So I was born and raised in the great state of Delaware, spent most
of my life there up through high school, and then I went to college
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then went to graduate
school at Northwestern University in Chicago. So we're going to talk a lot about
your company and over the last four years of service, first financial, but
I think to give context to our listeners, what was I like to find
out? You know, what you did out of school, what you were
interested in, and then you get that epiphany of an idea about starting your
company. And it's really hard to start a company, whether it's a small
or large business out there for our current entrepreneurs and CEOs that are listening and
also the future ones. So what was the plan right out of school?
Would you do? Yeah? So I spent most of my current Wall Street
as an investment banker and then later as a private equity investor. I actually
have a legal background. Have spent most of my career investing in and lending
money to distress businesses with the idea of helping them to improve the businesses and
eventually, you know, exit those You know what brought me to the home
services industry was In two thirteen, I led an investment where we bought the
second largest home services contracting platform in the country from one of the large HVAC
original equipment manufacturers. I spent about four years knee deep in that business helping
to turn it around. Successfully exited that business to a publicly traded company in
Canada. And in Canada, the market for home comfort's very different than the
United States. It's a very large percentage of population does not own their systems.
They actually rent them. When I say their systems, I'm referring to
HVAC and plumbing systems. And you know, given the change in consumer purchasing
behavior here in the 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 comfort industry 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 love to hear stories like this. It's that idea, and
you've kind of started that about why you came up with the company, But
there's a lot that goes behind that. Once again, for our future leaders
and entrepreneurs and CEO. 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 about the origin of kind of coming up with the idea,
starting it, what was execution light it's in those first few weeks and
months. Yeah, it's an interesting story. So you know, as I
mentioned, my experience in the home comfort space really paved the way from my
understanding of where there were some gaps in the current business models. And I
started, and I'll say this lightly, with a PowerPoint presentation in a spreadsheet.
I built a financial model PowerPoint presentation laying out the business, and I
went to New York and I talked to two investors. Now again my background
is from that world, so I think that made it a little bit easier.
I knew I 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. We you know, I spent six months negotiating, and then in
November twenty nineteen, we closed on our first call it incubation capital from a
firm in New York. And I remember I hired you know three people that
I had worked with in the past. We sat in a conference room here
in Bethesda, Maryland, and we looked at each other and said, we've
raised the money. Looks like we have to go build the business now.
And we literally started building from scratch. Someone took on the IT side of
it. I handled the legal, all the legal work. We hired a
head sales trainer who built the program out and over a course of six months
we built the infrastructure both from a technology and legal perspective. And in the
middle of COVID April twenty twenty, we originated our first premiere program, long
term Worry fore home Comfort program contract with a consumer in Oklahoma. Wow,
that's that's a great story. I love that. And right drink COVID too.
In the middle of COVID, not that we had planned that when we
raised them Mode Home course. Shortly after, yeah, three months after we
raised it, you know, the world fell part. Yeah, had a
lot of we pushed on and a lot of pivoting after that for a lot
of businesses out there, even though a lot of people worked remotely anyways to
start with. So I do want to talk a lot about the company,
and I'm always curious about names of companies because I know that's fun. Sometimes
you want to say who you are to your client out there and kind of
get people's attention. Can you tell us the origin story of the name of
the company. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know this the
industry, the home comfort industry. And when I again, when I say
home comfort refer mostly h VAC, plumbing, and electrical. The industry has
been selling you know, boxes and tanks to homeowners for decades. Right,
my system's broken, my house is hot, Well, here's a box.
This is going to help keep you cool. And then the genesis of service
first was consumers don't care about the boxes. They care about the service,
So let's give them service first, okay. And then the financial part of
part of it was built in there because you know, you know, in
the 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 services
to make that experience world class. I like that. That's very well thought
out 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 is
that from the company. Yeah. So, the mission for the company is
to transform the way both contractors and consumers purchase home comfort in the United States
from a product based sale to a subscription like service. All right, anad,
let's do this. I want to give everybody kind of a thirty thousand
foot view of your company. If they've been listening and Service First Financials the
first time they've heard this. If you were to give them an overall view
of what you do and who you work with, what would that be?
Yeah? Sure, so Service for us as a financial, technology, innovation
and training company that's transforming the way homeowners stay comfortable in their homes. Through
our 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 techlis, water heaters, water
fil train and purification, and standby generators. And for a low monthly payment,
homeowners can get access in use to a high efficiency home comfort system with
no cash out of pocket and none of the risks and burdens of product ownership.
If the system ever breaks, it's taking care of free of charge of
that homeowner. Our authorized contractors come out once or twice a year to perform
annual maintenance to ensure those systems are operating, get peak efficiency, keep utility
bills down, and the homeowners pay a low monthly payment and they know exactly
what to expect every single time of contractors in their home. All Right,
you've been around for a while, and I always like to talk to our
leaders about sustainability and then growth because everybody's got a different opinion, depends on
if you're a small business, medium or large and what you do for a
living in who you work with. With all that said, tell me about
starting the business, being sustainable, then growing and are you within the DMV
and are you working domestically tell us the story. Yes, absolutely so.
Our business today's a national footprint. We're operating in about thirty three states across
the country. We did we worked the business here in the Washington, DC
area, so we have a little bit of a concentration around DC, Maryland
in Virginia. But it is a national footprint. And you know, we've
built this business to be a business that's going to be here not only tomorrow,
but five years from now and ten years from now, you know,
serving our customers and serving our contractors in a way that no other business in
this industry is doing today. You know, from a sustainability perspective, I'm
going to shift it a little bit to the environmental sustainability. We have a
big focus on, you know, helping to drive decarbonization in the home comfort
space. Okay, about forty percent of our portfolio today is an electrified heat
pumps, and as many people may know, there's a really big push today
towards electrifying home comfort and the homes by removing fossil fuel burning, applying SYS
from within the homes. So many a big portion of our portfolio, about
forty percent, is really promoting that and 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 you do, but I'm sure there is competition.
So as you're pitching yourself, you're trying to sell the other clients,
you're starting to grow that business, how do you differentiate yourself from the other
competition out there? Yeah, you know, I think it's an interesting it's
an interesting question. We played a long 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 wants to come onto the program. We
really seek to understand our customers and to figure out is now right time?
Is this program right for you? But most importantly, we differentiate ourselves by
the support we provide. I mentioned earlier that we're a financial, technology,
innovation and training company. Training is a huge portion of what we do.
Okay. This industry, both from a consumer perspective and a contractor perspective,
does not necessarily understand how a service based model for home comfort works at the
kitchen table, and so we do. When we onboard a new contractor,
we train them on site. We fly all over the country and train their
their personnel on how do you present this 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 ways of acquiring home comfort? Well that's why
say training, yea, training is probably the biggest one that's absolutely fascinating,
And I guess that leads me to my next question, and once again I
don't want to make any assumptions, but when it comes to small, medium,
and large businesses that you do this training work with them, is it
all for 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
typically represented by the biggest and best contractors in each geographic market. Okay,
And the reason for that is there's really a few things. One we believe
this type of program requires a level of sophistication and business understanding that typically not
always, but typically your mid to larger size you know, home services contractors
have your smaller ones tend not to have. Okay, Okay, 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 tend to partner with
in whatever market it is a market leader within that market. Okay, got
it. Well, let's do this. I always like to get a great
story because you know, one of the things that entrepreneurs and CEOs and founders
like to share is something special that's happened. So I want to put a
pin in that just for a second. But let's have a good 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 get up 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 comfort industry over the last you know, called two
to three years since covid, has experienced outsized inflation on equipment costs, okay,
and so homeowners that maybe haven't replaced an HVAC system or water heater in
the last five, ten, fifteen, twenty years are shocked when they see
the price of a new home comfort system okay. In a lot of ways.
Simply put, home comfort has surpassed and broken through an affordability threshold for
most Americans. And so that's where one of the biggest challenges and opportunities is
for our business, is that we're making it easier for homeowners to buy the
systems that they want, the high efficiency, sustainable systems that they want,
as opposed to what they think or they may believe they can afford. Okay,
Not only that, but then we're supporting that installation of that system with
all of the services that you need throughout the useful life of that system to
ensure that it's operating a peak efficiency to keep utility bills down. 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 of great stories out there
where he said, you know what, team, we knock that one onto
the park for the client to maybe with a training session or something special happen
with that client. Do you have a nice story for us that you'd like
to share. Yeah? Absolutely, you know, it's an interesting, interesting
question. One of the things I take a lot of pride in is that
we do things differently than most other similar companies in our industry. Okay,
I'll give you example. First, we go on site to train all of
our dealers. Most people don't do that in this industry today. Okay,
if you're a vendor, you send them a a zoom link, you do
some training over the phone, maybe you go on site once a quarter.
We're out there a lot helping our dealers be successful with this program. We
hear numerous times from our dealers that the level of preparation, the presentation,
and the content and quality of the content that was delivered is better than any
presentation that they've ever received from a vendor in their twenty thirty forty years in
the industry. And if that was only once we had heard that, I
wouldn't put a lot of stock into it. We hear that from very large,
very sophisticated contractors on a regular base this month after month, because we
focus on that aspect of our business, you know. I My takeaway from
that is a couple of things. Outstanding customer service, but also real time
in person training where that's you're also different engineering yourself from the other companies out
there, and that's kind of mean a lot to the people you're working with
and just the overall chatter about your company that you go that extra mile to
get people trained up properly in person, that's kind of the extraordinary and very
smart on your part too. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a
double edged sword, right, because we do that. We have to be
selective on who we work with, sure, because it's just impossible for us
to be everywhere at every time and the other and if I may expenses too,
right, exactly, Yeah, we have to be selective because you know,
we can't. We can't spend that type of money and time, you
know, serving smaller opportunities. But the other side of that is when we
do work with somebody, the level of support and training and customer service,
as you mentioned, is really on that outstanding. Well, let's do this.
Let's wrap up our conversation with some final thoughts about you and as you're
about the company. And once again, if somebody is being introduced to Service
First Financial for the very first time, what takeaway would you like them to
go away with today? Yeah, you know, from a from a consumer
perspective. You know, if a consumer is in the market or facing a
difficult situation with their home comfort, their HVAC, plumbing, or electrical and
they're looking for a convenient, worry free way to replace their systems, I'd
encourage them to go to www. Dot worryfreehome Comfort dot com and explore watch
the explainer video about our program and see if it's a good fit. If
it is, fill out the form and we'll have one of our authorized contractors
reach out, you know, to come out and give a quote for whatever
their needs may be. And for contractors, you know, I think it
really comes down to if you're an innovative contractor seeking to differentiate your business and
your local market, seeking to be forward thinking and serve your customers at a
differentiated 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 can
do for you as a business and for you, you know, while you're
starving your customers. Outstanding And one last thing, Ina before we let you
go. I always like to ask our leaders about not only leadership but starting
a company. Now. We, as you can imagine, have a lot
of current CEOs and entrepreneurs that listen to this series, but also a lot
of future 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
up with the idea, how you executed with your team, and how you're
sustaining it and growing it. With that said, any advice or young people
out there that are starting whatever kind of business they want to do, just
about moving forward in today's climate. Yeah, you know my view as a
founder and a CEO that is not a title of leadership or management. I'd
encourage anyone that's seeking to start something or lead an organization to be willing to
do every job within that organization at some point in their tenure. Okay,
there's not a single job with this, 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 hired the types of individuals that are
willing to do whatever it takes to be successful. We always tell people that
what we're trying to do is change in industry. Changing an industry is hard.
You will run into walls. Okay. We want people who are willing
to go over it, through it, around it, under it, whatever
it takes to get past the obstacle and move on to the next challenge.
And so i'd encourage people 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 understand what it takes to be successful. I'm so happy you
talked about that and you and I are on the same page. I've been
in my industry with TV radio sports for a long time, and I extinctively
made sure that I did everything behind the scenes before I got that big job
on the air that I wanted to do. My daughter is also in cinema,
television, arts and school right now, and I said, I know
you want to be a director or maybe a DP, but do the lighting,
do the blocking, do the audio, do all the things around.
So when you're a director someday you'll know what everybody else is doing. It'll
be an easier life for you, no doubt. Yeah, hey, listen,
this has been a lot of fun. I should talk to you.
You're obviously very passionate 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 busy schedule to join
us on CEOs of Shanel continued success. Yeah, thank you so much,
appreciate it.