Derek Aarstad’s most effective move in a homeowner’s living room costs nothing and takes about thirty seconds.
He walks to a random floor vent and pulls up the register.
"Nine times out of ten we find it is rusted out. It’s got debris, goo, toy trucks, the ever-famous dustpan from the construction job. And of course, they’re almost never sealed."
He isn’t selling anything at that moment. He’s letting the homeowner look into their own duct and draw the obvious conclusion — that whoever installed this wanted to get off the job site and go home. The static pressure readings and the TrueFlow numbers come later. First, something they can see with their own eyes.
That single move is a good summary of how Derek runs DNA Heating and Cooling in Richmond, Virginia. Five years in, he’s the only technician his customers ever see. Every diagnostic, every maintenance visit, every quality check comes through him. He calls the company intentionally small, and he means intentionally.
Derek was already running the work of a high-performance contractor. He had a checklist covering static pressure and temperature splits from the day he started. He was using measureQuick before he even owned a business.
What he didn’t have was a name for it.
That arrived at his first National Comfort Institute Summit last September.
"I realized: oh, I am a high-performance HVAC contractor. I just never labeled myself as such. I didn’t realize that what I was doing was considered high performance."
Nothing about his diagnostics changed. What changed is that he started saying it out loud before he ever pulled into a driveway. Now a caller hears it on the phone, and then gets the receipts — a TrueFlow reading showing they’re short 375 CFM, which is exactly why the back bedroom has never been comfortable.
Worth noting what did the work here. It wasn’t new equipment or a new process. It was walking into a room full of contractors who were already doing it the same way, and recognizing himself in them.
"Make your own pond" sounds like a slogan until you look at what Derek actually decided.
He caps free estimates at one hour. He tells the homeowner up front: you’ve got one hour, then I’m out of here. Anything beyond that is a paid in-depth consultation. That single boundary is how a testing-first shop survives economics that are supposed to punish time in the home.
He vets inbound calls. Someone phones asking for refrigerant, and Derek asks why they think they need it, and who told them, and whether anyone has offered a leak search. "When we have the client that just wants the gas and go, they hang up real quick."
He’ll talk a customer out of a test. If he can already see 30% duct leakage, he’ll say so and skip the duct leakage test rather than bill for hard evidence the customer doesn’t need. If they want the before-and-after numbers anyway, he’s glad to run it.
He rebuilt the website to sound like himself. He hired a local designer with only a handful of sites to his name, because he wanted his own fingerprints on it. Online bookings went up over 100% in the first week. His favorite feedback is that he shows up as exactly the person the site promised.
None of those are things a competitor can copy by buying software. They’re choices about how he wants to work and who he wants to serve.
Derek doesn’t run paid ads. No billboards, no lead-gen spend. His favorite source of business is Reddit.
"They’ve already done their homework. They know who I am by the time I walk to the door, and nobody else does. The Google clients — I don’t know who you are. But these Reddit clients, they know what they expect."
That’s the payoff, and it’s worth being clear about the timeline: it took five years. Reputation on those forums accumulates slowly and can’t be purchased, which is precisely why it’s worth having. A Reddit lead arrives already convinced. The job isn’t to sell them, it’s to be the contractor they read about.
Meanwhile the thing that’s supposed to be the tradeoff hasn’t materialized. Derek set install targets for this year and, in his words, blew them out of the water — well past the numbers he originally set. Being deliberately small and testing-first didn’t slow the growth. It produced it.
He’s also honest that he only started feeling the results this year. "I’m in the most comfortable place that I’ve ever been. This wasn’t me a year ago. Definitely wasn’t me four years ago."
Derek doesn’t have your differentiator. That part you have to work out yourself. But it’s useful to hear how one contractor found his — and what it looks like once it’s working.
[00:00] - Episode Teaser
[04:12] - Intentionally Small: The DNA Heating and Cooling Model
[07:04] - From the Trades to HVAC Business Ownership
[30:49] - Finding the Right Customers and Building a Brand That Feels Like Derek
[37:23] - “I Am a High-Performance HVAC Contractor”
[41:13] - Making Testing-First HVAC Work Economically
[45:55] - Pull a Register: The 30-Second Move That Changes the Conversation
[48:01] - Why Reddit Became DNA’s Biggest Lead Source
[49:09] - The Real Reward of Building DNA
[52:10] - Closing Thoughts: Building a Business That Feels Like You
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:43.360 · Speaker 1
When I went to the National Comfort Institute, I went to my first NCI summit last September. That blew the doors open. There was so much self discovery in that short amount of time because I realized, oh, I am a high performance HVAC contractor. I just never labeled myself as such. I didn't realize that what I was doing was considered high performance. And then when I really thought about what they were saying, I'm like, yeah, they're right. Because when I go behind my competitors and when I see what else is out here, this is not high performance at all. So I realized that I really needed to be aggressive about differentiating myself from my competitors. Now, when somebody calls me, I make it clear you're on the phone with a high performance HVAC contractor.
That's why our numbers look the way that they do. That's why we send you the information that you've received, and we give you actual facts behind a true flow grid to show you. Look, you're lacking by 375 CFM here. No wonder that back room never gets what it needs.
00:00:47.440 — 00:03:38.210 · Speaker 2
Hey everyone! Today I'm talking to a friend. Derek Armstead runs DNA Heating and Cooling in the Richmond, Virginia area. We met a couple of years ago just on a demo for amply, and just from that I could tell he was different. I think you'll hear that in this episode. He is a man with incredible conviction about who he is, who his company is, and how and why it's different. He opens up about his story here and has to be able to tell. It took him years to arrive at the point he's at now. A key theme of this podcast overall is discovering what makes you and your company different, so that you basically stop competing rather than swimming in the same pond as everyone else. You create your own pond where you're the only fish.
Derek is one of the best examples of that I've ever heard, and he lays it out beautifully on this episode. He talks about his website, which you should go check out because it is super unique and differentiated. He talks about his sales process, how they answer the phone, and what they tell someone who calls to already set themselves apart. And he talks about his number one source of excellent leads, which he doesn't pay a single dollar for. And frankly, I was quite surprised by. It is a super interesting episode. And if you're trying to figure out what makes you unique, look. Derek doesn't have the answer for you. You have to figure that out yourself. But sometimes it's helpful to just hear how someone else found their own voice in this very crowded HVAC market. That's what Derek does brilliantly here. With that said, three quick things before we get into it. First, if you're listening to this when it comes out, it is the National Comfort Institute's annual conference.
If you're there, come find Eric and I would love to connect in person. Second, you are not too late to sign up for the US Heat Pump Summit. Go to usheatpumpsummit.com. It's September 15th and 16th in beautiful Worcester, Massachusetts. This will be our third year going. If you're building a heat pump business, you will find your people there. Use discount code AMPLY, AMPLY for a discount when you register. And last, we are hosting a webinar for my new training. It's right in line with the themes we cover with Derek on today's episode. It's called Be the Only Fish in Your Pond high performance sales for high performance HVAC contractors. It's going to be October 22nd at 3 p.m. eastern.
I took the best practices we have learned from our guests on this podcast, and I construct those into your entire marketing and sales funnel from the top with your website and how you position it down through how you answer the phone. Comfort surveys, your in-home sales process, and how you follow up to beat back those price objections. If you want to take what Derek covers today and turn it into a process your team can use to win on trust, sign up. The link is in the show notes. And again, that's October 22nd. All right. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Derek Aarstad.
00:03:42.050 — 00:03:53.690 · Speaker 2
Hi, and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith, and today my guest is Derek Aarstad, founder, owner, CEO of DNA Heating and Cooling. Derek, Welcome.
00:03:53.730 — 00:03:54.330 · Speaker 1
Thanks for having.
00:03:54.330 — 00:04:08.090 · Speaker 2
Me. Thanks for joining. All right, Derek, we're going to get into your backstory in your business. But to start. Tell us a little bit about your company. Where is it? How big is it? What's it all about? Paint us the picture.
00:04:08.130 — 00:05:03.820 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Happy to do so. I'm Derek Aarstad, owner of DNA Heating and Cooling here in Richmond, Virginia. We are a boutique HVAC company. And when I mean boutique, we're intentionally small. I'm the only technician customers see. So every diagnostic, every maintenance visit, every quality check comes through me.
We primarily serve the Richmond metro area, and we're building the company around something I think our industry has been missing, which is testing before guessing. We don't believe in selling equipment because it's old. We measure airflow, static pressure, duct leakage, and system performance first so we understand what's actually happening.
We're still early in our journey. We've grown quickly over the last couple of years, but instead of chasing volume, we're building the right foundation. I'd rather become known as the contractor who solved the problem everyone else missed than be the biggest company in town.
00:05:03.860 — 00:05:45.660 · Speaker 2
I love that, and I talk to you. I don't even know over a thousand HVAC contractors a year. I always check out everyone's website and so many of the websites look exactly the same. Your website looks radically different. Everything you just said is on your website. I'm just at your homepage, right? I'm looking at right over here.
Measured. Verified. Guaranteed is across the top in red. And this is a higher standard of HVAC. And then you say boutique service, master level diagnostics, all electric systems without shortcuts. How did you get to this point? This is what you wanted your company to be and to stand for.
00:05:45.700 — 00:06:45.180 · Speaker 1
Lots of challenges, lots of failures, lots of finding out who I am and who we are. My wife and I own this business together, and so we make a lot of these decisions together. And thankfully, my wife gives me the freedom and creativity to bring my ideas to life and say, this is the direction I want to go in. This is what I'm behind.
I just got back from this class discourse, this symposium, this summit, and these are the practices we're going to implement because these make sense to me, and this is the experience that my clients deserve. So as time has gone on, we have changed almost year after year. Looks completely different. You can even look at our graphs where every year seems almost entirely different, one from the other, not only in growth, but also in the shift of ideology.
What we're really standing behind, the products that we offer. Everything is different than it was almost five years ago.
00:06:45.220 — 00:07:04.060 · Speaker 2
Awesome. Excellent overview. Let's go back a little bit. Give me the story. Like how did you first get into HVAC? Take us back further than when? Five years ago. Than when you started DNA. But then tell us the story and don't be shy to go into it. Let us know who you are and give us the evolution that let you get here.
00:07:04.100 — 00:09:22.590 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So my journey is very interesting because I like to ask the same questions to people that I work with. I want to know their background and how they got into it as well. And so what happened for me was it was almost out of necessity that I landed in the trades, because about 15 years ago I got news that I would be having a child.
And so I thought to myself, okay, we need a job that packs a serious punch, like something that is always going to be needed and that I can grow upon and take with me anywhere I go. So I started with Colonial Web. That was the largest commercial industry fabricator and contractor at the time. And so I started in a fabrication shop.
I started doing really basic things, learning what a threaded six inch nipple was and how to cut one, how to make my own fittings if I needed to. And of course, I advanced from there. I saw it every opportunity for advancement that was out there. And I'm not one to be stagnant. If I think there's a higher task that I can perform, I'm just going to go up to them and say, hey, that looks awesome and I'm capable of doing that.
I'd like to try. So as things gradually went on, I actually became a what table operator, which is a plasma cutter that's on a tank track wheel system that goes back and forth and it works in backwards decimals. So that was a learning curve as well to be able to transfer a three quarter inch round cut or square cut into a decimal form and send the pipe on down the line in a way that is going to be accurate and work for the guys that are going to be fitting it and welding it.
Because most of what I did, I was cutting into cast iron pipe anywhere from 2in to 22in, just depending on the task at hand. I did a lot of jobs for like NASA, VSU, JMU, a lot of local historically black universities and things of that nature, or HBCUs, I believe.
00:09:22.630 — 00:09:23.630 · Speaker 2
Is HBCUs.
00:09:23.910 — 00:12:05.200 · Speaker 1
The right term. And so that was a lot of fun. But my foreman also happened to be someone that I he was my foot in the door, and I worked with him outside of his own work. We used to work with horses together, so I trained a lot of horses and did a lot of horseback riding western thing, a lot of endurance riding. So I knew him from that life.
I didn't really know him in a work scene, and he was not a pleasant person to be around in a work environment. And I think because we had a relationship prior to this, he thought he could treat me in a way that I did not find appealing. And so I found that particular environment was very toxic. A lot of these men acted in a way that I just did not mesh with.
Some of the younger guys were a lot more tolerable, but it really was the men that I thought that I was going to be able to learn with and get guidance from that did not have that in mind. And sadly, actually my run there came to an end because I had to leave my shift to take my, at the time wife to give birth to my first born.
And when I called them to check in and say, hey, I'll be there on Monday morning because they don't give you pay to be a part of that or anything like that. So when I call in to tell them, I'll see you Monday morning, they said, oh no, you're no longer employed by Colonial Webb. And their excuse was that I left a station and all these other things, they knew this was coming.
It wasn't a surprise. From there, I jumped on to another local competitor doing pipe fabrication that was a little more antique. So I went from these really fancy cutters and tools to now I'm cutting everything with buzz saws, and I'm grinding out the bevels in the pipe. Now they don't come beveled anymore.
And which was great experience because I liked having both capabilities. Right. I can build it from raw material, or I can get these other fittings and put that together too. So it was a good experience. But the same foreman that I had at the previous place also came over and became the new foreman at the shop that I was in, and unfortunately it didn't get any better.
It seemed like he had actually regressed, and he was really spiteful and angry that they had fired him for whatever it is that they did, and he was not a safe person to work around. And so when I was given an opportunity to pursue a job change, I got a job offer to start as a
00:12:06.360 — 00:15:33.170 · Speaker 1
maintenance technician for a multi-family housing facility or an apartment complex, if you will. And so I took that with a $4 raise. And that's what really started to inspire me, because when I got there, I had a really great mentor who laid out a lot of things I needed to hear. And the best advice that he gave me was, I want you to treat this like free college You have the time.
You have the space to be whoever and whatever you want to be. So take advantage of that. And so I started getting into certain habits that if I didn't know how to do a certain thing, especially because when you're doing this job, you wear so many hats, it's unreal. I was the carpet cleaner, the painter, the groundskeeper.
But I'm also the HVAC technician. I'm the plumber, I'm the electrician. There's so many different job titles. And we also had trash compactors, so we had to work on things like that. I was also fortunate that we had what was known as phase one and phase two. Phase one was original to the property and it had gas.
It had water sourced heating system. So they were using aqua terms and some of them had straight AC or they were dual fuel if they were replaced later on and they had slab coils in them. They were pretty simple, but for me, I was like, what is this? I've never seen anything like this. So I was up for the challenge.
It was really intriguing to me and I just remember personally, the most rewarding experience for my work was working around HVAC. When you show up to a miserable home with a mom and three sweaty kids running around. It feels good to bring that relief to them. And that was one of the few times I felt like people ever really even said thank you.
So I clung on to that and I wanted to be their top HVAC guy. So I asked them if they would put me through school, and they put me through my first two years, paid for it as long as I kept the appropriate grade average, which I was fortunate to be able to do. And the amazing thing about pursuing opportunities like this and just being driven to do things, but not also be stuck in your mindset.
Is that working at this property? I knew a guy who I went to school with his cousin, and that's how him and me got close working on this property. He was a resident there and where he was working. They were looking for a HVAC technician that could teach HVAC. And so this was still pretty early in my HVAC career, but I wanted this job offer because it came with a substantial pay raise.
So at the time I was making about 1750, working as a what they call level tech two, which is like top tech in that position. And I actually tried to stay on. I told them they're offering me this, but I'm happy to stay if you're able to bump my pay. And they didn't see the value in doing that. So I definitely took the other job offer.
So I went from roughly 1750 to $37 an hour.
00:15:33.210 — 00:15:35.130 · Speaker 2
Oh, wow. That's a huge jump.
00:15:35.170 — 00:22:53.840 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it was wild because it was a government run program. And so they definitely have the money to back it. So they paid me $27 an hour, and then they gave me essentially a stipend for my medical expenses or whatever medical care I needed. And so that definitely set me up for success. I was actually in my third year of HVAC during the day, and I was teaching HVAC by night.
And so that was a very humbling experience, and I found that I learned so much more as an educator than I ever had sitting in somebody else's classroom, because you had to know your stuff. You can't go in front of these soldiers and look silly. Because I was teaching for the 16th Ordnance for Fort Lee Division, so I was part of a new program.
It was called the Matrix Program, and it was the first program of its kind where we were giving these Soldiers actual tangible certifications. So if they left the army, then they had a 608 card. They had other certifications that they could hand to somebody and say, I'm experiencing this and I can do this.
So I was also proud to be a part of that, and I had some really great students that did push me. They had great questions. They expected really good answers from me. So I got to teach them on everything you could imagine from your standard type of residential systems how to perform recoveries, how to braze, how to work on gas.
We worked on 500,000 BTU heating systems for the desert FOBs, and that was another thing is those systems get so impacted with sand so quickly that they require constant maintenance. And so one thing that these guys had to understand was, if you're the HVAC guy out in the desert, you're going to be one of the busiest.
And so we had to prepare them for that, teach them how to do our electronic leak detection. We also worked on mobile transport units. So basically they are shipping containers that have a fridge division and a freezer division and they work off of diesel. They can be plugged in to a 50Hz circuit, and they can also be run off of the truck if need be as well.
So it was a very interesting system, like a hybrid system if you will. I had a lot of fun teaching on those, and that was probably one of my favorite parts really, because it was so new to me and it was also fascinating. I was just like, wow, this is something I just didn't even realize was out there. And I also got to work with the generator guys from time to time, too, because they were right next door to our station.
So it was just great learning from those guys and having that experience. So I taught for one year and then I got back into the multifamily housing, and part of what I was getting out earlier to with the free college thing is that if I didn't know something or didn't understand something, I would take that appliance to an empty garage and take it down to the bare bones, watch YouTube Academy videos all day long.
And that is how I really excelled at a high and fast pace within our industry. Because quickly I found that they were calling me out to multiple sister properties to take care of issues that other technicians just didn't have the ability to do. That was really cool. It felt good to be recognized for the efforts that I had put into it, and be known as the guy that can fix pretty much anything that happens on the properties and the phase two.
Part of that first property that I worked on was all electric, so it was heat pumps only. It was very different from phase one, which again, really helped polish me for when I got out into the residential world I had already worked on. What I found was a lot of things that some of the guys beside me had never even seen.
They had never even seen a water source heating unit or some of these other pieces of equipment. Of course they knew heat pumps, but some of those other oddities a three year technician still hadn't even seen before. And so with that, I finally got to a point where I worked on a flagship property in Richmond, Virginia.
It was a very unique place, and I loved what I was able to do there, but I found that the me and the leadership just we couldn't gel. And so I finally decided, I'm tired of wearing seven different hats on average and getting paid for one of those hats. At least that's what the pay felt like. So I said, why don't I just focus on my HVAC?
I'll do residential only and I'll get paid top dollar for one craft. And I'm forever grateful that I made that move because it changed everything for me. I started with one of the largest franchise HVAC residential companies at the time, which was one hour heating and cooling, and that was quite an experience, because what I will say is, I think one hour has the potential to be a really great company when they have the right ownership.
It's really great. But I didn't have a great owner and he didn't have compassion for his team or his technicians. And so time and time again, I just saw so many violations and health concerns and the lack of acceptance to a technician coming to them saying this is unsafe or we can't do this because of this, so can we get this waste managed first before the team can go in?
And they were like, no, get it done no matter what. Get it done. And I really didn't like that attitude or that type of leadership. It just seemed like at all cost. I need you to give me everything that you've got. And I just didn't find that to be. It didn't motivate me. Yeah. And I also worked around a lot of guys that seemed to have issues with drug abuse and domestic violence and just a lot of things that I'm not into.
And so I quickly realized, and mostly the biggest reason I wanted to leave this place was because they didn't teach me how to be a technician. They only taught me how to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. We're going to groom you to be the best salesman on this planet. And they promise you 40 hours of training, which was what drew me in.
I said, wow, they give you guaranteed training. I love that. What they don't tell you is that every single bit of that training is sales based, period. We're not going to teach you how to fix anything at all. We're not going to teach you how to be better technicians. And I want it wanted to find a company that would basically groom me to be a proper technician.
And so I found a local family owned business. After interviewing not only the owner of the company, but one of their technicians. I was like, wow, okay, this sounds like a really capable team, a very close knit group, and they had some really talented individuals that had come from non HVAC backgrounds, but became to me, there were some of the greatest HVAC technicians I had ever met.
00:22:53.880 — 00:22:56.120 · Speaker 2
What year was this when you joined the family owned business?
00:22:56.120 — 00:22:57.800 · Speaker 1
That would have been 2018.
00:22:57.840 — 00:22:59.200 · Speaker 2
Okay. All right. Keep going.
00:22:59.240 — 00:25:27.569 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And so there I found the right people. I found the right leadership. I had guys that were challenging me, testing me, making sure that I knew how to test a flame rectifier, or that I knew how to test a gas valve or a faulty blower motor. Because my previous to that faulty blower motor was one that didn't spin.
Right now, it's one that I'm testing the leads for, and I'm seeing that these don't match anymore, or I've got a ground too short or something of that nature. So we were like doing in-depth diagnostics and I loved it. It relit the passion inside of me, and I really enjoyed working with that team. It was really great until it wasn't like most things.
And really what pushed me to start my own business was while I was working for that company. They wanted me to be in charge of training, and the reason is because the owner had pulled me in multiple times just to ask me, why is it you're the only one that follows the program? Why are you the only one that literally does every single thing that I asked to be done the way that I asked for it to be done?
What is going on here? Why can't I get these other guys on board? And I didn't have much to say to him other than it's a mindset thing, you got to want it and I want it. And so he asked me to start training guys. And so when they had new hires, they would have them train with me. And what I found was that every new hire that I pumped out because there were other guys doing this too, but the ones that I pumped out immediately hit the ground running.
They weren't getting callbacks. They were following the checklist. They were taking pride in their work. They were proud to work for the company, and they fit right in. And I noticed that some of the other guys that were being trained by some of these other individuals, it just was not the same experience, or I was able to quickly weed out somebody that didn't need to be in my van as well.
So going through that, I found a technician that I was training. We got along really well, and what stood out to me though, was I think the first two weeks him and I worked together, I had $70,000 in revenue produced, which was nuts. I had not hit those numbers, I think, ever. Especially in that short amount of time.
And it was because we were such a good duo. I had the ability and the knowledge. He had the
00:25:28.570 — 00:28:16.170 · Speaker 1
sales down packed and this guy. He was just so good with a client. His mannerisms, his calmness, his guidance, he had it down. And so he came to me and it was basically in my ear and just kept saying, I've never seen anybody like you. I've never seen anything like this. You need to start your own business. And he kept on me for a while, and I basically told him, look, man, you're not the first one to talk to me about this.
You're not the first person to offer partnering with me. But every time this comes around and I ask somebody to sit down at the table with me and put a business plan together, they don't and they won't. He said, essentially, I'll be there in 30 minutes and we'll put a business plan together. He did what he said he would do.
We spent six hours putting a whole business together, and I know that if my boss or my ex-boss ever here is this, he probably won't be too pleased. But when I decided that this was what I was going to do, I had made up my mind. I knew what I was going to do, and I tried to work with really high integrity at all times.
But for whatever reason, this is one of those moments where I made my decision based on a coin toss. I sat down at the table and I basically was like, okay, if we land on heads today, we're going to turn in our uniforms and we're just going to do this thing. If it's on tails, I'll give them a proper two weeks and work it out from there.
It just so happened to land on heads and I went in knowing I was leaving. This would be my last day, so I cleaned out my van real nice and folded on my uniforms, brought them in nice and neat, and I dropped everything off and said my goodbyes and they did pull me into the office. They didn't just let me walk out the door.
We probably had another 45 minute discussion on what he could do to keep me, and he offered me VP, and I'll make you president of the company, and I'll do this, and I'll do that. I said, okay, when? And he said, oh, give me another nine months. And I said, no. See, that's the problem. I'm on my time now and I just can't be on your time, so I'm gonna have to walk away.
I appreciate everything. You've been phenomenal. I want nothing but great things for you. But I'm on my time now, so I'm going to go work on my own projects. And I will say he was very vindictive. It was not handled well. They did everything they could to inconvenience me. They took money from me. It wasn't great, but I was prepared for that.
So I didn't go into a great length to recoup any of that stuff. I just figured, okay, I know what people these are, and I'm noting that, and I'll move on and do what I need to do. So from there, I started a company was actually known as Community Comfort with a business partner.
00:28:16.170 — 00:28:20.890 · Speaker 2
And so what this is what now 2020, 2021, 2021.
00:28:21.130 — 00:29:19.020 · Speaker 1
Yes, 2021. And so everything was going really well. And like most things, it was great until it wasn't. And so about 90 days in just about at the three month mark, I realized that this was not the right business partner for me. And so due to how some things had unfolded, I just said, hey, this is not going to work.
I would like to dissolve and move on. That also wasn't a smooth process. It brought up a lot of emotion and honestly, I was really disappointed in the acts of betrayal by this ex business partner once I made it clear. Look, this. I'm being professional. I'm being kind here. I'm not taking anything from you.
I'm just letting you. We cannot do this together. I'm going to have to go do my own thing. So I did.
00:29:19.220 — 00:29:20.260 · Speaker 2
Clear is kind.
00:29:20.300 — 00:30:32.660 · Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. And so again, that was a great experience because I knew what to do. Now. I knew how to start it, what to do, where to go, who to talk to. And thankfully I had my masters. I had the ability to do these things, whereas my business partner did not. And so there came the birth of DNA heating and cooling.
And it feels so much better just being able to say that like DNA, because DNA is actually my initials. So Derek, Nathaniel said, that is who I am. And when I was really young, like real young, I had a vision that I was going to start a business. I was going to be a business owner. I didn't know what that business was going to be.
And I also had it in my head that whatever that business was going to be, DNA, whatever it could be DNA, cakes, DNA, barbershop, DNA fitness. But it just so happens to be DNA heating and cooling. So again, for me, that's another proud moment of mine that I made happen. I envisioned this many years ago, and it was fun to see what actually came to light.
And so really, that is how I've gotten to this point.
00:30:32.700 — 00:31:22.140 · Speaker 2
Yeah, I can see how in this journey, the seeds of what DNA is today was planted, right? Like your early HVAC education experience forced you to learn a whole bunch of stuff, but also force you to learn the right way to do things right. When you went to the family business in 2018 and you fell in love with the diagnostics, they were doing like that.
All I can see those seeds. Tell us now about the five years of DNA because Derek, We first met 18 months ago, two years ago, and your tagline on your website wasn't as crisp as it was two years ago. As it is now, the crystallization of who you are and what your business is today is very impressive, right? It's very impressive.
Thank you. So tell us about the five years of DNA and the sort of different chapters you went through that got you to where you are now.
00:31:22.220 — 00:34:36.749 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So DNA was raw when we started. I'm grateful that I had that three month, almost business trial period with that business partner, because I got to screw up a whole lot of stuff and realize, okay, this is not how things are done or these are not the clients that we want to attract. When I started the first business, we were going after Craigslist clients and anybody we could get right because we're acting almost out of disparity.
So we're just throwing everything at the wall and hoping anything will stick. And so we realized or I realize, Craigslist clients. Not for me. Angie's list clients. Not for me. Next door clients. Most are not for me, right? And that's another thing. I've learned how to vet clients. I'll call them if they have a curiosity, but they seem like they're either on the fence or probably not the type to commit.
So I make it clear to them, if they call me saying, hey, I want some refrigerant, okay, why do you need refrigerant? And who told you need refrigerant? And that if we need to add refrigerants because you're leaking refrigerant. So has anybody offered a refrigerant leak search for you. And I start making it clear I'm not just going to come to your house and gas it up and go, we're gonna have to do some real work here.
And when we have the client that just wants the gas and go, they hang up real quick. And so I've learned now to vet and how to vet. And again, that's just from these early on experiences. But the first year I'll say ever since we started this business, it's been nonstop. We don't have shoulder seasons. We don't have slow times.
It's always go. And it pretty much always has. In the five years that we've been doing this, I can think of maybe two weeks total where things were slow, and that's combining all of the slowness. So I believe that. Thank you. We've done a really good job of being present and having our presence be known, but as organically as possible.
We don't pay for paid ads. We don't do anything extra. We don't have billboards, the best or most that you're really going to see out of us right now is we're active on social media, so we try to stay up to date on our web page, which after updating our web page, wow, an immediate impact was made. And we were really fortunate with the web designer that we found because he was a local guy, just a local guy who had only put a handful of websites together.
But I was very impressed by what he was able to do. And like you said, I looked at my competitors websites. I wanted to see what it looked like when I went to their pages. And I have to be honest, a lot of them were frustrating, weird, wonky, wacky. It just it's one of the guys that I very much look up to, and I hold him in high regard.
He's actually been on your podcast before. He's a big hitter. His website did not impress me at all, and it did not represent him as who he is and who his company is. Now. I haven't had an opportunity to say that to him in person because we just haven't seen each other, but
00:34:37.909 — 00:34:45.429 · Speaker 1
very quickly, because of that, there's another guy in this industry that I love. I think it's Green Circle. He's one of the Green Circle guys. Peter Troost.
00:34:45.470 — 00:34:46.750 · Speaker 2
Oh yeah. Energy circle.
00:34:46.830 — 00:36:12.160 · Speaker 1
Yes. And so I thought originally that's who I was going to use for those services because he said so many great things. He set the foundation for what my web page needed because after getting to know him and meeting him, he went and looked at my web page and he goes, Derek, when I met you the other day, I was blown away.
I was just like, wow, this guy is something different, very unique. But when I went to your web page, none of that was presented. I didn't know who you are or like, I want to see that when I go to your page. This person that I met today. So he thankfully planted that seed for me. And when I reviewed the majority of companies that he had worked with and done work for, I just saw a clear difference in what my touch would be.
Working with a smaller, locally owned guy versus someone who's got all this experience. We've been doing this, we know it works, we've got all the remedies, but I just felt like I won't be able to put my personal touches on this if I work with this team versus this one over here, because this guy is dependent on my guidance for HVAC and blah, blah, Whatever this page is going to look like, it's going to be heavily dependent on what am I bringing to the table and how do we build this out.
So I'm really proud of the site and how it all came together. Very happy with it. And like I said, the impact was immediate. Our online bookings went up over 100% within the first week. It was really impressive. So that was nice.
00:36:12.160 — 00:36:14.840 · Speaker 2
And when did you relaunch it?
00:36:14.880 — 00:36:59.680 · Speaker 1
I think maybe 8 or 9 months ago. I don't even think it's been a whole year yet. So yeah, a move that I was really glad that we made because I'm not big on spending all this money for the image and things like that. So that was probably the biggest commitment that I had made as far as revamping the image of our company or just making a big change, because prior to that, we built the page and it was a great page.
It was very functional, but I get really great feedback from my clients now about like, how easy it was to use my site and how I'm exactly who I told them I would be before I got there. I am exactly as I portray myself on the website, and people absolutely love that. And that's really all I want to do is just always be what I say I'm going to be and do what I say I'm going to do.
00:36:59.720 — 00:37:11.360 · Speaker 2
I love that. Now I want to talk about the if it's not tested, it's just a guess. Yeah. When did that click for you and when did you really lean into that with the business?
00:37:11.360 — 00:39:11.129 · Speaker 1
It's always been that way. As far as when I started the company, I had a checklist that involves static pressures, temperature splits, a whole range of things that should be looked at. I've always used measure quick. Very early on, I was using measure quick before I even started my own business. So measure Quick has always been in my back pocket, and I also used other programs like gluon or whatever else was available to me to advance and just be capable, as capable as I could be in the field.
So I guess really, if you want to say adopting it, like turning it into almost a momentum is when I went to the National Comfort Institute, I went to my first NCI summit last September and that blew the doors open. In discovering myself, there was so much self discovery in that short amount of time because I realized, oh, I am a high performance HVAC contractor.
I just never labeled myself as such. I didn't realize that what I was doing was considered high performance. And then when I really thought about what they were saying, I'm like, yeah, they're right. Because when I go behind my competitors and when I see what else is out here, this is not high performance at all.
And so I realized that I really needed to be aggressive about my differentiating myself from my competitors and understanding. Now when somebody calls me, I make it clear you're on the phone with a high performance HVAC contractor. That's why our numbers look the way that they do. That's why we send you the information that you've received.
That's why you got an indoor air quality report from my haven. Indoor quality testing equipment. And we give you actual facts behind a true flow grid to show you. Look, you're lacking by 375 CFM here. No wonder that back room and this other one over here just never gets what it needs. And so they just really drove the value of
00:39:12.290 — 00:39:52.690 · Speaker 1
doing all the in-depth testing, but also not being overly analytical with the client. There was a whole lot of be that guy, but you don't have to be them right in front of the client, right? I've really had to learn from guys like David Richardson and others on how to put together appropriate ways to get them to see the full picture, how to guide them properly without going over their head, without having to say your static pressures or they don't know what that is.
The second I say so, I have to find other ways to bring that home for them. And all of these things have.
00:39:52.730 — 00:39:57.930 · Speaker 2
You mean homeowners don't know what inches of water like? They don't get.
00:39:57.930 — 00:40:57.260 · Speaker 1
The IP of my system for they love that one. So yeah, just meeting all those like minded people and just realizing and conversation. Seriously, my favorite thing about going to these summits and symposiums is the table talk. Getting to just ask questions, learn from guys, hear what they have to say. And some of the other things that I love about it is I meet other guys who think they're the best of the best.
They really, truly do. And they're in these classes too. And I learn a lot from them as well. And I certainly learned who I don't want to be and who I don't want to come across as. And it all also reminds me that if this guy over here with these behaviors seems to be as successful as he is, there is no option but to win.
For me, if I just continue doing what I'm doing. And again, just giving everybody an experience that they likely haven't had all year. The restaurants didn't give them the service, the airport didn't give them this service, but I did.
00:40:57.260 — 00:41:46.020 · Speaker 2
Can we talk about because we talked to a bunch of our customers about ideal sales processes and so much of what the response is? My economics get turned upside down. I can't spend that much time in the home running diagnostics. I'm in and out in an hour or under, or my sales guy is, I gotta hit this many homes in a day.
My conversion rate is this. The whole economics of their business are built on this sort of quick in the home. Talk to the homeowner, get them three options, and you're doing the thing that NCI talks about all the time. How does the cost of that of time in the home to run those diagnostics weigh you down or not, such that you're able to build a successful business on top of that.
00:41:46.060 — 00:41:46.620 · Speaker 1
So
00:41:47.660 — 00:42:07.020 · Speaker 1
I'll say that I really haven't started seeing the real fruits of my efforts until this year. Now that we're hitting year number five, like I'm in the most comfortable place that I've ever been, I'm in the calmest place that I've ever been. I don't feel stressed. I don't feel overwhelmed.
00:42:07.020 — 00:42:10.100 · Speaker 2
You don't look stressed. You look chill. Yeah.
00:42:10.140 — 00:47:53.600 · Speaker 1
And this wasn't me a year ago. Definitely wasn't me four years ago, that's for sure. So I'm really leaning into who I am and what I am and who DNA is. So that plays a big part. And I think it's also certainly helping in my sales process in the sense that, like you said, this is who you're going to meet. If I came to your house, this is exactly the same experience that you're going to get.
I'm going to treat you like a friend. I'm going to ask you the real nitty gritty questions that need to be answered. And I'm going to ask you to tag along. Let's do this together. Let's take a look so that I'm not having to regurgitate a bunch of information. You don't even know what I'm talking about. It's best if you are with me.
And I can just show you what I'm talking about. And so diagnostics and sales are somewhat different things to me in the sense that right now, our success is certainly shifting due to the amount of new installations that we are performing. And we set goals this year, we set numbers on how many installs we wanted to do per month and this, that and the other.
We've blown that out of the water way beyond the numbers that we originally set in the beginning. And I can see that we are rapidly moving quickly in that realm of system replacement, because in the beginning of this business, I was so proud of being able to fix everything and just fix fixed, fix fixed picks.
And once I became an NCI member and realized that it's okay to be proud to keep that 30 year old system going, but you're not doing your client a service or a great service if you're not educating them on the faults that do exist with that 30 year old system, with the non efficiency impacts, with other environmental impacts, there's just so many other things that need to be discussed at that stage that I was skipping, because I wanted to be the hero that kept that 30 year old system going.
Right. But now I've moved on from that mindset and realized that I need to give them facts and information and that when they say, should I keep this system going for another 5 to 10 years, why do you want to keep it going for another 5 to 10 years? Is this something that you're so proud of, that you just want to brag to your neighbors that you still have your 30 year old system?
Or do you want actual comfort in proper energy usage in your home? And that's when they get to thinking like, yeah, that is silly, isn't it? And I'm able to provide proper guidance. And again, the easiest thing, this is what has really changed my process. And I will say I don't follow the NCI process to a tee because I still like to have the freedom to move the way I want to move.
But the most effective sales process that I have found, because we don't charge for our estimates, like just entry level estimates. So typically if you do a free estimate with me, I give you one hour maximum of my time and I make that clear. You've got one hour and then I'm out of here. If you want anything beyond that hour, you will pay for an in-depth consultation of what you need for your home.
We also do other consultations where we may and likely always do a heat load calculation. I love that one. And of course that has been a driving force as well. The biggest jobs that I've sold have also been attached to amply because we built trust. We came in offering information that nobody else did. And getting back to that sales process, the most effective thing that I have found is that when I walk into the home and I asked some of the probing questions, how long have you been here?
How long do you want to be here, blah, blah blah. I say, okay, we're going to walk over to your floor vent. Just a random floor vent, and we're going to pull up your register and we're going to see what we find. Nine times out of ten we find it is rusted out. It's got debris, goo, toy trucks, the ever famous dustpan from the construction job.
And of course, they're almost never sealed. There's crawlspace air and gaps in between the actual boot, so we know it's not delivering airflow. So right at that very first boot, I'm able to get them to see and understand that the person that put this in did not have pride in their work, did not have indoor air quality in mind, did not have performance in mind.
They wanted to get off of that job site and go home. So that's where we step in, give a proper education. And typically that right there is enough for them to have already been like, this guy really cares. Everything he has told me is all about making my home better for me. And so from there, like I said, we collect our information, we do the reports any time that we're going to be offering a new system because it's just inappropriate not to.
And so we also offered duct leakage testing if they want hard evidence. But most of the time I will talk a client out of doing it in a heartbeat because I'll tell them, look, I have been able to visually identify at least 30% duct leakage in your system. I know this because I've tested so many like it. You don't need to get this tested for me to further convince you it needs to go.
It needs to go. And so and I've even had other clients that were like, I love that, that's great. But I want the numbers, the before and afters. And I'm like, okay, I love that. I think that's great. And that's typically I'll get on board if it's somebody who's like, no, I want the analytics because I want to be able to share with my friends.
This is what it was. This is what it is now. Isn't that great? Yeah, because that's cool. Trust me, I do want them to share that. Now, what we have found though, the biggest driving force that we have that has extra post business for us. Reddit.
00:47:53.640 — 00:47:54.360 · Speaker 2
Really?
00:47:54.360 — 00:48:40.080 · Speaker 1
I cannot thank Reddit enough. I don't even know how many Reddit clients we've actually accumulated to this degree, but what I will say is that they are my absolute favorite. When I see Reddit on the tag as to where we got this lead, I get excited because they're just a different type of client. They're very intellectual.
They've already done their homework, their research. They know who you are. They always know who I am by the time I walk to the door and nobody else does. The Google clients. I don't know who you are, but these Reddit clients, they're letting what they expect to. I chose you for a very specific reason. I hope you show up as a person, and most of the time I feel like I'm able to exceed their expectations.
00:48:40.080 — 00:48:51.480 · Speaker 2
Fascinating. And so that could make sense. Why I was starting to see the fruits of your labor, because that Reddit stuff takes time to accumulate and for that reputation to spread. And that's super interesting.
00:48:51.520 — 00:48:53.400 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it's been great, Derek.
00:48:53.440 — 00:49:09.960 · Speaker 2
Honestly, it's gotten me excited hearing about your journey, the company of built, the success you're having this year, especially on a pretty tough year. I feel like you've said it throughout, but what do you love most about DNA that five years in, you're still passionate to get up every day and do this work?
00:49:10.000 — 00:51:04.090 · Speaker 1
Yeah, it has to be the people I love, the people I love, the relationships. I love getting to put a smile on somebody's face. I love getting to know them. I love getting to know their families. It's really rewarding that now that I am in my fifth year, it is so cool to see that little baby that you saw in their crib running around the house now, right?
That means the most to me, especially when I can come back to them and ask them, How's Jeff doing? How did summer school go for him? How did swimming go for them? Because I remember those things. Because I do care about my clients, and I do want to have those genuine connections. It's the greatest reward for me when my client says, yeah, my dad and my uncle told me to use your services.
I love being attached to a family network where I get to see all the Smiths and all the Browns and all the Johnsons, and that they all have the same experience as well. I even have one client. It's really cool. They're all networked. And I came out to one house and she goes, I called you because my brother in law has a networked list among the family, so they all have an Excel spreadsheet that they share.
So restaurants, automotive, like anything that they feel like is either an f yes or an F no goes on that lit and they're like, Eric, I'm not kidding. You're at the very top of that list, and knowing that I'm on somebody's home list just makes me feel so good. And I also like to make people laugh and have a good time.
And one of my clients shared with me, whenever we in route to your house, you get this bubble with my head on it and it's just an image of my face or whatever, and for whatever reason, they find it to be humorous and very amusing. So now I'm like, they have a sticker of me and they use me as a comedy bit amongst themselves, which I just absolutely love that.
00:51:04.130 — 00:51:04.930 · Speaker 2
That's amazing.
00:51:04.970 — 00:51:53.850 · Speaker 1
I will tell you, there was a time in my career where people bothered me a lot and I didn't love the people, and I didn't look forward to going into homes. But I have to be honest, a lot of it is because I was running off of somebody else's playbook and it just didn't feel like me. So when I finally got to come across as myself.
It definitely changed how I receive my clients and again, it is just the best feeling ever. When you have a client that moves to a new home and they make sure that you go to the new home or when they are leaving you because they have to leave the state. They're sad about it. They are truly sad that they're missing, according to their words, one of the best contractors they've ever had the pleasure of working with.
00:51:53.890 — 00:52:05.610 · Speaker 2
Wow. That's incredible. Honestly, I don't know a better note to end on than that one. Derek. Super fun. Thank you for joining the Heat Pump podcast.
00:52:05.650 — 00:52:39.060 · Speaker 1
Oh yeah, such a pleasure and an honor. Seriously. And I'm so grateful to be growing with you guys and to see you all growing as well. And I just really want to give you your flowers and say thank you. Because when I learned about ampullae and saw what they were doing, this is one of the most exciting programs that I had seen because in my mind I'm like, how can I make this easier?
How can I make this task less daunting? And this was one of the first tools other than wireless probes that had come about where I was like, this is the ticket. This is a game changer. So I'm so grateful to be a part of the family.
00:52:39.100 — 00:52:44.780 · Speaker 2
We are grateful for you, and we'll see you at the NCI Summit in September. You sure will. Thank you Derek.
00:52:44.820 — 00:52:45.700 · Speaker 3
Thanks a lot.
00:52:48.700 — 00:53:11.140 · 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! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. No .com just energy. Thanks a lot.