In this episode of the Dominate Ductless Podcast, I sat down with Tony Jones—owner of Jones Heating and Air in Aiken, SC—to explore how 56 years of HVAC experience led to the perfect business model. Tony’s no-nonsense approach to running a lean, profitable ductless-focused operation proves that sometimes less really is more when it comes to building a sustainable contracting business.

Key Takeaways

Keep Overhead Low: Tony’s success comes from running an ultra-lean operation with minimal overhead and maximum profitability.

Focus on Comfort, Not Equipment: Position yourself as being in the “comfort business,” not the heating and air business.

Price Based on Value, Not Cost: Don’t price based solely on equipment cost—price based on what the market will bear and the value you provide.

Have a Ready Price Book: Be prepared to give pricing on the spot. Tony can price any job immediately because he has his systems dialed in.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Tony works 2-3 days a week, does 3-5 calls, installs two units weekly, and makes $125,000 annually.

Offer Ductless on Every Call: Every customer contact is an opportunity to offer ductless solutions.

Be the Local Expert: Tony is known as “the ductless guy” in his area—even competitors refer jobs to him.

Focus on Profitable Work: Master bedrooms, additions, and comfort problems are perfect applications for profitable ductless installations.

Tony’s story proves that with 56 years of experience, the right mindset, and a focus on ductless technology, you can build an incredibly profitable business while working fewer hours and dealing with less stress. His “right F’ing now” attitude and commitment to low overhead, high profit margins show there’s still plenty of room in the ductless market for contractors willing to position themselves as the local expert.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Mike: Welcome to the Dominate Ductless Podcast, where we tell the stories of entrepreneurs who are building businesses that are focused on ductless heat pumps. I’m Mike Cappuccio, the owner of Dominate Ductless, and I’m excited this morning to have a longtime friend and business owner, Tony Jones. Good morning, Tony.

Tony: Good morning, Mike. Thank you for having me.

Mike: Tell the audience a little bit about yourself and your company, and what you do in your day-to-day roles.

Tony: Well, I may be different than some, but like a lot of others as yourself, I’m an old school HVAC guy. Actually, I was a heating guy before there was AC. Fifty-six years in the business. My father started a business when I was young, with myself, my four brothers and my dad and a few other guys. I remember cutting insulation for ductwork when I was six years old—there was no OSHA requirements back then! We were in the family business for 40-plus years. When my dad passed away, my older brother didn’t want to continue, so we sold our business to another local company.

I did strictly sales there for about three years, bounced around a little bit, and then decided I’ll just do it my damn self. I am a prototypical one-man show now, which I prefer. I have what I call a pit crew—a man and son who I bring in when we do replacements and installs. I’m on the job the whole time, so I do the service calls, I help with the installs, I install sometimes myself. The key to all that for me, Mike, as you and I have spoken before, is keep overhead as low as possible at just about any cost.

Mike: When did we actually meet each other?

Tony: We were in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the Charlotte Motor Speedway for an Epting Distributors and Mitsubishi collaboration that you did. That’s where you might remember I came up with the term “RF in HVAC”—and a lot of people ask what that means. It’s “right F’ing now heating and air.” That’s my mentality. If I can’t do it right now, why bother?

Mike: That was a great event! How did that training actually help you or help your business?

Tony: The main concept that I got from you, Mike, is it reaffirmed my idea of a ductless-focused or ductless-only business. Can it be done? Is there enough business out there to sustain a business and make a good profit? And yes, the answer is yes. You reaffirmed that drastically to me.

Mike: So after that, did you do more heat pump installations?

Tony: Yes. And by the way, I put my first ductless in 1995. So over 30 years I’ve been doing it, but not as a focus. What I took away is, “All right, so this guy can do it. Although it’s in a different market, that doesn’t matter.” It doesn’t matter because in my belief, every home or business needs at least one ductless system. And if you don’t offer it, they’re damn sure not going to buy it.

Mike: I also got from you the level of professionalism that I was needing to hear, especially in the South where we’re known as—and I love this term—”heating and air rednecks” down here. But hey, now everybody wants to do it, so too bad. First man in wins.

Tony: You’re exactly right. I can remember going to AC events in New England where there would be a hundred contractors, and they would actually say I was a stupid guy and all my company knew how to do was hang plastic boxes on the wall.

Mike: I believe it! And there’s guys like that.

Tony: And I’m like, “Okay, well, you guys keep doing what y’all doing. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and I’m going to be very profitable.” And what I do takes a lot less time than what you guys do.

Mike: My motto is get in, get out and get paid. I don’t have all the overhead. I’ve been allergic to ductwork since I was six years old, so this gets me away from my allergies! And I say that jokingly, but yeah, you don’t have to have ductwork.

The idea of ductless—a lot of people still consider it like a window unit or something you can buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Yeah, you can go buy them and good luck. You’ll call me eventually. The professionalism and the focus on it is critical to me. I think it should be offered on every service call, every contact with a customer—existing or new customer—because if they don’t know about it, they’re not going to buy it.

Mike: I was in Minnesota last week, and what came up was there was a gentleman from the manufacturer who said it’s like he’s been taken back in time in the heat pump ductless world—it’s a single zone market only. What we really need to focus on is adding a single zone ductless heat pump to a unitary replacement job.

Tony: All the time. A couple of things to think about—I put them in master bedrooms, a one-to-one when I’m doing an existing changeout, because we’re not in the heating and air business, Mike. We’re in the comfort business. In my community, we have a lot of retirees—4,000 square foot house, they live in three rooms: the bedroom, the den, and the kitchen. They’re running a five-ton and a three-ton unit all day and every night just to try to be comfortable.

Some of my contractor buddies say, “Well, nobody’s going to spend $6,000-$7,000 on a unit just for the bedroom.” And I remind them, “They just spent $10,000 on a damn mattress!”

Mike: I see that in Southwest Florida all day long. There’s a guy down here known as the “cool garage guy.” You would think, who’s going to spend $10,000-$20,000 to keep their garage air conditioned? And I see his signs around my community every day. He does a 12,000 BTU for a one-car garage and 18,000 for a two-car garage, and a 24,000 for a three-car garage.

Tony: Exactly. And they spend that kind of money, so I think when people bring up price, that’s way down the list. That’s the last thing I talk about with a customer.

Mike: You nailed it. You go to bed at 10:00 at night and wake up at 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning. I could set that thing back to 80 degrees because I’m not even in that part of the house. The energy savings on that, and then an inverter-driven system in a bedroom running at next to nothing in capacity—they will never see it on a utility bill.

Tony: Never. And they’re comfortable. A master bedroom with a master bathroom suite—one of the hardest places to keep comfortable. One of these days I’m going to get in touch with a mattress manufacturer and do a tag team!

Mike: Let me ask you this—how many calls a week do you do?

Tony: I do maybe 3-5 calls a week, two units a week. I work 2-3 days a week and make about $125,000 a year, and then I go do what I want to do.

Mike: If you figured an average job at $6,000 and you did one a week, that’s $300,000 at about 20% net profit. Do two a week—that’s $12,000 a week, over half a million a year at 20% net profit.

Tony: My business model is two units a week. I’m good. And you can do one in one day.

Mike: The cool garage guy told me the same thing—if he can do two units a week, he’s happy. But this time of year, in season when all the snowbirds are here, he’s doing 4-5. He’s got a four-week backlog right now.

Tony: My wife asked me when I restarted my company on my own 10-12 years ago, “Honey, why don’t you advertise?” And I said, “Because then every damn body would call me.” I’ve been around town all my life and people know me, so I don’t have to advertise.

Mike: Do you know 80% of contractors across the United States cannot give a price for a heat pump in a home today? They can give unitary pricing.

Tony: I’ll do it right now—unitary, ductless, anything. I’ve got my own price book. And because they sell based on their cost, I don’t. I base my pricing on what the industry or what the customer base is willing to pay.

Mike: I have contractors that can’t price jobs. When we’re doing training now, I really make a high point of defining your price book. They’re looking at me like, “What are you talking about?” The funny part is they don’t even know how to put the price together.

Tony: That’s scary. I’ve made price books for other contractors in my area and given them to them.

Mike: I do single zone pricing in my book, and if it’s a multi-zone, I use a multiplier for each zone. It’s not complicated.

Tony: Way more complicated than it needs to be. Pick one manufacturer and go with it. You don’t want to be learning 500 different things.

Mike: I’ve had only one manufacturer in my whole career.

Tony: There’s more value there than just a markup on the cost of equipment.

Mike: You could have an extremely high price for a job that is extremely easy, and you can maintain the same profit margin based on what your hours are going to take to do it.

Tony: My labor costs are set because I pay the same price for whatever kind of unit we’re putting in for my guys—my pit crew, as I call them.

Mike: I could talk for days about this! Once you get into HVAC, it’s very hard to get out.

Tony: It’s in your blood. You and I talked about that in Tampa a couple of years ago. I was told when I was in second grade that I don’t play well with others. Well, it was true!

Mike: I love helping people with this, and of course, I love doing the business myself.

Tony: I just did a three-zone barn—yes, a horse barn. It’s a $2 million horse barn. I put multi-zone in the apartment part that a heating and air guy sent to me. It’s a $20,000 job.

Mike: Why do you think he sent it to you?

Tony: Because they’re afraid of the technology is one thing. But “he doesn’t have time to mess with those little things” is what he told me. I said, “Okay, please send me all of them.”