How A Virginia HVAC Startup Scales With Fair Prices with Jesse Bergstrom, Just Chillin

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:58Hi, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business World Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Jesse Bergstrom with Just Chilling. Jesse, how are you doing today? We're happy and excited to have you here. Not too bad. The weather's cleared up where I'm at here in Virginia, and I'm just hanging out outside on my back porch. Nice, nice. Now we're really excited to have you here. So let's go ahead and jump right into things. So for those of you who may not know it yet, you know, who are you?

1:32Who is Jesse Bergstrom and what is Just Chilling? Yeah, so my name is Jesse Bergstrom. I'm 30 years old. I started just, my wife and I, we started Just Chilling back in 2023. And it's a heating and cooling company. We do everything from boilers to furnaces, heat pumps, mini splits. We even do water heaters and stuff like that. And we just wanted to start our own business and see how that went. But more out of necessity just because we wanted a better life for ourselves and our kids. and wanted that freedom as well to do some of the things that we want to do in life. Now you mentioned who you as a person.

2:23You did mention a wife and kids there. Yeah. So my wife and I, we've been married for almost 11 years now. We got married when we were real young. We've got two daughters. My oldest is civil. She's eight. And my youngest is Allegra. She's five. we've got we've got some pets and yeah my wife's name i don't know if i've said that already but my wife's name is lauren and yeah she's my partner and everything partner in business partner in life and and couldn't do it without her so yeah yeah and side note she's the one who came up with the name just chilling right yeah she is yeah it's it it's kind of deceiving because it might imply that we only do cooling but we do heating and cooling it's more of a relaxed like reggae like hey let's chill out our uh our slogan is chill out we got this we got this okay okay i love it i love it so jesse you know let's get into that so real talk what's something about running your business that people think is amazing but you know you actually think it's actually complete bs i don't know that's kind of hard because i would have to say freedom you know freedom or the whole thing about owning a business is everything has its pros and cons so freedom is great like being able to schedule what you want to do but it also requires a lot of responsibility and self-discipline right you can't just wake up whenever you want to you've got to you've got to be self-disciplined enough to be self-driven and push yourself to make adult decisions every moment of the day.

4:10And that's, you know, it's kind of catch 22 there. Now, Jesse, what would you say was the exact moment where you realized, you know, this business can either really work or it could completely blow up in my face and I lose everything? Probably about two weeks ago. Oh, wow. Yeah, we, so we started the business in 2023 while I was working for, you know, just one of the HVAC companies in the area. And we've grown it since then and we've doubled every year since. But it took, it took up until last month for me to be out on my own 100 % for the business. and you know that that jump is kind of like that what's going to happen moment like is this going to fail is this going to succeed and it's it's pretty terrifying but you got to make that jump eventually yeah so what would you say is the most stressful moment you've had as a business owner you know that's like a how am i going to make it through this or how am i going to get through this type of moment?

5:20Information. You know, I, so you have the opportunity with what I do to get HVAC certification through a local college. There's information on deplore and stuff, but how to, to know where to go to get your certifications, what, what licensing you need, how to structure your business, how to do accounting, you know, and all that information of the how-to and what do I need to do next just seems like it's not available and it's not readily available. So it's very frustrating. It's very stressful to figure that part out, right? To figure out, hey, what steps do I need to take to be successful and to also make sure that I am doing everything the right way, the legal way.

6:16You know, that way I'm not cutting corners. That way my customers can have a quality product and can actually have a basis to build trust on. Now, Jesse, have you ever thought about quitting and going back to a nine to five? And if so, what stopped you? Yeah, you know, I've thought about that before. Like, hey, you know, is this more stress than what it's worth? especially you know sometimes people don't pay you and that's that's a struggle you know when it's like you know when you feel defeated like that it's like well you know you've got a you know you you got to remember that you're doing something that's bigger than yourself right if you can create a business especially that employs other people or that and that or that provides a service that benefits other people's lives, you're now contributing and you're now involved in something that's bigger than yourself.

7:17And that's the reason to keep going is it's not about the money. It's not necessarily about the money. It's about what can I do have a greater impact in others around me? And it's like, OK, so that's that's my goal. That's what I want to keep doing. Now, what would you say was a mistake you've made early on that cost you either? serious time money or reputation just not doing it sooner honestly not you know i've started so i started going to college i went to a local community college to get my two-year certification for hvac and that that allows you to test for you know journeyman's masters and stuff like that and i just started that when i was 26 if i would have started this like right out of high school it would have been great you know i i would have been so much farther along than what i already am now and i think you know and actually that's something that we're doing here is i'm trying to get with or i'm working on getting with boys and girls club here in roanoke to try and you know help kids that are interested in blue collar work to show them the ropes to show them what the work is about, but also how to get there, what certifications they need to get, you know, put them in front of, you know, maybe their community college and stuff like that.

8:44So I think having that opportunity to get out there earlier would have been so much more beneficial to me. Yeah. And I think that's awesome what you're doing there, getting out and, you know, talking to the kids about blue collar work. You know, I talk to entrepreneurs who work with their hands a lot and they're telling me, you know, There's less and less people wanting to do this when they grow up. You know what I mean? Have you seen that as well? Yeah. So I will say here in this area, there is a big gap. And I think there's still a push for that. Go to college and be a doctor. Go to college and be a business.

9:25Go into business or marketing or whatever. And those are great. Those are absolutely needed. And I see the value in those. But the gap here, at least, is ever growing between supply and demand, which we can touch on later. It's crazy. You know, I would love to do everything I can to get people more interested because, honestly, that's going to be job security. Yeah, and honestly, I don't think AI is ever going to get to the point. well it might at least it's going to take a long while before they can ai program a robot to do what to do what we do yeah yeah but you guys do yeah i think blue collar phil i think you guys are fine because i mean man to program a robot to fix ac i don't know about that we're probably a long ways away from that but but to program an ai to take a phone call you know like you know an office job or a customer service job yeah that's pretty easily they're pretty close to that actually already yeah absolutely yeah and they've got like emotions and mannerisms and stuff that's like oh it kind of feels like i'm talking to a real person that's interesting yeah yeah yeah it's interesting but uh yeah and on this next question is hypothetical but let's say if someone shadowed you for a day or full day or even a full week let's say what would surprise them the most about how you operate just generally?

10:47Probably efficiency. I feel like a natural talent of mine is that I'm able to look at a situation and figure out how to do it as fast as possible. Not at the cost of quality, but just like, hey, these are the steps we need to take and this is how we can do it. So I'm pretty efficient and that makes up for some of my other deficiencies as far as being organized and keeping track of time and stuff like that. But I would say if they were to shadow me, that would be something that they would notice. Okay, and that was actually the next question. So you say your biggest efficiency is your organization?

11:35So my biggest efficiency is just, yeah, I guess, maybe just being able to predict the next step of what's going to be needed, I guess, is how I accomplish that. So if, you know, while I'm doing this task, let's say I'm doing task A, I'm thinking about task B, C, and D that are down the line. And, okay, what can I do right now that's going to set me up for success for those next tasks? and i guess that is organization come to think of it but yeah that's yeah okay okay now you know let's let's say if you know let's talk numbers without getting too specific here but since you have started your business you know what year how long have you actually been in business yeah so we started the llc in about this 2023 it was 2023 or no we started the llc in 2024 but we i started so the way the business started was is i just was not making enough money to make ends meet 40 hours a week for for a company and so i started reaching out and i had friends and family that needed help with stuff and had a really great mentor that helped me along the way and started it you know started helping people in 2023 and then we started the in 2024 and since then you know 2024 we we almost tripled from 2024 from year 2024 to year 2025 and I can't remember where we're at right now but we're doing pretty solid for this time of year this year as well so okay so you know like I like I was saying so when did you come to a point since you've been in business for almost three years now but when did you come to a point where it started to scale and you started to become profitable would you say approximately when I mean, I've been profitable as far as business profit or altogether with my personal life included.

13:46Yeah, business profit. Right. Business profit since day one. Since day one. Okay, that's good. Absolutely. Not every business can say that. No, I already had purchased a lot of the tools that I needed from working from my nine to five. And I was doing side work with my mentor as well. And that allowed me to, by the time I went out on my own, I pretty much had all my stuff paid for. Now, along the way, you know, last year I bought a company vehicle and stuff like that. But all in all, we were still profitable even after those big purchases. Nice, nice. Now, what actually would you say moves the needle most in your business right now?

14:32Is it leads? Is it word of mouth, conversions, pricing, or team performance? so pricing and team performance from what you listed there pricing and team performance are a big one so I big thing with HVAC companies in the area of some a lot of the bigger companies they do have more overhead so I'll give them that but they charge an astronomical amount of money and And part of that I do understand is supply and demand. There's so much demand and not enough supply in this area that you can get away with charging quite a bit more than what you, I feel like, morally should be charging. And that's where I want our company to be a difference.

15:26right we we want to price things to where everyone can afford them and yet still make a enough profit to and here's the second part of my company's dream is to pay my employees not the standard rate but rather a livable wage an actual livable wage right you know years ago it It was, you know, decades ago, minimum wage was more than enough. And now it doesn't even touch your food budget. So it's like we can't, you know, we can't do that to the workers. At least I feel like we can't do that to the workers in our field. So that provides a great team performance. You know, when I hire my guys to come help me with bigger jobs, we get stuff done that takes other companies sometimes two, three days to get done.

16:23We'll get it done in one day. And the reason why is because we've boosted that morale with not just the pay, but the ideology that, hey, I want to take care of you. But honestly, what moves the needle for me is something that you didn't list was relationship. When you start actually connecting with the customer on a personal basis, this whole it's business, not personal just doesn't work, I feel like. You have to be personal. You have to be personal with your customer. You have to be personal with your employees. You have to be personal with your referrals and your people referring you as well as your vendors.

17:08When I go into a place that I buy stuff, I don't always call. Sometimes I drive in and go to meet people and talk to them and say, hey, how's your kids or how's that baseball game and stuff like that? because connection and relationship and business is probably the most driving thing that can make you successful. Totally get it. Now, I know you said you don't have any direct employees. I'm sure you want to change that eventually, but let's just say hypothetically you were going to hire somebody to work on your team, like a tech or something, right? What traits would you look for more than what's on their resume.

17:51Anybody can say anything on a resume, right? Oh, I have this much experience. Great, great. That's all great and good, right? But, you know, getting to know them and it's like, okay, well, what do I feel about you that makes you worth me bringing you on other than what's on their piece of paper? I would say curiosity and then drive slash work ethic. So, I don't care. I really don't care how much you know. I'll figure that out, you know, as we work together. It's more, are you curious to learn? And are you curious to learn me and how I do business, right? And how I do the work. Are you curious to, even if you've worked in it for 10 years, are you still teachable?

18:43Are you still wanting to learn and move forward? And then, of course, drive. If you come to work every day and you just have no incentive, you have no drive to actually work and do the job, then it's not that, hey, I'm going to fire you, but rather, hey, let's address this and figure out why. So those two things, if you have those two things, you'll be successful. and then you know like the opposite of that if you're dishonest and egotistical then yeah no that that's not going to work out and and i can't work with that right yeah no i agree agree all right so we're going to head to what's called the quickfire round so how this works is i'm going to give you one word and then i just want you to give me the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear each word in regards to running your business and then just give me a couple of sentences two or three sentences to kind of expand upon why you chose that that makes sense sounds good yeah yeah okay perfect first word of success i'd say connection okay why did you choose that why did you choose that word oh sorry i didn't hear you connection like connection relationship i would not be successful at all without the community that I've built here.

20:04If I don't know something, I know someone who knows what I'm trying to learn. Right? So success would not be possible without those connections in my life, those relationships in my life to find out how to navigate all this. And let's go to the opposite end of that spectrum, failure. I'd say ego. I've even fired a subcontractor before over that. If you are showboating and you are not teachable and you're just like, I know it all, especially when you keep making mistakes, it ruins relationship with customers. It ruins relationship with your coworkers. It ruins relationship with the vendors. I've seen vendors not sell to companies before because of ego and i think it's just it's a poison man when it causes failure every time i see it

21:10burnout burnout i would say disconnect it would be disconnection even if you're doing something that you love if you are too busy doing the day-to-day stuff you're feeling burnout it's because you're not connected to the original reason why you started. You are disconnected from your why, right? You're so consumed with the what and the how and what's next that you've lost your why am I doing this, that bigger picture, and you get burned out right away. I've seen this so many times. Scaling. I would say scaling is work. It's hard work, but I think it's quality. If you are scaling, but your scaling is a balloon filled with bad quality and it's just hot air, it's going to collapse.

22:22True scaling has an aspect of quality work to it, quality customer service, quality interactions. And that is kind of the backbone of that. Hiring. Investment. Hiring somebody is an investment, just plain and simple. I mean, you're investing in them and you are hoping. and I think a lot of programs for hiring for all these big corporations is trying to get the people that they hire to invest back into that company and so hiring I think investment you know are you investing yourself you're investing yourself as a business owner to hire somebody but are they investing back into you true competition competition I look at my competition more like co-workers yeah there's there's people out there that are my competition but again and i think supply and demand has you know has a little bit to do with this so i'll give that credit right because there's so much out there that we have to try and work together to accomplish so it feels like co-workers but i want to look at that we're a co-worker more as like hey we're a team and you might be another company that's competing against me but there's stuff that we can learn from each other that isn't gonna hurt our businesses at all it's gonna benefit them actually and that's that's how i look at it you know that's how i look at competition is someone to learn from the last word is freedom responsibility self-discipline kind of like I talked earlier like if you are an adult that just cannot make adult adult decisions you're not gonna have that freedom that you want you I mean that's that stands true outside of the business world you know if you aren't self-disciplined and you keep showing up to work late you're not going to have a job or you don't make those responsible decisions in your life, you could end up in trouble with law and you'll lose your freedom.

24:46So freedom to me is just tied with responsibility. Okay, perfect. Perfect. All right. So yeah, I appreciate you getting through that quickfire round here. So, you know, where do you think your industry is going? It's a growing gap. I kind of mentioned that earlier. It's a growing gap of supply and demand. And it's, I think also, you know, heating and cooling is more of a need than most people think. You know, as far as like residential, I could understand someone saying, well, I don't necessarily need heating and cooling. It's more comfort. And that is a really good sales perspective, right? To sell someone comfort.

25:28But a lot of times, you know, I've seen elderly people, for instance, They can't endure high temperature swings. Or if you look more like the commercial side of things, or if you're looking at, you know, you mentioned AI earlier, there's a lot of server buildings going, being made and stuff. All of that requires cooling and heating. And some of them, like labs and hospitals and different research corporations, they absolutely need HVAC to stay compliant with federal law. There's some medication that gets made that has to be within and kept within a certain degree or within a certain two degree difference.

26:19and that's needed, you know? So I think as far as it's going, it's going to grow and it's going to keep growing and it's going to turn more from comfort to a necessity. Gotcha. Now, and I want you to be, you know, as candid as you can on an answer to this next question, but let's say, you know, a small business owner is listening to the podcast episode with you today, Jesse, and let's say they're feeling stuck or overwhelmed and they're just not having a great 2026, not profitable at all this year. What's a piece of advice you'd want them to hear from you today? Take a second and take a deep breath and, you know, reconnect with your why, reconnect with why you're doing it.

27:05Be okay with reaching out to people for help. remember you know definitely invest in a community find people that will lift you up and get you there but just take a second have gratitude for where you're at and appreciation for where you're at even though that's hard and i get that but reconnect with your why and lean on people. Don't be afraid to delegate. Absolutely don't be afraid to delegate stuff. You know, there's stuff that I've got friends that are good with social media and website development. I have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, it took me like two attempts to figure out how to download the app to do this podcast today.

27:55Right. It's just I'm not good with technology like that. But I have friends who are and I go out with them. My wife and I will go out with them we'll hang out and it's not a monetary investment it's a time investment and they do it they'll do it for me if i ask and you got to be okay with that you got to be okay with letting go a little bit of stuff that maybe you need help with okay okay all right and what's next for uh you know what's what's next for just chilling what should people be excited about coming up in the near future? Yeah, well, I think I'd be excited to grow. I'm really wanting to have an impact in my community as far as one, like I said, having affordable quality prices.

28:42We don't have a lot of that. And then also, like, if I could change somebody's life by paying them a little more, I want to do that. I want to, I wish we were big enough to hire everybody. but it's that's new and exciting for me is definitely the growth just growing and seeing where this goes sorry my hvac just started i might have to pause for a second i'm actually gonna turn it off real quick that's funny there we go good thing i'm an hvac Where was I? So yeah, so growth, I'm excited to grow. But also I want to introduce more air quality products, like maybe some air sanitization through ozone, better filtration systems, stuff like that, that can help deodorize, but also kill viruses and bacteria from, you know, and also control allergens within your house and just let you live a healthier life.

29:58And then also commercial heating and cooling. I'd love to get more into commercial buildings and get into that realm as well. Okay, great, great. And finally, what's the best way for someone to connect with you and learn more about what you all do? Yeah, call me, text me, email me. I don't know if you I can hand that out if you want yeah so my numbers I have a Michigan number I'm not changing that soon to a more local number but it's 231-881-7358 and my email is justchillinh hvac523 at gmail.com and look forward to people reaching out yeah yeah perfect perfect and do you have any social media yeah we're on facebook instagram i think we're on threads got a website just chilling va.com my my wife does a lot of that you know when the website says that she's coo that's because she she helps she helps me out a lot.

31:10So now does, do you have a TikTok? I don't know. Honestly, I would have to ask. That's a good question. I wasn't prepared for. Yeah. No, TikTok is like the big one these days, especially with the younger, younger folks. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Perfect, man. Hey, Jesse, this was a fantastic thing. Thank you for coming on, man. This was a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Yeah. Thank you. this was really awesome I'd love to do something like this again yeah thank you very much

31:46Jesse Bergstrom:hey thanks for listening to the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get the more cool things we can offer to you. Second, to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach. It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly.

32:34Jesse Bergstrom:Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads it first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.