Your 5 to 9 Builds Dreams, Your 9 to 5 Pays Bills | Building a seven-figure business in three years with Anthony Woo

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i'm bill gilliland the owner of action coach business growth partners and we're super pumped today i've got anthony wu from climatization acg so welcome to the podcast can't wait to hear your story tell us a little bit about your business and you well first off thank you for having me here bill um i'm anthony from I'm Clemente Sasson, ACG, out in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. And yeah, I'm a technician turned owner, not knowing how to run a business, not knowing the business, but just knowing the trade and the craft. And we went from me and my partner to we are a 10-man team now, almost four trucks, three and a half trucks on the road.

1:19Yeah, that's where we are now. we're going we're finished well wrapping up year four um of our business and we're just you know doing what we got to do to you know put food on the table yeah that's cool i got a couple of questions uh as always but uh we'll get to the business part but i got a couple of just curiosity questions right here the first one is what's acg that's an interesting one i get that asked pretty frequently and acg is actually ac guys and the reason why we had to use acg and climatization is because here in quebec there's a language laws that i can i couldn't use ac ac guys because it's just english being quebec we need to have a french name so climatization is actually air conditioning in french so it's climatization acg having the acronyms nobody can tell it's just whatever acg stands for it could be french it could be english doesn't matter but that's how we decided to go with climatization acg which is really we're the ac guys that's what we were known as in our community before i started the business so i'm like you know what that'd be cool but then i want to go register our company names like nope it's too english uh interesting interesting that's a that's that's great that's an interesting i got another question how do you have three and a half trucks yeah so we're running full three full-time three trucks but one of my techs is actually a part-time a more part-time so he's a musician so i gave him the freedom to hey he's a great tech but he also loves his music i'm like hey you give me whatever time you want so whatever time he's not on i use his truck and then whatever time he is on i just hop into my personal vehicle my suv throw in my diagnostic tools and my sales stuff and i go at it so that that is my half truck I'm in the process of trying to acquire a fourth, but the wait list was something ridiculous.

3:10So we're working on a fourth. Yeah, it's pretty interesting right now to get that. So let me ask you some questions about the business. So you've been at it four years. You've gotten a 10 team. That's awesome. Congratulations. If you had to start from square one, what would you do differently?

3:30oh that i would say focusing on the processes in the back end i almost got to a point where we were growing too fast and not having the right stability um but at 10 is where we i really put an emphasis on slowing down and we're not putting we're not getting any more people we're not getting more trucks until I really solidify all my foundations. Having new guys come in and realizing like, oh, there's another new way of doing something is working on standardizing all our processes, making sure that we have a standard for everybody that walks into our company. Yeah, that's a good one at some point.

4:13Yeah, it's an interesting one because as you grow, you'll have systems and then the systems eventually will break because they won't keep up with the growth and then you have to redo the systems it doesn't and that just keeps happening by the way you know yeah there's so i get it yeah yeah with me and my partner like we were two guys we started together we've worked together for over 20 years we just know the way we work with each other but then when we bring in a helper it's like oh wait this helper doesn't work like when we work together and then realizing it's like oh just because we are used to doing something our way, it's not the same way everybody else thinks.

4:47And we have to translate our thoughts and our standards to everybody within our team. Yeah. Yeah. Got to establish the culture in a way of what you want to do. So that seems like a big learning. What other big learnings have you had as an owner or an employer since you started up? As an owner is really the management aspect. I'm just, I was very good at doing my job, very good at troubleshooting, doing the repairs. But as the team grew, I felt like that balance was really shifting where I'm spending a lot more time working on the business and not in the business. And it was very difficult to let go at the beginning and putting that trust into somebody else.

5:39But to grow, you have to be uncomfortable. We have to be able to let go and trust others to help you build. So I just recently hired a service manager. My first trust barrier was having an admin, having my CSR and having her handle my messaging because I was very particular in the way I answer my clients and helping them over the phone first and this and that. I built relationship with clients. So I was very reluctant on letting that go. But if I spend 10, 15 minutes before every service call and after every service call, it adds up to a lot of time that I'm not generating income. So that is where I've learned it's, you know, any repetitive task, we have to be ready to let go.

6:29So, yeah, I find often in working with our clients and hundreds of clients over the years that the trust thing is probably the hardest, particularly for founders. Yeah, they got it. They know how to do it. They want to do it. Yeah, it's an interesting one. It's sometimes easier if you don't know how to – I mean, look, I had a client. This is an interesting story. I had a client who had a restoration, mold remediation kind of company, disaster restoration company. And he had been a banker. He didn't know how to do the stuff. I mean, he didn't know how to do any of the actual technological, you know, the technology.

7:14He didn't know how to do mold remediation. He just was a manager. And in some ways, that was easier. In some ways, it caused him a lot of problems because, you know, he didn't know what was what with his team. But it's an interesting thing. So what are some common misconceptions about running a business? We make a lot of money.

7:43That's something that I had to be very clear with, even as I was building the team, is what the metrics look like. just because you're paid this amount and you see what we invoice, you don't see the cost of running a business. Even from a homeowner perspective, it's like, hey, why are you that much more expensive than the next guy? Well, our team has a lot more specialized training. I invest a lot of money into the team. So it's not like I'm getting the cheapest guys on the market to just do minimal work i invest my into my team to send them out to training across the u.s with uh the elites we we deal with the national comfort institute you know we do all the certification trainings i i really want to empower my team so it's those are costs that outsiders don't see or say hey why do you charge this much for a part when amazon sells this part for X amount.

8:40Well, I had to send someone to go pick it up. I had to go store it in my truck so that I can have it ready for my next client. You can order from Amazon, but call me back when you get it. That's another service call. So what would you rather do? So there's a lot of misconception of how cost works. Everybody's okay with going to a restaurant paying 80 bucks for a steak when you can get one for 20 at the store. It's almost the same thing in the trades where you're paying for the service and the experience of whoever you select as a contractor. So I think that's where there's a lot of misconception.

9:14Just because we charge a lot doesn't mean we're making a lot. If the metrics are not right, it doesn't mean we're profitable. The cash flow may not be there either. I think that's where there's – I feel like there's a very big misconception. Oh, yeah.

9:32Yeah, it's amazing to me that, say, a homeowner who knows that they have to pay their mortgage, they know they have to pay electric bill, they know they have to pay their water bill, they know they have to pay – they got their regular insurance, insurances, their car payments, whatever it is. Somehow they can't make that translation to a business. It's the same stuff. Yeah, it's really interesting. So what do you attribute your growth to? For me, it's the hunt for knowledge. For me, it was never – I never enjoyed being plateaued, and I always knew there was more to learn. And the more I learn, it's the more people I meet.

10:16The more people I meet, the more ideas I get. The more ideas I get, the better I can grow. and that was really the cycle of my training is it started with the hunt for knowledge um so just a little story to share it was when i started my business i was trying to get into indoor air quality and of course i googled looked around named john ellis popped up he's like mr ieq of north america trying to get him here in quebec was also red tape because he doesn't speak French so our distributor who's normally supposed to hire these um speakers or trainers because he's part of the Daikin group so they were supposed to do it but then my my rep was like oh he doesn't speak French there's so he can't we cannot hire him all right what if we go to Ontario where it's English so can you speak to a colleague and may set up a course there nope because they don't have enough people that are interested in in learning this stuff okay so and end up finding him he's doing a panel at this high performance summit and i went there not knowing who he was didn't know what the summit was about but i just knew he was talking there just to you know at least go introduce myself and from there it was just like everything just changed being at that summit meeting other high performance contractor meeting like-minded people attending their trainings and it was just non-stop from there wow that's awesome yeah i think it all does start with mentors and knowledge, you know, the right mentors, the right knowledge.

11:50So how do you balance like personal life and the demands of running the business? That is an interesting one. That's something I do preach, but it wasn't overnight. It was never something that was, oh, I started my business and that was it. I still, it was, I started building my reputation years before I started my own business. Through all my previous employers, I have always treated their company as if it was my own and represented myself as who I am. And what ended up happening is, I mean, over the years, none of my employers ever provided me a cell phone. So whenever I called my clients, I was using the same cell phone I had for number I had for 20 years.

12:35And of course, these customers remembered my name, remembered who I am, and they went back and use the number and not use the company's number i do identify that hey i no longer work for so and so um i work for so and so now is that okay yeah as long as you are the one coming so just put a note when you call our csr call our company book an appointment and just request to have anthony and over four employers you know 15 16 years after 16 years later it was like you know what everybody's calling me and asking for me why why should i not do this for myself and that's where it just kind of clicked that i decided to do for my soul it's i spent those years building the reputation so it helped me when i was ready to do my own business i didn't have to work as hard on the reputation side of it um in terms of the rest of the balance when it's family time it is family time uh when there's events graduations birthday parties there's those are what i call non-negotiables it's there's no money not enough money in the world that will take me away from those times if there's times that there's no scheduled plans or whatever they work on the business after i put the kids to bed i got time to myself i work on the business um during the day it's it's field work i'm in the business outside of my nine to five i'm on the business so that's and then anything in between is you know if there's something that happens with the family or just events for sure those are just some non-negotiables for me and that's how we that's how i find my balance yeah do you always see yourself being on the tools yes and no and that was where i was at about year three after we crossed the seven figure barrier was like all right i gotta start stepping away from tools and continue filling the funnel as we're bringing new guys, it becomes more of my responsibility to make sure the funnels are full or the pipeline is full to ensure that all the guys have work.

14:41As much as I love the tools, I also realize that I have to kind of migrate myself on working more on the sales and the pipeline and making sure that the guys have work so that I can ensure that they can put food on their tables for their families. Yeah, that makes sense. So what qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive and productive work environment? We've kind of talked about this a little bit already, but yeah. So that is another interesting one. Everybody from my team did not come from an HVAC background. So everybody was grown into it and And I am the only one on my team with formal training in HVAC.

15:33My partner started when he was 16. I was his helper, but he just grew up with, worked through experience. I have a musician that transitioned into HVAC, which he's still a musician, but he loves HVAC. And he's a great tech. And he learned a lot through just working with me and my partner at our first employers. when he heard that we are doing our own thing he he has to jump ship and come on board the other my our first helper he was a landscaper who i also trained at one of my previous employers and he liked the way we treated him and with respect and the way we trained him to learn the trade so he came on board as well my admin was a nanny um that needed some extra income and started doing part-time admin work for us.

16:22My social media manager was a tattoo artist. One of my other techs was a precious metal trader. Another one was a professional gamer. So yeah, when I foster culture, it's one of the few things I did in my early conversation with each one of my guys and girls was I always aim for a slightly lower than market salary for our industry and see where they value what they value do they value the dollar or do they value our company for everybody that came i did not go hunting for my my team members they just came to me so when we had the conversation they they already knew what our company represented they knew they see what people are talking about in our community and that is they want to work for someone that supports a community and has that connection with the community type thing so like our company values is integrity community and empowerment and that's where when we have that initial talk is what do they value everybody wants to be empowered so when we started it was i showed them my organizational tree of our business show them where my name is x next to each of the positions that are available within our industry, our company.

17:45And I tell them any, anywhere you see my name, it's a spot that's available. You tell me where you want to be. Tell me how much you want to make. I'll tell you what responsibilities you need and what you need to learn to get to that position. The only name, only position that I don't want to give up is CEO. That's the only one that I want to keep my name next to, but everything else, any management, any other specialty departments, whatever it is, you tell me what you want. I'll send you to do the right training and get that for you. And that's how we've been going. And it's been working well so far.

18:22But we're a young company. I'm only four years in. So long term, I don't know what it's going to turn out to be. But so far, it looks like the team does appreciate that. We take them out to do a training. When we do trainings, we pay for everything we flights hotel accommodations all our food all our team activities um the only thing is souvenirs and alcohol that's that's on their dime yeah you got to watch out on that alcohol uh the depending on who you got on your team or yeah we do it with we take our we take our clients on a pretty significant trip we went to curacao this year and yeah i can't get the uh Alcohol bill for some of those guys.

19:04You can't do it. I got some quick fire questions. The BEPIC is an acronym. So just a couple of sentences, thoughts on the letters in the acronym. So the B stands for bring the energy. What are your thoughts on bringing energy? Absolutely. I'm a very big believer in energy. And if you provide the positive energy to your team, they'll see it and they'll recognize it. You bring the negative energy, your team is going to have negative energy. So that's why empowerment is a big deal for me. That's a core value. Whether I'm empowering our homeowners or I'm empowering my own team, that is part of the energy of progression and keeping positive.

19:48Someone messes up, hey, everybody makes mistakes. Every month we have our team meeting. What did we learn? It's not what mistakes you make. It's what did we learn this month? Where can we improve? Everyone share a story. What was your learnings this month? That is how we turn a negative into a positive. And that is for sure energy that I want to foster. Yeah, really, the team really is a mirror, isn't it? If you get in a funk, they're in a funk. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It is so clear. All right, E stands for education. I think we've probably covered this one, but just a couple of more sentences on education.

20:25Education is priority for me. It's training and empowerment. That falls under empowerment once again. It's non-stop. I tell my guys, what you put into this trade is what you're going to get out of it. I can teach you what I can in your nine to five, but your five to nine is where you're going to build your dreams. If you want to take that extra step, you want to get to that next position. Everybody has to put in extra time to get to where you want to be. your nine to five is not enough to build your dreams it's there it's enough to pay your bills but if you want to grow you have to go beyond that nine to five and maximizing your time like when i started was i call it university on wheels i was listening to podcasts between every job i was listening to training videos and stuff you know nine before i had kids i was like always watching YouTube videos on the guys that I learned from.

21:16And that's how I was able to build up that knowledge and to get to where I am. And that's what everybody has to do. It's not just giving, it wasn't because I was smart in it. I was not an academic. So it's really putting that grind to get to what you want is really what education is gonna help you with. Yeah, I call it car college. Yeah. I heard Zig Ziglar call it automobile university. But I think car college is what I tend to call it. I love it. Yeah, having something on. The truth is I wish somebody had told me that when I was super young. For a long time in my career, I took the education that came my way, and I did well, but I wasn't doing a lot of outside self, personal development, improvement things.

22:07And when I got on that track is when things changed. And so I love what you're doing for your empowering your team and talking about the five to nine and that sort of thing. Because I think people, a lot of people don't know. All right. So P stands for planning. Give me your quick thoughts on planning. Planning. That's a route to organization. Having a good plan. Even before I hired anybody, I already have a plan on where do I want them to start. and then from there we we talk and we see once we get into the like i said none of my guys came from hvac background and hvac is such a diverse industry in its own there's so many different ways you can go so once we start i'd like to see what these guys and girls are interested in so i can help them plan their career and i don't want them feeling like being just a number and just doing roll-up pipes roll-up pipes change filter change filters where do you want to be let's plan let's see or these are the skills you're going to need and help them look at all right hey these are maybe some of the people you should start following because i've gone from you know from refrigeration to ventilation air conditioning to personal development to business development i have seen a wide range of mentors and people to follow so i could definitely give guidance if there's a specific direction they want to go so i think that's where for me planning is very important to help everybody see a goal and a career path and have clarity on a goal when you don't have clarity on a goal you do not have a clear direction of where you're going to go so for me planning is very important to to have i love it so the i is inspiration give us your thoughts on inspirations inspiration it's something that i have to I want it to be contagious to my team.

24:04So everything I do, I want that to inspire my team. That's why I lead by example. I don't just say, hey, you guys go do this training and tell me what you learned. I go and do the training. I show them what I learned. I bring back the tools. This is why we go to the trade show. This is why we do the training. I don't just sit in my ivory tower and crack a whip and say, hey, do this. get this do that it's i am there to lead so that is where i i'm hoping that that's where the team sees me as being inspirational i deal with a lot with my community i want to inspire my local entrepreneurs and contractors to also do what we do and help the community build the community that we're in like i'm running a school bag drive right now to fill up school bags for underprivileged kids in our community so it's our sixth year doing it and every year i'm doing it's starting to get bigger because now other contractors are seeing it and like oh this guy's getting a lot of attention you know like everyone's sharing this post well that's what i want to hopefully inspire it's not necessarily inspiring my own team but inspire other contractors community leaders just to be a pillar and inspire others to do good for others it's what um where i want to be with inspiration yeah and i love that all right the cn epic is commitment

25:30commitment like anything else if you don't commit fully you cannot get to your goals if you want to reach your goal you got to commit you got to have a plan you got to commit to it and it's the discipline and consistency that it's gonna bring it i've seen guys come and go guys that will start the first week oh yeah i read this chapter this this this week two i didn't hear anything else you know it's like i told my i told my guys early on 20 minutes a day it's all you need watch one episode listen to one podcast a day and that will get you ahead of 80 percent of the trade unbelievable it's yeah read one chapter yeah just absolutely yeah read for 20 minutes just do anything i'm not asking i'm not asking you to take a whole course overnight it's 20 minutes all you need you go to the bathroom you could read 20 minutes listen to a podcast between a job is 20 minutes.

26:23You cannot tell me you don't have 20 minutes to spare in a day. So that will also help me see character. Usually when I, you know, weekly, I check on my teammate, what did you guys learn this week? People were telling, guys telling me what they've been looking into. If, you know, if they want to go into IAQ, they were telling me about IAQ stuff. Someone more troubleshooting. They're learning diagrams. It's cool. Anybody that needs extra additional help from me, I tell them, I'm always open. Just tell me when. We'll meet at the shop. We'll do a little extra training. Whether it's customer facing, whether it's technical, whatever it is, I'm here to help you grow.

26:57Yeah, that's awesome. And that's my commitment to my team. Yeah, I love that. So you had a number of years in the trades before you went into business for yourself. But what do you wish that you had known or that somebody had told you before you went into business?

27:23that's a good one. I am not 100 % sure what I wish I knew. It was almost too easy when I started. I don't think I struggled as much as a typical startup because I spent years watching and learning through my previous employers, watch what their mistakes were, how fast they grew, what came of it, and what I needed before I recognized these mistakes before I made them. So I've learned from a long time. I always knew after like four or five years in the industry, I already knew I wanted to do my own thing, but I just didn't know how or had the funds to do it or I had that fear of how do I get myself out there.

28:11And over the years of just working in it, it just naturally came. game so i don't really know what i wish i knew but i just wish i knew there was a lot more babysitting you know a lot more management when it comes to comes to i didn't realize how much management there is um having teams uh around you so that was uh where i should plan a bit better and start moving my original tier up one to or maybe look at management before getting more teams So right now I got more teams on the road, but no management. So I am the management. So that's why I just this year hired a service manager to manage the service side.

28:56So now that's where I think my biggest thing is. But besides that, I must say, like I said earlier, I've spent a lot of time representing myself and always carried myself and respected the company. I always treat my employers as if it was my own company. It was never my company, but that's the way I treat it. And I think having that mentality and to represent yourself is what really helped me get to where I am. When I started up, when I announced that, hey, I'm no longer working for anybody. ACG is who we are now. I never had a day of not having any work. I never had a moment of fear that, oh, my God, how am I going to pay my next bill?

29:37It just came. Like right now, my trucks are not labeled. I don't have a website. I don't have any marketing dollars. The only marketing I do is my Facebook reels. It's my social media. That's my marketing. But I don't do ads. I don't do anything like that. But yet all my team, my service, maintenance, and install team, we're booked out three weeks out. We've been booked out like this since April. And we're looking towards the end of September now type thing. Nice. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one that it never is. What I would say you just said is it's never the same as you thought it was going to be.

30:21It was close. And another lesson there is that who's easier to learn from your own mistakes or somebody else's? And it seems like you really learned a lot from a lot of other people's mistakes before you got into it. So well done on that. you know we expect the first five years to be a struggle but you know after year one we're like why don't we do this sooner after year three we hit our five-year goal uh crossing that seven figure barrier or so we're like we're just now i'm at a point where like wow we're unstoppable we just but we have to focus and get back to the roots i i am seeing cracks already as we are growing there's definitely um you know there's going to be talks with the team there's going to me mistakes are being made, how we handle it, how we're going to grow from what we learn from is that's, those are the kinds of things that I'm learning to deal with now.

31:16Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the key. It's not, the key is not that there's going to be adversity because there is the key is how do you deal with it? So, um, well done. So what would you advice would you give to other business owners who are looking to grow? work with integrity integrity and honesty is no joke the only way to survive the test of time i've always done work with integrity and honesty and that is what built my reputation if there's something that i wasn't sure i was not afraid to tell the client hey you know what this is out of my reach um so and so will probably be better suited off for for this for this situation um In terms of business, it may not be sustainable, but we have walked away from jobs just because it's out of our expertise.

32:10Don't be afraid. You cannot be greedy and, oh, it's a job. I'm going to take it. Recognize your limits. Yes, you could push your limits, but put a buffer in there. You know, there's going to be circumstances where don't let greed dictate where you're going to go because that greed, immediate gratification could be your biggest downfall. Yeah, I love that. Look at the bigger picture. It's always looking ahead. You got to look at the long term. The short term, it's easy to do it. But one of my friends and mentors, Paul Dunn, said that success is what you say no to. oh that's deep yeah or the other way he says it success is who you say no to because sometimes it's a who not a what but he put he the way he described it to me put the letters up on a board it doesn't spell anything right and just success is who you say no to and he's like that's just remember this and i'm like i got it i got it so um hey and this has been unbelievable there is a lot of nuggets in here what is the best way for someone to find you or get in touch with you our biggest place is facebook that's where i grew my business and that's where uh is facebook you look up climatization acg we also have an instagram um website is in development so that will be there shortly but we're not quite ready with that um but yeah facebook and instagram is the ways to see you know follow along see what we're doing for our community and how we are the values we believe in if anybody have any questions about what i've done i'm here to share i love that we we went from nothing i went from honestly working on my garage and my suv to having three and a half trucks on the road and crossing that seven figure barrier in year three um with no marketing yeah other than facebook yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah it's good it was all about targeting community and helping the community all my stuff is for homeowner facing It's not for the technician.

34:16I'm not here to train a technician. I'm here to empower homeowners. And that is where a lot of people saw value. Hey, this guy's giving so much to the community. I want to support that guy. That is the guy you want to be. You want to be the guy that your community's backing. And that is why any opportunity I have, I want to support the community because they recognize that if they invest in me or they choose me as a contractor, I am supporting the community. I'm not that contractor that's just packing my wallet and showing up in a Lamborghini. That's not the contractor I want to be. So you got to be humble.

34:52You got to be loyal to your community, respect your community. And also growing a business on Facebook, the double-edged sword is as good of work you do, yes, that will spread like fire. As worse of work you do, that will also spread like fire. And that is what always kept me in check. I always told clients before going on Facebook and bashing, call me, give me the opportunity to do right. But everybody makes mistakes. But how you handle your mistakes is what's going to define who you are. And that's the only reason why we've been able to maintain a five-star review across our Google page for four straight years.