#1 HVAC Influencer: I've Grown To 200k+ Followers, You Can Too! - Tony Mormino - Local Marketing Secrets

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey there and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host Danny Lebrand and today I'm with Tony Mormino.
If you don't really know Tony, he's a 25 year HVAC veteran, VP
of Technical Media at Air Control Concepts, the
award-winning creator of the HVAC TV YouTube channel and
podcast and 2025 HVAC Tactical Influencer of the Year, amassing

(00:21):
hundreds of thousands of followers across social
platforms with 50,000 followers on LinkedIn, 50,000 followers on
Instagram. He's a big name in the HVAC
space and a lot of people think it's like not even possible to
grow following and you know, HVAC or pest control or these
under other industries. So very impressive.
And in this episode, we're unpacking how Tony turns his
technical expertise into magnet magnetic content and how to

(00:44):
build a personal brand that getsyou way more customers.
Now, without further ado, Tony, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Danny. I appreciate you having me.
Absolutely so. Tony, can you give me a little
bit more background on you of how you originally got into HVAC
and eventually social media? Sure.
So again, thank you for having me.
It's an honor to be here. I love your content and your

(01:05):
mission and what you're doing, so I'm glad to be part of it.
I love talking about building brands online and how it could
help, especially with home services businesses, some brick
and mortar too. Maybe we'll touch on that, but
you know, I come from a family of, you know, my dad was a
residential HVAC installer. So he so I grew up knowing about
the challenges of home services businesses and I myself got

(01:28):
introduced to HVAC through my father.
I ended up going to college, I got an engineering degree and I
came out and I wanted to go intosales.
So I ended up working for commercial HVAC Rep firms as a
sales guy. I was part owner of a Rep firm
at one point and a sales guy there as well.
But for the last five or six years, I've been primarily
focusing on content creation andbuilding brands online,

(01:51):
specifically in the HVAC space. Awesome.
So I mean, there there's so manydifferent ways we could tackle
this. Like when did you start building
your personal brand? Was that five years ago?
10 years ago? Yeah, so I've had some.
Online experience for about 20 years very minimal in terms of

(02:11):
really getting out there and building a personal brand and
let's talk about personal brand for a minute because I know when
I first heard that term and evenif I hear it today, I kind of
cringe I'm like, oh, I don't want a personal brand I'm not
some sleazy salesy you know that's.
Kind of the. I I think that for a lot of
people, that's what they think of when they hear that term.

(02:32):
But you know, just think of it as your reputation, right?
Like first, at some point it changed from reputation to
personal brand, but really your reputation is everything.
And Jeff Bezos, the creator and owner of Amazon, says your brand
is what people say about you when you're not in the room,
right? So just think of it that way.
Your personality, you know, thatTony guy, he's great.

(02:52):
He always calls us back. Or don't call that Tony guy,
man. He doesn't take care of his
problems. You know, So you got to be
careful with how you curate and develop your personal brand.
And a good personal brand could take years to build, but it
could take one moment to smash through the service you provide
your customers and things like that.

(03:12):
So, you know, in terms of building a personal brand
online, that's, that's somewhat new to me.
I've only been doing that for about probably about six years
now. How have you found so much
success like I I know a lot of other people that post a ton
online and they never really seeanything happen from it.
How have you amassed hundreds ofthousands of followers?
Well it goes like this. You post something, no one

(03:35):
cares, you cry about it. You post something, no one
cares, you cry about it, Then you're like, I'm not doing this
anymore. And then a month later you're
like, I'm going to give it another try.
And basically you beat your headagainst the wall for a couple of
years and you figure out the secret to it.
And, and you know, if you're listening to this and taking
notes, the secret is you got to provide value to whoever is
listening. Nobody.

(03:55):
Here's a news flash, right? And Danny, you probably
understand this because you're acreator.
No one cares about your business.
No one cares about your new truck.
No one cares about your new tools.
People care about what we care about.
What can they do for me? Why am I listening to this?
Why am I going to hire this person?
What's in it for me? You know, So when you, when you
take the selfishness of most content, and I'm guilty of this

(04:18):
too from time to time and turn it around and make it selfless,
then you attract people and you build a brand and you become the
trusted person that people want you to call it.
I love the strategy for home services business.
Like if you're a painter, you doa video on Here's 5, here's five
ways to paint your room. So you don't need to hire me.

(04:38):
Let me show you the tricks of the trade.
You know, you build a lot of trust and you might help people
do the work. But 90% of the time they're
going to watch it, they're goingto probably call you because
they're going to try a little bit of it and they're going to
get sick of it, so. Yeah, no, I've been watching a
lot of Gary Vee lately and he's been saying that same thing.
I I think he said he's even speaking at a roofing
conference, I believe. And he was telling them the

(04:59):
first thing you should post is how to not hire me.
And it's the same thing you're saying is it's almost exactly
the example you gave. Maybe you're even familiar with
what I'm talking about of, you know, how to not hire me.
Just provide as much value as possible.
Hey, you know, if you're dealingwith this thing, you know, you
can honestly just do this on your own.
You don't even need me. And that really establishes
trust with your audience. And that's, that's something
I've been coming to terms with alot lately is like it's all

(05:22):
about trust building, right? Yeah, exactly.
And it's weird. It's counterintuitive to what
you would think. You know, I got a company.
I'm trying to, you know, and companies are trying to survive.
You're trying to make a living. You're trying to feed your
family, you're trying to send your kids to college, whatever
it is. And your, your, your, your
intuition is to post, Hey, hire me today, here's my thing.
And you need to do some of that,right.

(05:42):
And I would say, you know, you want to follow like the 8020
rule, 80% of it should be givingback, showing what you can do
for people. And then the other 20% is like.
Hey by the way. I fix roost, I fix air
conditioners. Call me, you know, someone who
needs some work, give me a call,you know, drop, drop me a
number, drop me a line, DME or whatever.
However your whatever media you're using at the time to talk

(06:04):
to them. But yeah, so that's the way I
would do it. Awesome.
Do you have a favorite platform that you like to post on that
like is LinkedIn the best, Is Facebook the best or does it
kind of depend? So I'm really agnostic to the
platforms and a lot of times I'll be talking in public, in
person and, and in my industry, we talk a lot about LinkedIn

(06:25):
because it's more of the professional, you know, B to B
commercial HVAC realm that that is mostly is on LinkedIn.
And inevitably someone will say,you know, and usually it's some
old fart, like a little bit older than me.
I'm 55, I'm not an old. I don't know if that's old fart
category yet, but I'm getting there.
And they'll say, you know, I'm never going to be on LinkedIn.

(06:45):
I think this is stupid. You know, blah blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, you know what? I, I can care less about
LinkedIn, but that's where the attention is, right?
That's what matters. So I am agnostic to the
platform. I want to go wherever the
attention is to achieve the goalI'm trying to achieve.
So I'm on all the platforms, allthe major ones.
I'm not on some of them, but youknow, LinkedIn, TikTok,

(07:07):
Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, YouTube Shorts.
And I tell you, I held out for TikTok for years because I'm
like, I'm not a dancing teenager.
And that was my misconception because I wasn't on there.
I didn't understand and today wepost primarily commercial HVAC
educational content and I get like 20,000 views a day on
TikTok which to me is just shocking.

(07:29):
Like there's people on there actually watching this stuff.
It's crazy. Yeah, I know that is a big
misconception in the especially in the trade space.
There's so many guys I hear, Oh no, I'm not posting on TikTok.
It's like there are still plentyof your target market out there.
Your target market is, you know,maybe it's Mom's age, 30 to 60
years old. They are on TikTok.

(07:50):
Like you can't get in front of those people.
So it's just wherever the attention is of your target
market, right? Yeah.
And if you're, if you're in thathome services business or the
trades and you're not posting onTikTok, you're really missing
out. It's a huge opportunity.
That's one of the biggest opportunities for home services
businesses that I see. I see it all the time on there.

(08:11):
I see there's some hairdresser place, I think it's actually in
your area in Chicago, and they're like, come to blah,
blah, blah, here's what we do and they just show the lady's
hair. When she's I'm like, this is
perfect. It's got the address, it's got
the phone number. You could tag.
A lot of people don't know this.So on TikTok and most of the
platforms you could tag your location so it'll show.
So if you're a home services business, roofer, painter,

(08:33):
etcetera in Chicago and you tag.Where you're at, it's going to
show it mostly to people who arein your area.
So it's it drives me crazy todaybecause I see the power of it,
but it's free advertising. And community building like
we've never had before. It's actually more powerful than
ATV AD Way more powerful. Wow, No, I know.

(08:54):
I was just going to mention thisagain.
Gary Vee harps on this all the time that it is free.
Like in in the history of advertising, you'd usually
always have to pay something. But you know, I don't know, you
spend a little bit of time making the video.
Maybe you have some equipment, but otherwise you could post a
video basically for free and it gets millions of views.
Like that's just unreal. It's a huge opportunity.

(09:16):
It's not going to be like this forever.
There's a short window. I'm a big Gary Vee fan too,
because when I do what he says, it works.
So I, I keep listening to him and do what he most of the time
I do what he says. But there's a huge opportunity
right now on social media with, with, with what's called organic
reach, which is what you're talking about, which is if
you're listening to this organicreach is when you post something

(09:36):
and people see it, but you're not amplifying it with money.
You're not putting money to it. You could do that too, but you
can literally post stuff today. Hey, this is, you know, if
you're an air, here's an air conditioning example.
I would do if I was in residential, ACI would say, Hey,
missus, so and so I have a TikTok channel.
I get a lot of business from there.
Do you mind if I take a quick, Iwon't put you or any of your

(09:58):
house in there, but just like a quick before and after rundown
of the system. And I, I would bet 90% of them
would say, sure, that's no problem and do that and post it.
It the editing of it would be very minimal and you could say.
Hey, I'm Jack. I'm out here at this.
So and so House and here's what we do.
Here's what we typically did. Watch for this.
If you have this problem, don't call me.

(10:19):
Here's how to fix it. It's super simple.
You know, things like that. That's what I would do all the
time. Awesome.
OK, cool. I'm, I'm glad you brought this
up because I was actually going to ask you about this of the
content strategy because I feel like a lot of these owners that
you know, they, they might be smaller, they might even be up
to $1,000,000 plus a year. I feel like a lot of them to
understand social media. Social media is important at

(10:41):
least for their company. Maybe not their personal brand
yet, but they don't know what topost.
Maybe they've never posted before.
So like, how do they get started?
So that's a good question. The main reason people don't get
started is the same reason we don't start anything, because

(11:06):
you got to learn new stuff, which is hard, especially when
you get older and you got to overcome a lot of fear.
You know, that's really it. And if the key is, in my
opinion, is to have the why behind it, like why are you
doing this? That's why most B to C

(11:26):
businesses dominate online, likebusiness to consumer.
They're selling stuff to people online.
The reason they do is because they have to.
They don't have a choice, right?So if you don't have that kind
of why, like I am going to grow my real estate business, I'm
going to grow my painting business and I'm going to do it
this way, then you're never going to overcome the fear of
getting on there and doing that.And 90% of it, and I don't care

(11:48):
who you are, like I talk to multibillion dollar HVAC
manufacturers all the time and we'll talk for an hour and it'll
go round and round and this, this, this.
And I'm like, all right, who's going to come on the podcast?
Where are we going to shoot the video?
And here go all the well, we gotto wait till such and such.
And I'm like, you're scared. You know, I'm not saying it to
them, but and I get it. Like, who wants to wake up in

(12:09):
the morning and get on camera? You know, especially if you're
going to show your work because you're going to get a lot of
opinions out there that might not be like, why'd you do it
this way? You should have done it that
way, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is dumb, this is stupid.
So these are the these are the reasons why people don't
typically start or they start doit for a week and like, I didn't
get any results. This is dumb that Tony Mormino

(12:29):
is an idiot that Danny doesn't know what he's talking about,
right. But then you're like dude, you
posted one video like you might have to post 3 times a day for a
year before you start getting action, you know so.
Yeah, no, definitely. OK.
So you need to have your why in place and you need to stay
consistent regardless of whetherthe content is performing or
not. Got it.
Yeah, No, I've a, I mean, not a similar story, but just I, I

(12:52):
feel like everyone in social media has somewhat of a story
like this. That when I started growing my
following, I started on Twitter and for the 1st 30 days, none of
my posts got more than like 5 likes.
They all of them completely bombed.
And then I finally after 30 days, and it's so funny because
I told myself I like promised myself that I'd, I'd post every
day for 30 days. On the 30th day, that's when I

(13:15):
finally got a post that did like45 likes and I was like, OK, I'm
hooked. Like, you know, I, I figured out
something, something's working here and then, you know, that
got me like 100 followers. Then, you know, a month or two
later, then I got 1000 followersand then thousands of followers
coming on after that. So it's kind of just like a
spiral effect, but really that those first like 30 to 90 days

(13:36):
are the toughest. As as is with anything, you
know, anything you try to learn new and I another conversation.
I love when we're having these with, with people and they're
like, well, I guess when it justcomes down to it, Tony, we're
worried the content won't look that good when we first do the
video and I'm like, I, I'll fix that for you.
Let me help you with that. It's not going to look that

(13:57):
good. It shouldn't look good because
you've never done it before, right?
Like if I had to build a house for the first time it.
Wouldn't look, you wouldn't want.
To live in that house, trust me,right?
But by the 10th house, I might know what I'm doing.
I might have a little more experience.
So it's just like anything else,like you got to really get in
there and grind it out and do it.
And I say don't focus on the results, focus on the.
Product the work. Like, you're putting in the

(14:18):
work. Be proud of that.
If you're getting on there and posting and putting yourself out
there, you're already doing what99.9% of the world won't do,
yeah. A good way I like to frame it is
that you're still driving value or you're still getting value
from posting regardless, even ifthe videos don't get any views
immediately. Because people that might be

(14:40):
doing research on your company, they might come from a referral
or Facebook ad. They're going to do some
research on you and then they might end up seeing some of
those videos that you have that are posted across the platform.
So they still also help for conversions, not just awareness.
Correct. Definitely.
So yeah, let's let's dive a little bit more into the the
content strategy. So you were saying it should

(15:03):
kind of just be like day-to-day what you're doing and like
showing value. Just jump a little bit more into
that. Yeah, so I'm going to, we're
totally like ripping off Gary Vee during this podcast, but I'm
going to RIP him off a little bit more.
But yeah, he has a thing called,you know, document, don't
create, right? So what am I doing today?
Like this morning there was somebreaking news in the HVAC
industry. So I said, OK, I'm going to do a
breaking news clip. So I do these little things, you

(15:25):
know, HVAC breaking news of the day.
Here's kind of what's going on. I give credit to the new source,
yadda, yadda, yadda. So that I'm just documenting
what's happening. The same scenario with, you
know, the person who walks up tothe lady's house replacing the
air conditioner. You're just kind of documenting
that. You might even be in the truck
and saying, hey, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to go to this thing.So when you do it that way, it's
super easy. And if you're in the field, it's

(15:48):
an Eden of content, like your content's everywhere, clogged
drain line, how to mix your paint, how to do this, how to do
that. I mean, you could just make
content left and right. So that's what I would recommend
is just kind of document your day, document what you're doing
and focus on bringing value. So.
And what's what's realistic to get started?
Should you just be posting like once a week and don't edit the

(16:09):
videos like I? I try to recommend something as
small as possible so people can just get started.
I would say if we're being specific to the home services
folks, I would say if you, if you could do it, if you could do
it every day, that's great. I would say once a day and just
focus on TikTok in the beginningbecause that's where I think

(16:32):
your main opportunity is, the low hanging fruit opportunity.
So I would say if you could do once a day, do that.
And I would say before you do that, get in there.
And if you're not on TikTok, first of all, get in there and
consume about 40. Hours of content just go
through, type in whatever business you're in, plumbing and
watch what the plumbers are doing.
Watch hey, this guy got 10,000 views, this guy got 500,000.

(16:52):
What are they doing here? How did they do it?
How did they film it? Did they just record it, what we
call B roll and then do a voice over later?
That would be one of my favoritethings to do if you're in the
field because you don't have to set up and mic up and get in
front of the camera. Do all that.
You could just take B roll and then talk about what you did on
that specific job. So, so all that to say, once a

(17:14):
day, I would say minimum, you know, if you could do it, do it
2-3 times a day, but that's a, that's a tall order when you're
first starting out. So.
Yeah, awesome. OK.
So I guess like the starting point at least should be to not
reinvent the wheel. Like check out what's working in
your industry. You don't have to like come out,
not even necessarily with new content ideas, but just like see

(17:37):
what other people are doing and then almost recreate that.
Yeah, you know, you want to follow people and you want to
quote UN quote emulate them. You don't want to copy them.
Word for word. Or shot for shot, but you can
see like, oh, this is hot right now people like to talk about.
Whatever, fill in the blank heat.
Pumps are hot right now or high seer units are hot right now

(17:58):
because it's the summertime or clogged drain lines people are
talking about that, you know, soI would follow a bunch of people
who are doing what you want to do and then just kind of do what
they do. Yeah, awesome.
And then why the the emphasis onTiktok?
We talked about it a little bit,but why Tiktok over YouTube,
Facebook, these other platforms so.
Tiktok. Has.

(18:21):
One of the higher organic reaches than the other
platforms. So TikTok and YouTube Shorts for
me is a close one and two, but Idon't like to overwhelm people.
So I just say TikTok. You know, YouTube shorts, you
could probably you could take that same content usually and
load it up on YouTube Shorts. So you can do 22 platforms with
one piece of content. But just to keep it simple.

(18:42):
That's why I was just keep it a TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,
There's tons of people on there,but they don't have good organic
reach in my experience. So you're going to post up
something there. The chance of a lot of people
seeing it is very slim. You have a bigger chance of
people seeing it on TikTok and and on YouTube Shorts than you
do on the other platforms and LinkedIn.

(19:03):
I don't think that's a big core focus for home services.
Business. Yeah, got it.
OK, so you have way more organicreach on TikTok.
So let's say, let's say someone does keep at it for, you know,
3-6, maybe even 12 months. What can they expect out of
doing social media? Building a personal brand for
them or their company? Depends on how good they are,

(19:24):
you know, how much value they bring.
You're going to get to the pointwhere if you're providing enough
value of building trust, people are just going to reach out to
you, you know? That's kind of the point I'm at
now. Folks reach out to me all the
time, mostly on LinkedIn, sometime on the e-mail.
I put my e-mail in the, I don't know how you found me, but I put
my e-mail on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all the platforms.
People could e-mail me if they want to get a hold of me.

(19:47):
But I would say after a year, ifyou're doing it consistently,
you should, you should be getting some business from that
definitely. And it's an exponential curve,
right? Because you're going to get
better at it. You're going to do more of it,
more people are going to call you, they're going to start
building, you're going to start building trust with that
audience. But it's really.
If you're doing anything in terms of marketing spend or

(20:07):
time, I, I, that would be the first thing I would focus on me
personally. Awesome.
And then you touch on this a little bit, or at least hinted
at it, But when you make something like a short form
video, because that's kind of the meta right now, Not just
like a, you know, little writtenpost on Twitter, but an actual
short form video of you in the field, whatever it may be.

(20:27):
Are you cool to just repurpose that exact content across all
platforms or should you reframe it or change the captions even?
Yeah. So if it's a short form video,
I'll typically put it on all platforms.
If you got unlimited time or want to work from midnight to
4:00 AM, you could curate it different for each platform.
I just don't have the time to dothat.

(20:49):
I do try to change the captions sometimes, but most of the time
I just put it on all. All the platforms.
Yeah, awesome. That that's what I recommend
too. Yeah.
You know, if you're making a great piece of content, then why
not put it everywhere? And really, again, it's only for
guys like Alex or Mosey and GaryVee that, you know, that they
have like a huge content team and they can, you know, make

(21:11):
different things with those different clips and those tweets
and such. But it's really not realistic or
necessary for, you know, home service.
I do find too, there's some things I'll post on TikTok that
I won't post on Instagram and vice versa.
Some things just don't somethinghe get 1,000,000 views on
Instagram and and get 700 on TikTok.

(21:31):
I just had this happen recently.Like what is that?
How does that happen? You know, but you know, all the
tik toks, all the if you're watching this and you're new to
social, don't worry about all that.
That comes after years of of playing around with it.
I think. So just, you know, stick with
the stick with the TikTok and the YouTube Shorts, you know?
Yeah. Do you have a key to viral
content of, you know, a short that gets over 1,000,000 views?

(21:54):
How do you how do you do that? It's tough.
I mean, I've only had a few, maybe 10 go over a million in
the five years and I do and I doa lot of content, right.
So The thing is you don't have to have those.
You can have those and it can change your business like you
can have one post really change and start taking off on your on

(22:16):
your on your platforms. I mean, the key is to bring
value. The ones that go viral, they
touch on some sort of emotional or intellectual truth.
In other words, you see it, you'll go yes, or I agree with
that or that is so true. That is so true.
But it's usually something like it's kind of an insider thing,
you know, like I posted something about it was a meme,

(22:39):
it was Phil Collins. I've been waiting for this all
my life or whatever. And the caption was when your
wife casually asks you how an air conditioner works.
You know, every air conditioner guys like, oh, she asked me,
here it goes, you know, so everybody gets, you know,
everybody could kind of get thatin the space and that that was
probably one of our better ones got three and a half million.
Now you might be saying, what does that do to to grow my

(23:00):
business? Well, it does a lot because it
brands you of someone with a personality.
It attracts people to your following.
They're going to rewatch your stuff.
So it's it's good to have those,but.
Awesome. OK.
But that's still you don't have to have too much of A focus on
going viral, it seems, because really you just want to get in
front of your target market anyways.
So if your local city is 50,000 people, then you just want to

(23:21):
get in front of those people anyways.
You don't need to be the Mr. Beast to be very successful on
social media. I mean, I have 40 to 50,000
followers on the platforms. That's not a lot in terms of
when you look at the big guys like they're in the million.
I'm nowhere near that. What I found is you don't need
to be and if you're in an A small niche, you're not going to

(23:43):
be and that's OK. It's amazing to me.
And we go to, you know, HVAC shows.
I go around and people recognizeus from the YouTube channel.
It's really incredible when you start seeing that.
And if you're doing this consistently, you're going to
start getting that. You're going to start getting
people reaching out to you. You're going to start getting
people in public in your hometown.
Oh, you're the plumber guy. I love your videos.

(24:04):
Thanks for posting those. It'll it will happen.
To you, if you if you do it, another thing you're going to
get is you're probably going to get people reaching out you to
you for brand deals. Like you might have someone you
know, if you're again, if you'rein air condition space, they
want to give you tools. Hey, let me give you these tools
you can use in your videos, yadda, yadda, yadda.
So that's another thing that's good for business.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Talk to me about some of the personal opportunities that

(24:26):
you've seen. Again, it's the same way with me
of how I get invited to speak or, you know, go on podcasts,
clients, referrals, all these great things.
Talk to me about some of the benefits you've personally seen.
You basically just nailed it, you know, speaking in public,
getting into factories, like we do a lot of commercial HVAC
factory tours. We do a lot now.

(24:48):
But originally the manufacturersweren't like, we don't know if
we want cameramen in our in our factory, but we did a couple, we
found some places that wanted usthere and now they saw it and
they're. Like, oh, we need to get.
Them here. So now we we do that all the
time. So you're never going to know
who's going to see what you're going to do or where that's
going to lead. That's another thing I've
learned, like you might be love your trade and be good at that,

(25:08):
but you might start doing this and new opportunities might open
up that you never would have even thought of brand deals or
they want you to, you know, Rep their product or hey, I'm trying
to open a plumbing business. Can I spend an hour with you?
And then you talk to them. You're like, man, I like doing
this. Maybe I'll start a coaching
business on how to start plumbing.
So you don't know what's going to happen when you start doing
this stuff. Yeah.

(25:30):
No, ultimately that's what I've seen as well.
It's just so many opportunities.You don't even know what's going
to come your way. But if you just especially at
what you were saying of putting out value, you keep putting out
goodwill, people really like you.
They really resonate with you and the the message that you're
giving and good things just happen when you do enough good.
That's kind of what I've noticed.
That's right. Definitely.

(25:52):
Something else I want to ask youwas the difference between
building a personal brand versusa company brand.
So a lot of people I feel like don't even, or at least in the
home services don't even make this distinction.
It's kind of one or the other. But how do those vary, if at
all? And is 1 easier?
Should you start in one? So my recommendation is people

(26:13):
follow people, not logos, right?I'll go to the painting example
again, ABC Painting Company. No one cares about ABC Painting
Company. But if you're Joe the Painter
and you're on there and you're talking and you have a
personality and you're showing people, people will follow you.
People will wanna know what you're doing.

(26:34):
And I look at that like if you take that to an extreme, you
look at a personality like Elon Musk, right?
Like not a lot of people are going to Tesla's social media
pages and looking at all their oh, I can't wait for Tesla to
post again. But people will listen to Elon,
whether you. Like him or not, you're going to
probably stop and listen to the guy.
That's the difference between a a company brand and a personal

(26:54):
brand. So if I would be all in on
building your building your company?
Through you as the. Personality of the company like
that's the that's the Holy Grailof of content.
You know so. HVACTV is a good example.
You can see the logo behind me. Probably that's the company
brand that we own or my company owns, but I'm the personality of

(27:16):
it. So the Holy Grail is to have
someone like Tony out there and driving traffic to the HVAC TV,
helping to build a reputation ofthat brand.
I don't know. If that makes sense or not, but.
No, no, that does. Yeah, no, I've noticed that with
myself as well. Building my personal socials has
always been easier than buildingcompany socials.
Like I tried building a softwarecompany, building my agency

(27:38):
personal, you know, basically for all the reasons that you
just said, people want to connect with people, people want
to listen to people. It's much easier to build the
personal brand. I think there's still value in
building the company brand. And that's, you know, maybe we
should split the efforts. Sure, we shouldn't neglect the
the personal brand. That's that's definitely
something we don't want to do. Something else I want to ask you

(27:59):
was the future of social media. And actually maybe even what you
mentioned, which Gary Vee talks about is that the window is
closing. It's not going to be here
forever. You know, we might have five
more years of social media, maybe even a few more years of
social media if if the glasses take over and you know, all
those different things. Just give me like your general
take on the future of social media.

(28:20):
Well, nothing lasts forever. Yeah.
So, you know, in, in my short, you know, time on this planet so
far and in looking at marketing,you know, we went through, you
know, when Amazon, before even Amazon started, you know, e-mail
marketing was hot, was a real big thing.

(28:40):
And it's you could still do thattoday with some some success,
but really e-mail marketing. And then there's SEO, which you
do a lot of, but you're probablystarting to see a lot of changes
with that with AI. It's social media now.
It's hot right now. You can post content of people
see it. Blogging was real hot a few
years ago. That's kind of, you know, not as

(29:00):
hot still. Still could be done.
What's next? I have no idea, but I know it'll
be something different if you and I are still around in five
years and on a. Podcast where we'd be like, Can
you believe people still on social media?
I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it's going.
To be five years or not, but youknow, it goes back to that whole
attention thing. You got to go where the
attention's AT and right now that's where the attention is.
And whether it stays on social or not, you're still going to

(29:22):
learn so much by creating the content, learning how to bring
value, learning how what's a good hook, learning how to
drive, build your brand and drive business.
That's that's engaging. So.
Yeah, no, I'd still like to believe that that content will
still exist somewhere, even if people aren't watching it of,
you know, different AI tools anddifferent search engines will

(29:45):
still be pulling from that content of, you know, Google and
chats. BT like to see that you post a
lot on YouTube and you post a lot on Facebook and it can pull
some of these videos and, you know, when you do a search on
your company name, it will show or, you know, your personal name
as well, it will show those videos pop up.
So, you know, even if, you know,maybe we're in a future where
people don't even consume socialmedia, I think if we have that

(30:07):
underlying trust within the platforms, which again, it's
like such a such a tough topic because everything is moving at
an exponential rate. Kind of a fun thing to dive
into. 100% Yeah. And talk to me about building
HVAC TV. Like you guys have over 25,000
followers on YouTube. Tell me what that was like, how
you got started, and where it's at now.

(30:29):
So this is a great story. We did not wake up one day and
say, let's start a YouTube channel and I'll be the host and
yadda, yadda, yadda. When COVID hit, we, our, our
business is totally relationshipdriven, right?
So we're primary customers, Mechanical Engineers and
mechanical contractors in the commercial HVAC space.
So when COVID hit, it all shut down.
We're like, oh, how can we get in front of our core audience?

(30:52):
So we started doing live presentations on Zoom, which
believe it or not at the time. This was like groundbreaking in
the HVAC. Industry, we were on Zoom and
there'd be like. 300 people on there, 400 people.
People, wow, this is so cool. It's so cool.
And then two months later, people were like, I'm going to
kill myself. I got to go to the Zoom meeting,
right? People were sick of it.

(31:13):
So about that time, LinkedIn Live came out and I was like,
oh, let's try LinkedIn Live. And we were just goofing around
trying to find ways to do it. And, you know, we did it and
people were watching. Then we did a podcast YouTube
channel. So it kind of just organically
started growing. And that's a great lesson.
And you got to try new things and to do thing I was going to

(31:33):
say do things. Don't be scared to try new
things, but you can actually trynew things if you're terrified,
which I was like public speakingonline.
I didn't wake up one day and say, well, let me go speak in
front of 300 of my peers live onLinkedIn and YouTube where they
can comment if I make a mistake and it's there forever.
You know, that's a stressful thing in the beginning.
Now I can give two shits like I just get on there and I do it.

(31:53):
You know, it's just I know I'm human and I know I make mistakes
and we're doing it to give back.So, but the the lesson there is,
you know, you just got to try new things and if you're afraid,
just do it anyway because that'show you're going to learn and
that's how you're going to grow.I'll.
I'll circle back to this that I feel like most, you know, trades

(32:16):
owners probably haven't even posted on their personal brand
at all. Or again, it might be just a
little bit on their personal Facebook or just a little bit
here or there. They might be posting a little
bit on their company socials. But for you personally, how did
you overcome that hurdle of, youknow, my family's going to see
me, You know, this is kind of cringy.
Like, how do you jump that hurdle to start your first few

(32:36):
videos? Is there any like mindset
switch? You kind of just have to do it.
Pray a lot have a strong why we talked about in the beginning.
I mean, I still remember the first YouTube video I pushed the
button on. I was on vacation in like a we
were actually skiing in Breckenridge.
You know, that sounds so foofy. Oh, we were skiing and we were

(32:58):
skiing in Aspen. Now we're skiing in Breckenridge
and we, I was in a one of those little private rooms where you
could do work and stuff like that.
And I'm like, I'm going to record this video and post it.
Something just came over me to do it and I did it and I was
shocked that people watched it and the world didn't come to an
end and it was some good value. So for.
Me having a strong why, you know?

(33:20):
Praying a lot, talking to peopleabout it, but at the end of the
day, you just got to pull the trigger and do it like there's
no there's no way around it. You got to go through the fear
of starting something that's with anything new, especially
when you're putting yourself outthere in video where your
friends and family could see it.And that right there, Danny,
that's that's. The crux of the issue with all

(33:41):
this stuff, people will say it'sbecause I don't have the new
shirt or I don't, I need to get my haircut or I don't have the
right setting. I don't, I don't have the right
equipment. That's a big BS excuse.
By the way, your iPhone is a better movie studio than
Hollywood had like 20 years ago.So you have everything you need
in your hand. The real reason is it's scary.

(34:03):
There's a lot of insecurity involved.
That's the that's the real reason.
But you know, especially guys, we don't talk about that because
we're men, you know, we're not supposed to talk about that kind
of stuff. But that's the that's the exact
reason why people don't do it. Yeah, definitely.
No. I'll share two things on this.
One is that your first 100 videos are gonna suck.
Like that's kind of just bound to happen.
Just make them, really make themas quick as possible so that you

(34:25):
can jump that hurdle. Just RIP.
The Band. Aid off, right?
Yeah. No, seriously, like you, just
like anything else. If you start the guitar today,
you've never played the guitar. I mean, you're gonna suck,
right? I've tried playing the guitar.
I'm not good. And then also something I really
like from Mr. Beast is that he said just improve one thing
every single video. And that that was for him for
for long form video, but it applies to short form.

(34:47):
It applies to any kind of content or really anything you
attempt. Just make a video.
It could be any random video. It could be the worst video in
the world. Like you look at Mr. V, Mr.
Beast's original videos, I mean,they were bad.
I mean, he was like 12 years oldand he was in his bedroom just
like kind of saying nonsense, but he's improving something
every single video now. He's by far the biggest YouTube

(35:09):
of all time. So like that's that kind of goes
to show of just start and just keep iterating. 100% I love it.
You just got to do it. There's no way.
You just got to do it. You just got to And the first, I
would say the first, while you're doing it, you're doing it
for you. You're not really doing it.
You're not going to get a lot ofviews.
And like you said, it's not going to be.

(35:29):
I mean, you could do 1 and have a million people see it.
That could literally happen. It's not likely, but it can
happen. But you're really doing it for
you to learn. Hey, this is my first video on
TikTok. It's probably going to suck.
I don't have a lot to say right now.
Follow me if you want. I'm a painter.
I'm going to talk about painting.
And just anything goofy like that, just get it out there, you
know? Yeah, just be humble and real.

(35:51):
I mean, that's something we could even talk about as well.
That Gary Vee also says that there's going to be a lot of AI
influencers and that's AI is kind of already taking over our
lives. But I feel like there's still
something attractive about the human component.
Like it is attractive to see like me or you stutter on the
podcast or you know, OK, we're switching topics here.
It's not, it's not super fluid. That is actually attractive

(36:13):
because we're humans. We're like you said, we're not
perfect. I feel like there is something
to be said about the content notbeing totally orchestrated or
artificial or perfect. So a surefire way for me to get
very few views is to script it out, plan it, orchestrate it,
spent hours on it, edit it to the date to the cows come home.

(36:37):
And that's usually not going to do very good.
Me popping on and talking about something that's interesting
does better so the. The most viewed video I have on
LinkedIn, it's about 1.5 million, which is a lot for
LinkedIn for me anyway. You know, it was me and my I
just woken up. I had like a sweater pyjama

(36:58):
thing on. I had a hat on like a a snow hat
on. I look like crap and I was in my
back porch and I was there was fog.
Coming out of the dryer vent andwe talked a lot about
psychometrics in our industry, which has to do with humidity
and air and dew point and, and the fog was a great teaching
tool. So I went out there and I did.
It it looks so bad that I was like, I'm not going to post
this. You know, it's going to.

(37:18):
I can't post this on LinkedIn. Finally, I just did it and it
turned out to be the best video.So the point is, you don't need
to make it. It doesn't need to look great.
It's all about is it a value? Is the content interesting?
Yadda yadda yadda. Another example of that is we've
done, I don't know, 300 podcastsnow.
The best performing podcasts we've had by far is me at my

(37:43):
desk talking into my phone aboutheat pump technology.
I didn't. Have a guest.
I didn't have a guest, Danny. It was just me.
Like talking into my phone. That's the best one we've ever
had, so I tell. People and I've got the nice mic
I've got the nice expensive camera here I got the whole
setup but that was our best performing one so the lesson
there is it's all about the content you know you want it to

(38:03):
look decent if you get better atit you'll be like OK I can
improve the lighting here and there but it's not don't ever
let that stop you from posting content that's the key right
there because you could post that one little thing out on a
job site or in your living room or whatever and that's the one
that could go off so. Yeah, no, I've heard a lot of
stories like that. And I mean, I've personally

(38:23):
experienced that myself. It's kind of strange.
Like you don't really know what will go viral.
Like sometimes, you know, I've put it out a tweet or LinkedIn
posts or, you know, YouTube short and it goes completely
viral. I was like, I wasn't even going
to post this. Basically like what you said, I
literally wasn't going to post this.
I was, I was too embarrassed. Like I thought this video was
horrible. I thought it would perform worse

(38:44):
than all of my other ones. And yet it performed way better.
So that's kind of also just something you have to be OK with
is just putting out content, youknow, Hey, and also like the
other side of the spectrum, likeyou mentioned, which I've also
experienced this a ton where I spend like 5 hours on a piece of
content and it ends up totally flopping.
It does worse than my normal videos that take like, you know,
30 minutes or whatever. Like, and you're like, oh man,

(39:07):
this is gonna break the Internet.
Everyone's gonna text me how amazing it is.
It's gonna be so funny. And then no one watches it.
But the other thing too, you know, we're talking about a lot
of views and all this stuff. Think about like if you get 1000
people in your area to see your craft and what you do, that's a
lot of people. Think of a room of 1000 people.
Yeah, that's a lot of folks to see what you're doing.

(39:27):
So yeah. No, like we mentioned earlier,
especially if that's your targetmarket, if it's random people,
if it's people overseas and yourlocal, I mean, you know, who
cares about those views. But if it is people local, which
this is a, this is a good segment towards kind of our kind
of the, the last section of our show, which I really want to
dive into, how can we actually make social media a personal

(39:48):
brand or even a company brand convert into actual customers?
So like you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but like how
can we make sure that we show upin front of our local market
that is there some kind of strategies that just hashtags
are showing the location like you said?
Hashtags are good, but tagging the location in the app is, is

(40:09):
huge, you know, and I, I can tell you my experience with that
is this. So most of the content we do is
in the US. It's continental.
It's, it's wide around the United States, not really
isolated any little pocket because we don't have a brick
and mortar store. We're not local home services in
a specific area. So we don't usually tag a

(40:30):
location. Now, last October, this past
October, we had a flood come. I'm in Asheville, NC, So we had
this biblical flood come throughthe area.
Well, my wife and I are both content creators.
So we went into, you know, CNN news reporting mode, like, hey,
we're here if you need help, here's where to go.

(40:51):
We were blessed because our homewasn't affected by it.
So we can go down to the river. We can help people come back up
here, create the content and do that.
So we're posting tons of local content, which you've never done
before. And we would go out in public
like, hey, thanks for what you're doing.
You know, people would recognizeus at the grocery store, which
was really super cool, to be honest with you.
And we would wreck. People would recognize us at
the, you know, where we take ourtrash.

(41:12):
We don't have trash pickup here because we're up in the
mountains, But we would go to the dump and people would
recognize us. So getting recognized at the
dump, that's what that's famous up here in Marshall, NC.
But you know, the auto parts store, Yeah.
Would be walking around with my daughter and like, someone would
recognize. What do you think about that?
She's like, Oh my gosh. You know, she's like.
Kind of embarrassed by it, but. So anyway, So what I'm trying to
say is if you show it locally and you tag it, hashtag it, and

(41:35):
you tell it what city you're in,it's gonna show it to those
people who are around you. Which is so powerful.
I feel like even home service companies, whether again on
their personal profile or their company profile, they might be
posting content, but I almost guarantee they're not tagging
that location. Just something super simple.
But yet that's what will get them showing up in their area.

(41:58):
And even I've noticed this with Facebook advertising and
different platforms that just content being in someone's area
is enough for someone to watch it and engage with it.
Just oh, wow, this is happening in my hometown, Glenview, or
this point like, yeah, no, so you, you get that, that base
relevance and there's immediately something to relate

(42:20):
to it on of. Oh, wow, this is this is going
on in my hometown. You know, like you said, there's
a flood or oh wow, you know, a lot of people are dealing with
this kind of HVAC issue because you know, it's, it's super hot
out. People are going to watch that
because you're showing the location, they they see that
you're local, especially if you mentioned the video maybe in the
captions as well. So that's something I really
advise as well. 100%. Awesome.

(42:42):
And then let's talk about the actual conversion as well.
So again, we, we kind of hinted at this earlier, but so you
should be posting a lot of content, ideally at least once a
day and then people are gonna reach, reach out to you in the
comments or the messages or somewhere else.
I would put my phone number and e-mail right in the description

(43:04):
of the of the platform. You know mine has my e-mail
there. E-mail me or they could DM you
on the. Platform a lot of people.
Would that stands for direct messaging if you're not familiar
with that. So that's those are three ways
people will get a hold of your e-mail, your phone number and
your direct message. But you will, if you create
content enough, you will get, you'll have people starting to

(43:26):
reach out to you for sure. Or what'll happen is you'll
build the brand there and they'll see a billboard like,
oh, that's the guy from TikTok, I'm going to call him.
So it all kind of works together.
Yeah, no, definitely. That's something I've noticed as
well is that, you know, because I'm an SEO guy, SEO is mainly
showing up on Google. But that is increasingly
becoming more platforms. And really what I've realized,

(43:47):
which is kind of unfortunate in a way, but you kind of have to
do everything in digital and everything in digital powers up
the other sides. Yeah, You know, Facebook powers
up YouTube and those power up the web and then those power up
paid as well. And then there's also
traditional versus organic and those two power up each other.
So you kind of have to be everywhere in a sense.

(44:09):
But if you're doing short form video and you're repurposing
that across all platforms and you're covering a lot of that.
And I guess maybe to end here, something I was kind of curious
about. I want to hear your take if this
really matters, which you were mentioning what to put in the
bio so that it'll be much more conversion oriented of how to
contact you e-mail or phone. Do you have to have like a great

(44:29):
profile picture or a great banner?
Does that Does that stuff matter?
I think it. I think it.
Does I would I would make it your face clear shot of with
minimal background stuff going on.
You know, have someone take a picture of you or do a selfie
with a background. You could do it in portrait mode
so the background is a little bit blurred.

(44:51):
Because they want, you want themto see your face.
Because people connect with people.
Don't use your logo. It drives me crazy when people
do that. That's just me personally.
If it's your company page, maybeuse your logo.
I'm not sure. But for your own stuff, use your
face. Don't use an air conditioner,
don't use a paintbrush. They want people, want to see
your face, make sure you're smiling, a guy they could trust.
Don't be in there all like. Take my picture here.

(45:13):
This is mean looking grumpy old dude.
You know, you got to be approachable.
Like, you know, think of it as abillboard.
You know, how would you, how would you have your face on a
billboard? Something like that.
Awesome. OK, Last question I've got for
you Tony is what is your messageto the trades industry?
What do they need to know? What are they missing?
And specifically regarding branding, but what?
What is your message then? What do they need to know?

(45:36):
I guess my message would be if you want to grow your business
or your reputation or your personal brand, the attention
today is on the social media platforms and technology doesn't
care what our opinions are of TikTok, of LinkedIn, of YouTube,
You could have any opinion you want, but that's where the
attention is today. And it's not going to be there

(45:59):
forever. And it's easy to get in front
of. And tomorrow it'll be somewhere
different. And if you don't want to grow,
then don't get on there and do it.
You know, if you're happy with the way your business is, that's
great. There's nothing wrong with that.
Be perfectly content being a solo guy and you got enough
work, that's great. But if you do want to grow,
that's a great way to grow. That would be my message.
If you want to grow, you have tobe where the attention is.

(46:20):
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on.
Tony. This has been a blast.
Where can people find you on social media?
Which is kind of funny, you knowthey can find you everywhere,
but but what are what are the places people can connect with
you and learn more about you? Yeah, so Tony Mormino.
MORMINO. On all the platforms you could
type that in and you'll probablysee my ugly mug pop up somewhere

(46:40):
and you could reach out to me there.
Awesome. Do you do you have a personal
favorite platform? Like which one are you on the
most? Probably on LinkedIn the most.
I don't know it's that's a good question.
I'm not really sure. Probably on LinkedIn the most
TikTok, YouTube would be the close seconds to that.
So. Awesome.
Yeah, Linkedin's my personal favorite as well.

(47:01):
I just, I like the the way the platform works so you can
connect with people. The the content always seems to
perform pretty well. And then anything else you'd
like to plug or promote, you know, regarding your company or
the podcast? Yeah, so if you're in the HVAC
world, check out HVAC TV on YouTube.
We focus a lot on commercial, but we focus a lot on the

(47:22):
sciences of HVAC too. So if you're in residential, you
should be able to get something out of it as well.
And we're on all the podcast platforms.
So and Danny, thank you so much for having me.
I really enjoyed it. Awesome.
Yeah. Thank you so much again for
coming on, Tony. It's been a pleasure.

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#1 HVAC Influencer: I've Grown To 200k+ Followers, You Can Too! - Tony Mormino

Episode Transcript

Host

Danny Leibrandt

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#1 HVAC Influencer: I've Grown To 200k+ Followers, You Can Too! - Tony Mormino