HVACBossPro Blog — Running an HVAC Business

Starting Your Own HVAC Business After Years of Working for Someone Else

You know the trade. You have pulled hundreds of capacitors, cleared more drain lines than you can count and talked plenty of homeowners through a replacement. At some point you looked at the invoice the office sent for your work and thought you could do this yourself. Many good HVAC companies start exactly that way. The technical work is the part you already know. This article is about everything else.

The Work You Never Saw

The big picture of the business side is laid out in Running an HVAC Business: The Complete Guide for Owners With a Few Service Vans. This article zooms in on the first months.

When you worked for someone else, a lot happened before you got to the driveway. Someone answered the phone, took down the address, asked what the problem was, checked whether the customer was on a maintenance plan, put the call on your list and texted the customer you were coming. After you left, someone made sure the invoice went out and got paid. If the card declined, someone called. If a tune-up was due, someone booked it.

On your own, that someone is you. The trap is spending all day in attics and all evening doing the office work from memory. Plan for the office work from the start, even if you do it from your truck.

Set Up Your Records Before Your First Call

Your first customers are the most important ones you will ever have, because they are the ones who will tell their neighbors. Treat every one of them as a record worth keeping. For each customer, write down:

• The address and the best way to reach them.
• The equipment. System type, brand, model, serial, year installed, tonnage and filter size.
• Where the unit is and how to get to it: attic ladder, gate code, dog, thermostat location.
• What you did and what you recommended.

In HVACBossPro this lives on the address and shows under it on the job card every time you go back. A customer who calls you in two years gets a tech who already knows their system. That is a real advantage over a bigger company that sends whoever is free. Getting an HVAC Business Off Paper From Day One covers the setup in more detail.

Decide What You Charge Before Anyone Asks

Many new owners price too low because they compare themselves to what they used to be paid per hour. Your old hourly wage is not your price. Your price has to cover the van, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, software, the time you spend driving and quoting and invoicing, the slow weeks, and a profit on top.

Write down a diagnostic fee, a tune-up price and a maintenance plan price before your first call, along with your common repairs. Put them in your service list so every estimate and invoice uses the same numbers. Changing them later is easy. Quoting a different price every time because you are making it up in the driveway is not. Pricing an HVAC Business for Profit: Diagnostics, Repairs and Maintenance Plans goes deeper.

Find the First Customers

Your first customers usually come from people who already know you: friends, family, neighbors and customers who asked for you by name at your old job. Be careful about the last group. Whatever agreements you signed with a former employer are between you and them, and that is a question for your own advisor, not a blog post. What is always fair is doing good work for whoever calls and asking happy customers to tell people.

Beyond that, the basics work: a simple website with a request form, a business listing with your service area, a truck that looks clean and a phone that gets answered. A request form that drops straight into your software saves you from copying names off emails at night.

Sell Maintenance From Day One

Service calls will find you. Maintenance customers have to be asked. Every call is a chance to offer a maintenance plan: two tune-ups a year, the filter checked, the coils and drain line looked at, and the customer first in line when something breaks. Customers who sign up become the steady base that carries a new company through slow months.

Set the plan in your software with 180 days between visits, and each tune-up will come due on its own on the Waiting List. You do not need a wall calendar or a memory for who is due in October.

Build the Habits Now

The habits you build in the first year are the ones your company will run on when it has five vans. Take photos on every call. Write notes the next tech can use. Invoice at the driveway, not on Sunday night. Keep a card on file for maintenance customers. Look at what is due, what is unpaid and what is waiting on an estimate once a week.

None of this takes long when the tools are set up for it. It takes forever when it is done from memory. To see how HVACBossPro handles the office side for a one-van company, visit the HVAC business software page.