Dan is 50% owner of The Good Guys Heating & Cooling, along with his cousin Andy. We sit down with him and ask him questions about his life and how he views business.
How did you get into the industry?
Believe it or not, my background was not in HVAC. It was in Software, Hardware, Servers, Networking. Pretty much anything with a computer was something I spent hundreds of hours on learning either myself or at FVTC. I got into this industry conveniently 2 months before graduation, I received a call from John Christensen. He was reaching out seeing if I had any interest in a part time job here working with our website and trying to get us more into the modern times.
I started just part time hours stopping in when I wasn’t at college. First few things I did was set up another website for one of our companies, started designing a customer brochure about our business, and finding a new solution to book appointments that didn’t involve a salon book.
What do you like most about the HVAC industry?
I never expected that I could utilize my skills as much as I do. Our industry has not really been customer friendly, and I was able to use my skills to help bring quality features to our customers 24/7. With so much competition in our area it’s important to put yourself apart. I am a strong believer in having a good healthy phone system with people who answer quick and can deliver great customer service. I also believe in having a comprehensive online system that allows customers to do things themselves.
In regards to products, I have been amazed at where technology is taking us. With the slow transition for Air Conditioners into side-discharge style, we’re seeing high tech makes it’s way into more and more homes.
This industry is also very rare to find people like me, so things I touch have a unique look and feel to them instead of it being a cookie cutter approach.
Every single ad, logo design, our website, our website software, our internal field software, was all built from the ground up by me over my years here. I don’t think I would have this creative freedom in most industries.
What do you dislike the most about the HVAC industry?
How unfair the pricing is to contractors. Many people just assume because they can buy a product online for $100 that means we pay $60. I have to tell them, it’s more like $115 because we buy it locally from a place that supports us and we need to be able to return it or swap if it’s a dead on arrival part.
While I like that customers can buy parts online, and we are happy to diagnose a furnace or ac for you, for you to repair yourself, it still sets up a lot of assumption that we are just raking in profits on repairs when we really aren’t.
That, and sometimes we have to pay more just because of where we are located in the state, and they know they can do it. For example, a manufacturer may charge us (and therefore you) an extra $400 per unit because we aren’t in a big city environment where competition is tougher.
It’s those silly games where companies put greed for fairness and common sense that makes me so angry and hate how it is allowed to happen in our industry.
How would you describe your work style?
I am very informal, relaxed type of worker. I love taking on challenges, and redesigns. For example, all of our company handouts are designed by me, and I get to take an idea and try to put it in a nice catchy, easy to read handout.
There are times where I get intense, and I tend to put myself intentionally into that environment. That’s when I have working on a new software product, or a significant update to our systems. I will just push the update, and then force myself to work non-stop to make sure all patches and issues are fixed.
For example, in 2025 we finally retired the first digital scheduling software we used since 2007, and replaced it with my own solution. Old software was not written for Windows 11, and ran horribly, and we had user limits that would annoy us. I ported the contents out and moved it over, and made sure all of our existing customer facing software still worked. It was A LOT to take it, but I pushed it through and had the excitement of rushing through to make micro patches for things I did not take into account.
Those who work with me, will realize I treat this business like a second family. I rarely have to pull the “I’m your boss” card because we all know what is expected of ourselves and we do it.
I enjoy working with others.
What do you think is the big thing facing small businesses today?
I would say the biggest thing is going to have to be the economy. I am no expert in the economy, but we need to have an economy that works for all of us, not just mega wealthy jerks. The inflation caused from the pandemic was going to be an unfortunate side effect, but it was slowly correcting itself. Unfortunately now there is a lot of unknowns that has people afraid to spend money.
We are fortunate that we offer services that are required, but we feel so bad for those who are stuck in a situation where they have to spend money unexpectedly. We did our best to strike deals for lower equipment costs, and are trying to run our company as efficiently as we can. Our pricing is strictly algorithmic, and if we are more efficient and our company reports show that, the price of products can actually come down possibly!
A second would be work force, but I truly believe a lot of companies have problems hiring because they are not offering competitive wages. We have not really had a problem hiring people, as we put so much effort in having a place that people want to work.
Describe your worst working day. What did you learn from the experience?
While I cannot pinpoint the day, I can remember the entire month of December 2020. We had to terminate someone for cause, another person moved away, and another employee died unexpectedly. Our company does not add and remove employees very often, and when we do it’s a big deal. The hardest for sure was losing Mike, our Office Manager. He unexpectedly died of a heart attack overnight. Mike was with us back in the day and came back to finish out his career back at The Good Guys.
His laugh and positivity really traveled. His work ethic was impressive, and you would never have to ask twice or question if something would be taken care of.
All three things hitting us in the span of two weeks put me in a pretty bad place mentally, and I am fortunate to have the friends and family I did to help me get out of it.
I’m a strong believer of appreciating the good and bad, and using it as a learning experience to further prepare you for the randomness that life throws your way. We still deeply miss Mike. <3
What is your greatest success in industry?
Put simply, my software solutions. I never really got into software development as a kid, although I had a decent understanding of working with VB and Visual Studio. What got me into PHP/SQL software stack was doing a community project for Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament 2004. A project that people relied on sold out to a company that then dropped the project. I made it my duty to replace what was gone and do it better.
I learned how to code, and built the system out (which is still in use today). With that knowledge in 2009 I developed my first big program, CCS (Comfort Consultant Scheduler). It was a Sales CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) that let our estimators keep track of appointments in the computer, and incoming appointments would be toggled by type, and the algorithm would determine which person was next, taking the human choice out of it.
From there, I kept learning and kept implementing. In 2012 we held a meeting and John Christensen (uncle) looked at me and said “Dan, is there any way we could push the information of a call to our technicians through text message?” That one question set off the biggest chain of events. Not only could I do that, I had tons of great ideas. Our system tied right in with our existing scheduling software. It would send a special crafted link to the tech, which would load a page with all the customer information, history, and ability to take a photo of the invoice.
From 2012 to 2025 and beyond, that product which we call “Good Guys ServiceDesk” is our ultimate software title. We moved our sales CRM into it, and we added literally hundreds of features. We have a proper mobile app in the app store, and we have a special server appliance built to running it.
Our team likes the program, and it’s even a greater joy to see inside sales at distributors see our software in action and be dumbfounded at how smooth it is. I am very excited in what I have accomplished, and maybe some day we will look at sharing this with other businesses.
Describe your average day at the office. What do you do?
I get in an hour before we open to make sure the showroom lights are on and the office is opened up. I check all of our systems and if I need to reach out to a customer for something done online I do that before we open. From there it is a mix of working on marketing, handouts, software updates, general I.T., server management, human resources work occasionally, and whatever else people require of me.
I prefer to be a hands on helper, earning my pay. I take pride in being a part of our company’s success and want to show everyone that rank doesn’t mean anything, everyone can take out the trash.
How do you personally measure success?
I would put this into a few bullet points…
- Are the employee’s family doing well? If people are struggling I may be doing something wrong.
- Am I able to take a vacation without my systems failing. Early on this was not a guarantee, but now all our systems seem pretty rock solid.
- Do I hear my name being talked about through the “grape vine” as being positive. I understand I’m not going to please everyone, but it is very important that I am doing all I can to assure that people enjoy this place as much as reasonably possible.
- Am I able to go home and not bring work with me. If I am, it’s because things are bothering me and things. Early on this was hard, but as time went on I stopped letting little stuff bother me at much.
What do you think your company does better than your competition?
This may be hard, because I am clearly biased from what I see, and I have never worked at another HVAC contractor. I guess if I had to choose they would be:
- Customer Convenience: I don’t think any other residential contractor, especially in this area, has the convenient level of online resources and help that we put up. We go out of our way to cater to people who would rather learn and research on their own time and then reach out if they’re interested. We also are the only company to offer online scheduling to the level we do. Offering this is way more complicated than people realize but I’m glad it is stable and reliable. About 30% of our customers book appointments this way.
- Standing Behind our Work: We do this to a fault sometime, because we truly care about doing the job right. But, as you know, we are human… We can make mistakes, and that means we need to make things right. We give our managers complete flexibility to correct invoices without our approvals. We had one thing happen that was not our fault, but it affected a customer. A press fitting installed properly was leaking all through a building. While we were fighting this with insurance their bill for cleaning came up. Even though we didn’t have the money yet, I wrote a check and ran it directly to the company that did the clean up and let the customer know that they should not have to front the money, and that we will deal with the process. It took us 6 months past that to get paid. It was the right thing to do.
- Our reputation: We are a family tradition going back to the 1920’s. I take what we do seriously. I chose to be a part of this company because I loved what we did, I trusted and respected my co-workers, and our family has run this company so well that it would be an honor to carry on the legacy. I could have easily said no and took my skills elsewhere and make a lot more money, but you will find with me that happiness is way more important than money. I know corporate won’t come in and ruin our good time, because I’m “corporate” and I don’t do that, hehe.
In what ways have you increased business productivity?
This lines up mostly with my software. Everything we have in our ServiceDesk suite is built around how we can stay more organized and be on top of our workload. From where we were with dispatching inefficiently, to using GPS based dispatching, and our automated systems like Move-Up Express that deep decision making to plan where to fit appointments that make sense from a location stand point.
We saved even more knowing that I wrote this software during my downtime for the past 15+ years so we aren’t really out much labor, and all the money we don’t have to pay to other companies that charge tens of thousands a year to use their software.
It’s hard to measure but we know it’s there, and it’s appreciated by all.