What HVAC Owners Get Wrong About the Labor Shortage

Jennifer Manzo (0:00)

The majority of companies don't even have a CRM, and don't know why they need one.

John Wilson (0:04)

Hey, the beginning of professionalization of an industry is groups like yours that are training the industry how to run a better business.

Jennifer Manzo (0:12)

Every company now wants an experienced technician. What I'm here to tell them is that no, you don't.

John Wilson (0:16)

Now we're like freaking drowning in Gen Z kids.

Jennifer Manzo (0:18)

Yes, they should be here, and we need to like really target them next because we could use their help. You don't want to hire, you know, necessarily a 15-year tech who's never seen an inverter before.

John Wilson (0:27)

If you could get every HVAC owner to change one thing about how they support and develop their techs, what would it be?

Jennifer Manzo (0:33)

The...

John Wilson (0:40)

Welcome back to Owned and Operated, a top 150 business and entrepreneurship podcast. I'm your host, John Wilson, and on this show, we talk about the home service industry, how to build companies and to buy companies, and the stuff that we're doing inside my own company here in the Midwest. Today, I'm joined by Jennifer Manzo from HVA-Chicks. And we're really excited to talk to Jennifer.

I've been following her on LinkedIn for a while, and she shares a ton of great stuff. So we'll have her handle below. But, Jennifer, welcome to the show.

Jennifer Manzo (1:06)

Thank you.

John Wilson (1:07)

And thanks for making the trip out.

Jennifer Manzo (1:08)

Of course.

John Wilson (1:09)

From Maine.

Jennifer Manzo (1:09)

From Maine.

John Wilson (1:10)

Yeah. What's the what like has Maine has heating season already?

Jennifer Manzo (1:14)

Yes.

John Wilson (1:14)

Like full-fledged.

Jennifer Manzo (1:15)

Yes. And I was so excited to come to Ohio because it's very close to our same weather. And I show up and it's 82 degrees here.

John Wilson (1:21)

Oh, it's 85 Yeah. It's going to be warm as heck today. Yeah, that is funny. Well, I would just love it if you could introduce a little bit about yourself, a little about all the different projects you're in as a way to start off.

Jennifer Manzo (1:32)

Absolutely. So I own an HVAC company in Maine, very, very small, very just niche and high performance. In Naples, it is a big lake area. It's the touristy area of Maine.

John Wilson (1:45)

OK, like coast on the coast.

Jennifer Manzo (1:47)

Sort of on the coast. Yes, southern Maine.

John Wilson (1:49)

OK, got it.

Jennifer Manzo (1:50)

And then I'm more on the lakes coast rather than the ocean coast. But OK, so I own a company there. And I also am the founder of HVA-Chicks Coalition. We are a coalition of roughly 8,300 people right now.

All techs, owners, people who want to help each other and who want to get help. So that's what we do. We offer free training to technicians who can't afford training or aren't offered training in their business, their company. And then we also train whole companies. So it's pretty great.

John Wilson (2:20)

Yeah, that is cool. 8,300 people just like walk me through that really quick. Is it like a Facebook group or is it like an internal community? Like how where and how does this community work?

Jennifer Manzo (2:30)

Yeah, so it is essentially an internal community, but it's everywhere. So we use a Facebook group as our base. So like that's kind of a home plate. That's our office, if you will. So we have 8,300 people who have chosen to and been accepted as members. There's it's free membership. You just have to want to be there and not be a bot. Because of that, we're able to keep a very clean Facebook group for like five years. People make jokes about it all the time. How it's like the only group you can go into and post your work, right?

But it's really great. Everybody works together.

John Wilson (2:58)

Post your work like, hey, I just did this install.

Jennifer Manzo (3:00)

Yeah, and not get absolutely torn apart, you know, online. It's really great. Every single person is there for the same reason. It's 8,300 like-minded people that all care about our industry very much.

John Wilson (3:11)

Yeah, that is interesting. I think obviously the content that we create on this show is like owner-operator content.

But it so like usually like that's where my head goes for and like that's the Facebook groups and stuff I think about. But it's always like Reddit as an example, like the plumbing subreddit has like a million freaking plumbers in there. It's absolutely crazy how just big that or Roger Wakefield, as an example, like his YouTube channel is humongous. Oh my God, it's crazy. Absolutely. It's crazy.