One guest at a time.
No panel, no news roundup, no three hosts talking over each other.
A show by 
A Podcast About the Part of Owning an HVAC Company Nobody Posts About
There’s plenty out there about refrigerant, diagnostics, and the newest tool. There’s almost nothing about the night you realized you’d built a job instead of a business.
Latest episodeOut of the Truck
Latest episode
Latest episodeWhat Getting Out of the Truck Means
There’s a moment in most HVAC companies where the thing holding it together is the owner, and everybody knows it.
Take that person out for a week and the schedule slips, the quotes stop going out, and the good technicians start asking questions.
Getting out of the truck is the work of making that stop being true. It’s hiring someone who’s allowed to decide things, pricing so the business can carry a manager, and building a company that keeps running on the weeks you don’t.
Nobody does that cleanly. This show is about how people did it anyway.
Out of the Truck is a podcast for HVAC business owners. Every episode is one conversation with an owner who has made the move from technician to CEO, or with someone who helps owners make it.
Sarah GonzalesHost
Austin WendelThe $300K to $500K stage and your first hire
Episode 01 · Pricing and ProfitWhy HVAC Contractors Make Millions and Still Struggle to Pay the BillsSarah GonzalesHost
Derrick ConyersWhy the labor shortage is a training problem.Episode 02 · Hiring and CrewCan’t Find Good HVAC Technicians? He Stopped Waiting and Built a SchoolLatest episodeWhy HVAC Contractors Make Millions and Still Struggle to Pay the Bills
How an Episode Works: One Guest, One Hour, No Panel
A story without the specifics is entertainment. This show is meant to be useful on a Tuesday.
About an hour, recorded remotely.
The conversation goes wherever the guest’s experience is strongest.
No script, and no questions sent in advance.
The answers people prepare are the answers nobody needs.
Sarah pushes for specifics.
What the number was, what the decision cost, and how many months went by before it worked.
Nothing publishes until the guest has seen it.
If something needs to come out, it comes out.
What You Get on Every Episode Page
The full video and audio, so you can watch it or have it on in the van
A complete written transcript, which means you can search it, skim it, or read the one part you came for
Chapters, so you can skip to hiring if hiring is what’s on fire this month
A page about the guest, with their company, their story, and every episode they appear in
Most podcasts hide the useful part inside an hour of audio. We give you the whole thing in writing as well, so you can get what you came for without sitting through the rest of it.
The Topics We Keep Coming Back To
Topic · The question underneath it
- All Episodes
- Getting Out of the Truck
- Hiring and Crew
- Pricing and Profit
- Marketing and Leads
- Selling and Private Equity
- Systems and Ops
Getting out of the truck
How do I stop being the person every job depends on?
Hiring and crew
Where do good technicians come from, and how do I keep them?
Pricing and profit
Why is the busy season not turning into money?
Marketing and leads
Where does the work come from when the phone goes quiet?
Selling and private equity
What is my company worth, and do I want to sell it?
Systems and ops
How do I run this without holding all of it in my head?
Who It’s For, and Who It Isn’t
| Worth your time if | Probably not for you if |
|---|---|
| You own or run an HVAC company and the growing is harder than the starting was | You’re learning the trade and want diagnostics, refrigeration, or tools |
| You’re the general manager or ops lead carrying it with the owner | You want news, product launches, or manufacturer updates |
| You want to hear what something cost, not a highlight reel | You’d rather hear success stories than the parts that went wrong |
What This Show Is Trying to Prove
Private equity is buying up this trade, and an independent shop now competes with companies carrying budgets it can’t match. The easy conclusion is that the independents lose.
Every guest on this show is an argument against that. Not because they’ve said something inspiring, but because they can tell you what they changed, what it cost, and what happened next.
If you’ve been through the part nobody posts about, come and say so.
