May 8, 2024 • 17 mins
Anuj Khanna is a Partner of CapitalView Investment Partners. Mr. Khanna is responsible for deal origination, transaction execution, portfolio management, fundraising, and administration of the firm’s operations. He has over 12 years of investing and other relevant experience and has sat on the board of directors of eight portfolio companies.
Prior to co-founding CapitalView Investment Partners in 2017, Mr. Khanna was a Principal with American Capital Special Situations, having joined in 2007 as a Senior Associate. Mr. Khanna was involved with and served on the board of directors of the following American Capital portfolio companies: Service Experts, NECCO Realty Investments, Halex Corporation, Unwired Technology, and Unique Fabricating, among others.
Prior to joining American Capital, Mr. Khanna was an Associate in the Restructuring Group at Evercore Partners and an Investment Banking Analyst at UBS Los Angeles.
Mr. Khanna received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a J.D. from Northwestern University’s School of Law, and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Prior to co-founding CapitalView Investment Partners in 2017, Mr. Khanna was a Principal with American Capital Special Situations, having joined in 2007 as a Senior Associate. Mr. Khanna was involved with and served on the board of directors of the following American Capital portfolio companies: Service Experts, NECCO Realty Investments, Halex Corporation, Unwired Technology, and Unique Fabricating, among others.
Prior to joining American Capital, Mr. Khanna was an Associate in the Restructuring Group at Evercore Partners and an Investment Banking Analyst at UBS Los Angeles.
Mr. Khanna received an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a J.D. from Northwestern University’s School of Law, and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
A news Can is the CEO ofService First Financial, now known as Comfort
Connect. His story of building thecompany is one of perseverance and good old
fashioned hard work. You're a CEOin news Canon of Comfort Connect. On
how his journey started. So,I was born and raised in the great
state of Delaware, spent most ofmy life there up through high school,
(00:24):
and then went to college at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
and then went to graduate school atNorthwestern University in Chicago. So we're going
to talk a lot about your companyand over the last four years of Service
First Financial. But I think togive context to our listeners, what was
I like to find out? Youknow, what you did out of school,
what you were interested in, andthen you get that epiphany of an
(00:45):
idea about starting your company. Andit's really hard to start a company,
whether it's a small or large businessout there for our current entrepreneurs and CEOs
that are listening and also the futureones. So what was the plan right
out of school? Would you do? Yeah? So I spent most of
my current Wall Street as an investmentbanker and then later as a private equity
investor. I actually have a legalbackground to have spent most of my career
(01:06):
investing in and lending money to distressbusinesses with the idea of helping them to
improve the businesses and eventually, youknow, exit those You know what brought
me to the home services industry wasin twenty thirteen, I led an investment
where we bought the second largest homeservices contracting platform in the country from one
of the large HVAC original equipment manufacturers. I spent about four years knee deep
(01:27):
in that business helping to turn itaround, successfully exited that business to a
publicly traded company in Canada, andin Canada, the market for home comfort's
very different than the United State.It's a very large percentage of population does
not own their systems. They actuallyrent them. When I say their systems,
I'm referring to HVAC and plumbing systems. And you know, given the
(01:48):
change in consumer purchasing behavior here inthe United States towards subscription and subscription like
services, I said, you know, I think there's a big opportunity to
help the industry, the home comfortindustry start selling what consumers really want,
which is comfort as opposed to large, expensive systems that they don't really care
about all right, So I loveto hear stories like this. It's that
idea and you've kind of started thatabout why you came up with the company.
(02:12):
But there's a lot that goes behindthat. Once again, for our
future leaders and entrepreneurs and CEOs.I've got a great idea, here's what
I'm going to try and execute it. Let's go. And there's a lot
behind that. So tell us aboutthe origin of kind of coming up with
the idea, starting it. Whatwas execution light It's in those first few
weeks and months. Yeah, it'san interesting story. So you know,
(02:32):
as I mentioned, my experience inthe home comfort space really paved the way
from my understanding of where there weresome gaps in the current business models.
And I started, and I'll saythis lightly, with a PowerPoint presentation in
a spreadsheet. I built a financialmodel PowerPoint presentation laying out the business,
and I went to New York andI talked to two investors. Now,
(02:53):
again, my background is from thatworld, so I think that made it
a little bit easier. I knewI was onto something when both of the
first two investors I talked to said, we'll give you the money to go
build this business with scratch. Wespent six months negotiating and then in November
twenty nineteen, we closed on ourfirst call it incubation capital from a firm
(03:13):
in New York, and I rememberI hired, you know, three people
that I had worked with in thepast. We sat in a conference room
here in Bethesda, Maryland, andwe looked at each other and said,
we've raised the money. Looks likewe have to go build the business now.
And we literally started building from scratch. Someone took the IT side of
it. I handled the legal,all the legal work. We hired a
head sales trainer who built the programout and over a course of six months,
(03:36):
we built the infrastructure, both froma technology and legal perspective. And
in the middle of COVID April twentytwenty, we originated our first premiere program,
long term worry free home comfort programcontract with a consumer in Oklahoma.
Wow, that's a great story.I love that. And wry drink COVID
too. In the middle of COVID, not that we had planned that when
we raised the model course. Shortlyafter, yeah, three months after we
(03:59):
read that, you know, theworld fell a part. Yeah, and
a lot of we pushed on anda lot of pivoting after that for a
lot of businesses out there, eventhough a lot of people worked remotely anyways
to start with. So I dowant to talk a lot about the company,
And I'm always curious about names ofcompanies because I know that's fun.
Sometimes you want to say who youare to your client out there and kind
of get people's attention. Can youtell us the origin story of the name
of the company. Yeah, youknow, it's interesting. You know this
(04:21):
the industry, the home comfort industry. And when I again, when I
say home comfort, IM refer mostlyh VAC, plumbing, and electrical.
The industry has been selling you know, boxes and tanks to homeowners for decades.
Right, my system's broken, myhouse is hot. Well, here's
a box, right, this isgoing to help keep you cool. And
then the genesis of service first wasconsumers don't care about the boxes. They
(04:45):
care about the service. So let'sgive them service first, okay. And
then the financial part of it,part of it was built in there because
you know, you know, inthe end, we are a financing company
that finances a homeowner's you know,acquisition of systems. But then we bundle
it with a full array of servicesto make that experience world class. I
(05:09):
like that. That's very well thoughtout and very cool. We're going to
talk about those in a second,but I did want to ask you about
simply the mission statement. What isthat from the company? Yeah? So,
the mission for the company is totransform the way both contractors and consumers
purchase home comfort in the United Statesfrom a product based sale to a subscription
like service. All right, anad, let's do this. I want to
(05:31):
give everybody kind of a thirty thousandfoot view of your company. If they've
been listening and Service First Financials thefirst time they've heard this. If you
were to give them an overall viewof what you do and who you work
with, what would that be?Yeah? Sure so. Service fir Us
is a financial, technology, innovationand training company that's transforming the way homeowners
(05:53):
stay comfortable in their homes. Throughour network of or national network of home
services contractors, we provide a comprehensive, worry free home comfort solution for homeowners
in place of buying a new system. Our Premiere program includes HVAC tank and
(06:15):
techless water heaters, water filtration andpurification and standby generators, and for a
low monthly payment. Homeowners can getaccess in use to a high efficiency home
comfort system with no cash out ofpocket and none of the risks and burdens
of product ownership. If the systemever breaks, it's taking care of free
of charge of that homeowner. Ourauthorized contractors come out once or twice a
(06:36):
year to perform annual maintenance to ensurethose systems are operating, get peak efficiency,
keep utility bills down, and thehomeowners pay a low monthly payment and
they know exactly what to expect everysingle time of contractors in their home.
All Right, you've been around fora while and I always like to talk
to our leaders about sustainability and thengrowth because everybody's got a different opinion,
depends on if you're a small business, medium or large, and what you
(06:58):
do for a living in who youwork with. With all that said,
tell me about starting the business,being sustainable, then growing and are you
within the DMV and are you workingdomestically tell us the story. Yes,
absolutely so. Our business today isa national footprint. We're operating in about
thirty three states across the country.We did start the business here in the
Washington, DC area, so wehave a little bit of a concentration around
(07:21):
DC Maryland in Virginia, but itis a national footprint. And you know,
we've built this business to be abusiness that's going to be here not
only tomorrow, but five years fromnow and ten years from now, you
know, serving our customers and servingour contractors in a way that no other
business in this industry is doing today. You know, from a sustainability perspective,
(07:41):
I'm going to shift it a littlebit to the environmental sustainability. We
have a big focus on, youknow, helping to drive decarbonization in the
home comfort space. Okay, aboutforty percent of our portfolio today is an
electrified heat pumps, and as manypeople may know, there's a really big
push today towards electrifying home comfort andthe homes by removing fossil fuel burning applying
(08:03):
system within the homes. So manya big portion of our portfolio, about
forty percent, is really promoting thatand we're seeking to grow that segment of
our business going forward as well.Outstanding and aj I did want to ask
you a little bit about differentiating yourself, and I don't want to assume that
anybody out there does exactly what youdo. But I'm sure there is competition.
So as you're pitching yourself, you'retrying to sell the other clients,
(08:26):
you're starting to grow that business.How do you differentiate yourself from the other
competition out there? Yeah, youknow, I think it's an interesting it's
an interesting question. We played along game, okay, And what I
mean by that is, you know, this program is not for every consumer.
It's not for every contractor that wantsto come onto the program. We
really seek to understand our customers andto figure out is now right time?
(08:50):
Is this program right for you?But most importantly, we differentiate ourselves by
the support we provide. I mentionedearlier that we're a financial, technology,
innovation and training company. Training isa huge portion of what we do.
Okay. This industry, both froma consumer perspective and a contractor perspective,
does not necessarily understand how a servicebased model for home comfort works at the
(09:11):
kitchen table, and so we do. When we onboard a new contractor,
we train them on site. Wefly all over the country and train their
their personnel on how do you presentthis to a homeowner and decide whether this
is right for that homeowner or not? And how do you talk through the
value proposition of this versus other waysof acquiring home comfort? Well, that's
that's why I say training. Yeah, training is probably the biggest one.
(09:35):
That's absolutely fascinating. And I guessthat leads me to my next question.
And once again, I don't wantto make any assumptions, but when it
comes to small, medium, andlarge businesses that you do this training work
with them, is it all upfor grabs or do you like to center
around a certain type of business?Yeah, So we typically are authorized contracting
network across the country. Is typicallyrepresented by the biggest and best contractors in
(09:58):
each geographic one market. Okay,And the reason for that is is there's
really a few things. One webelieve this type of program requires a level
of sophistication and business understanding that typicallynot always, but typically your mid to
larger size you know, home servicescontractors have and your smaller ones tend not
(10:18):
to have. Okay, Okay,that's that's the first thing. But we
do work all across the country,and we work in even big markets in
small markets, but we just tendto partner with in whatever market it is
a market leader within that market.Okay, got it? Well, let's
do this. I always like toget a great story because you know,
one of the things that entrepreneurs andCEOs and founders like to share is something
(10:41):
special that's happened. So I wantto put a pin in that just for
a second. But let's have agood story just a few minutes here,
maybe with a client to somebody trained, there's something special where you say,
you know, that's why we getup in the morning. We did pretty
good here. But before that,your industry, what kind of challenges are
you working with right now? Yeah, you know, it's interesting the home
coomfort industry over the last you know, called two to three years since covid,
(11:03):
has experienced outsized inflation on equipment costs, okay, And so homeowners that
maybe haven't replaced an HVAC system ora water heater in the last five,
ten, fifteen, twenty years areshocked when they see the price of a
new home comfort system okay. Ina lot of ways. Simply put,
(11:26):
home comfort has surpassed and broken throughan affordability threshold for most Americans. And
so that's where one of the biggestchallenges and opportunities is for our business,
is that we're making it easier forhomeowners to buy the systems that they want,
the high efficiency, sustainable systems thatthey want, as opposed to what
(11:48):
they think or they may believe theycan afford. Okay, not only that,
but then we're supporting that installation ofthat system with all of the services
that you need throughout the useful lifeof that system to ensure that it's operating
a peak efficiency to keep utility billsdown. Makes sense. I'm glad we
talked about that. All right,let's do a little story time here.
I'm sure there's been a handful ofgreat stories out there where he said,
(12:09):
you know what, team, weknocked that one on the park for the
client. Maybe it was a trainingsession or something special happening with that client.
Do you have a nice story forus that you'd like to share?
Yeah? Absolutely, you know,it's an interesting, interesting question. One
of the things I take a lotof pride in is that we do things
differently than most other similar companies inour industry. Okay, I'll give you
(12:31):
example. First, we go onsite to train all of our dealers.
Most people don't do that in thisindustry today. Okay, if you're a
vendor, you send them a youknow, a zoom link, You do
some training over the phone, maybeyou go on site once a quarter.
We're out there a lot helping ourdealers be successful with this program. We
hear numerous times from our dealers thatthe level of preparation, the presentation,
(12:54):
and the content and quality of thecontent that was delivered is better than any
presentation that they've ever received from avendor in their twenty thirty forty years in
the industry. And if that wasonly once we had heard that, I
wouldn't put a lot of stock intoit. We hear that from very large,
very sophisticated contractors on a regular basis, month after month, because we
(13:18):
focus on that aspect of our business. You know, my takeaway from that
is a couple of things. Outstandingcustomer service, but also real time in
person training where you're also different engineeringyourself from the other companies out there,
and that's kind of mean a lotto the people you're working with and just
the overall chatter about your company.That you go that extra mile to get
(13:41):
people trained up properly in person,that's got to be extraordinary and very smart
than you're part too. Yeah,you know, it's a double edged sword
right, because we do that,we have to be selective on who we
work with, sure, because it'sjust impossible for us to be everywhere at
every time and the other and ifI may expenses too right, exactly,
Yeah, we have to be selectivebecause you know, we can't we can't
(14:03):
spend that type of money and time, you know, serving smaller opportunities.
But the other side of that iswhen we do work with somebody, the
level of support and training and customerservice, as you mentioned, is really
unbatched outstanding. Well, let's dothis. Let's wrap up our conversation with
some final thoughts about you and aji'reabout the company, and once again,
if somebody is being introduced to ServiceFirst Financial for the very first time,
(14:26):
what takeaway would you like them togo away with today? Yeah, you
know, from a from a consumerperspective. You know, if a consumer
is in the market or facing adifficult situation with their home comfort, their
HVAC, plumbing, or electrical andthey're looking for a convenient, worry free
way to replace their systems, I'dencourage them to go to www. Dot
(14:48):
worryfreehome Comfort dot com and explore watchthe explainer video about our program and see
if it's a good fit. Ifit is, fill out the form and
we'll have one of our authorized contractorsreach out, you know, to come
out and give a quote for whateverthey're needs may be. And for contractors,
you know, I think it reallycomes down to if you're an innovative
contractor seeking to differentiate your business andyour local market, seeking to be forward
(15:09):
thinking and serve your customers at adifferentiated level relative to the competition. Again
www dot Worry freehome Comfort dot com. Click on the contractor link learn a
little bit about what our program cando for you as a business and for
you, you know, while you'reserving your customers outstanding. And one last
thing in OUCH before we let yougo, I always like to ask our
(15:30):
leaders about not only leadership with startinga company. Now, we as you
can imagine, have a lot ofcurrent CEOs and entrepreneurs that listen to this
series, but also a lot offuture ones that love to get into whatever
they're going to do for a living. And I know that your perspective is
your business, how you came upwith the idea, how you executed with
your team, and how you're sustainingit and growing it. With that said,
any advice or young people out therethat are starting whatever kind of business
(15:54):
they want to do, just aboutmoving forward in today's climate. Yeah,
you know my view as a founderand a CEO that is not a title
of leadership or management. I'd encourageanyone that's seeking to start something or lead
an organization to be willing to doevery job within that organization at some point
(16:15):
during their tenure. Okay, there'snot a single job within this organization that
I haven't done myself so far.Okay, from the very beginning till now.
I'm willing to do whatever it takes. And we hire the types of
individuals that are willing to do whateverit takes to be successful. We always
tell people that what we're trying todo is change an industry. Changing an
(16:37):
industry is hard. You will runinto walls. Okay. We want people
who are willing to go over it, through it, around it, under
it, whatever it takes to getpast the obstacle and move on to the
next challenge. And so I'd encouragepeople that are listening to this, if
you're a CEO or a leader,do every job within the organization for some
period of time so that you understandwhat it takes to be success. I'm
(17:00):
so happy you talked about that andyou and I are on the same page.
I've been in my industry with TVradio sports for a long time,
and I extinctively made sure that Idid everything behind the scenes before I got
that big job on the air thatI wanted to do. My daughter is
also in cinema, television, artsand school right now, and I said,
I know you want to be adirector or maybe a DP, but
do the lighting, do the blocking, do the audio, do all the
(17:22):
things around. So when you're adirector someday you'll know what everybody else is
doing. It'll be an easier lifefor you, no doubt. Yeah.
Hey, listen, this has beena lot of fun, and I should
talk to you. You're obviously verypassionate about your business in a short amount
of time. The growth is incredible. Nice to see a guy locally doing
very well for what you do.And we can't appreciate enough for your very
(17:44):
busy schedule to join us on CEOsof Shanel continued success. Yeah, thank
you so much, appreciate it.
A news Can is the CEO ofService First Financial, now known as Comfort
Connect. His story of building thecompany is one of perseverance and good old
fashioned hard work. You're a CEOin news Canon of Comfort Connect. On
how his journey started. So,I was born and raised in the great
state of Delaware, spent most ofmy life there up through high school,
(00:24):
and then went to college at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
and then went to graduate school atNorthwestern University in Chicago. So we're going
to talk a lot about your companyand over the last four years of Service
First Financial. But I think togive context to our listeners, what was
I like to find out? Youknow, what you did out of school,
what you were interested in, andthen you get that epiphany of an
(00:45):
idea about starting your company. Andit's really hard to start a company,
whether it's a small or large businessout there for our current entrepreneurs and CEOs
that are listening and also the futureones. So what was the plan right
out of school? Would you do? Yeah? So I spent most of
my current Wall Street as an investmentbanker and then later as a private equity
investor. I actually have a legalbackground to have spent most of my career
(01:06):
investing in and lending money to distressbusinesses with the idea of helping them to
improve the businesses and eventually, youknow, exit those You know what brought
me to the home services industry wasin twenty thirteen, I led an investment
where we bought the second largest homeservices contracting platform in the country from one
of the large HVAC original equipment manufacturers. I spent about four years knee deep
(01:27):
in that business helping to turn itaround, successfully exited that business to a
publicly traded company in Canada, andin Canada, the market for home comfort's
very different than the United State.It's a very large percentage of population does
not own their systems. They actuallyrent them. When I say their systems,
I'm referring to HVAC and plumbing systems. And you know, given the
(01:48):
change in consumer purchasing behavior here inthe United States towards subscription and subscription like
services, I said, you know, I think there's a big opportunity to
help the industry, the home comfortindustry start selling what consumers really want,
which is comfort as opposed to large, expensive systems that they don't really care
about all right, So I loveto hear stories like this. It's that
idea and you've kind of started thatabout why you came up with the company.
(02:12):
But there's a lot that goes behindthat. Once again, for our
future leaders and entrepreneurs and CEOs.I've got a great idea, here's what
I'm going to try and execute it. Let's go. And there's a lot
behind that. So tell us aboutthe origin of kind of coming up with
the idea, starting it. Whatwas execution light It's in those first few
weeks and months. Yeah, it'san interesting story. So you know,
(02:32):
as I mentioned, my experience inthe home comfort space really paved the way
from my understanding of where there weresome gaps in the current business models.
And I started, and I'll saythis lightly, with a PowerPoint presentation in
a spreadsheet. I built a financialmodel PowerPoint presentation laying out the business,
and I went to New York andI talked to two investors. Now,
(02:53):
again, my background is from thatworld, so I think that made it
a little bit easier. I knewI was onto something when both of the
first two investors I talked to said, we'll give you the money to go
build this business with scratch. Wespent six months negotiating and then in November
twenty nineteen, we closed on ourfirst call it incubation capital from a firm
(03:13):
in New York, and I rememberI hired, you know, three people
that I had worked with in thepast. We sat in a conference room
here in Bethesda, Maryland, andwe looked at each other and said,
we've raised the money. Looks likewe have to go build the business now.
And we literally started building from scratch. Someone took the IT side of
it. I handled the legal,all the legal work. We hired a
head sales trainer who built the programout and over a course of six months,
(03:36):
we built the infrastructure, both froma technology and legal perspective. And
in the middle of COVID April twentytwenty, we originated our first premiere program,
long term worry free home comfort programcontract with a consumer in Oklahoma.
Wow, that's a great story.I love that. And wry drink COVID
too. In the middle of COVID, not that we had planned that when
we raised the model course. Shortlyafter, yeah, three months after we
(03:59):
read that, you know, theworld fell a part. Yeah, and
a lot of we pushed on anda lot of pivoting after that for a
lot of businesses out there, eventhough a lot of people worked remotely anyways
to start with. So I dowant to talk a lot about the company,
And I'm always curious about names ofcompanies because I know that's fun.
Sometimes you want to say who youare to your client out there and kind
of get people's attention. Can youtell us the origin story of the name
of the company. Yeah, youknow, it's interesting. You know this
(04:21):
the industry, the home comfort industry. And when I again, when I
say home comfort, IM refer mostlyh VAC, plumbing, and electrical.
The industry has been selling you know, boxes and tanks to homeowners for decades.
Right, my system's broken, myhouse is hot. Well, here's
a box, right, this isgoing to help keep you cool. And
then the genesis of service first wasconsumers don't care about the boxes. They
(04:45):
care about the service. So let'sgive them service first, okay. And
then the financial part of it,part of it was built in there because
you know, you know, inthe end, we are a financing company
that finances a homeowner's you know,acquisition of systems. But then we bundle
it with a full array of servicesto make that experience world class. I
(05:09):
like that. That's very well thoughtout and very cool. We're going to
talk about those in a second,but I did want to ask you about
simply the mission statement. What isthat from the company? Yeah? So,
the mission for the company is totransform the way both contractors and consumers
purchase home comfort in the United Statesfrom a product based sale to a subscription
like service. All right, anad, let's do this. I want to
(05:31):
give everybody kind of a thirty thousandfoot view of your company. If they've
been listening and Service First Financials thefirst time they've heard this. If you
were to give them an overall viewof what you do and who you work
with, what would that be?Yeah? Sure so. Service fir Us
is a financial, technology, innovationand training company that's transforming the way homeowners
(05:53):
stay comfortable in their homes. Throughour network of or national network of home
services contractors, we provide a comprehensive, worry free home comfort solution for homeowners
in place of buying a new system. Our Premiere program includes HVAC tank and
(06:15):
techless water heaters, water filtration andpurification and standby generators, and for a
low monthly payment. Homeowners can getaccess in use to a high efficiency home
comfort system with no cash out ofpocket and none of the risks and burdens
of product ownership. If the systemever breaks, it's taking care of free
of charge of that homeowner. Ourauthorized contractors come out once or twice a
(06:36):
year to perform annual maintenance to ensurethose systems are operating, get peak efficiency,
keep utility bills down, and thehomeowners pay a low monthly payment and
they know exactly what to expect everysingle time of contractors in their home.
All Right, you've been around fora while and I always like to talk
to our leaders about sustainability and thengrowth because everybody's got a different opinion,
depends on if you're a small business, medium or large, and what you
(06:58):
do for a living in who youwork with. With all that said,
tell me about starting the business,being sustainable, then growing and are you
within the DMV and are you workingdomestically tell us the story. Yes,
absolutely so. Our business today isa national footprint. We're operating in about
thirty three states across the country.We did start the business here in the
Washington, DC area, so wehave a little bit of a concentration around
(07:21):
DC Maryland in Virginia, but itis a national footprint. And you know,
we've built this business to be abusiness that's going to be here not
only tomorrow, but five years fromnow and ten years from now, you
know, serving our customers and servingour contractors in a way that no other
business in this industry is doing today. You know, from a sustainability perspective,
(07:41):
I'm going to shift it a littlebit to the environmental sustainability. We
have a big focus on, youknow, helping to drive decarbonization in the
home comfort space. Okay, aboutforty percent of our portfolio today is an
electrified heat pumps, and as manypeople may know, there's a really big
push today towards electrifying home comfort andthe homes by removing fossil fuel burning applying
(08:03):
system within the homes. So manya big portion of our portfolio, about
forty percent, is really promoting thatand we're seeking to grow that segment of
our business going forward as well.Outstanding and aj I did want to ask
you a little bit about differentiating yourself, and I don't want to assume that
anybody out there does exactly what youdo. But I'm sure there is competition.
So as you're pitching yourself, you'retrying to sell the other clients,
(08:26):
you're starting to grow that business.How do you differentiate yourself from the other
competition out there? Yeah, youknow, I think it's an interesting it's
an interesting question. We played along game, okay, And what I
mean by that is, you know, this program is not for every consumer.
It's not for every contractor that wantsto come onto the program. We
really seek to understand our customers andto figure out is now right time?
(08:50):
Is this program right for you?But most importantly, we differentiate ourselves by
the support we provide. I mentionedearlier that we're a financial, technology,
innovation and training company. Training isa huge portion of what we do.
Okay. This industry, both froma consumer perspective and a contractor perspective,
does not necessarily understand how a servicebased model for home comfort works at the
(09:11):
kitchen table, and so we do. When we onboard a new contractor,
we train them on site. Wefly all over the country and train their
their personnel on how do you presentthis to a homeowner and decide whether this
is right for that homeowner or not? And how do you talk through the
value proposition of this versus other waysof acquiring home comfort? Well, that's
that's why I say training. Yeah, training is probably the biggest one.
(09:35):
That's absolutely fascinating. And I guessthat leads me to my next question.
And once again, I don't wantto make any assumptions, but when it
comes to small, medium, andlarge businesses that you do this training work
with them, is it all upfor grabs or do you like to center
around a certain type of business?Yeah, So we typically are authorized contracting
network across the country. Is typicallyrepresented by the biggest and best contractors in
(09:58):
each geographic one market. Okay,And the reason for that is is there's
really a few things. One webelieve this type of program requires a level
of sophistication and business understanding that typicallynot always, but typically your mid to
larger size you know, home servicescontractors have and your smaller ones tend not
(10:18):
to have. Okay, Okay,that's that's the first thing. But we
do work all across the country,and we work in even big markets in
small markets, but we just tendto partner with in whatever market it is
a market leader within that market.Okay, got it? Well, let's
do this. I always like toget a great story because you know,
one of the things that entrepreneurs andCEOs and founders like to share is something
(10:41):
special that's happened. So I wantto put a pin in that just for
a second. But let's have agood story just a few minutes here,
maybe with a client to somebody trained, there's something special where you say,
you know, that's why we getup in the morning. We did pretty
good here. But before that,your industry, what kind of challenges are
you working with right now? Yeah, you know, it's interesting the home
coomfort industry over the last you know, called two to three years since covid,
(11:03):
has experienced outsized inflation on equipment costs, okay, And so homeowners that
maybe haven't replaced an HVAC system ora water heater in the last five,
ten, fifteen, twenty years areshocked when they see the price of a
new home comfort system okay. Ina lot of ways. Simply put,
(11:26):
home comfort has surpassed and broken throughan affordability threshold for most Americans. And
so that's where one of the biggestchallenges and opportunities is for our business,
is that we're making it easier forhomeowners to buy the systems that they want,
the high efficiency, sustainable systems thatthey want, as opposed to what
(11:48):
they think or they may believe theycan afford. Okay, not only that,
but then we're supporting that installation ofthat system with all of the services
that you need throughout the useful lifeof that system to ensure that it's operating
a peak efficiency to keep utility billsdown. Makes sense. I'm glad we
talked about that. All right,let's do a little story time here.
I'm sure there's been a handful ofgreat stories out there where he said,
(12:09):
you know what, team, weknocked that one on the park for the
client. Maybe it was a trainingsession or something special happening with that client.
Do you have a nice story forus that you'd like to share?
Yeah? Absolutely, you know,it's an interesting, interesting question. One
of the things I take a lotof pride in is that we do things
differently than most other similar companies inour industry. Okay, I'll give you
(12:31):
example. First, we go onsite to train all of our dealers.
Most people don't do that in thisindustry today. Okay, if you're a
vendor, you send them a youknow, a zoom link, You do
some training over the phone, maybeyou go on site once a quarter.
We're out there a lot helping ourdealers be successful with this program. We
hear numerous times from our dealers thatthe level of preparation, the presentation,
(12:54):
and the content and quality of thecontent that was delivered is better than any
presentation that they've ever received from avendor in their twenty thirty forty years in
the industry. And if that wasonly once we had heard that, I
wouldn't put a lot of stock intoit. We hear that from very large,
very sophisticated contractors on a regular basis, month after month, because we
(13:18):
focus on that aspect of our business. You know, my takeaway from that
is a couple of things. Outstandingcustomer service, but also real time in
person training where you're also different engineeringyourself from the other companies out there,
and that's kind of mean a lotto the people you're working with and just
the overall chatter about your company.That you go that extra mile to get
(13:41):
people trained up properly in person,that's got to be extraordinary and very smart
than you're part too. Yeah,you know, it's a double edged sword
right, because we do that,we have to be selective on who we
work with, sure, because it'sjust impossible for us to be everywhere at
every time and the other and ifI may expenses too right, exactly,
Yeah, we have to be selectivebecause you know, we can't we can't
(14:03):
spend that type of money and time, you know, serving smaller opportunities.
But the other side of that iswhen we do work with somebody, the
level of support and training and customerservice, as you mentioned, is really
unbatched outstanding. Well, let's dothis. Let's wrap up our conversation with
some final thoughts about you and aji'reabout the company, and once again,
if somebody is being introduced to ServiceFirst Financial for the very first time,
(14:26):
what takeaway would you like them togo away with today? Yeah, you
know, from a from a consumerperspective. You know, if a consumer
is in the market or facing adifficult situation with their home comfort, their
HVAC, plumbing, or electrical andthey're looking for a convenient, worry free
way to replace their systems, I'dencourage them to go to www. Dot
(14:48):
worryfreehome Comfort dot com and explore watchthe explainer video about our program and see
if it's a good fit. Ifit is, fill out the form and
we'll have one of our authorized contractorsreach out, you know, to come
out and give a quote for whateverthey're needs may be. And for contractors,
you know, I think it reallycomes down to if you're an innovative
contractor seeking to differentiate your business andyour local market, seeking to be forward
(15:09):
thinking and serve your customers at adifferentiated level relative to the competition. Again
www dot Worry freehome Comfort dot com. Click on the contractor link learn a
little bit about what our program cando for you as a business and for
you, you know, while you'reserving your customers outstanding. And one last
thing in OUCH before we let yougo, I always like to ask our
(15:30):
leaders about not only leadership with startinga company. Now, we as you
can imagine, have a lot ofcurrent CEOs and entrepreneurs that listen to this
series, but also a lot offuture ones that love to get into whatever
they're going to do for a living. And I know that your perspective is
your business, how you came upwith the idea, how you executed with
your team, and how you're sustainingit and growing it. With that said,
any advice or young people out therethat are starting whatever kind of business
(15:54):
they want to do, just aboutmoving forward in today's climate. Yeah,
you know my view as a founderand a CEO that is not a title
of leadership or management. I'd encourageanyone that's seeking to start something or lead
an organization to be willing to doevery job within that organization at some point
(16:15):
during their tenure. Okay, there'snot a single job within this organization that
I haven't done myself so far.Okay, from the very beginning till now.
I'm willing to do whatever it takes. And we hire the types of
individuals that are willing to do whateverit takes to be successful. We always
tell people that what we're trying todo is change an industry. Changing an
(16:37):
industry is hard. You will runinto walls. Okay. We want people
who are willing to go over it, through it, around it, under
it, whatever it takes to getpast the obstacle and move on to the
next challenge. And so I'd encouragepeople that are listening to this, if
you're a CEO or a leader,do every job within the organization for some
period of time so that you understandwhat it takes to be success. I'm
(17:00):
so happy you talked about that andyou and I are on the same page.
I've been in my industry with TVradio sports for a long time,
and I extinctively made sure that Idid everything behind the scenes before I got
that big job on the air thatI wanted to do. My daughter is
also in cinema, television, artsand school right now, and I said,
I know you want to be adirector or maybe a DP, but
do the lighting, do the blocking, do the audio, do all the
(17:22):
things around. So when you're adirector someday you'll know what everybody else is
doing. It'll be an easier lifefor you, no doubt. Yeah.
Hey, listen, this has beena lot of fun, and I should
talk to you. You're obviously verypassionate about your business in a short amount
of time. The growth is incredible. Nice to see a guy locally doing
very well for what you do.And we can't appreciate enough for your very
(17:44):
busy schedule to join us on CEOsof Shanel continued success. Yeah, thank
you so much, appreciate it.
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