Running an HVAC Business During Early COVID: Essential Work, Nervous Customers, Remote Fixes

Vance Crowe [00:00:01] As the crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast. Sounds good.

Joel Sigman [00:00:07] Joel Sigman, welcome to the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:10] Thanks for having me.

Joel Sigman [00:00:12] So you are a trusted contractor for me, somebody that actually did a fair amount of work in my house, putting in a geothermal, well drilling system. And I am running a podcast right now focused on the various perspectives about coronavirus. How is it impacting individuals and industries? And I thought of interviewing you because you're in a unique position in that you and your guys are having to go into people's houses right now and help them with their heating and cooling, something that can't be weighted on. And yet people are afraid of having strangers in their house right now. So I wanted to call up and find out what's the world look like from your point of view?

Vance Crowe [00:00:54] Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting because we've never run across this before. Always had times where you couldn't get into somebody's house, but not in a situation where their fear was you were gonna bring in a virus. I haven't been, I haven't, you know, been there yet. So going through this, the first thing that, that we hadn't usually this time of year we would be really busy starting maintenance. And that hasn't happened. We have, because one, you know, that can be a question mark of essential or non-essential, but also some people just simply don't want you in your house. And we have a lot of older clients too. And, and even from our perspective, we're trying to look at it and we, we understand that they may not want us in our, in their house right now, especially when we have no way to test our people. They, they all may be just fine, but it's still that fear that's been putting everybody's mind from the news media that, that this is just so substantial. You know, now you're looking, people are looking like everybody next to 'em might have this, so maybe I better be careful about who comes into my house. A few things that we've done is we've given our guys mask and gloves. So if they do have to be in somebody's house and they are particular, they have that there with them, that they can go ahead and put on a mask, put on gloves to make the homeowner feel much more comfortable about them having to be in their house. That that's something that, you know, before if we carried a mask, it was for dust purposes.

Vance Crowe [00:02:30] It wasn't for actually going in somebody's house. So a little bit of change of pace there.

Joel Sigman [00:02:35] And how about your guys? Are they worried about this? Is this something they're just walking past? I mean, a lot of 'em have to have kids sitting at home with a spouse taking care of 'em while they're heading into the, into the office every day. Well, heading into stranger's houses themselves.

Vance Crowe [00:02:50] Right. I haven't gotten a lot of feedback from our guys that they're worried about it. We have a lot of younger guys that work for us, and they probably, like a lot of younger people, we know the virus is there, we know it's out there, we know people are affected by it, but we don't, they're not looking at it, you know, they're, they're not letting everything get to 'em in a sense that they feel overly concerned about taking something back to their family. Because most of our situations, when somebody goes into a house, they may talk to 'em for a few minutes of what their problem might be. They may go down to the basement, they may go outside. So their interaction time is very little. So that's helpful because then people don't feel, and even the guys aren't gonna feel the same way because the, the interaction time's short. So I haven't got a lot of fear from the guys or worry. They're just going out trying to do their job and take care of people and do it in the best manner they can. And then they wanna take the precautions that make people feel comfortable when they do go in their house. And, and maybe those precautions you, you, for our guys, it's the hope that the people that are there tell us, Hey, I've been sick, or you know, I can't come near you. I'm gonna stay in my room if there is an issue. Because whether they have that or something else, we hope that common courtesy is there all the time. But I think now it's just becoming more visible that people take that common courtesy if they don't feel well to stay away from you.

Joel Sigman [00:04:20] Yeah. It would never have even really dawned on me. If I had a cold in the past and I had somebody coming by to do some work, I'd have, I mean, I probably wouldn't have shaken their hand, but I would've just been like, Hey, come on in. And I probably wouldn't have mentioned it, but Right. But now those gonna be a whole new social norm around, around letting people know that kind of stuff. I think

Vance Crowe [00:04:39] There is, I, my my view was always, if it is interesting when they started going, Hey, wash your hands, don't touch your face. Different things that always thought were common courtesy to start with an expectation I would have, if any of the people that work on our team went into somebody's house, I would hope that they would take that common courtesy. You if, if you've got a cough or sneeze, sneeze in your arm, don't sneeze in your hand. You would hope that would be common courtesy all the time. It's unfortunate that now we have to tell people about it to, you know, if you go to the bathroom, wash your hands, they put some statistics out there that I thought were crazy. 40% of the people wash your hands coming outta the bathroom. I'm like, wait a second. I go in the bathroom just to wash my hands. Sometimes I don't even have to use the restroom. So, you know, people can use that common courtesy. Hopefully this will be the jumpstart that people use. Common courtesy, like you said all the time, you know, Hey, I can't shake your hand. I've been sick. So, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm being rude.

Joel Sigman [00:05:42] So I've been talking with a lot of guys that are in the ag industry that, and they're saying, Hey, I don't have a choice. I gotta get out there. I gotta plant, I got animals I gotta feed. And I think the same thing has gotta be true of your line of work. I mean, maybe right now in St. Louis in the St. Louis metro area, you can get away without having heating and cooling, but you got another couple weeks, another month, two months, it's gonna be maybe not unbearable, but deeply unpleasant and probably unbearable for some folks.

Vance Crowe [00:06:09] Right. What,

Joel Sigman [00:06:10] What is it like having some people, you know, huge percentage of the population being told shelter in place while you guys are going out and working? Is there, is there bitterness there or is it just like, Hey, we have a chance to work? How do you feel about this?

Vance Crowe [00:06:27] I, I, you know, I don't think there's any bitterness to anybody. Everybody's situation is so different there. There's also a lot of people I've heard from different guys, different trades. Some of their guys that work, an electrician told me some of their guys wanted to stay home. They didn't want to go out in the general public and work. So you have, even within each company, you're gonna have both sides where certain people wanna work and certain don't. The biggest thing I look at, and I think the toughest thing that, that we're dealing with is isn't what other people will look at and say, because you look at people that work in grocery stores that have to be there. They're more in a susceptible PO position than we are. We're not around that many people. We could have a guy that goes if he had service calls in a day, depending on what the art, he may only make four or five calls. So we're not around a lot of pe. Each service man may not be around a lot of people in one day compared to other industries that have to work. And we are essential. If you look at anything, even the restaurants right now, if people can't come in but they're still doing takeout and their freezer goes down, the people in our industry have to be there to get that freezer going. We can't stop our warehouses have to be open, our supply houses. So that chain of people, there's still quite a few people out there working within that industry. The biggest thing that we're gonna see a drop off in is the normal maintenance, the, the normal maintenance that keeps a lot of companies going this time of year. Now that becomes the question mark. Is that essential or not essential? That's a tough one because if I don't change your filter, if we normally come out and take care of your filter, but we don't come out and change it and you go another month, well now if that filter gets too dirty, your unit might shut down.

Vance Crowe [00:08:09] Now you gotta have us come out anyway for a service call. But it's costing you more money because now it's a service call. Of course in our industry we may not do that to you going, we understand what was going on, we're gonna, we're gonna take care of it like a normal maintenance this time, not a service call based on the circumstances. But I'm not seeing anything from anybody out that I, that I've heard of that, Hey, you guys are out working. We're not, I haven't heard of any of that yet. And there, but there are some people that would say, Hey, I'm glad I don't have to be out working. You know, I feel sorry for you guys. You gotta go in people's homes. So I think that you kinda catch both sides of it. I haven't seen it yet.

Joel Sigman [00:08:47] Yeah. I think one of the things that has become so abundantly clear in this whole shutdown or shelter in place is you cannot actually ma have everyone shut down because you need to have the vascular system of our nation working. You need to have food delivered, you need to have plumbing that's going on. You need to have heating and cooling and electricity. So Right. We can't have a system where everybody just stops working it, it literally, we would die.

Vance Crowe [00:09:14] Right, right. No, I agree with that. And, and we get into situations, like you said, as it gets warmer out and temperatures change, you're gonna have people that, especially elderly people. And I think that's where, you know, hopefully we'll see some of this past before it gets really hot and they'll have this under control. It's, those are the people you're gonna worry about more going into their houses, you know, and I, I don't think it's that you feel like you're sick or there's something wrong with you. It's, it's just, I think more of the unknown that's been put out there to people. Even though right now the percentage of people that has it is very small. They've created through everything and the awareness, you'd almost think every other person you saw had it. Right. So you've gotta go into caution and, and the, when I say this with people that are a little older, that are more susceptible when their cooling goes out, many of them, if you have somebody that's on a breathing machine, you have to go to their house. They can't be without cooling because that's just detrimental to their life is, is if they got the virus. I mean, if they don't have cooling and their house gets too hot, that that could have a, you know, a horrible effect. So you've gotta be there to take care of those, those people. So I see more of it coming down the line from a service side, maybe in a month or so, if this is still going on like it is, hopefully it won't be. But

Joel Sigman [00:10:36] How did you and your family personally prepare for when, when you started realizing, hey, this is looking like it's gonna, it's gonna cause some wrinkles. What did you guys do?

Vance Crowe [00:10:47] You know, I, I probably shouldn't admit this because my wife's at home all the time. 'cause she's a personal trainer. So many of her clients are older and she goes to their homes. So she's, she's getting a, you know, feeling a little boxed in after being here for two or three weeks and not going anywhere. And she's literally stayed at home. I think she ordered her food from the supermarket and went and picked it up and they put it in her car. So she hasn't done much on her side. For me, it really hasn't changed because I go in the office a lot and many of the places that I personally had to go, there may not be anybody there. If I go to a job site there, if nobody's on that job site, I haven't seen a lot of that. So for me, it, it really hasn't changed much on what I've had to do. But my daily life didn't always, wasn't always meeting with a lot of people. The biggest difference that I've seen personally from a work standpoint is just this morning I had a meeting and we were doing, like we are now, we're sitting on a computer and looking at each other. The other odd thing is I had a doctor's appointment and that same thing. I didn't go in, I talked to him, you know, I was staring at him through the computer. That's probably the biggest change that I've seen personally is a lot of the meetings now or online. And, and so,

Joel Sigman [00:12:10] And how comfortable are you with that? Is that something you like, is this, is this experience awkward for you or how does it feel?

Vance Crowe [00:12:16] I don't mind doing it. I, my wife always tells me, I, I, I probably shouldn't talk as much as I do. So I, the talking side of being here is easy. I do like the, I guess may, maybe it's my age, but I like the personal contact. I like being able to sit across from somebody and talk to 'em. I think it's, it's just so much different. I didn't grow up in the age when I was a kid where I was texting everybody and there was Facebook and Twitter and all these things out there that you, you, your way of communicating was always through a phone or a computer. Mine was always communicating through. If you were on the phone, you were actually talking to somebody and you would meet them in person. So it, it works out. But yeah, I'd much rather meet somebody in person. 'cause I think to me, you get to know people better. And

Joel Sigman [00:13:08] I think, I think that like this next generation of kids, the ones that are growing up right now,

Vance Crowe [00:13:13] They

Joel Sigman [00:13:14] Will not even remember how I, I think that the amount that they will meet with people on video will go up so dramatically as a result of this. That there wont be a memory of when this was rare. Like it used to be a big burden for me. It used to be if somebody wanted to video chat, I was like, Ugh, why then I can't keep working on whatever I'm working on while I'm talking to you on the phone. Right. And now, because we're kind of sequestered in our house, it's, it feels incredibly gratifying to be able to see your face and to be able to like watch how you're reacting, see a smile, you know, that kind of stuff. But our, our children will have no concept that of how unusual this was for us.

Vance Crowe [00:13:56] Right. Yeah. I thought it was kinda odd you talking about, you know, everybody's talking about social distancing and I thought, well most of the kids today and then you kinda saw the spring break thing. But like most of the kids today are so socially distanced already, you know, because I remember my own son, he, you know, it is kind of funny, I should shouldn't say it this way, right? He's upstairs and I'm downstairs. It's, you get lazy, I'll, I'll just text him to come down for dinner. Right. See, you know, the old days he ran up and knocked on their door and got 'em to come outta their room. So it seems like they're already there. So yeah,

Joel Sigman [00:14:30] I, I mean I definitely think that, I think that that for if, if this had happened when we were kids, 'cause we're about the same age. If this had happened when we were kids, we would've gone crazy. 'cause I'd have had 10 channels on TV and I'd have had one phone line that I would've had to have shared with six brothers and sisters and parents. And now these kids, they already have social communities built up. They have networks built up completely online. So maybe they're not seeing their girlfriend, you know, after the basketball game, but they're definitely able to interact and communicate probably with I or bandwidth than you and I can,

Vance Crowe [00:15:07] I would say. Yeah. Yeah. This is, you kinda mentioned when I came on, it came up pretty quick. Well, I don't use this stuff every day, even though I have used it. So when I click on something, I just hope it works. You know, or if I've got a question, I I, you know, I'm gonna ask my son how to use it. And you're, you're right, this, this is gonna have an impact on how people communicate through meetings for a long time. And I think everything at a point, if you don't see anything like this for a long time, people tend to get over it. But that may be, might be one of those things there that doesn't change because it was already growing and now you put it in a position where it's all people have is communication through, I mean I, I'm sure Skype and a lot of these companies are really loving this now because everybody's having to do it. You don't have a choice. If you want to talk to your grandma, you better hope she can figure this out because you're probably not going to your house because you just, you want to take that and be precautious that, that, that, that you're not gonna get her sick. You don't know if you are and you hope you're not

Joel Sigman [00:16:07] And there's no more putting it off. You can't be like, well I'll figure that system out later. Oh, like now it's like I I have to figure it out. Right. So I, two more questions that I wanted to ask. First is, so talk through maintenance for somebody. I mean it actually could be a genuine problem that there aren't enough people willing to let HVAC people come into their houses. So talk us through some general maintenance. What should people be looking for on their heating and air conditioning? When do they know it's a problem they can solve versus a problem they should call you about? Right. Or a guy like you?

Vance Crowe [00:16:41] Yeah, I, I would say, and they definitely wanna call us, right

Joel Sigman [00:16:45] Nancy? I did. You're my guy, you're my guy. I would call you for anything

Vance Crowe [00:16:50] We got, we got good people, they're nice, nice guys. That's one thing. You gotta have a good team first. A few things people wanna look at and probably the most common is things just get dirty. So if you've gone, especially if you have a minimal, like a one inch filter. If you have a four or five inch filter, a media filter that's gonna easily last you six months or typically gonna last you six months, maybe longer. Look at those dates the last time you had something done. If you don't feel you want anybody in your, in your house to do any of these things, then check those filters. If they're really dirty then you know, the worst case scenario is if you don't want to go out and get one call, because most of us have delivery guys, we'll drop it off on your front porch. But you know, that way you can put your filter in. There's an a directional arrow. The other thing you have interior equipment because it's geothermal. So you don't have condenser coils to clean, but a lot of people do. So if you have condenser coils to clean, you may wanna go out and just look at 'em. Are they really dirty? What is

Joel Sigman [00:17:49] A dirty D condenser coil look like?

Vance Crowe [00:17:53] Probably the most common you'll see is when you get like cottonwood and all that on it and you'll, you'll see a nice layer of gray dirt over the fins. So when the fins get where you can't see separation anymore, even though it's small, then you're probably getting pretty dirty. You may wanna clean it out and you can take a hose and and wash that out. The best thing to do is call and say, Hey, I don't wanna have anybody in my house. Here's a picture of my filter. Here's a picture of my coil. You know, does this look overly dirty? Should I do something? And then we could probably walk you through doing it. If, you know, if it's somebody that's older, you know, and you see the condenser coil's dirty, the other thing you could do is say, Hey, I want to have my stuff maintenance, but I don't want anybody in the house. Okay, well what's your filter? Like, we'll drop you the filter, you can put it in. Then we'll go ahead and clean everything outside and we can go ahead and start the unit up outside, jump it and make sure it runs and then you'll be good to go. You don't even have to, you know, touch us. You know what I mean?

Joel Sigman [00:18:51] Amazing, amazing man. So

Vance Crowe [00:18:52] You, you could do some of that in the summer. You're in a different case, but you don't get dirty condenser coils inside. You don't have a condenser coil. It's all buried. So the somebody has geothermal, the big thing's just gonna be checking the filters.

Joel Sigman [00:19:04] That's Yeah, I checked mine and you even emailed me to check it. So, or text me. So I, I man by the way, I love my geothermal system, right? Like, and I, I was hooked on it 'cause my brother does the drilling for him. But I, when, when all this storm passes, if people have the time to do it, I highly recommend it. My house was more comfortable during this winter than it's ever been before. And I'm looking forward to summer time. Great,

Vance Crowe [00:19:29] Great. Yeah. And I usually don't hear that unless we're in a situation like this. You only hear about the problems. So usually if I don't hear from somebody, it's a good thing. Yeah. Like it's the opposite. And

Joel Sigman [00:19:39] So the final question that I have for you, and I've been asking everybody this is, what do you think the world looks like in two weeks? Today is April 2nd, it's Thursday, April 2nd, 2020. What does the world look like in two weeks from today?

Vance Crowe [00:19:53] That is a really good question. When I stand back and look at what we do, 'cause that's the easiest perspective, something you do yourself. I think that we're in our industry, we're still gonna have work out there. It's not gonna be as much because you're still gonna have problems if the numbers of the virus are gonna go up. That's just a fact. They, the more you can test, the more you're gonna find people that have it. I don't think there's any way around that. It's just people staying calm and within themselves and not letting the media, you know, I would rather see 'em put a positive spin on things because I think in the world, if you can keep people positive and in the right direction, things get better faster. I, I think that, I get it, it's a virus. You can't say that, but people that tend to think more positively and have positive focus also don't get sick as much. So if you can stay more positive, keep the stress off, typically you're, at least from what I've heard or read, your immune system stays stronger. Your chances of getting really sick or having problems are a lot less. So, you know, if they can keep people positive, I think, you know, then things will start to turn around if they keep pushing it and keep telling you how many people are gonna die. And I, and they keep pushing a lot of negative things out there, you know, i i, it, it concerns me because there's just so many people outta work right now and, and get it. The government's giving you some money out there to help people, but that also creates other problems six months down the line.

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] And, and that's, that's my my biggest concern right now is making sure that, and, and I think of everybody out there, but making sure that the guys that I have in our family at our company can keep working to pay their bills to put food on their table. And that's really important. So that's a stressful side to me. If we can get through the next two weeks with a pretty positive outlook, I think things will turn around and they'll come out just fine. I think if it stays really negative and they start to push this back further than the end of April, I'm really worried that the economy's really gonna fall apart because you can only get so much money from the government

Joel Sigman [00:22:09] And you know that coming from you, people wouldn't know this, but your, your company has guys, like the guy that showed up at my house has been working for you guys for 20 years. And I talked with all your workers when they came in, I was kind of a pain in the ass I think 'cause I'd stopped by to just chat with them. But

Vance Crowe [00:22:24] They,

Joel Sigman [00:22:25] They were guys that were positive and they were thinking about how to solve problems. And frankly, it doesn't matter what happens at this point now, the only way things go forward is if men and women get up and do work and they solve problems. And so I just from the bottom of my heart man, thank you for, for keeping your guys going, for doing the work that that needs to be done. 'cause it is important. So if people wanted to get ahold of you 'cause they have HVAC issues or how do they get ahold of you?

Vance Crowe [00:22:55] Well, I, I would say that first thing I would have somebody do is call our office and that is 3 1 4 4 3 6 2600 Missouri in over in Illinois. It's, we have multiple numbers in Illinois, but the main number is 6 1 8 2 3 4 4 3, 4 3. That's the first way to do it. They're all also

Joel Sigman [00:23:16] In your website, you have a website, right?

Vance Crowe [00:23:18] We have, we have our website. You can go to the website. There's also a service email. Sometimes it's somebody needs service, service at Sigma. I believe it's service@sigmahvcr.com. I always have to look that up 'cause I just click the s on my

Joel Sigman [00:23:37] I'll, I'll post a link of it in the show notes. And I, and I will personally say that I would have you guys over to my house and trust you to do anything. You guys really helped us out with our system. And when, when I was looking for a guy that's working on houses, going into people's houses, you were the first guy I thought of. So,

Vance Crowe [00:23:56] Well I, I appreciate that. And so our guys, it's important to us that we have a good team. And so if the end result, if you have a good team, that the end result's gonna be good. And that's, that's what's important. And you want people happy, but you wanna solve problems and you wanna make sure that you can get 'em back online. And that's why I tell people now, don't you know if anything call and ask a question. If you have a problem, at least call and ask the question. Even if you're concerned about people coming to your house. 'cause then maybe we can figure something out without, not that we don't wanna be there 'cause that's our livelihood we do, but we can figure something out and help you get through it until a point where somebody can get there or you feel more comfortable with somebody getting in your house and and being there. So, amen.

Joel Sigman [00:24:36] Maybe

Vance Crowe [00:24:36] It'll come a test here that we can, you know, it'd be nice to have a test advance that we could give to our guys to test for, whether now or anytime in the future. Hey, we've all been tested on Monday. Nobody has the virus. We just want to confirm that too, because then clientele would feel that would be nice,

Joel Sigman [00:24:55] That would be come.

Vance Crowe [00:24:56] Something like that. I think you're also gonna see a change in two weeks if we have testing that can get us answers really quickly and it's a concern for people, I think we can then get rid of those concerns and then things will go much smoother.

Joel Sigman [00:25:08] Amen. All right, Joel, thank you so much for taking the time and keep up, keep up the good work, man. Yeah. All right. Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:25:14] Thank

Joel Sigman [00:25:15] You. Appreciate

Vance Crowe [00:25:15] It Vance. See

Joel Sigman [00:25:16] You have a

Vance Crowe [00:25:16] Good.