on a second piece of software to confirm — he does this himself when something looks off, because pressing the wrong button happens. But don't cave to pressure for a bigger system. Because if you let a customer talk you up to three tons and it underperforms, you own that failure anyway — and you've taught them not to trust you. "Stick by your guns. This is the number. This is what we're gonna install, and we swear by it."
He's lived the cost of the alternative. His own parents put an 18,000 BTU unit in a 650-square-foot room over the garage — a space Paul had calc'd at 8,000 — because a contractor told them bigger is always better. That room is now humid as anything all summer. HVAC, as Paul puts it, is Goldilocks. Bigger is not better.
Spending marketing money against the grain
Ask the internet how to market an HVAC business and you'll get one answer: pour money into Google and Facebook ads. Paul has a golfer's take on how that tends to go. Every year a new driver promises another 10 to 15 yards. Buy one every year for fifteen years and your drives should be going 150 yards farther — so why isn't he hitting it 400-some yards off the tee?
The promised returns rarely show; the checks clear anyway. So Paul went looking for something different and found it in the most "traditional" medium imaginable: local radio. He's now the official contractor sponsor of Lou Manfredini's House Smarts Radio — "Mr. Fix It" — a host who was already a genuine fan of the Mitsubishi product. When a listener gets interested, there's finally a contractor attached to the pitch. It's the fastest-working marketing Paul has tried.
The reframe is worth holding onto: in 2026, "traditional" marketing is Google and Facebook. Sponsoring a local radio personality is the contrarian move — and for Paul's market, it's the one that's working.
Hiring from a job interview no one knows they're in
Differentiation shows up even in how Paul staffs. He teaches part-time at his community college's HVAC program — a role he backed into after helping an instructor run the electrical portion. The strategic payoff took him a while to see, but it's sharp: a semester of teaching is "a four-month job interview that they don't know even exists."
He gets to watch which students show up, work hard, and want to learn — then route the best ones toward jobs, sometimes his own. Two of his current hires came through that channel: a former student and an instructor's referral, both vetted long before they ever filled out an application. In a trade where everyone complains about finding good people, Paul built a pipeline most contractors don't know is available to them.
The throughline
None of these are big, expensive moves. A name. A load calc. A radio sponsorship. A teaching gig. Individually they look minor. Together they're a business that doesn't compete with every other Tom and Harry in Chicago — because it's playing a different game on purpose.
"You've gotta be different," Paul says, and deciding what you won't do is how you get there. He said no to volume, no to oversizing, no to Google ads, no to being one more interchangeable truck. What's left is a business that's growing, more profitable, and — by his own account — a lot more fun to run.
For any contractor who keeps doing things the standard way because that's how they've always been done, that might be the real takeaway. The difference doesn't come from one grand gesture. It accumulates in the details you choose not to phone in.
Key Takeaways
- In a market with only 50–60 mini split contractors, niching down beats competing with every HVAC truck in town.
- The mechanical install is the easy part — sizing the system right is the work most contractors skip.
- Chicago homes with 120,000 BTU furnaces keep coming back needing 50,000 or less. Believe the numbers once you've measured enough of them.
- Right-sizing will cost you some jobs. Stand behind the number anyway — offer to re-run it, but don't cave to "bigger is better."
- "Traditional" marketing is now Google and Facebook ads. Sponsoring a local radio host was Paul's fastest-working channel.
- Teaching at a community college doubles as a months-long job interview — two of Paul's hires came through it.
- Your brand isn't an afterthought. A memorable name and mascot made A-Guy identifiable in a sea of look-alike contractors.
Timestamps
[00:00] – Introduction to the Episode
[02:02] – Paul Bojko’s background
[07:45] – Transition into HVAC and discovering ductless systems
[11:09] – Mentorship, training, and early business insights
[14:37] – Key changes that drove business growth
[17:38] – Marketing strategies and standing out in HVAC
[26:36] – Hiring Through Education
[30:10] – Content creation and building a modern brand
[34:04] – System design, load calculations, and customer education
[45:14] – Advice for Contractors and Future Heat Pump Specialists
Connect with Paul:
Transcript:
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:42.520 · Speaker 1
I think it's time to accelerate the gas pedal a little bit. Let's just go ahead and make a workout. Let's make this move forward. I think I was holding the reins a little bit too much, and that's when we started to see some real positive growth. It was sort of eye opening. I've been talking with Cappuccio a long time here, and one of the things that we started seeing, just tracking the data, it was just amazing to see how fast of a change we made from switching between unitary to ductless.
It was like a flop or like a role reversal, I should say. So we were so heavily focused on unitary the previous year and then 25 hit and boom. The numbers just literally shifted.
00:00:46.480 — 00:02:31.120 · Speaker 2
Hey everyone. We've got a great episode for you today. We're talking with Paul Bojko, who over the course of the last few years has become a good friend. And this episode is, in a lot of ways, a story about following a playbook and watching it work. Paul is a mentee of Mike Cappuccio. Same as me. That's actually how we met. And when Paul started out, he was building more conventional HVAC business. When he was doing that, he was busy, stressed, and business was up and down. Then he found Mike and leaned into Mike's playbook, and it changed almost everything about how he operates, the equipment he installs, the way he goes to market, even how he advertises. Two years on, he's calmer, he's having fun, and his business is growing very nicely. We get into the specifics why he's gone all in on heat pumps and in particular ductless the load calc numbers that genuinely surprised him, and a marketing approach that runs completely against the grain that you hear every day. It's a great look at what happens when you find a system that feels like it fits your style. Commit to it and stick with it. All right. Let's get on to the show.
00:02:34.960 — 00:02:42.640 · Speaker 2
Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith, I'm one of the two co-founders of Amply Energy, and today my guest is Paul Bojko. Paul, welcome.
00:02:42.680 — 00:02:43.680 · Speaker 1
Hey, thanks for having me on.
00:02:43.800 — 00:02:50.280 · Speaker 2
So, Paul, we want to talk about a bunch of stuff largely your business, A-guy. And I love the branding, by the way.
00:02:50.320 — 00:03:02.090 · Speaker 1
Thank you. Took a long time to come up with this, and I had some help. But, yeah, I know it's really worked out really well. We get a lot of compliments on the design, the logo, even the name. So a lot of marketing going on with our company.
00:03:02.090 — 00:03:08.250 · Speaker 2
It's friendly, it's approachable, it's unique, it's memorable. Yeah, it's all the things you want in a brand.
00:03:08.250 — 00:04:28.970 · Speaker 1
Thank you. And that's what we're striving for in a industry where there's lots of competition, there's tons of HVAC contractors in our area and we wanted to really separate ourselves amongst other individuals. It was funny because we did our branding with Kick Charge, and I did a lot of research to see who was the best, and I had talked to different companies and of course, Kick Charge just kept coming up to the top.
And I decided, all right, let me explore this a little bit further. And as we were doing our pre enrollment process, they had a questionnaire. And one of the questions on there was if you were to go into a grocery store out of 100 people, how many people would know your company? And I thought to myself, and if it wasn't my wife, if my wife wasn't shopping in there, well guess what?
Nobody would know who I was. And that just made me to really start to think that, hey, branding has a really important role. And so moving forward with that whole rebranding process had a tremendous impact on who we are. We're identifiable now. There'll be times where sometimes in the middle of the day, I was a little tired.
I'd take a nap in my van in the middle of the parking lot. I can't do that now. People see me. It's just like, all right, well, I can't hide like I used to anymore. My wife has even seen me at different job sites going to the grocery store. Oh, well. Hey, look, there he is. He's working behind the grocery store.
So? So, yeah, we get a lot of traction with the color scheme for sure.
00:04:28.970 — 00:04:37.330 · Speaker 2
I love hearing different ways people are suffering from success. Not being able to nap in the van in the parking lot anymore is a new example of suffering from success.
00:04:37.410 — 00:04:42.130 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it really is one of those problems that you don't realize you have until it actually occurs.
00:04:42.770 — 00:04:44.210 · Speaker 2
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
00:04:44.930 — 00:04:48.010 · Speaker 3
All right. So we're going to get more into your company.
00:04:48.010 — 00:04:58.010 · Speaker 2
But like give us the Paul Bojko Story a little bit where you're from and what was your arc to getting where you are now as a heat pump focused entrepreneur?
00:04:58.050 — 00:05:48.570 · Speaker 1
Yeah, no, we can definitely spend hours about that, but we'll try to keep it a little simplified. So I grew up in Chicago, born and raised, lived here till I was about 18 and then decided I needed to get up and travel. And so I moved to Florida, spent a few years out there, decided military was a good option. I didn't have any type of formal education at that point, and I just figured, hey, what can I do with myself?
And so I joined the Coast Guard. So I wound up spending four years in there doing a few different jobs. I got to play with helicopters for a little bit and yeah, you're welcome, and had a little bit of mechanical aptitude that I gained from there. I was always mechanically inclined. And so once I got out of the service yet again, here I am at a crossroad of what am I going to do with my life?
I had a little bit of a golf background, and I try to pursue that, and it didn't really go very far. And so I said.
00:05:48.570 — 00:05:49.650 · Speaker 2
Well, professional golfer.
00:05:49.690 — 00:05:55.890 · Speaker 1
Don't want to say anything on the air, but yeah, I can hold my own. So that was actually one of the reasons that I did move to Florida.
00:05:55.930 — 00:05:56.770 · Speaker 2
Oh, wow.
00:05:56.930 — 00:08:19.380 · Speaker 1
Yeah. But here I am, right? Oh, you can see how well that played out for me. But it really helps having that golf background. So after the Coast Guard really couldn't get back into golf, I tried working at different places, but I was just like, let me see if I can get something with utilizing my hands, maintenance mechanics, something like that.
And so I got into a industry where I worked at a custom office furniture factory. They hired me, took a chance. I had no idea how electrical even worked. I just knew I could sort of fix things. And luckily the equipment was fairly old from like the 1970s. So real push button contactors, things like that, and motor starters.
And I sort of figured my way. I had somebody teach me a little bit about electrical and started getting better. Went to another company, learned some more stuff, more technical, and wound up becoming a maintenance manager at another facility. And realized the industrial manufacturing sector wasn't for me and I wanted to use my GI Bill.
And so I started learning about HVAC. All right. I'm going to school. And the nice thing was, I got paid to go to school. So thank you, military for that. And once I was in school, I learned that, hey, being good with my hands could expose me to a potential career of opening up my own company. One of the problems that I had was I couldn't deal with stupid people.
And there's a lot of stupid people when they tend to be your boss, right? And so I figured, well, let me be my own boss. And here we are. So I started my company back in 2017. Focus back then was remodeling, repair and heating and cooling. Worked on bathrooms, kitchens, whatever it was just to make a name for myself.
And then right before Covid came, I went ahead and focused strictly on HVAC, and that was pretty much the same time that I was exposed to many splits. Trane had partnered with Mitsubishi and we were really interested about the product. So we did a class where we learned how to sell the product. We learned more about it.
The light bulb went on. I couldn't believe how fantastic this thing really was, and we've been focusing on that ever since. So we've made a tremendous strides with the product. We do primarily sell Mitsubishi, so heat pumps, that sort of thing are about 80% of our business. And that's in a market that really doesn't even know what the heck a heat pump or a mini split even is.
00:08:19.420 — 00:08:38.419 · Speaker 2
Love it. All right. That was awesome. Take me more into the decision to focus on HVAC. And then I want to dig more into that into that class. But after you're sort of remodeling age, like the sort of jack of all trades, what made you say HVAC is the place to focus?
00:08:38.460 — 00:11:16.420 · Speaker 1
HVAC was always, I think, the direction I wanted to go. It always interested me the most, and I enjoyed doing some remodeling and repair and different projects and seeing. Wow, look at the bathroom that you made. And what really got me though, was I had the same van that I sort of have today, or at least the same type, and it was just always, all right, you have to unload the van, all of these tools.
So your tiles, all your chops, all your all this, and then you have to load up all the other tools and it's just like, all right, I'm spending however much time loading up this heavy equipment, plus all the materials and going off to the jobsite and doing this. And finally it just got to the point where, hey, if I can just strictly do HVAC, everything's already on the truck.
I don't have to pull things out. Things are in place. It simplifies the job much more. And now I'm more efficient. And I also learned just by focusing in on one thing, you get very proficient at that. Sure, I'm good at doing other things, but am I the best drywall? Probably not. Am I the best, Tyler? Probably not.
Right? Am I good? Yeah. I'm good. I'm good enough to sell the work. But now, because I am focused on HVAC and I'm focused on Mitsubishi mini splits now, we're really good at that. And we've sort of found a niche market here in the Chicagoland area that nobody's really exploring. I mean, there's maybe 50, 60 contractors throughout the Chicagoland area that are really performing this type of work.
And let's be the frontrunner now. We don't have to compete against every other Tom and Harry. We can be in this little niche market that is starting to generate a lot of steam. It's more lucrative to do this, and you're also not hauling around big, heavy piece of equipment up and down stairs, going into attics, that sort of thing.
I mean, there are still some times where you are in attics, but it's just an easier type of lifestyle and for whatever reason, people don't want to work on it. I don't know if it's just too complicated or they just don't understand it or honestly, I don't care. That's fine. You don't have to understand it.
We do. So we'll take your business and that's perfectly fine. I had one contractor. It's just amazing. I've met him around just driving. And you get to know the people in your area, and there's plenty of business to go around. And he knew that I was sort of the go to Mini's play guy. And so he called me up, offered me a job, he gave me a referral, and I'm like, okay, let me go check it out.
Well, the guy passed up on a furnace and an intelligent system with three other zones attached to it. I'm not going to name numbers, but that was tens of thousands of dollars that I just got for free because somebody didn't want it.
00:11:16.460 — 00:11:21.340 · Speaker 2
Wow. Wow. Yeah. So I see why you landed on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:21.380 — 00:11:40.860 · Speaker 1
It's great. And we really enjoy it. And so I modeled or I created this whole mascot that I have Mitzi up here. He's a mini split head, and everybody loves him. Even my kid or my kids. Seven years old. And for Christmas two years ago, I gave him a little stuffed plushie. And it's still his favorite little plushie to this day.
00:11:40.860 — 00:11:41.860 · Speaker 2
So that's awesome.
00:11:41.860 — 00:11:45.700 · Speaker 1
Weather. Whatever happens to a guy regardless. I mean, right there. That's all I need.
00:11:45.740 — 00:12:04.540 · Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. All right. All right, so you decided to go into HVAC? Yep. And then you go to this class put on by train. Tell me more. I'm guessing I know who put on the class, but, like, tell me what happened in there that made you say, like, this is the area of HVAC to focus on?
00:12:04.580 — 00:14:33.630 · Speaker 1
Oh, absolutely. So that was probably one of the most eye opening classes I ever went to, right? I was joked around, I called the guy Mike Cappuccio for a while there, but his that's my cappuccino and my cappuccino. He's sort of been the quintessential go to many people had gotten right. He was the one that sort of everybody knew.
He grew his business, made it very lucrative. And if anybody's going to be asking any questions, it was Mike. Right. Mike has since retired from the game, but he's still out there coaching. But he gave so much invaluable information. Right. Yeah. Dominate Douglas. And it was an eye opener, right? He compared different industries.
Right. You're talking about new construction. You're comparing remodels. You're comparing mini splits. What's the most lucrative? How many man hours are you getting? What's really transpiring? How is it all benefit you as the contractor and all the details that he started going over, he was just like, wow.
First off, I love the product. I mean, just the way it works. I mean, until you have it in your home and experience it, it's an eye opening experience, right? But it's just one of those things that we walked away with so much information. We put it in place and then a couple of years go by and I'm just like, he's coming back in, I need to do this class again.
And there he talked about even more information. Things that have evolved in such a short period of time since the advent of AI, and everything else that's happening on the back end here between the Google machine and everything else that we need to do. Contractors aren't the same type of individuals that they once were.
I almost have to joke, and we are trying to grow our social media content. But I have to be not only a contractor and a businessman, but now I have to be a videographer, a influencer, right? And we have to make content that is something people want to watch. It's not just good to throw videos up there that doesn't do you any justice.
So we try to make it a little bit more entertaining, maybe some comical. We've got some educational videos that are going to be coming out just to really explain the product. So it's amazing how just one class from Mike has led to this direction. And I know Mike is still talking about video and all the different things that need to be done to ensure that you're getting your name out there and you think about it.
How many other contractors are really throwing out information like that? Right? They're not. They're just either paying somebody or they could care less.
00:14:33.670 — 00:14:56.070 · Speaker 2
That's awesome. So we're both mentees of Mike Cappuccio, which is how we met, which is interesting because we first started working together. I'm going to say 18 months ago, maybe two years, and Paul of two years ago, and the Paul of now is radically different. If I could be so bold.
00:14:56.550 — 00:14:56.870 · Speaker 1
Go ahead.
00:14:57.110 — 00:15:29.590 · Speaker 2
The Paul of two years ago when we got on the phone, Paul, like you were busy, you were stressed, you were working constantly. Your business was like a little bit like up and down, right? Like you'd have work and then like, you take your eye off marketing and then. And the Paul of now you're calm, you're having fun, you're enjoying it.
So what changes have you made over the last two years that have led to this? I'm not saying it's all roses, like it's never all roses, but you're noticeably different from the first time we started talking. Yeah, say, two years ago.
00:15:29.950 — 00:16:59.469 · Speaker 1
I think I've evolved, right? I think with a certain amount of time, you either adapt or overcome or you completely fail And you brought up all those different variables, the stressors and the business and this, that. Yeah, it's just magnified. But now I can just seem to handle a little bit better. Right?
Some of those stressors don't go away or you need to push them on off and have solutions. Right. Somebody needs to step in. Somebody needs to fill in those voids. Right. You can't wear all the hats maybe you're wearing. They'll just say ten hats. Take off some of those hats. Give them to some other people to do and maybe only have five.
Well, I mean, that's still half the work than what you were doing previously, and that's what we're trying to do. Originally when we talked, I was still really invested as a technician out in the field, still out there cranking the wrenches. And yeah, that still does happen. I mean, today we are still a smaller company.
We don't have the huge amounts of techs like some of these bigger guys do. So yes, there are times where, hey, after hours or whatever the case may be, I need to get out there in the field. And it does lead to a potential opportunity, a sales opportunity. And what better of a person than myself to be out there?
I do believe in selling tax as long as the person is able to do that. And so we are in the midst of training our guys to be able to do sales on the spot. Not everybody's capable of doing that, but the guys that I do have, I feel confident in pushing on that role to them. And so
00:17:00.550 — 00:18:04.200 · Speaker 1
now I'm focusing more on the front end of the business. I'm working on things that need to be accomplished. Relationships developing those. And so yeah, it is a little bit easier. I get to enjoy a little bit more things out there in life. It's hard to until you become a business owner, you don't realize how much time is really sucked by the business, right?
It's just it. Time doesn't exist. You always have these exercises of, oh, well, we can do this worksheet, figure out where you have the time, where you can save it. And then it's like when you figure out, oh, I've got five minutes. Well that's an email that I can write to somebody, right? Not for myself, but to get more work done.
So that's always the biggest challenge and obstacle. But I've gotten more comfortable in the role. I've been doing this for quite some time. And yes, it's one of those things that it will never end. There's still evolution happening. We're always going to continue to grow. We're going to adapt new things, new technologies.
But somehow I've been able to change, right. And it's probably been for the best. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be here.
00:18:04.240 — 00:18:25.440 · Speaker 2
Yeah. So let's go into I love that overview. And that makes a ton of sense. So tell me some of the key changes you've made over the last couple of years, whether it's hiring or whether it's investing more in marketing or advice carpaccio gave you. But I'm curious about those, like key inflection point moments over the last couple of years that sort of let you level up to where you are now.
00:18:25.440 — 00:22:36.250 · Speaker 1
So when I first started, it was always I had looked at different companies and a lot of them had either grown too fast or didn't have different processes in place. And so I was always, let's start slow. I want to build the foundation to my business. I want to have all these different principles in place. Because I've heard this, I think numerous times is it takes about five years for somebody to get good at what they do, right.
Do you look at unions and you have your apprenticeship, and you get through the process before you become a journeyman? It's for five years. And so you may be a technician, but now all of a sudden you need to develop as a business. Well, now you have to learn this whole business element and that takes time.
There are different things that people would explain to me, oh, your profit margin or your gross margin. And I'm like, okay, great. It's margin. No, no, there's a difference. And that wouldn't compute it at first right. But as time goes on, the brain somehow finds ways of storing information. And now all of a sudden things are able to stick.
Or if I hear it, it makes sense now as opposed to before. It was just way too much information, information overload. And so people absorb information at different rates. And so it does take some time. And for me, understanding that I'm going to grow this slowly, I'm going to have different processes in place.
I'm not going to just mortgage my house just to get capital to grow this thing. We're going to work off of whatever income we've generated and grow our business based on that. And then about two years ago, when we decided to rebrand, that's when I decided, hey, I think it's time to accelerate the gas pedal a little bit.
Let's just go ahead and make a work up. Let's make this move forward. I think I was holding the reins a little bit too much, and that's when we started to see some real positive growth. It was sort of eye opening. I've been talking with Cappuccio long time here, and one of the things that we started seeing, just tracking the data, it was just amazing to see how fast of a change we made from switching between unitary to ductless.
It was like a flop or like a role reversal, I should say. So. We were so heavily focused on unitary the previous year and then 25 hit and boom, the numbers just literally shifting. I just couldn't believe it. People talk about SEO. SEO takes a long time to develop. And we had started that a while and it started finally coming into place.
One of the things that we're trying to do is do marketing that is not traditional in the sense. Right? So one of the things that we discovered and we're running live right now was Mitsubishi was partnering with a local radio station, and Mitsubishi was just throwing money out there getting their name out.
But the one thing that wasn't available was a contractor to go along with it. And so now we're partnered with this radio station and it's Lou Manfredini. People call him Mr. Fix-it. He was always promoting Mitsubishi products. Now we're the official sponsor. So people that are going to get are interested in Mitsubishi.
They already have a contractor lined up to go along with it. So we just made that correlation and it seems to be working. It's probably been the most advantageous marketing that we've done. Sure, it's expensive, but the results I've never seen anything quite as fast. And that's just for me, right? It's maybe not going to work for everybody in the market, but we're looking at different avenues, right?
Traditional things don't work. And that's why I bring up the influencer thing. Right. You have to be different than all the other guys are out there, right? Some people may want to watch the videos, but some of the content creators out there, they're making Fixit videos like, oh, I'm replacing the inducer, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, and that's great.
Maybe that's great for a technician's perspective, but if you want to generate sales, who you're really going to be targeting, you're going to be targeting the customer. Customer doesn't care about the inducer or how the inducer looks or sounds. They just want it fixed. And so that's the type of marketing that we're trying to target.
And so these are just some of the things that we've discovered and moved on towards, to really separate our business from everything else.
00:22:36.250 — 00:23:27.490 · Speaker 2
Which I love. Right. The competitive differentiation, it's in the name. Right? You got to be different. Yes. And deciding what you're not going to do is how you really be different. Like I love the phrase strategy is what you say no to. So I heard a few things that you mentioned that all kind of catalyzed.
One is you let go of the reins a little bit, and to me that means you brought people on who you could give some of those reins to take some of those hats off. 25 is when you focus on Ductless and walked away from Unitarian. 25 was, at least when some of your marketing, the build up, started to hit. But sounds like you started doing some pretty interesting different stuff.
I heard a lot about social and they said traditional stuff doesn't work. Then I also heard you say radio, which is about as traditional for marketing as it gets. Did I get those three things right?
00:23:27.530 — 00:24:22.970 · Speaker 1
You did. And in what I mean by traditional is you go out there and you start searching for marketing strategies, and what's the first thing that's going to pop up there? Oh, you need your Google. You gotta dump it money. Google, right. Yeah. Exactly. Was it paid to click or whatever. It's just like yeah, yeah, pay per click and great.
You're dumping tons of money. You get all these marketing companies that are, hey, we promise you the world. And I'm like, okay, great, here's 50,000 to 50,000 you, I mean, based on the ROI numbers that you're going to give me, I'm going to be making millions of dollars here next month, right? Yeah. And here we are.
It's, you know, going back to this whole golfer mentality, every year they come out with a new driver. Right. And this driver says it's going to add 10 to 15 yards to your drive. So shoot going back ten years 15 years I should be hitting 150 yards further than I was at that point. Right? So I mean, why am I driving I going 400 some yards.
00:24:23.010 — 00:24:59.930 · Speaker 2
Yeah fascinating. And this matches with like we don't do any Google or Facebook advertising. We haven't seen the return and everyone is doing that sort of thing. And the pay per click like how many views are you getting there just with the wrong people. Like it's just better to go to where your people likely are with the content that they want to see, and you don't worry about anybody else.
The algorithm is actually pretty good at surfacing relevant content to folks. But tell me more about the radio. So it's a show, correct, that you're the sponsor of. So it's a specific show? Yeah. Tell me more.
00:24:59.970 — 00:25:38.730 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So it is a sponsor. So it's the Lou Manfredini show how sports radio and what it is. It runs once a week from I think 6 to 10 a.m.. And the gentleman. He's got a background in handyman services. Right. He owns a couple of hardware stores. And he would always get people asking him different questions. You walk into an ace, hey, how do I fix this?
What do I do with this? And so he took that information, brought it to the radio, and he started just giving that information out to all the customers in the Chicagoland area. Got it. And he's been a really big fan of the Mitsubishi product.
00:25:39.130 — 00:25:44.810 · Speaker 2
Okay. You mentioned him before. Okay. So he likes to talk about Mitsubishi. And so you sponsor his show.
00:25:45.130 — 00:26:07.530 · Speaker 1
Right, exactly. And he's a gearhead too. I had an opportunity to talk to him and he brought up some great ideas. He's just well, can we incorporate a humidifier into this because we don't have humidity coming out of these? He's like, oh, I've got this idea. We can incorporate it here and blah blah blah. And he starts going on to it and I'm just like, wow, this guy's really invested.
You don't normally get that from somebody that's not in the HVAC community or in the world.
00:26:07.570 — 00:26:39.770 · Speaker 2
Yeah. That's cool. And it's funny how traditional has changed now in 2026. Traditional marketing is Google and Facebook. But like sponsoring a local guy on the radio with a home improvement show. I mean, this is Home Improvement, the sitcom from the 90s. Sure, yeah. Tim Allen. Do you have that burn? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're sponsoring the Tim Allen of Chicago radio?
00:26:39.810 — 00:26:43.210 · Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. Without all the accidents and so forth. But. Yes.
00:26:43.970 — 00:27:06.050 · Speaker 2
Yeah. And, like, light to moderate misogyny that wouldn't fly these days. Okay. Very interesting. Tell me about who you hired over the last couple of years. Like specific roles. Because I think a lot of times people know they need to take hats off. They don't know who to hire first. And if they got burned once or twice.
So, like, I can't do it, like, I just I can't. So just tell me more about what you did there.
00:27:06.090 — 00:27:10.050 · Speaker 1
Well, so now you're looking for the trade secrets. And I normally have to charge for these here.
00:27:10.090 — 00:27:10.330 · Speaker 2
Editor.
00:27:10.330 — 00:27:12.610 · Speaker 1
Okay. Well, I mean, as long as nobody's listing.
00:27:12.610 — 00:27:14.010 · Speaker 2
This episode behind a paywall.
00:27:14.050 — 00:27:14.930 · Speaker 1
Then here we go.
00:27:15.250 — 00:27:15.650 · Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:27:15.650 — 00:29:01.500 · Speaker 1
So here's one of the things that I also discovered, right? So I had the opportunity to go through an HVAC program. It was at my community college. I enjoyed doing that program, and in one of the classes I was helping one of the instructors teach. I had developed a really good background in electrical, just troubleshooting, understanding the process.
And so when I was going through basic electricity, it was really fundamental for me. And so I was helping educate other students in the class. So he'd have half the class and I'd have the other half, and we'd be talking about different technical issues or problems. And this is basic electricity, right?
And so I developed this knack for teaching. And then I wound up going to the program coordinator a few years afterwards. And I said, hey, are you guys interested in having any more teachers? And I'm like, yeah, sure. So I became an instructor. So I'm also a part time instructor at the community college. Now here's the one of the things, right.
Not everybody is able to do this or relay information. However, what people don't realize or more importantly, the students don't realize, is that if you are a potential, I don't know, employer and you're teaching and they don't know you're the employer. Now you have a, I don't know, a four month job interview that they don't know even exists.
And so now you can look at all the different students that are through the program, and you can select the best ones and direct them where they need to go. Right. And maybe they don't necessarily come working for me, but they can go working for somebody else that I know, or I can direct them to go to this place or that place, because they've shown a really great interest in learning, they've shown just a good work ethic and so forth.
And so they have a bright career ahead of them.
00:29:01.500 — 00:29:06.780 · Speaker 2
Love that. Have you hired a office person like someone?
00:29:06.820 — 00:29:32.660 · Speaker 1
Sort of. Yes. I do have an office person. She does working on the the books, filling in all the things that I don't necessarily have time to. And then this goes back to the people that I've hired. They were one I hired as one of my former students after he had progressed through the program, and the other one was a referral from one of the other instructors.
And so now we know that they've been vetted before they come in. And so they've been really great assets for me and my company.
00:29:32.660 — 00:29:50.620 · Speaker 2
That's awesome. Okay. So you've hired basically technical team who you had a monopoly on because you were teaching them. They were going through this. So you've been able to like really build a good team. That way you've got someone working in the office to help you with that. You have outsourced marketing help, right?
00:29:50.660 — 00:30:47.380 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So I do have some of that. I do use comfort media. They do focus in on mini splits and really great resource. They're really helping us on the website portion and SEO and really developing a good product to be able to showcase to the customers. Right. That's one of those things. It's crazy just to see this whole process work out right.
You don't necessarily sometimes see from start to finish, but we had a customer did an estimate and the way it worked was they heard us on the radio. They then took that information, went to our website, looked at all of our website information, Google reviews, all that, and then they submitted a form. So they had to go through all of these different little points of contact before they finally became a lead and provide them with an estimate.
So it's just all these little pieces are in place to basically funnel them in and get that potential sale.
00:30:47.380 — 00:31:47.460 · Speaker 2
So super helpful. Paul. I was at a distributor event in January and Caputo was on stage and he talked about you and he showed a clip. He was silent, but it was one of your clips from Instagram, Facebook. And he kind of like talking straight into the camera. And he was talking about the importance of video, and he said, This is Paul.
He's one of my coaching clients. When I started working with Paul, he didn't want anything to do with this video stuff. And now look at him. He's a ham in front of the camera. He loves it. He's enjoying it. Tell me about your journey. Because we're about the same age. And like, I wasn't. I was pre social media.
Like, Facebook wasn't really a part of me growing up. So a bunch of it's been alien to me. How have you changed over the last couple of years to kind of come around from what is this to. Oh, I have fun doing this. And I know that's super important.
00:31:47.500 — 00:31:59.900 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Everything that has happened to me in my life has led up to this moment, right? I can always look back at this and be like, oh, because I did this. It led me to here, and I go back to actually.
00:32:00.140 — 00:32:02.540 · Speaker 2
The right road. What's that? That led me straight to you.
00:32:02.580 — 00:32:04.100 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.
00:32:04.100 — 00:32:06.700 · Speaker 2
And I said, it's my wife all the time.
00:32:08.660 — 00:34:40.669 · Speaker 1
So going back to college, right? I want him going in as a little bit older. Right? I was in my 30s when I was going back to college, and so I was at this point, I wanted to learn. I tried college when I was younger. It just wasn't for me sleeping in class. It was just like, why am I really here? But now, as an older individual, I wanted to learn and I took a speech class and I was just like, what am I going to do with speech?
Why is that important? And one of the first speeches that we gave. I'm sitting there and I'm literally trembling, right, talking in front of people. And I'm scared. I think I'm, you know, my voice is all shaky. And what the instructor did is he recorded you, and then he played back the footage so you could see yourself.
And when I saw that, I realized that, yeah, I was shaking internally, but you couldn't really see that externally. Wow. And so that just gave me a different mindset of like, well, heck, I could be scared, pardon my friend shitless and nobody would know. And so now I just have a different demeanor. And that's why I'm more relaxed when it comes to the camera.
No matter what I'm shooting, it's just like, hey, I've done this, I've practiced. There are different strategies that you can incorporate. I'm always trying to better myself. Following some content creators, I've even paid for a course just to make sure that we're getting the right shots, right? It's this whole umbrella of information that's given to you, and you need to digest it and incorporate it.
And there's a reason why some videos get a million views and some only get five. Right. And it's not the content, it's just all the pieces that go along with it. Sometimes people don't even know you exist. So you may start off with five likes and then it gets to 1000, 10,000 or whatever. I know there's guy. I don't know if you've ever heard of him called Mr. Fat Cheeto.
No, no. Well, he's an HVAC guy and he would do like quirky segments. He would make things blow up, or he'd paint, uh, compressor gold and just sell it to the customer and saying, hey, this is a gold compressor. It's going to have a higher price tag. And so he's got these different skits. Sort of comical, right?
I know he was working at a supply house. Well, his videos got so lucrative. He quit then, and he's making tons of money just off of YouTube, just making more of these videos. And so, yeah, I do enjoy it. Right. I've always been creative in that mindset. My marketing, obviously I've had some help, but the Almighty was my idea.
A guy was my idea, and being able to use some of this creative juices that are flowing really helps just get that out. And I really enjoy some of the video content that we make.
00:34:40.710 — 00:34:50.190 · Speaker 2
That's awesome. All right, changing gears a little bit. You're the sales person, right? You have an outsourced. You haven't hired someone to do that. You're the guy. Go and selling the jobs designing the systems.
00:34:50.230 — 00:36:26.750 · Speaker 1
Yep. For right now, yes, that is me. We are working on getting the guys up to speed to be able to do that. I have one guy that is, I think, going to be pretty close to being able to start selling the systems. I think the big thing is understanding how to design them. One of the things that just recently I've come to the realization is installing a mini split is technically mechanically, not hard, right?
We have a unit, we hang it on the wall, we run some lines of electrical boom. We're done. However, there's all the back end stuff that people don't realize. Well, what size system do we need? Most people think that, oh, it just ramps down to this number. And hey, we'll throw an 18 in there, it'll ramp down. It's good.
And it's like, well, no, that's not necessarily how it works. Maybe it's not going to ramp down low enough not to give you a plug here, but your software amply has been utterly a game changer from day one since we started implementing it. Not only has it given us a better experience with the customer, because then they can look and see what we're doing.
Sure, we're putting on a little bit of a show, like how, look, hey, we're scanning these rooms and they're populating on the the tablet, but more importantly, we're learning from them. We're learning sizing, correct sizing in our area. I have yet to scan a home that requires more than 50,000 BTUs of heating for a traditional sized home.
2500, maybe 3000. And I'm just like, how is this possible? You had 120,000 BTU furnace in here before, and you're telling me you have to go to a 60? Maybe an 80? Like what? And now we're starting to believe the numbers. It's one thing to see them.
00:36:26.830 — 00:36:27.710 · Speaker 2
It's only been two years.
00:36:27.750 — 00:38:00.160 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it's only been two years. Right. But it's amazing that you see these numbers and you're like, I don't trust them. There's no way these are right. And then you do it and then it's just like, well, holy cow, it works. Yeah. Like why? And so it's just amazing at what's really transpired. And we're educating ourselves how to properly size systems.
And we're getting ourselves not necessarily out of problems, but we're saving us from potential problems because we are not being put into positions. I was literally with a customer earlier this week, and he had two rooms. He wanted to put a mini split into these two small rooms. We scan them really quickly.
It was 1500 BTUs on a 95 degree day. That's nothing. Right? And so some contractor came in and said, oh, we're going to throw a 24,000 BTU system in there. We can support two heads. You're going to be great. I'm like, no, that's not going to work. We're going to run into all kinds of issues on the heating, the cooling side.
And this is supplemental. This wasn't just a like a sunroom or anything. It was supplemental. So we're just talking about a five degree difference. And so I mean what do you do at this point. And this is the things, the questions, the situations that we are discovering that a lot of contractors, just because they install these, they don't understand the back end to properly design a system.
We also want to make it not only functional, but we want to make it esthetically pleasing. And so how do you incorporate all of those different facets to make it unique and work? And I think we're doing a really good job. And that's what's differentiating us from our competition.
00:38:00.160 — 00:38:56.240 · Speaker 2
So I want to dig into this more because you said so many things that like just hit the bullseye for me, starting with whether they use amply or not. I'm delighted you like the product, but whether folks use amply or not, when they first start trying to do load calculations on every home. We hear this all the time.
There's 120,000 BTU system in there. I mean, first of all, there's difference between like the marketing number and what it can actually perform. But I'd love to ask you on behalf of a customer. We just signed on, Paul. This guy has been thinking about for like six months, and I got this text message from him over the weekend where he's worried about this exact problem, the exact experience you're having when you start doing load calculations.
So he said, I just feel like it's going to come back with a smaller figure than what this customer has. And that conversation of going smaller won't be fun. So how do you handle a conversation of, hey, we actually need to go smaller and that will make you more comfortable?
00:38:56.280 — 00:41:11.200 · Speaker 1
It's a tough one. And the reason I say it's a tough one, it's because something that we are experiencing ourselves, and it's actually led us to or led me to realize that, hey, we need to generate a video and we're going to probably end up doing this here sooner than later. And why is it important to have a load calculation, right?
Not because Akka says so. Who's Akka? Right. The customer doesn't understand that. So we need to. First off, we're trying to differentiate ourselves, right? There's always this thing like, oh, you walk into a house, you put on your booties, you have your nice clean uniform and then we're doing a load calc.
Well, everybody else does the same exact thing except for the load calc. Not a lot of guys are doing this. Not a lot of guys are using any type of software, three dimensional augmented reality, whatever to do it. And so when we come in, it's sometimes startles the customer. Well, why are you guys right? I'm going to go with the majority.
Right. Majority always rules. They want to be part of the crowd. And we're trying to be the differentiator. And so that sort of led us into some of these awkward conversations. And we've actually lost some jobs because people don't trust the numbers. Oh, these guys have been doing it for 30 years. Like, okay, well, I've been doing it wrong for 30 years, I'm sorry to tell you that.
Right. But it's one of those things that I think every contractor has to develop a solution and answer for that. I have no problem explaining the numbers, showing them right here. And I can say, hey, I can run this again on a different piece of software just to confirm. And there have been times where something's just quirky.
It doesn't seem right, and I will I'll double check it in just to see if, hey, is something really adding up like it's supposed to? Maybe I did something wrong. I pressed the wrong button. It happens. And so it's just one of those things that you sort of stand by your decision, because then if you say, hey, you need to go with a smaller system, you need to go with a two ton system, and the customer pushes you to a two and a half or a three ton, and then it doesn't perform well.
Well, then you're on the hook because it's not performing like it's supposed to. Whereas if you said it's a two ton, that's all we're installing because I trust the software that much, either the customer is not going to. If you're changing your mind. At that point, they're not going to trust you. So stick by your guns.
Tell them that this is the number that it is. This is what we're going to install and we swear by it. If you want to give your own guarantee on there, you can. But that's up to you as the company to do so.
00:41:11.240 — 00:41:50.960 · Speaker 2
Yeah, we've heard of folks who we've for customers like I really, really want the bigger system. Like I think that's right. Our customers say like cool, we'll we'll install it for you, but you need to sign this release of liability waiver because we know you're going to have problems with this. But it's tricky.
I'm embarrassed to say it, but my dad and my mom just finished the bass over the garage, so it's not on the ductwork, and they didn't want to expand it, so they put in a mini split. It's 600ft², 650ft². I did the low calc with amply. It needs 8000 BTUs. It's over the garage and so it's like pretty lake. It's got some heat loss and heat gain in there.
They put in an 18 without consulting me. Wow.
00:41:52.040 — 00:41:52.440 · Speaker 1
Wow.
00:41:52.480 — 00:42:16.130 · Speaker 2
And I said if my dad was like, why? What happened was I just the guy was like. If you're worried about it. I mean, just make it bigger and bigger is always better. And I was like, dad, Goldilocks sized. This is HVAC is Goldilocks. Like, bigger is not better. Like, that's not always the case. He was sort of like, oh, right.
I'm like, well, so now that room is humid as anything in the summer.
00:42:16.170 — 00:42:40.090 · Speaker 1
Unfortunately, you get a lot of situations like that, or you have customers that decide that, hey, I'm going to buy my own equipment, I'm gonna install it because they saw a chart online that says, based on this zone and my square footage, this is the size unit that I need. And that's great. Are you in a cave 15ft below ground, with the same square footage as a greenhouse 30ft above?
I mean, ultimately the chart says yes. Same load.
00:42:40.530 — 00:42:41.930 · Speaker 2
So wild.
00:42:41.970 — 00:43:23.250 · Speaker 1
Yeah. I said, there's a lot of education that needs to be had. And this goes across the board. Right? But more specifically in our area, we do find that people first off don't understand the product. They don't understand what can be done or can't be done. The unit generates conversation and then their mouth drops like condensation.
What's that? I'm like, well, the water. Where's that going to go? Well, yeah. So now the place that you thought it was going to go can't go there because we have to worry about this water situation. And so that education, along with the load calc and discussing system design and placement of the unit and all the other features that go along with it, really goes a long way in designing the right system for that home.
00:43:23.250 — 00:43:40.050 · Speaker 2
I love that. All right, Paul, this has been great. I should have asked it a little while back when we were talking all about your branding. But tell me more about Mitzi and the name Guy. Heating and air. Like, how did you land on both of those? And what are you trying to communicate to your potential customers?
Sure.
00:43:40.090 — 00:43:40.530 · Speaker 1
So it's.
00:43:40.530 — 00:43:40.970 · Speaker 2
All.
00:43:40.970 — 00:43:49.810 · Speaker 1
Started out with our tagline, right? Because everyone recommends a guy. So everybody would always say, hey, I got a guy for that. I got a guy for that.
00:43:49.850 — 00:43:50.490 · Speaker 2
Well, I got a.
00:43:50.490 — 00:45:52.410 · Speaker 1
Guy, I got a guy, and that's where a guy came from, the dash portion. When I first started, I was doing my own website design. I created my own logo. I didn't have money for that. I'd watched some YouTube videos and learn how to edit and. All right. Put some things on here. And yeah, my website was very crude at the beginning, but it was a website and it was free.
So going back to my childhood, I loved the A-Team. I loved Mr. T, and it was a team. And so I tried to incorporate that same look because I was going for this, like, rugged military thing. And so that's how I came up with the dash. So it'd be a dash guy. And then since we made that switch in 24 to heating it, cooling, it was just too much, right?
The home services threw people off. They would always get this. I'd always get questions. What other services do you offer? And I have to explain. We do this, we do this. And it's got little tiresome. And so we went ahead and we just added the heating and air in place of the home services, and it's really simplified it.
Now, as far as Mitzi. Right. We were just coming up with different names. And since we do install a lot of Mitsubishi product, we just basically shorten the name to Mitzi. And we wanted something that really showcased what we did right. Heating and air. That's a multitude of things you can do commercial, you can do residential, you can do industrial, whatever boilers.
And so because we are so heavily focused on mini splits, that's what I wanted. I'm like, hey, can we make a mascot with a mini split head and quick charge delivered? I mean, I remember still the reaction to this day when I gave my son his little plushie. He just, like, stared at him, and he's just like those eyes.
And for whatever it is, it's the eyes that really capture you when you start to look at our caricature. So we've got some more things that we're going to be doing with Mitzi. Moving forward, I. Don't want to reveal all the secrets yet, but I'm really excited.
00:45:52.410 — 00:46:14.170 · Speaker 2
That's awesome. All right, Paul, this has been super fun. We always end the pod with the same question, which is for anyone else in your shoes or who want to be in your shoes. They want to build a heat pump focused business, want to be successful. They want to be enjoying it. What resources? Podcast? Whatever would you point people to help them learn on their journey?
00:46:14.210 — 00:48:02.660 · Speaker 1
Well, I thought you were going to say who's going to be the highest bidder? I mean, the highest bidder. We could always discuss that. Right? But ultimately, I think it just depends on which direction you're trying to go. There's so many different facets to this industry. It's like we're sort of like doctors, right?
We have guys that specialize in boilers, and those could be your orthopedic guys. We have the mini split guys and we'll just say they're brain surgeons, right? Then you have the other guys that dabble in everything that are general practitioners. And so find what you're really good at and try to focus in on whatever department that is, whether it's sales, installation, tech service, whatever.
And honestly, just first off network. It's amazing how much networking has an impact on development. People say, oh, it's not about well, yeah, it absolutely is about networking because what's the first thing people do? They're going to ask, hey, do you know a guy and you're going to give a recommendation, right?
And that's how you get your foot into the door. And so having a good solid network people to rely on is paramount. After that, educate yourself. Right. Never stop learning, no matter what it is, whether it's going to the distributor, watching YouTube videos, whatever, ask information. I don't think there's a single solid person out there that knows everything, but there's a lot of people out there that in conjunction, know a lot.
And so try to separate yourselves. Push yourself. There's so much to learn in this industry, and no matter what direction you go, you're definitely going to find success. With the advent of AI and everything that's really happening in this marketplace, I think we're going to start to see a much greater demand for people in the trades, and that's just going to lead to even more jobs.
And I think we're going to start to see very, very high paying jobs in the blue collar field because people don't want to do them anymore.
00:48:02.700 — 00:48:07.100 · Speaker 2
That's awesome. Yeah. Paul Bojko, thank you so much for joining me on the Heat Pump podcast.
00:48:07.580 — 00:48:11.100 · Speaker 1
It's been amazing. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.
00:48:13.900 — 00:48:36.300 · Speaker 4
Thanks for listening to the Heat Pump Podcast. It is a production of Amply Energy and just a reminder that the opinions voice were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe in your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out!
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