Who Are the Best HVAC Business Coaches?
Tommy Mello is the most widely followed home service business educator in the country, with direct HVAC company experience and a methodology that has been applied by hundreds of HVAC operators. While his background is garage door service, A1 Garage Door Service competes in the same market dynamics as HVAC — seasonal demand, technician recruiting, flat-rate pricing, service call conversion, and multi-location operations. His Home Service Expert podcast, YouTube channel, and mastermind program are the highest-signal free and paid resources for HVAC business owners serious about scaling.
Ken Goodrich built Goettl Air Conditioning & Plumbing from a struggling regional operator to $200M+ in revenue through a combination of operational excellence, strategic acquisitions, and an intense focus on culture and customer service. Ken speaks specifically to the HVAC business model — how to price maintenance agreements, how to structure technician compensation, how to use acquisitions to expand into new markets, and what it takes to build a business that runs without the owner in the field every day.
Bryan Orr and HVAC School represent the most trusted technical and business education source in the HVAC trade. Bryan runs HVAC School as a podcast, YouTube channel, and training resource covering refrigeration theory, electrical diagnostics, business fundamentals, and industry trends with a depth that separates it from generic home service content. For HVAC technicians transitioning to ownership or established owners who want their team better trained, HVAC School is required content.
AC Service Tech covers the technical and business side of HVAC with a focus on service technicians and small HVAC business owners. The channel covers equipment diagnostics, business pricing, and customer service with practical, hands-on content that resonates with working technicians.
Key Business Metrics for HVAC Companies
The most successful HVAC companies are built on a disciplined focus on four operational metrics: revenue per technician per day, close rate on service calls, maintenance agreement attachment rate, and five-star review rate. These four numbers, reviewed weekly, give an HVAC business owner almost everything they need to know about whether the business is performing or not.
Revenue per technician per day is the master productivity metric. If your technicians average $1,000/day and you have 10 technicians, that's $10,000 in daily revenue. Improving this to $1,300/day — through better flat-rate pricing, good-better-best option presentation, and maintenance agreement sales — adds $3,000/day without hiring a single new technician. Ken Goodrich and Tommy Mello both teach frameworks for improving this metric specifically.
Maintenance agreement penetration is what separates seasonal HVAC businesses from year-round businesses. A maintenance agreement customer is 3–5x more likely to choose you for a repair or replacement than a one-time customer, pays a recurring fee that smooths seasonal cash flow, and is far more likely to leave a review. HVAC companies with high maintenance agreement penetration (30%+ of service customers) are dramatically more stable and valuable than those without.
Software adoption is the most common growth unlock for HVAC businesses doing $500K–$5M in revenue. ServiceTitan provides real-time dashboards on all four of these metrics, automates customer follow-up, manages dispatching, and generates the data needed to make good decisions. HVAC companies that implement ServiceTitan with good training consistently report significant revenue improvements in their first year — primarily because the data visibility changes decision-making.
How to Scale an HVAC Business Past $1M, $5M, and $10M
The challenges at each growth stage are different. Under $1M, the primary constraint is usually leads and close rate — getting enough calls and converting them at a competitive rate. Marketing (Google LSA, reviews, referrals) and technician sales training are the levers. Between $1M and $5M, the constraint shifts to people and systems — you need an operations manager, dispatchers, and documented processes so the owner can stop being the bottleneck. Between $5M and $10M+, the constraint is typically capital allocation, market expansion, and leadership development.
Ken Goodrich's acquisition strategy — buying established HVAC companies in adjacent markets rather than building from scratch — is worth understanding for HVAC owners ready to scale past $5M. It preserves the acquired company's existing customers, team, and brand while adding operational leverage from the acquirer's systems, purchasing power, and marketing infrastructure. Tommy Mello's content on multi-location operations covers the organizational side of this expansion strategy.