The HVAC Sales Mindset That Built a $30M Family Business – Andy Hobaica

00:00Fired five times working for dad between age 10 and 25

Andy Hobaica: No, again, it was all about money. I didn’t really care. I said when I get out of high school, I’m out of here. I’m never working for my dad when I’m older and hey, to be fair between the ages of 10 and maybe 25, I got fired like five times.

Tyler Martin: Really.

Andy Hobaica: It’s hard working for your dad, right? So it was really that change when I went from install to service to sales when I went from install to service to sales.

Narrator: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue-collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big.

Narrator: Here’s your host, the blue collar CFO, Tyler Martin.

Tyler Martin: Today’s guest has generated over $7 million in personal HVAC sales annually, not by using high pressure tactics, but by literally telling his team to stop selling. Andy Hobica is the third generation in a 72 year family business that’s thrived by putting relationships before revenue.

Tyler Martin: If you’ve ever wondered if you can scale without sacrificing your values, this is the blueprint We’ll dig into. How he transformed from a technician to a sales leader, maintained family legacy through a major acquisition and the counterintuitive approach that puts him in the top 1% of HVAC sales professionals nationwide.

Tyler Martin: This is a good one. Let’s get started. Hey, andy, welcome to the Profiting Great Podcast Show. How are you doing, good Tyler? How are you buddy? Andy, I’m so excited to have you on the show. Thanks for being here on a Saturday morning.

Andy Hobaica: I know it was really hard to schedule with me. It’s our busy season, right? So as soon as it hits 100 degrees in Arizona, we’re slammed. We don’t really have time for fun stuff because I’m always busy in the morning, early morning. But you were open for a Saturday and I really appreciate that.

Andy Hobaica: I got done with a workout, went grocery shopping and now I’m home with you.

Tyler Martin: So I’m excited that’s awesome, man Once I heard you say yes, I would have done it at midnight if I had to. Just have the privilege to be able to speak with you. But hey, where I would like to start? Give yourself a lift for the folks that don’t know a lot about you.

Tyler Martin: Share what you do professionally. And then I’d love to know just a personal tidbit about you.

Andy Hobaica: Okay, we’ll get more into the history of Hobica, but I worked for my family company, hobica Services. It was founded in 1952 by my grandfather. I’ve worked here since I was about 10, right, I worked in every position, from growing up running duct work, insulation, doing all the hard grit stuff, all the poop stuff, just like bare bones, everything right.

Andy Hobaica: So every summer, growing up from sixth grade into seventh grade into eighth grade, all through high school, every summer growing up from, you know, sixth grade into seventh grade, into eighth grade, all through high school, every summer growing up installing air conditioning equipment, duct work, insulation, all the fun stuff, not really right.

Andy Hobaica: So I worked only when it was over 105 and 160, 170 degree attics. You’re going through five, six shirts a day.

02:59Cash under the table at 12 an hour and flooding a house

Andy Hobaica: But at the time my dad said like, what do you want? Like, you know it would go as small as you’re buying a new pair of shoes. It’s time to buy a new pair of shoes for school. Here’s 30 bucks, $70 pair. Great, go work for it.

Andy Hobaica: You know, if you want something, nicer clothes, wise, if you want something. You know you want to go to the movies with your friends. Oh, you already went last month. You want to go again? Go get your own money, so like that, so like.

Andy Hobaica: That’s how we were brought up our whole life to where hustle, hustle, hustle and work hard for the things that you have, and it’s why we’re so successful as adults me and all my brothers so. I would work with him and minimum wage, even if you were 16, was like 425.

Andy Hobaica: Right so so my dad paid me 12 bucks an hour and that was amazing back then and it was cash under the table Cause I wasn’t supposed to be working there Right. Had working there right, had a couple things like it’s kind of funny it’s past tense now, so you can’t get in trouble for it but I remember stepping on a sprinkler line in someone’s house and flooding their house.

Andy Hobaica: My dad had the right on the insurance that he did it Because, at the end of the day, I was not supposed to be in the attic.

Tyler Martin: That’s hilarious.

Andy Hobaica: It’s good, but you learn as a child to really hustle. So we did everything, man. I didn’t just work for my dad. Every weekend, me and my brothers are mowing lawns, papers, selling chocolate bars door to door. We did everything and anything because all I was motivated by was easier when you have money and then when you grow up as an adult, it’s not everything.

Andy Hobaica: You got to be happy first, but hey, you know what makes life easier Making more money.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s so true. And what about on a personal side?

Andy Hobaica: Leading argument for adults and parents is kids and money Two best.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, no, I’m with you. What about on the personal side? Do you have something about you personally, maybe, that people don’t commonly know?

Andy Hobaica: I’m pretty out there man. So in the last couple of years I’ve really stopped caring about what other people think and I kind of just do what’s normal to me and what’s comfortable. I’m a lot right. You’ll see me in a podcast this, I’m a lot right.

Andy Hobaica: You’ll see me in a podcast. This is me in real life. I am a lot. I have a lot of energy. I’m out there. If someone asks me how I feel about something, I’m straightforward. I’ll just tell them how it is. And if I don’t know you, I’ll ask you hey, real quick, do you really want the truth here?

Andy Hobaica: If I’m about to give it to you, I don’t think you’re going to like it and I’ll just give it to them. And some people are like well, I appreciate your honesty. And some people get turned off and never talk to me again.

Andy Hobaica: So I am a lot. But at the same time I’m tired of faking. You know being someone fake, for you know the shadow of someone that’s looking at me like, oh, that guy’s cool. It’s group really, really small.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, and I’ll add because I’ve done a lot of research on you you have a big heart. I mean you may have a big personality, but you have a big heart and I think we’ll get to that towards the end of the show.

Tyler Martin: I want to know how you’re giving back.

05:34Moving from install to service to sales at 29

Tyler Martin: So let’s talk about the family business. 73 years long history that’s a long history. You pretty much have done every position. How did that? Like? As a kid, did you always see yourself as being in a critical position in the company? Like? How did you view that?

Andy Hobaica: No, again, it was all about money. I didn’t really care. I said when I’m, when I get out of high school, I’m out of here. I’m never working with my dad when I’m older and hey, you know, to be fair, between the ages of 10 and maybe 25, I got fired like five times.

Tyler Martin: Really.

Andy Hobaica: It’s hard working for your dad, right? So it was really that change when I went from sale, sorry, when I went from install to service to sales. So install to service all the way till age 28, 29. I worked for my dad the whole time.

Andy Hobaica: 29 years old was my turning point, when he gave me a chance at sales, and that’s another story. But basically it gave me a chance, gave me a opportunity to try sales out. As soon as I went into sales I was no longer managed by my father because my father wasn’t the sales manager.

Andy Hobaica: My uncle was at the time and as soon as I got out of his wing emotional but like to be honest man, it was a big part of my life because I still worked for his company but at the same time I didn’t work for him anymore.

Andy Hobaica: I worked for my Uncle, mike. So it was kind of like eight or nine years me and my dad are friends again. It’s just that big weight lifted off my shoulders to where I still work for my dad’s company. But now that I’m a top performing salesperson, I’m hitting on my numbers.

Andy Hobaica: It doesn’t babysit me anymore. I feel like it didn’t pick on me anymore because at the end of the day he didn’t have to you know all day long and make sure I was doing what I was doing because I was working for someone else under the company.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, family businesses are tough, I mean, especially when you’re directly reporting your dad. And if your dad your dad sounds like he’s a great business person, he’s probably pretty driven. He probably has super high expectations. It’s hard when you’re in your 20s and you’re you know we’re going through our own things when you’re in your 20s that don’t always align with your dad’s business.

Andy Hobaica: Most of everything. Yeah, exactly. And then, like a big group would do something right, like, let’s say, a job was supposed to take four hours and it took four hours. My dad knew I could have done it faster. He’d come up to me and say, hey, why did that take two hours?

Andy Hobaica: I’m like, well, I’d send him the paperwork. We had four hours to do it. And he goes that’s not the question. I asked you. You were there, you should have done it faster. I’m like, well, the other guy I don’t care about anybody else, you were there.

Andy Hobaica: You’re supposed to set an example. So I was like I’m supposed to rat people out for not working or taking a Fine. If you don’t believe in my situation, there’s the door. Ah, f you, you know. Just to me, slater, hey, how’s life?

Andy Hobaica: You know I could use you back at work. Like it was back and forth a lot, you know work for my father, but now again, we’re best friends.

Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Hey, how do you think working all these different roles as you were going through the company stages and now where you’re at now, primarily in sales, how does that help you to reflect on the business and maybe what technicians are going through or other people, other roles within the company.

08:32Why 15 years in the field beats guessing on a sales call

Andy Hobaica: Well, you build a lot of respect, right? Because a lot of people at our company, like I, have installers that work for us for 20 years, like still working for us, and technicians with us for 15 years. So I’ve worked in the field with those people.

Andy Hobaica: Now our newer guys don’t know, but they know I’m Andy Hobayka and all they have to do is ask someone hey, andy, he’s really good at sales, like, does he know how to install the equipment? And someone will put them in check. Yeah, and Andy’s actually been doing it since he was 10 years old.

Andy Hobaica: He knows what you’re doing exactly right now and he can do it better. So, like the thought of Well, everyone that works for Hobayaka has worked in the field at one time, but me it was just like on steroids because I did it for so long.

Andy Hobaica: So I’ll tell everyone. I went to a conference a couple months ago in Florida and I asked everyone. I said raise your hand if you sell HVAC, plumbing or electrical. And all these hands went up. I’m like great, great, now lower your hands if you have less than five years of field experience.

Andy Hobaica: Like half 90% of the people lowered their hands. I’m like man, I’ll tell you right now, when you guys get slow, if your owners don’t agree with this, come and talk to me. I’ll convince them. Go back to the field, go One. You’re going to build respect from your people.

Andy Hobaica: Are you actually willing to go out and help them and do that? And I’ll take a step away from making a lot of money and do that to learn. And then you’ll be into a situation that I’m in to, where a customer asks you a question, instead of taking a wild guess, you actually give them the solution, or five solutions, because you’ve done it.

Andy Hobaica: Taking a wild guess or BSing or asking someone, you have the answer because you’ve done all the work. And how many jobs I go to and they’re like hey, fyi, I want this and this done because that’s what the other three companies said.

Andy Hobaica: I’m like what are you trying to solve with that? And they’ll tell me I’m like I’ll be honest, I can solve that, but it’s not that. They’re like how do you know that? I worked in the field for 15 years? Wow, yeah. So the thing is is we can do that.

Andy Hobaica: It’s not going to do anything for you. We can do this and it will solve your exact problem.

Tyler Martin: I guarantee it, I’ll give you the money back. Wow, and that brings up a question. I know you guys are on pace to be a $30 million company this year. $25 million company, I believe last year. Good growth again this year. You contribute at least 7 million from my research of those sales.

Tyler Martin: Is that correct?

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, between 7 and 10, depending on how you count it, because you’ve got sales in HVAC and then we break apart plumbing, and then we break apart insulation and ductwork sales, but yeah, it’s up there.

10:55Waking at 3:10am and the miracle morning routine

Tyler Martin: I mean that’s a lot of activity. How do you do that Like kind of take me through? I mean, obviously you don’t get to that level overnight. Like what have you done that has made you so successful to get to potentially $10 million a year in sales?

Andy Hobaica: You got it. You got to have an amazing morning routine and be consistent.

Tyler Martin: Talk to me about that. What’s your morning routine? We all want to know.

Andy Hobaica: You ever? You ever read or listen to the audio book the miracle morning by? Um? How? Uh, yeah, I know, missed on the last podcast. I forgot his name. Look it up, cause that guy Hal’s dope. He’s actually just a normal dude. Uh, I went on the HBC success secret podcast and they know him because they live in Canada.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’s a Hal Elrod, hal Elrod.

Andy Hobaica: Dude, everyone. Listen to this. Drop what you’re doing, pause this podcast. Go listen to that audio book. The audio book’s amazing. So I did. I basically do what he does, but a little bit different. But waking up is the hardest thing, right? So I literally wake up every single day at three, 10 to three, 15, depending if I hit my snooze or not.

Andy Hobaica: Not past three, 15, I get a bed around nine o’clock. So I get my six hours and do I. Obviously I’m wide awake, doing my energy. I won’t talk about supplements, if you want, but basically, long story short, my alarm clock goes off at three 10.

Andy Hobaica: If I hit snooze one time, great, 315. But it’s just, I like hitting snooze. So instead of waking up at 315, I’ll wake up at 310, just so I can hit snooze, because it’s like a mind up. But you have to set up.

Andy Hobaica: You have to put your phone on your dresser or in your bathroom. You have to. You can’t put it next to your bed. So you actually getting out of bed and going to do it. Okay, phone, you need to have a 32 ounce glass of room temperature water.

Andy Hobaica: Okay, you’re tired because you’re freaking. You’re tired because you’re dehydrated. You haven’t drank water in eight hours. So literally you force yourself to get out of bed one. You don’t want to wake up your spouse, your husband or your wife. You don’t wake them up, so you get out of bed, go over, turn it off, drink the water, and then you have to really mind up for yourself a couple of times and then you’ll get used to it.

Andy Hobaica: Go into the bathroom, wash your face, brush your teeth, go back to bed. You’re just going to stare at the fricking wall. You’re not going to be able to do anything. You’re not going to be able to go back to bed. So it just forces you to wake up, get out.

Andy Hobaica: I’ll do a little pre for like 20, 30 minutes, get my blood flowing, do some pushup sit-ups and then I go meet a buddy One of my two buddies at the gym at four to four 30, depending on when. They’re able to meet me every single day, monday through Saturday.

Andy Hobaica: I didn’t today. Now I take Sunday off. I still do some cardio and walk the dogs, but Monday through Saturday I’m at the gym between four and four 30, know, six days a week, okay. So being able to do that and then get your blood flowing, the energy I have at 6 am.

Andy Hobaica: You’re not going to reach until 11, 30, 12, you know, if you’re not working out doing that in the morning and then, I do more things. I’ll come home, write my goals down, do my calls. You want to talk about that, but the energy I’m on when I make your you know, design this amazing HVAC system for you and your family.

Andy Hobaica: Where would you like to get started versus I, tyler, we spoke on the phone is my? My truck parked in a good location Literally 90% of my competitors right there.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, so you bring the energy, which is awesome. So, but take me, it’s deeper than that, I think too. So you get your mind and you get your spirit and you get your mental frame, your physical, you get it all lined up. What are you doing to build those relationships?

Tyler Martin: Do you have a methodology? Obviously the energy is awesome and your connection I can tell, just even with me, like you can really connect with people. But what do you think is creating that like residual? You must get a lot of residual business out of this too.

Tyler Martin: Oh yeah.

Andy Hobaica: So you have to spend the first 10 to 20 minutes in a customer’s home, becoming their friend? Forget about why you’re there, forget about it. Literally get to know the person and what the issues they’re having. Maybe you start talking about the family and then they say, well, you know what?

Andy Hobaica: It’s actually really hot in this room where it’s. You know, I just had family over for Christmas and we couldn’t even use this room. It’s so hot or it’s uncomfortable, or it’s loud. And my wife’s you know, to be honest, man, no matter what we do today, keep waking up my wife and, to be honest, we want to move it from the bedroom side all the way on the other side of the house.

Andy Hobaica: And then I’ll ask him I’m like, okay, we can move it or I can just quiet it down. So basically, no matter what, no matter what we do today, Tyler, you’re just telling me that I have to basically make it so your wife never hears your air conditioner turn on again.

Andy Hobaica: That’s possible, we can do that, that’s easy, and just being able to open up their mind, but basically becoming the customer’s trusted friend in about 15 minutes is doable. I do it every day.

Tyler Martin: Wow, okay. And then I know you know your whole tagline is being likable, so you obviously must be conscious about doing things that are, you know, going to connect with people and build that trust and that likability? Is there anything that you consciously do in terms of connecting with people?

15:28The coffee call-ahead and cleaning gutters unasked

Tyler Martin: Sounds like you’re listening, you’re trying to address their problems. Anything else that you do that might help people out there?

Andy Hobaica: Have you heard my call ahead with the drink order. Tyler, no, I have not Good one, I’ll role play with you. You’re the customer, so I’m heading out. We have an 8 to 8.30 arrival appointment in the morning. You’re the customer. I’m going to call you when I’m on the way, okay, okay, so ringer ring.

Tyler Martin: Hello.

Andy Hobaica: Hey, is this?

Tyler Martin: Tyler, it is Tyler, it’s Andy Hobayka. Hobayka Services. How are you doing today?

Andy Hobaica: Hey Andy, I thought you guys were on the way. Are you almost here? Yeah, so it’s 7.42. I’ll be there at about 8.10, 8.15, if, 810-815, if that’s okay with you?

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s great. I’m really looking forward to it. I need some help.

Andy Hobaica: Beautiful, beautiful On my way, I had to stop and get gas. I go to QT every morning, every morning, afternoon. We drive a lot, so I have to go get gas. While I’m getting gas, I’m going to go in and get a coffee.

Andy Hobaica: Tyler, is there anything I can grab you while I’m there? And hey.

Tyler Martin: Tyler, Please say yes, because if you say yes, my drink’s free. What can I get you, buddy? You know I always love a coffee. I haven’t had my morning cup yet. So a nice medium-sized cup of coffee with some of that Irish cream that every 7-Eleven seems to have, or fast, quick martins You’d make my day.

Andy Hobaica: You want a medium-sized coffee with Irish cream, right.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, it’d be awesome.

Andy Hobaica: Beautiful, Extra hot right.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’d be awesome, beautiful extra right. Yeah, that would be great, man Sweet. Yeah, I’ll get that for you and I’ll see you in about 15, 20 minutes, buddy. Okay, looking forward to it. Thanks, andy, you’re welcome. So on the way to that call.

Andy Hobaica: I’m going to listen to an audio book or podcast. Get my mind right no music. Don’t listen to music when you’re driving. Stop you ever. So not talking about other podcasts, but no it’s great you know brian burton, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh, way so day.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Yep, I’ve been on it and, like dude, all the heavy hitters have been on it. It’s a great podcast and I’ve listened to all of them. Or maybe I’ll just listen to myself. I’m just joking. So I know it’s, it’s good.

Andy Hobaica: Um, brian and nate are really really good people and it, and it was a lot of fun going on that podcast. But there’s a lot of good stuff on there. Or turn on the audio book, even some Grand Cardone. Just listen to something that’s going to get you in the right mindset about helping that, customer sales and the whole thing.

Andy Hobaica: So I’m coming over. You park your truck out front with the front door. Well, instead of just saying, hey, is my truck parked, okay, knock on the door. Now, when you’re walking up, you better notice something that you can talk about. I don’t care if it’s clean a nice sharpened grass, fresh cut grass.

Andy Hobaica: Maybe a Chevy or a car in the parking lot in the driveway that you actually know about. Maybe an American flag, something. Maybe the house is extra clean. Maybe you see some window shades and ask him how much they love their energy with those window shades, something you can talk to them about.

Andy Hobaica: And then, right when you answer the door, hey, tyler. Andy, here’s your coffee buddy. Now. I did do two pumps of the Irish cream. Hopefully it’s not too sweet. You’re going to smile on your face. You’re laughing. You try it. Oh, it’s amazing. Great, great, hey. Before we get started and this is one of my introductions that a lot of people don’t do they go a step further.

Andy Hobaica: Good, okay, cool. And then, hey, tyler, I’m not saying we’re going to need a crane, but if we need one on a day of install, can it park in the driveway around 7, 38 am, or does your wife back out of it?

Tyler Martin: yeah, so you’re just really just giving setting, setting up, install. You’re giving thoughts to everything. I mean all the attention to detail is all there. Yeah, that’s awesome that’s awesome. That’s really good stuff. So, in terms of your own energy, I mean, I love that you bring this energy, but do you have your off days, or how do you always?

Tyler Martin: Is it the constant feeding of your mind of positivity that you don’t have those down times, or what’s your cycle like? Is it always up 99.9% of the time? Okay, that’s pretty good.

Andy Hobaica: And if it’s not I’m trying not to cut right Just stop. And you got to put yourself in the check because there’s people depending on me. Yeah, so true. So shut up, take it and just do it, and when you come home you’re going to be missing the price.

Andy Hobaica: If you want to but do not bring that crap to work you might as well call in sick. So that’s actually a good question. If you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and you’re not feeling good or maybe you just lost a friend maybe it’s good time to call in sick.

Andy Hobaica: Bringing your negative bullshit into the office and your negative energy is going to kill your entire team or customer or friends. It’s going to do so much negativity versus you not coming in and maybe missing out on some work. So don’t bring that BS around other people, because you’re spreading it.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s a great point. It’s very common for business owners to have a bad day and they go in and, like you said, they bring that toxicity, negative energy, and the problem is staff remembers that bad day 20 times more than they remember maybe the 10 days that you were nice or whatever, and so it’s so much better just to not even come in.

Tyler Martin: I mean, I’ll tell clients that, like dude, if you’re having a bad day, just don’t even go in, just erase it, because you’re hurting your company way more than you’re helping it. Right, yeah, that’s good stuff. Hey, I know you’ve used the phrase stop selling, start helping.

Tyler Martin: Let’s talk about that a little bit. Like what do you do in terms of that helping to? I mean, you’ve definitely brought up a lot of things around attention to detail, positive energy, creating connection, all that great stuff. Is there anything that you can think of in that start helping phase that you’re doing to build relationships?

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, again, you have to spend time getting to know the person and then if you stop focusing on what you’re there to sell them and just start helping them, sales come up right. So it’s kind of like a slide. It’s a better way of selling because you’re going to get the sale at the end of the day if you just help the people.

Andy Hobaica: So what sounds better? Tyler, walk in. Hey, tyler, show me the thermostat. Tyler, do you have any hot rooms? What do you hear, as a customer, when I say that?

Tyler Martin: You care, you want to know, you want to solve my problems.

Andy Hobaica: I appreciate that, but not what I was looking for, sorry. So when I say, do you have any hot rooms, what I hear is, oh, this guy’s trying to sell me crap, really Okay, like, like if you say hey, show me a hot room, Tyler, I want to solve it.

Tyler Martin: Yeah.

Andy Hobaica: It’s more that I have a better way of going about it. So most people in the industry where, if they come down, hey Tyler, before I go outside, do you have any hot rooms? And people are like a new air conditioner and want you to leave.

Andy Hobaica: Okay, so with with our case, a better way of asking it is you walk up and be like hey Tyler, we go outside and I look at the HPC system before I do my heat load. Before anything, can you show me the most comfortable room in the house?

Andy Hobaica: I’d really like to go to that room. Go to that room. What are you doing here, tyler? Oh, nope, you sleep in there. You watch movies with your wife. Great, great, that’s really cool. So this is the master, I’m guessing, right, master bedroom, main room.

Andy Hobaica: Good, good, okay, cool. Now you know the rooms in the house spend more time in. If they were just as comfortable as this room, oh yeah, come on over here, my family room. I wish I could watch TV out here, but it’s not as comfortable as that room.

Andy Hobaica: That’s why we watch it in there, okay, cool. So, no matter what I do today, tyler, if I could make this room just as comfortable as the master, it would actually make you and your wife happier. Oh yeah, it would. I guarantee no one else did that.

Andy Hobaica: Everyone else is quoting a freaking new air conditioner or maybe some duck working, not even addressing this big cause of what you just solved. All these little things. You’re solving problems for the customer and you’re doing what You’re helping them because no one else gave a crap about their problems or their needs.

Andy Hobaica: They were just trying to sell them stuff. Now, maybe they did, but they didn’t undercover it the right way. So it’s kind of like people go in the attic and they’ll take measurements of the furnace, they’ll look at everything, but then they won’t look at the insulation.

Andy Hobaica: I don’t care if you do it, you sub it out or you’re going to refer someone. How amazing does it sound to come down and be like hey, so I looked at the furnace. Obviously, I took my measurements, got everything, but I’m going to show you a video.

Andy Hobaica: Look at this. Did you know you have five inches of insulation? You know the benefit of having more than five inches of insulation. When they build homes they blow in 14 in Arizona. Let me show you why and show you why. And then when they look at you and say, well, you guys sell insulation, those people don’t.

Andy Hobaica: So then you respond and say, no, actually I don’t. I just want to let you know I probably have a referral that I can give you. But no, we don’t do that. I just want to let you know, no matter if you replace the system or not, you probably need on a service call, a sales call.

Andy Hobaica: Whatever you’re doing, maybe I’m walking around the house let’s say your air conditioning company doesn’t do plumbing and you see a faucet that’s dripping. I guarantee that faucet has been dripping for like 10 years and they just haven’t done anything about it. Right? Hey, I have a friend that’s a plumber.

Andy Hobaica: Do you want me to have them call you? Like this, this dripping doesn’t have to be like this, and it’s a very easy fix Lightbulb’s going to go off. Like he’s here for air conditioning. Why the hell is he looking at my faucets Like he actually cares?

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that trust meter goes off the hook.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, it does.

Tyler Martin: It goes off the hook too. When you like, come down about the insulation. You’re like no, I don’t even I take it a step further.

Andy Hobaica: They’ll open the front door, open the sliding door to go to the backyard, and I’ll hear something. And I’ll be like Tyler, not picking on you. I’m just one of those handy guys that takes care of everything. Does this door always make this noise?

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, it’s an old door. It needs to be replaced. I don’t think it needs to be replaced, I think it needs to be lubed up. You know what? Yes, or I can fix it for you in about two minutes, if you’d allow me to do that.

Andy Hobaica: Spray some WD-40 on it, weld the joints, get everything good and be like holy crap, it’s not making noise anymore. I’ll be back, buddy, close the door, don’t say anything and walk away. Come on, man, Like the simple stuff. You’re not there to clean their freaking door jams, but you’re helping them.

Andy Hobaica: And then my favorite one is if you go on a roof the gutters, guys, they’re always full. They’re always full. Bring trash bags in your in your hand, go down, don’t say anything, clean out the gutters and then walk up to the door before you.

Andy Hobaica: You’re able to present your options and say knock, knock, knock and be like hey, tyler, just letting you know before we get started. I want to know where your trash can is, and you have this big bag of trash. I’ve done it hundreds of times.

Andy Hobaica: It happens the same thing every time. They always respond and say what do you? What are you throwing stuff away in my trash can? For I don’t like. Is that your lunch? Like, what are we doing? Actually, this is full of leaves from your gutter system.

Andy Hobaica: I saw that they were full up there and a light bulb went off in my head. If this was my house and my wife saw that and saw that I hadn’t done it, I’d get in trouble. So I thought I’d just stop that fight and do it for you.

Andy Hobaica: Not a big deal, ronnie.

Tyler Martin: When you first brought that up, I’m like oh, andy, you’re giving me another project if you bring this up. And then you said oh, I clean them out. I’m like oh, I’m in love with you, man. Exactly, that’s good stuff.

Andy Hobaica: I didn’t ask you to do that. I know you didn’t, I just wanted to help you out. What?

Tyler Martin: are they going to?

Andy Hobaica: remember. Let’s say they don’t buy an air conditioner from anyone. Are gutters? And brought the trash cans in.

Tyler Martin: Come on, man Do you think and I’m just playing a little bit devil’s advocate here Obviously you’re an ownership, so you can, you’re afforded the courtesy to do that. In terms of the extra time, Do you think typical HVAC shop technician does that?

Tyler Martin: Our entire team does it. Okay, but that’s what we said, Do you think? Most I’m wondering if there’s owners out in the audience going man, I don’t know if I want someone spending 20 minutes to 30 minutes or whatever it takes to clean out gutters.

Tyler Martin: Is that the best use of their time?

Andy Hobaica: Fine.

Tyler Martin: Then don’t grow. Yeah, that’s good, that’s a good comeback. I like that.

Andy Hobaica: What are you doing? That’s the same type of person that believes in the no-show call. What’s the word I’m looking for, tyler, the no-money call the the no money call.

Tyler Martin: I’m not following that track.

Andy Hobaica: Well come like going to a service call and you’re not going to make any money, so don’t spend too much time on it. Get to your next call.

Tyler Martin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, just get out of there, yeah, yeah.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, take your time. You don’t understand what that customer is. Maybe that customer is not going to spend any money with you, but maybe they love your 10 people that spent a million dollars with you.

Tyler Martin: Well, plus, in my world, like I’ve had this happen, and I know this happens in HVAC, home services, everything else you go out to a client that isn’t the right fit for whatever reason, assuming they’re not a pain in the butt, but it’s just.

Tyler Martin: You can’t help them for some reason. I’ve had referrals from that type of client Like they, they, I didn’t even nice guy who’s really helpful. I think he could help you out and so yeah, if you think bigger picture, usually it’s kind of back to your helping thing.

Tyler Martin: If you just do the right thing, more often than not it pays off.

Andy Hobaica: It’s also. You know those people that say, oh, it’s 20 minutes and they had a busy day, like, okay, let me ask you a question then what’s a five-star Google review worth? Oh, wow, yeah, I would pay. Like if it was legal I’d pay $500 a review, okay, cool.

Andy Hobaica: So what you’re saying is your technician can’t spend an extra 15 minutes there and then ask for a review after doing you know, the customer is an amazing favor and then they leave a five-star review mentioning the technician’s name so you can track it and like that’s not worth it.

Andy Hobaica: Oh, when you put it that way, it’s like. Or when they say, well, my people aren’t good at talking to people, sounds like you need different technicians. Then yeah, yeah, or better training.

Tyler Martin: Training, training, training. Okay, it’s time for this week’s Marketing that Scales tip brought to you by my favorite marketing agency, service Scalers. Now, one of the most powerful sales strategies that you’ve probably never tried is the line that Andy Hobica said. He said if I’m not the right fit, I’ll still recommend someone to you.

Tyler Martin: Now, if you want more clients who trust you before they meet you, service scalers can help you with that, just like Andy and his style of building trust and not selling does. So check out service scalers when you get a chance and tell them Tyler sent you.

Andy Hobaica: Well, my people aren’t good at talking to people. It sounds like you need different technicians then. Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Martin: Or better, training, training, training, training. I’m always amazed, you know, sometimes it’s just training, it’s just, it’s just telling people what you expect of them. We’ve, as you know, a lot of times businesses forget to do this and people only going to do what they know how to do or don’t know how to do, and if you don’t raise the bar on what your expectation is, that they won’t ask those questions Correct.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Hey, I want to shift gears. So you guys became part of the champions group. I wanted to talk about that. That happened in 2021. So I think we were just coming out of COVID or we were towards the end of it.

Tyler Martin: I think Towards the end. Yep, yeah, what was the thinking there? What does that mean to your business Strategically? Why did you guys do that?

29:07Selling to Champions Group so both uncles could retire

Andy Hobaica: It was scary at first, right Family legacy going away. We didn’t want to get changed. We don’t want people changing the name, we didn’t want to do all that stuff. So we had many offers right. So my dad had many offers from all different private equity companies for 10 years but he just couldn’t find the right fit until Champions Group came across to where we had Leland Smith.

Andy Hobaica: Leland Smith and Frank DeMarco and these people they’re just good people and they had the same upbringing that I had and my dad had. So they’re just good people and we knew, we felt like it was a really, really good group to join.

Andy Hobaica: And the reason why we had to do it was because both of my uncles wanted to retire. So we have a $20 million company. How do you retire two people without a ton of cash or taking on a massive loan? Yeah, so you bring in private equity and at the end of the day, to be honest, tyler, nothing’s changed Really.

Andy Hobaica: It’s only gotten better. I pay my people, we pay our people more and then at the same time, better benefits, better insurance, better, everything. So nothing’s changed bad. We get equipment for cheaper and we get to push the suppliers a little bit like, hey, what do you mean?

Andy Hobaica: You only have two of those left. You’re giving them to another company. I want them All right, fine, then you know what? Yeah, give back to them. I’m going to sell Lennox next week no train.

Tyler Martin: So it’s like it’s a big group right, so they a minority or majority.

Andy Hobaica: Majority now yeah.

Tyler Martin: Okay, so they do have full say in the business. They do, yeah, but the thing is they don’t.

Andy Hobaica: They don’t step in and change anything if you’re not. If you’re doing well, right. So not bragging, but out of the entire Southwest region, all the companies that have ownership in or own outright, we’re the top performing company. So we have the most profitability, we have the best turnaround, we have the most clubs.

Andy Hobaica: We just we’re a high performing company because even you know, my dad was still the president at the end of the day, following his lead and doing everything and putting the customer first. If you’re doing amazing, your manager’s never on top of you.

Andy Hobaica: It’s the same thing. They do not bother us if we’re hitting our numbers.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, when we got acquired. I’ve sold two companies and my second company. When we sold it, we got bought by a multi-billion dollar company in Philadelphia and they had branches throughout the United States and every week they would release the sales for each business unit throughout the United States and we were always the top one.

Tyler Martin: So I kind of can relate to that and I remember how much we used to enjoy seeing. You know, it was kind of within the group, my team we used to appreciate being number one and saying how everybody else sucked compared to us, in a nice way of course.

Tyler Martin: But I wonder, do they do something like that for you, where you get to see the numbers routinely?

Andy Hobaica: Of course they do. Yeah, because we’re all on service time right. So like they all do that. And then, what’s even more fun for us, I’m very competitive Now that I’m still in sales, like I’m not a manager, I’m just a sales guy.

Andy Hobaica: But that’s what I wanted to be, because I love doing sales and we have a little bit of a structure to where our general manager is kind of a sales manager right now, but he’s not paying himself that way, so it’s more of like we have more freedom.

Andy Hobaica: But you have that, your numbers, they have the freedom right. So it’s a fun place to work. It’s still a great time and I enjoy, you know selling. And then, as well, I do a lot of training as well. I don’t get paid for it, but we come in, we’ll do role play, we’ll train with our guys.

Andy Hobaica: I just love doing it Right, and we’re all in service time. The thing I like and I get excited about is all the salespeople are tracked and out of all their companies. If you have 700 people on a list and your name’s in the top three, you’re like let’s go, baby Wow.

Andy Hobaica: Because, I knew I was good before. Like right, like I know I’m not some like schmo. I go to conferences and people are like I did 3 million last year and I’m like, oh, this is a good number, okay, cool. Then I’m just crazy.

Andy Hobaica: So, like you like, if you’re in the top three about like 700, oh wow, this is great. And then you’re battling like you have six and a half million, some guys at 6.7. You’re like I got to crush him, man. And then a good thing for a champions group is they take all the top sales guys in the industry at all the regions.

Andy Hobaica: They take everybody and they go on this huge trip at the end of the year. So you’re going to surround yourself for like a week around sales and then their wives.

Tyler Martin: So much fun. Yeah, that is awesome. Well, hey, congratulations, by the way, thank you. That’s a cool event when someone comes in and wants to be part of you, and obviously there’s the remuneration, the monetary side of it, which is pretty cool.

33:11The club bank that credits dues toward a new system

Tyler Martin: So that’s an awesome, awesome accomplishment for you guys. I mean, it’s pretty cool, thank you, yeah, hey. So a couple other things I want to cover before we wrap up. I want to talk about maintenance agreements. Sure, how do you guys structure yours?

Tyler Martin: What are you conscious about trying to grow your maintenance agreement every day? I don’t want to just kind of talk through that every day, right?

Andy Hobaica: so maintenance agreement a lot of little benefits. You come out twice a year, right? We clean the coils, we check, we do our you know 75 points inspection, change the filter. If it’s a normal size, we’ll bring one and we’ll change it for them.

Andy Hobaica: You know, bring the filter and then we do something a little bit different. Now the cat’s out of the bag already, so everyone already knows this. No one’s catching on, though. Everyone’s going to start doing this. We have a little thing called a club bank, okay, okay.

Andy Hobaica: So let’s say, our maintenance for the year, you’re going to pay me 259 for me to come out every, you know, twice a year. So come out and do the maintenance and then get 10% off on parts. You’re 259. Let’s say your system is three years old.

Andy Hobaica: Over the next seven years you invest 239 a year. That’s put into a club bank that you can use on a replacement when it gets old enough and has to break.

Tyler Martin: So none of your money’s wasted. Oh cool, so it’s like a credit essentially.

Andy Hobaica: Savings account. So when you have to replace your system now, you have this $1,300 credit that you’re going to get off of a new system in seven, 10 years, whatever.

Tyler Martin: So as part of those maintenance agreements now I’ve heard, you know I’ve heard a lot of different ways they’re structured. One I most recently I was talking to Gil Cavi. Have you heard of Gil? He’s great guy. Did that ring a bell, doesn’t?

Tyler Martin: sound familiar to me I bet my dad knows him. Anyway, big, big, big, big Instagram guy like you and Gil. What they do is they do the club but they won’t do emergency calls unless you’re in the club. So that’s kind of their pitch to get people in and they offer a discount if you get into the club and then they’ll do the emergency, so they don’t lose any emergency service.

Tyler Martin: They just get more people in the club essentially. So you just get more people in the club essentially. Do you guys structure anything like that as part of your maintenance agreements where you get certain you only do certain types of services if you’re as part of you’re in that annual maintenance agreement?

Andy Hobaica: Club members come first, but I’m never going to turn away somebody, yeah.

Tyler Martin: Got it Okay, yeah, okay.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, I can see how that would help. I’m not saying it’s a bad way, I just I I see in Arizona, if someone doesn’t want to be in a club, you’re going to turn away their business because they’re not a club member. What if they’re adamant?

Andy Hobaica: They’re like Andy, I don’t go on clubs, but I’m going to call you and I can’t wait to replace my unit when it breaks. You’re going to turn that away. I don’t know.

Tyler Martin: It could work. I wouldn’t do that I wouldn’t recommend it. This is why I love having these discussions, because there people have their own perspective in terms of what makes for an effective type annual. Whether you told a club or an agreement, whatever it is, that’s cool.

Andy Hobaica: Maybe the way I think about it is a limiting belief, but you know what I’ve never tried it and I’m not going to try it anytime soon.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, no good stuff, hey. And then I also want to talk about keeping emotions out when it comes to business decisions. I’ve heard you bring that up. You are a pretty charged guy. How do you do that? Where you’re cause, you seem like a lot of energy and emotion can come into business decisions.

Tyler Martin: So how do you do that? How do you moderate that? The reason why I’m not a manager, I’m a very emotional person.

Andy Hobaica: If you don’t, if you’re not emotional, you’re not going to be good at sales in the way, like not many top top salespeople in the world are not emotional, because people buy an emotion. So if you don’t have the emotions, where are they going to go?

Andy Hobaica: But how we’ve done it with Hobica is you have to take emotions out of it and it really does suck a lot of the time. And how you take emotions out of it is what we do at Hobica is we never fire anyone.

Andy Hobaica: They fire themselves. So check-ins right, if Tyler is not keeping up with his KPI, he’s not doing what he needs to do, not getting on maintenance, but it’s not doing that. You promised me you were going to do that, tyler, so we’re going to call you in.

Andy Hobaica: We’re going to go over your why. You told me a year ago, when we hired you, what your why was, why you were working there, why you wanted to make money. You want to make a hundred grand this year and your kids like go over that and then ask you let’s check in.

Andy Hobaica: Is this even happening? Like what’s going on, man? And then, if you have to have you know six, seven, eight of those check-ins be like hey, tyler, do you like? If we have another one of these meetings, you don’t want to work here anymore.

Andy Hobaica: That’s what I feel, because we went over this and I’m doing my best here of like at a loss, so you help me out. Is there anything else that we can do? Because if we have to meet again, it looks like you’re going to be turning in your two weeks because you told me you wanted this job.

Andy Hobaica: So it’s just. It’s just that thought of like. To be honest, some people leave right there, but most people will get their shape you know ship, you know shape out and then getting shipped here and they get that into their mind. We never let anyone go.

Andy Hobaica: The only reason you would get fired is if you steal or lie. Yeah, and and, and. To be honest, it was their decision, because they decided to do that.

Tyler Martin: Yep, yep, good stuff, hey. So other thing I want to talk about is marketing. Imagine you’re big enough now. When I say marketing, I mean like lead generation. Yeah, you’re big enough now where you’re probably thinking do it in-house, uh, as opposed to maybe like using an external service, like service scalers, as one of the companies that specialize in in home services.

Tyler Martin: Of course, my boys over at rhino rhino, okay, uh, is that, what is that what you do? You? What type of service? What do you guys do in terms of your own lead generations, in-house or do you use an external service?

Andy Hobaica: both right, right, both, and then we’re really big on postcards. We go old school man, so we do a lot of postcards. I was actually going to show you a couple, so we do the ones that you look them up and basically, you know, three guys on there, so my two uncles and my dad.

Tyler Martin: That’s your website picture, by the way, right.

Andy Hobaica: And then, we’ll do ones for like and then we’ll do ones like this. This is actually my favorite one. It says you’re next or it’s your turn, right, and basically it’s giving a coupon of $250 off of any replacement or big repair. Every single person in your neighborhood within two streets that way, two streets, this way is going to receive this after we install a new equipment at your house.

38:58Sending a comfort advisor out with the technician

Andy Hobaica: Hey, we were recently at a neighbor of yours on Cottontail and they replaced their system. What we normally see is, in a neighborhood, all systems break about the same time. If you still have your original system, we’d come out and love to look at it for you, for a free checkup and if we’d find a repair or we do need to replace, here’s a $250 gift card from your neighbor.

Tyler Martin: Stuff like that, good stuff. What’s your philosophy around following up on leads Like what do you? How many salespeople do you do you have? Do they all go through you? How does that work? How do they get divvied up? And then, what’s the philosophy as far as follow-up?

Andy Hobaica: So a couple of questions. Right, so we have four other sales guys myself. Right, if a call comes in and someone calls in and says I need a salesperson out or a technician flips a lead, it goes through your round robin, you know, at the end of the day.

Andy Hobaica: But, to be honest, man, top guys are going to get filled up first, because if I have a guy that’s closing 27% and a guy that’s closing 72%, I’m going to fill up his day before I fill up his day. We’ll still be fair.

Andy Hobaica: We do a lot of training calls. You’ve heard of a training call like a buddy check. When you say training call, you’ll let go over a recorded call. Is that? What? Is that what you mean? No, I’ll send a salesperson with a technician on an opportunity call.

Andy Hobaica: Okay, oh, wow, so I’ll send. I’ll send a comfort advisor with a technician on a call. Maybe it’s a maintenance and it’s 14 years old and everything’s working fine. Well, maybe there’s an opportunity there where the salesperson can help out the technician and then give them both choices repair versus replace.

Andy Hobaica: We’ll go to a 14 year old system, tyler, and maybe it’s working great and there’s no problems. But the sales guy obviously wants to sell something, but only if it’s the right thing to do and everything has to be recorded on videos. Let’s say you look through everything and you’re like, as a technician, you’re like all right, andy, everything looks great.

Andy Hobaica: And it’s like, okay, take off the rest of the panels, let’s make sure this thing’s working good. We want to get it through the summer. We don’t want to lie to the customer. And we take off all the panels and we actually find out that the indoor coil is starting to rust out and there’s growth all over the blower motor and the contactor is extremely badly burnt.

Andy Hobaica: It’s like, well, there’s a few problems here. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take videos showing the burnt contactor, showing the growth on the bl, the rust on the coil, and say, tyler, let us know if you have any questions.

Andy Hobaica: Then we come down, we show him this and he’s like, oh, wow, what does this mean? Well, it just means that we have a rustic coil. So in the future, when it leaks, that’s probably where it’s going to come from in the near future, this growth you’re breathing in.

Andy Hobaica: We should probably clean that, if you ask my recommendation. And then this contactor, so you know we can do anything you want and then shut up. Let the customer ask what would you do? Well, to be honest, we’ve got a couple of different options.

Andy Hobaica: We could, you know, replace the contactor, install a start assist kit to protect it, clean the blower motor and then just hope the best for the decision, and all your options would be nothing versus repair, versus possibly upgrading the system. And then you just see their emotions of what they’re doing and most people will be like you’re probably right.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, I probably should look at all my options. That call turned from a 14-year-old system that probably is not about to make it through the summer to the technician saying everything’s working great. And then you have to go back in two months and save them on 115 now versus now.

Andy Hobaica: They know exactly what’s about to happen and they decide themselves that you know what? Yeah, let’s get a quote for replacement. And then I show them how it’s not super hot out yet. I’m going to save them two grand versus doing it in the middle of the summer.

Andy Hobaica: It’s like man, yeah, why wouldn’t we do this? Yeah, most technicians won’t have that conversation because it feels uncomfortable to them. Certain ones will, but most will not. You want your technicians fixing things, so send a comfort advisor out there, dude. The worst thing that happens is they sell nothing and the technician sees the salesperson role, play with the customer and overcome objections.

Tyler Martin: And then they learn that way, it’s a good experience overall. Yeah, I mean for sure. Even a client experience, customer experience. It’s great for all three parties. How do you get your salespeople? Are they previous technicians that have grown into comfort advisors? Is that your methodology usually Correct?

Tyler Martin: Yeah, okay, correct, okay, got it.

Andy Hobaica: So we basically we start them off at level one, level two, level three, sometimes level four, and then if they want to go into a comfort advisor role, then we would basically take that person and turn them into a selling tech, so basically a technician that can find the problem, make the videos hey, the compressor is bad, let us know what you would like to do.

Andy Hobaica: And if they ask for a quote instead of having a salesperson come out, they can quote as well. Very few people do that, but then from there, if they like it enough, then they can become a full-time comfort advisor and we do the same thing with plumbing.

Tyler Martin: Wow Okay, so you have that same type of career progression. Yeah, that’s cool. Do you guys have any type of training academy for your technicians? Have you built a training academy?

Andy Hobaica: So yeah, we’ve used NTI right, so we use a lot of NTI. And then, as well, champions Group has their own training. So it depends if we want to do an in-state or out-of-state. If we have the time, we’ll just send the champions group in California or Vegas or different, different areas.

Andy Hobaica: They’re actually. They’ll actually have one in Arizona. Starting up here, pretty quick, one of our, one of our partners, has a big shop in Phoenix and they’re actually going to be training people out of there in Arizona, so we’re really lucky, okay, cool, okay.

43:56One Bag at a Time and why giving back sells more

Tyler Martin: I’m down to two things out. One bag at a time Really want to spend at least five minutes talking about that, learning about that. I think it’s so cool when I researched it. And then the other thing I want to talk about is personal branding.

Tyler Martin: You do such a great job of being out on social media, and so I want to talk a little bit about that. But first let’s do one bag at a time. What is that? What are you trying to accomplish with that?

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, so one bag at a time, man. I founded it when I was like 23 years old I’m 38 now, so growing up every Sunday we would go to church. So Catholic family I’m a Christian now, but Catholic family we’d go to church and then after church, at least once a month, we’d go down to the soup kitchen, go down and help the homeless, go down and go go fold clothes, pack bags.

Andy Hobaica: We would do something and it’s what my parents got us used to and actually I like doing it. A highly ADD, a little autistic kid to where I’d go home after a freaking church and if I wasn’t playing video games or going outside I’m going crazy.

Andy Hobaica: Well, I like helping people. So I enjoyed it. And then you get into high school sports gets in the way, girls, all the fun stuff, to where you get out of high school and you’re in that college area. All your friends are going to college, straight school, whatever you’re doing, and I’m like I really miss.

Andy Hobaica: I miss giving back some bags. So I went to the store with my own money, like three, four bucks, bought a bunch of stuff, papers, sack lunches and I start making sandwiches, get chips, granola bars, started packing it and had me and my roommates at the time, cause I had my own house when I was like 21, thankfully working my ass off and then bought my own house when the market crashed in 08.

Andy Hobaica: But basically I’d have me and all my friends and roommates go out to the homeless in Phoenix the downtown Phoenix and we’d pass out these bags. Man, talk about a dopamine serotonin rush. It was so much fun. I loved doing it. I kept doing it and doing it and doing it and then I was like you know what I got to make this into a thing.

Andy Hobaica: So I started basically my own nonprofit but didn’t really know what I was doing, so I was just helping people out doing my thing. I went to a networking group called BNI they’re in every state, right? Oh, yeah, and. I was really big into BNI for a long time Not currently, but time-wise.

Andy Hobaica: I’ll talk to you about it later if you want. But I met someone named Ted Young. He’s one of my best friends. He was in my wedding. He’s just my godsend. So we started off a relationship as a friend because he owns Raymond James’ office in Phoenix and basically building his relationship.

Andy Hobaica: And then he found out, about one bag at a time and said he wanted to get involved, started helping out, getting the word out there, said Andy, why aren’t you a 501c3? Like I’ve tried three times and they denied me three times. And he says, yeah, I specialize in this kind of stuff.

Andy Hobaica: It looks like you don’t like paperwork. I’m like I hate paperwork. You’re probably doing it wrong. Let me try. He got me approved in three months. So it was very emotional for me, very like appreciative, like dude. He’s like it’s all good. I’m just glad I could help.

Andy Hobaica: Ted’s the one who prolonged me to keep going and going and going, got us grants. We became a QCO last year. So like best friends and one of my mentors and really good buddy of mine and also makes me a lot of money in the market.

Andy Hobaica: He’s my financial advisor, but he’s just someone that gives back technically per business and per client. You know I worked for him and he’s, you know, making me money. He technically can’t be on paperwork, that he’s a vice president, but he’s extremely involved with one bag at a time and now there were a final one, c three and twoCO.

Andy Hobaica: So anyone listening, if you hear this and you’re moved, go to onebagatatimeorg. You can donate on our PayPal link. But taxes guys. So this last year I think it was like $4.50 or $9.38 for a couple a dollar for a dollar tax returns.

Andy Hobaica: Like you give me that money, you get in your refund. So instead of paying the federal government like you do with churches and schools, we’re the same thing now. So it’s going to blow up now that we can get money and it was really good last year.

Andy Hobaica: Once a month we go downtown and feed, and how about the homeless?

Tyler Martin: okay, and and so the money goes towards being able to buy the food, to be able to feed the homeless. And when you say feed the homeless, are you, are you cooking something, preparing a full meal, or is it more like bagged goods that they’re?

Andy Hobaica: yeah, sometimes we have people make sandwiches and stuff like that, but mainly it’s like non perishable right. So non-perishable food I’ve got last a while, so like a bag of chips, granola bars, granola bars, uh sorry. A little nut packs you got, uh, you know, fruit snacks.

Andy Hobaica: You got rice, crispy treats, cookies, like everything that’s individual they can put in their bag. And then as well, now that we’re starting to blow up and stuff, we buy everything on alibaba in bulk and we’ll make little shampoo bottles, little shaving creams, you know, little baby wipes.

Andy Hobaica: I say, well, maggie, time on it that you can reseal. So the number one, two items that people want, we found out over the years, is baby wipes, cause the shower in a box and it sucks Cause we’re in the same pair of socks for about three weeks.

Tyler Martin: Wow, wow, that’s good stuff. Hey, uh, have another podcast, think Business with Tyler, and I had a guy on my show and he put a gun to his mouth and he was depressed a very young age, 16 years old and the gun didn’t go off and he told his father.

Tyler Martin: Several years later his father said look at you, little whiny son of a gun. You know what you need in your life. Stop this depression stuff. You need to go out and help people. And he literally drove his son down to a park and he said you need to go out there and help these kids.

Tyler Martin: You need to coach. I don’t care what you do, but you need to start helping people. And this guy ended up going on. Now it’s many years later. He’s built multiple companies that are helping kids. He does uniforms, he does all these different things, but basically that became his mantra of helping people, helped him feel better about himself and gave him purpose, gave him a why, and so whoever maybe is listening out in the audience and isn’t, you know, is doing great or isn’t doing great.

Tyler Martin: A lot of times, that missing link is just being part of something to help others. So when you, when I hear one bag at a time. That’s exactly what I thought of. It’s like it’s helping others.

Andy Hobaica: So when I hear one bag at a time, that’s exactly what I thought of it’s like it’s helping others, and I think that’s kind of what you’re getting to too is it makes you feel good helping others. And then as well, tyler, just to wrap it all in what we’ve been talking about if you want to sell more, it’ll come off.

Andy Hobaica: Giving back more will make you more, have a bigger heart in the field as well, and you will care. You’ll go to someone’s house to wear and be an old lady that maybe doesn’t need an air conditioning system and you talk her into not buying it today and saying you know what?

Andy Hobaica: It’s actually fine, it was a blown fuse, it’s only 12 years old. How about we just wait for it to have an issue and then we do it? At that time you can save up a little bit more money. You’ll leave feeling like a better person.

Andy Hobaica: Most people can’t even get there and take the long-term money versus the short-term, unless you’re used to helping people out. You’re not screwing them over by replacing their 12-year-old system, but maybe they need another six months to save up. You’re, in that, more of a helpful mindset when you get back on a daily basis.

Tyler Martin: Yep, that’s great stuff, okay. Last thing I want to wrap up on is branding, personal branding. Can you kind of take me through? How has that had any business impact for you with your personal branding, and are you consciously trying to grow your audience, and is this something most people should be doing?

Tyler Martin: So that’s kind of my question towards that, because I think a lot of people out there don’t do personal branding and I want to know your feedback on it.

Andy Hobaica: Well, for me, I see a lot of people that have a big audience right, and what do you see if someone has, let’s say, if someone has a million followers on social media? Right Authority when they say something.

Tyler Martin: what are people doing? Probably listening, they’re listening.

Andy Hobaica: Now, let’s say, 10% of those people take action. Well, those 10% of people that took action would have never taken action unless they heard that person say that. So I feel like I have a lot of value to help other people and a lot of, I guess, experience, especially in HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and in sales and in leadership and in coaching.

Andy Hobaica: So, where I know, I have it all up here and in here. So I need to get it out there. And what’s the fastest way to do it? Go on podcasts, go on social media and share. Indeed, I’ll randomly get a message from a guy that’ll literally be like Andy, you have a coaching program and I’ll do.

Andy Hobaica: We can talk about that. But long story short, I watched a couple of your reels, dude, I doubled my income. I literally started doing this and this. I get emotional. I’m like man, let’s go baby Cause. Like, again, I helped that person out.

Andy Hobaica: I didn’t even know who that was. I have someone walking up to me at a conference. Hey, andy, it’s George. We’ve never met. I follow you on social media. You said this and this, I implemented it. It saved my marriage. I’m like man, like oh, just something so small that you didn’t even know about.

Andy Hobaica: I’ll get emotional because it’s like this is crazy.

Tyler Martin: Yeah.

Andy Hobaica: I got to keep going. Baby, let’s blow it up and maybe help out a million people next year.

Tyler Martin: It’s big stuff. It is pretty cool. On that note, let’s talk a little bit about the coaching. What do you do in coaching and who do you help?

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, so anybody in home service sales right. So mainly if an owner has someone that’s struggling or someone that’s stuck at three to four to 5 million and they want to go much further, let’s just let’s be honest If I took away helping people, I could probably sell 15 to 20 million, like if I only did sales right.

Andy Hobaica: But I have a process and it’s a proven system to where from waking up, making your life well, eating correctly, what you do before a sales call, during a sales call, after a sales call, follow-up, creating that customer experience and referral program, like everything I guarantee anyone that gets on my coaching program or jumps on a free call with me I could change their life.

Andy Hobaica: So that’s the benefit. I’ll jump on a call with them It’ll kind of be like a podcast type of thing to where I’ll talk to them and then they get so energized up they’re like what do you charge? It’s like actually not a lot of money, like I have a company from programs where if you want to jump on one call a week for 45 minutes, I guarantee it’ll help you out.

Andy Hobaica: The thing is, tyler, I have to charge something because I have to hold them accountable to where they won’t show up to the meeting because they don’t feel well, right, so like that’s why I have to charge money. But at the end of the day as well, I get more on the calls than they do.

Andy Hobaica: I’ll bring stuff up and I’m like I stopped doing that. I’m telling them to do it. I better do it today.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, what about? Like you know, you see this a lot relatively small HVAC business. Maybe they have one salesperson, maybe it’s the owner, maybe they want to add salespeople. Is that like a type of right profile for you that can help them get some structure and kind of start One?

Andy Hobaica: hundred percent Right. So you know, and I could teach them sales. And then as well, I could refer my dad Now that my dad has involved with a business, he has his own mentoring ship program as well and man, that’s that’s like on steroid, that’s where the business owner right.

Andy Hobaica: So like I focus on sales relationship and creating that customer experience. That’s what I focus on Cause I’m really good at it. My dad’s not as emotional, but he’s business. My dad jumps on a call for four calls over a month with someone who will double their business.

Andy Hobaica: So like he’s made all the mistakes, he’s done it, he’s done it his entire life to where, to be honest with you, he doesn’t charge enough money.

Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s good, it’s good. It’s hard to argue with your guys’ success in your history. I mean you’ve seen it all. You’ve gone through recessions, disruptions to business, covid pandemics, you name it. You guys have gone through it. You stood firm.

Tyler Martin: You’ve grown. Yeah, I mean you’ve got the war wounds.

Andy Hobaica: So this is what I offer to anybody, and my dad’s the same way. Easier to get ahold of me because my dad’s not as big on social media he doesn’t like it. Just literally add Andy Hobica A-N-D-Y-H-O-B-A-I of your life on Instagram and Facebook.

Andy Hobaica: Shoot me a DM, I’ll respond. I offer a 30 to 45 minute call, and my dad as well. 30 to 45 minute calls, free with anyone, just to show them what we’re about to see, if we’re able to help them. And if we’re able to help and you think it’s worth it, great, let’s sign up and at the end of the day, it’s nice and easy.

Andy Hobaica: It’s just me me me being able to take all of this and putting it onto the person. They’ll ask a question, I’ll answer it and they’ll be like man, I never thought about it that way. And then they try it and they call me Andy.

Andy Hobaica: I did what you told me to. I just sold a $40,000 job. I didn’t think that was possible, but yeah, I’m really happy for you. Let’s keep this going.

Tyler Martin: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s good stuff. Hey, so you mentioned your Instagram, facebook. I’ll definitely put those in the show notes at. At profitandgritcom, your company site, which you guys are located in Arizona, is hobicacom and it’s H-O-B-A-I-C-Acom. Do you serve? How big of an area of Arizona do you serve?

Andy Hobaica: Mostly everywhere, except we don’t go far, far north, so we don’t go past, like Cottonwood, like Prescott and Plymouth.

Tyler Martin: We don’t go up there, we don’t go to Tucson, everywhere else Okay. And then, in regards to the coaching, the best spot to do that is just DM you either on Instagram or Facebook.

Andy Hobaica: Yeah, if they’re interested in a free call with me or my dad to help out business or sales, just shoot us a message and we’ll be able to at least tell them what we’re all about.

Tyler Martin: Okay, and then, of course, I’ll add this to the website too the show notes onebagatatime one bag at a timeorg. Please check that out Everyone. Uh, it’s a way to give back, if you’re inclined to do so. I think that’s it, andy. I think we covered everything.

Tyler Martin: Man, you are just awesome. I really. I really want to talk to your dad too, by the way. I’ve been after talking with you, we’ll set it up. Yeah, I’d love to hear a story anyway. Um, okay, that was awesome. I appreciate you spending your Saturday morning with me and, uh, I hope to see you more out on Instagram and share some more stories with you.

Andy Hobaica: Man, I appreciate it and, hey, anyone that’s listening that wants to change their life and they just can’t take action. Remember, every single person, whether it’s you, Tyler, me, Andy or anybody else that we’re listening to, that’s listening to us. You have it up here and in here.

Andy Hobaica: You just have to share it with the world so they can learn, and I guarantee you have something that some other people can learn. You just have to believe in yourself and let it out there. Who cares about the haters? No one did anything really great in the world without having haters, so just go out and get it and stop caring what other people think.

Tyler Martin: And surround yourself with the right people. You surround yourself with the right people and you have the head and the heart to do it. Everybody does. I agree with everything you said Boom, take care guys. I agree with everything you said Boom, take care, guys.

Tyler Martin: What Andy showed us today is something you’ll rarely hear in sales training seminars or business school that authentically putting customers first isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the most profitable path forward. That’s the essence of what we call grit on this show having the courage to play the long game when everyone else is chasing quick wins.

Tyler Martin: If you’re building something that matters in the trades or service industry, make sure you’re subscribed to Profit Grit wherever you listen, and if you know someone who needs to hear this message, share this episode with them right now. Until next time, keep balancing profit with purpose and grit with growth.

Tyler Martin: Thanks a lot.

Related Episodes

• The Home Services Masterclass: Profit, Apprenticeships, and Exit Strategy – Lou Hobaica
• Why Most HVAC Sales Calls Fail Before They Start – Drew Cameron
• Trust-Based Sales Will Make Your Home Service Business Thrive – Gary Rawding
• Scaling a Home Service Business Without Losing Your Sanity- Adam Sylvester

Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: a fractional CFO for HVAC contractors.