From Zero to $15M+ in HVAC - How to Grow & Scale Crazy Fast!

David and his brother Michael started Trio (formerly Pacific) in July 2021 with zero HVAC background and grew to 60 employees, three locations, and over 1,000 five-star reviews in just three and a half years. In this episode of HVAC Hotshots, he covers the rebrand built around three core pillars, the checkpoint-based customer journey that generates reviews, and the financial and hiring systems that made fast scaling possible.

The conversation lasted two minutes. David came home one evening and asked his brother Michael: “If you break your leg tomorrow, what are you going to do? How are you going to make money?” That night they ordered business cards, built a website, and needed a name. Michael came up with one in 10 seconds. Trio was not yet what it would become but the company was born.

That was July 2021. Three and a half years later: 60 employees, three locations in the Bay Area, over $50 million in revenue, and over 1,000 five-star reviews. No business background. No college degree. No HVAC certification at the start. What David and Michael had was a clear view of what quality looked like in an industry where it was frequently missing, and a willingness to build the systems required to deliver it at scale.

In this episode of HVAC Hotshots, David walks through the rebrand that forced them to define what they actually stood for, the customer journey framework behind their reviews, the P&L structure they use to manage three locations, and the advice he gives to every business owner who asks how to grow without losing everything in the process.

A year and a half before the recording, the company changed its name to Trio. It was the hardest decision they ever made.

The company had been growing fast close to $10 million in revenue when they started the conversation about a rebrand. The shirts, the vehicles, the wrapping, the website, the marketing materials changing all of it at once is essentially starting a new company while keeping the existing one running. Multi-partner businesses make this harder. Getting everyone from “we’re thinking about it” to “we’re doing it” is not a straight line.

The process David used: they brought employees together, ran anonymous surveys, and asked a single question across multiple formats: what do we stand for? What do you think about this company? Three things kept coming up.

The first was customer satisfaction. Not the kind companies put on websites. The real kind. “You need to feel the ground shaking when we are getting a four-star review. And for us, it’s a loss.” A four-star carries the same weight internally as a one-star. The question they keep asking: if we could give this customer a seven-star experience, what would that look like? A homeowner who mentioned they love the Giants gets a hat and a poster shipped to them after the job. Movie tickets. Something that says the team noticed, cared, and acted on it.

The second was employee growth. Every person at Trio has a documented success criteria: a clear path to six figures, what they need to learn to reach the next position, what their next compensation tier requires. It is not a manager’s subjective call. It is measurable, visible to both the employee and their manager, and supported by 100-day plans and regular one-on-ones.

The third was environmental responsibility. One tree planted per completed job, regardless of ticket size. A $50 tuneup or a $20,000 system replacement: one tree, on behalf of the customer. The program grew from a personal experience. In 2017, a major fire swept through Napa County. David and Michael were doing insulation work at the time and spent weeks helping homeowners with smoke damage, pulling ruined insulation from homes in neighborhoods that had mostly burned down. “It was horrible. It was really difficult to be in those areas.” That experience created a commitment: the company’s work on indoor air quality needed to connect to something larger. Close to 12,000 trees have been planted since the program launched. David’s hope is that over time it is not a differentiator, because other companies have adopted it too.

The Trio logo reflects all three: five stars on a cup for the five-star experience, a small tree, green surrounding it for environmental responsibility. The three owners people assume the name refers to are actually the customer, the employee, and the earth.

Trio built their review count by first building a system. They spent multiple weekends in the office mapping the customer journey as a series of checkpoints, each one requiring a five-star interaction before the next one begins.

The first checkpoint is the CSR call. If the customer does not have a great experience at that station, everything that follows is already compromised. The technician pre-arrival checkpoint: did the notification go out, did the reminder go through, is the tech on time, is the vehicle parked on the street and not the driveway? Every element of the visit, from the parking spot to the way the tech introduces themselves, is a process built to produce a specific outcome.

“A five-star review is not because you provided a five-star service. It’s because you were able to build a personal connection.” The review is a byproduct of the relationship. David illustrates this with a simple example: if a friend’s uncle comes to fix your fence, does a poor job, and leaves it unfinished, you are unlikely to leave him a one-star review. You have a personal relationship through the referral chain, and that relationship creates patience, grace, and a willingness to give that person a chance to make it right. That same dynamic is what Trio tries to build with every customer.

The reverse is also true. Personal connection protects against one-star reviews when things go wrong. The goal is not perfection but speed and sincerity when a problem surfaces. “They shouldn’t be waiting more than a day for an answer.” A full system replacement at no charge. A hotel night if the system is down. Whatever it takes that is what a seven-star recovery looks like.

The program called Trio Cares runs alongside all of this. Any employee can nominate a customer or a family member in need for a free system installation. It is a direct expression of the same personal-connection philosophy: this company’s reputation exists because the people inside it genuinely care about the people on the other side of every job.

David has no business background. He built the operating structure by talking to companies that were ahead of him, learning from employees who had worked at larger organizations, and implementing what he found.

Two systems anchor the day-to-day operations across all three locations.

The daily huddle runs every morning at 9 AM. Every manager is in, regardless of location or whether they are working remotely or on vacation. The meeting is 10 to 15 minutes. Each department head gets 60 to 90 seconds: what did we hit yesterday, what is the target for today, how are we going to reach it? The discipline of reporting to the whole team creates accountability that self-reporting alone cannot. It also creates visibility across departments the marketing person understands what the service team needs, the call center manager knows what the sales team is waiting for. “It creates that environment of collaboration because people really see what each department needs from them.”

Weekly leadership meetings go deeper. Week-over-week performance against budget, targets for the month and year, opportunities and struggles, what each department needs from others. This is where decisions get made and where problems surface before they become fires.

The financial framework David uses is P&L structured in five layers. Revenue is the starting point but says nothing about efficiency on its own. Cost of goods sold follows: every cost the business would not have unless the job existed, including labor, equipment, materials, and commissions. David includes commissions in COGS even though standard accounting places them in overhead, because the company would not pay commission without the job. Gross profit follows COGS. Target: 50%. Overhead comes next, with marketing broken out separately from the rest. Target: 40%. Net: 10%.

“We can have a million dollars a month in revenue and make zero in net profit. You could have $300,000 and make more profit than many businesses with $3 million.” Revenue is the size of the business. Gross margin is the efficiency. Every threshold in the P&L needs a defined target, a warning level, and an emergency level. When a number moves, you know immediately which layer to examine.

Without that data, the daily huddle and the weekly meetings have nothing real to report on. “If you don’t have the basics in place, you can’t.” For operators still working toward that foundation, the starting point is gross margin and average ticket. Everything else follows from there.

Hiring. High performers look for companies they can be proud of. This is the secondary reason David gives for obsessing over reputation. “High-caliber individuals are looking for good companies to work for companies that can deliver, that can stand behind the promises they make to the client.” A company with a weak reputation loses access to the best candidates before the conversation even starts.

The compensation foundation: 401k, reliable vehicles, unlimited PTO if targets are being hit, family health benefits, and top-dollar pay funded by being priced correctly. Not by being cheap. “You need to price for the company that you want to be.”

Organic growth within the team is powered by referral bonuses of $500 to $5,000 per hire, depending on the position. The math David lays out is straightforward: if every person in a 10-person company brings one referral in a year, that company doubles its headcount in 12 months. “We’ve had years of growth of no more than 300%.” The referral pipeline works because the culture is worth referring people into.

Marketing. Google Local Services Ads are the highest-performing and most cost-effective channel David has found. For operators at a scale where the budget fits, he would put the entire marketing spend there. Once that ceiling is reached, the channels expand: magazines, TV, sports team partnerships, PPC, Yelp, Thumbtack, door hangers, door knocking, home shows, billboards, community involvement.

The post-COVID market shift matters here. During the pandemic years, demand was so high that whoever had the labor supply won. Equipment manufacturers reported 50-60% increases in demand. Five to six years of projects were completed in two to three years. Now the demand has normalized and the game has changed: whoever has the marketing wins. Private equity companies are outbidding smaller operators on every digital channel. A cost per lead of two to three times the historical rate can destroy margins. The operators who will win in the current environment are the ones willing to invest in traditional marketing where PE companies do not compete: “The price stays pretty much the same. You’re not paying two, three times more per lead.”

Seasonality. The visible problem during slow season is revenue. The less-discussed problem is the employee mindset and culture that slow season can erode. David addresses both.

On the revenue side: memberships are the primary buffer. The target at Trio is 350 members per technician. At 200 members per tech, a company is largely insulated from slow season through maintenance calls and tuneups. When membership volume is not there, shift the messaging. When nobody is searching for a furnace or an AC replacement, talk about indoor air quality, duct cleaning, and whole-home purification. Use CRM data to rehash the 60% of estimates from the past year that did not convert with a targeted promotion.

On the culture side: slow season is the best time to recruit, because top performers at competitor companies may be experiencing the same slowdown and be more open to a conversation. “By the time calls pick back up, you have those people. And you get to enjoy the benefits and generate more for the next year.” Growth mindset during slow season is not an option. It is the only posture that compounds.

David breaks every problem a company has down to one of three root causes: a person who did not follow a process that exists, a process that exists but is wrong and needs to be updated, or a process that does not exist yet. When a fire needs to be put out, first identify which of the three is responsible. Then address the root cause, not just the symptom.

The four areas of time he teaches to every operator he coaches:

Area one is firefighting. Drop everything, deal with the emergency.

Area two is building. Creating the systems, processes, automations, and documents that reduce how much time gets spent in area one. This is where businesses grow.

Area three is day-to-day operations. Payroll, scheduling, ordering, assigning.

Area four is personal time. Rest, family, reading, recovery.

“Our job is to spend as much time as possible in area two.” The more time in area two, the fewer fires in area one, and the more the business can grow without needing the owner to hold it together.

The scale ladder maps clearly against this. At $1-2 million, the two foundational requirements are a proper price book and a structured pay plan. Both of these, done correctly, eliminate most of the internal problems early-stage operators face. At $3-5 million, the challenge is the owner who has become the business. Every decision runs through one person. The firefighting is constant and growth stalls. The solution is hiring key management positions, not as an expense but as an investment that buys back time. “The thing that you spend the most time doing that’s where you need to invest in bringing a person in.” Every recurring problem that shows up more than twice a month needs a written SOP so it stops being a decision and starts being a system.

David’s final advice is this: “Think twice.” Not as a discouragement but as a preparation. At 12 employees, he had a moment that changed him. The realization that 12 employees, each with a household of three or four people, meant roughly 48 people whose stability was connected to how well he did his job. “I started tearing up, thinking that I’m not doing enough or I’m not good enough for my own company.” From that point: “I am eating last. I’m the last person to eat.”

The follow-on to that: “Don’t try to reinvent the wheel.” Every problem an HVAC operator is facing has already been solved by someone who is a level or two ahead of them. Talk to the $5 million company if you are at $1 million. Talk to the $10 million company if you are at $5 million. “We have no secrets. Whatever they ask for, we give it to them.” Two to three companies from across the US visit Trio’s facility every week for shop tours.

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