Year Recap and Christmas Special!

It's been, what, three weeks now since I have seen y'all live. It's not that the lives are going to stop. No, they are not. I've just been kind of busy, and I've been looking for a good guest to bring on. So, y'all forgive me for not being too regular with the lives. I wanted to come on today to tell everybody Merry Christmas in a more personal way. And, you know, maybe go over some of this last year. Let me see if I can show this. Happy Holidays! And go over this last year, this last year, I think for not just me, but for several people at least around here or in the industry was a little different. It was the volume wasn't there. It's not that the profit wasn't there. The volume, at least the new installs was not there. So in the year to come, I'm hoping to continue making good money, learn everything I can, enjoy my job. And keep putting out good videos for y'all. So that's really my goal. Just to keep doing what I'm doing and try to enjoy every moment of it. Hey from Bama. I got family in Bama. They might not claim me, but I got family in Bama. Yes, Victor, we have a live on Christmas Eve. I felt like y'all deserved one after I haven't had one for a couple of weeks. So yeah, a live on Christmas Eve. I hope everybody's been having a good week, a good couple weeks, because it's been a couple weeks since I've been here, and while I've got you here before I have another guest on probably, hopefully next week, if I can find somebody, y'all comment and tell me what the picture and sound quality looks like, because there's some significant changes in the internet. I'm going to try to lean over here, can y'all see that, that right there? That egg looking thing is a new router with fiber optic led to it, which is a brand new thing for this house and for this whole area. So hopefully I can have better performance on my internet and get rid of Mediacom because they were starting to throttle my data just for uploading videos. I mean, I've been using them for years and then all of a sudden they started treating me crazy. Dude, um, well. I got to tell y'all, y'all are more like family to me than most of my own family. For a long time, I was like the black sheep in my family. Almost all of them live in South Carolina. All of my wife's family lives in Alabama. So we're stuck here right in the middle, a long way away, at least six, seven hours away from family, but really. You don't choose your family. You can choose your friends. Well, my friends basically are my family around here. So y'all are family. Un chato. Feliz Navidad. Y prospero año. I love the way the Hispanics say that. Instead of happy new year, prospero año. Have a prosperous new year. That's the goal for everybody, isn't it? Thank you, Alex. I appreciate that. I do hope it's a good quality. We put a lot of effort. Well, I've been speaking Spanish for a long time, many years, more than 30 years. For those of you who couldn't understand that, I've been speaking Spanish for like 30 years now. I do try to keep current on it. Those who are native speakers can sometimes lose me. There are modismos and local dialect words sometimes that can lose me, especially if somebody's speaking fast. But I'd like to think I speak Spanish pretty good. Steve Lab is a card. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Well, thank you, Bobby. Merry Christmas to you and your family and everybody out there. I do wish everybody a Merry Christmas and I hope everybody is able to enjoy the next few days, especially tomorrow, in a meaningful way without too much family drama. Maybe it's a good thing to be a long way away from family. The only drama is between me and my wife and we keep it to a minimum. Feliz Navidad. Feliz Navidad. Actually, I ate breakfast this morning. I had to go to work this morning. I ate breakfast at Waffle House. And they got this little jukebox that you can play at Waffle House and play music on. And I played Feliz Navidad on it. It was loud in there, but a few people heard it. Well, guys, share with me maybe what some of your goals are for the year to come. Like I said, mine are basically to make more money than I spend. Have fun working, try to stay healthy. I'm at the age where staying in great shape and healthy all the time is a little more challenging than it used to be. Just getting down on my knees might hurt me. So stay healthy, work hard, make good money. I want to put out some good quality content and just keep doing what I'm doing. What might be some of your goals in the year to come? Water bucket. I have also seen where they take a piece of copper and put a quarter inch fitting on it and just shove the copper into the ground. I actually had a boss one time. He called that midnight recovery. For example, if we had to diagnose the compressor, we're going to come back in a couple of days. He would say, put midnight recovery on it. And that meant to crack the Schrader so that when we came back, there wouldn't be any refrigerant. A lot of people do it. I don't think it's right, but yeah, a lot of people do that. I don't want to be too critical of them. In my early days, I've done maybe unethical work myself, but I've seen, I've come up on my installers doing the hose in a water bottle and I didn't know they were doing it. And so maybe we're all guilty of doing some stuff like that at least once or twice. Yeah, Victor, the Amana install is, it was a little bit of a job because I didn't have all the information I needed to troubleshoot the issues I was having. I do intend to sell some more of those if I can sell them. I think it's a quality product and that, that warranty on that condenser on a lifetime replacement, I mean, she can't beat that. So yeah, I'm going to Try to sell those especially don't need any heat strips down here. Um, I think you're from Florida, Victor. You you wouldn't need any heat strips either. I mean y'all hardly even sell heat pumps down there. It's only it was ethical unless someone was watching. Yeah, unless someone gets it on film and then you're in trouble. Is it normal to sell a system you're not familiar with? Well nowadays with these new inverter systems coming out with different name brands left and right Possibly, yeah. I mean, there's a first time for everything. Yeah, maybe there's a first time for everything, so it's not too abnormal. All right, I'm going to assume your name is Jack. Right now, Jack, you should probably be saving your money for this time of year, or actually the shoulder season. I'm not sure where your business is located. Around here, spring and fall can be very slow, so the bigger companies just load up on preventive maintenances, and they They sell these contracts all year long and what ends up happening is the techs that are lower down on the totem pole are doing preventive maintenances all year long and that to me never made any sense but you need to do something to keep the money coming in. I have never sold those contracts. I've been pretty busy with service. That has always been my bread and butter has There has been service, but even still, you need to save money for the slower parts of the year so that you're not struggling or worried about overhead like if you have an employee you don't want them sitting around the shop and you're paying them 20 something an hour and not making money at the same time, not a good thing, trust me I've been there let's see, in Florida where Victor is no heat pumps but yes on the heat strip just in case, um, I've talked to Carlos down in Naples, Florida They don't really do heat pumps down there either. There's no need for them. And in fact, in some cases up here, our heat pumps have been, the heat strips have been, this is a regular single-stage heat pump where the heat strips have not been connected for 10 years. And the people have never known it. And it can get kind of cold down, I'll say down here compared to Florida. Maybe I should say up here, but it can get well below freezing, below 20 degrees. A regular heat pump doesn't produce much heat at that temperature. So we need the heat strips, at least most of the time. Let's see, Victor. Heat pump is usually from Orlando area and up. Now, Georgia happens to be a heat pump state. Basically, electric heat cannot be, according to code, the primary source of heat. Another thing, an unvented gas furnace, like one of those wall furnaces or a room gas furnace that also cannot be the primary source of heat so um if somebody doesn't have gas around here it's a heat pump almost always, you know, unless somebody's gotten around the code like mobile homes do sometimes i have straight coil electric heat i don't know how they get around the code it's been code for well over 20 years but still Still, they're selling mobile homes with straight coil electric heat. Let's see. In Las Vegas, heat pumps and furnace. I know you're in the desert, but it does get cold at night, doesn't it? I'm about to find out. Speaking of Las Vegas, AHR is coming up in a little over a month and I plan to be there. The last AHR I went to was in Orlando and it was a little more business for me. Attended the award show and then... I targeted certain booths trying to look for sponsors and stuff like that. This time, I am purposely going to just try to have a good time. If I don't make it to the show until like 2 o'clock in the afternoon, so what? You know, I'm going to have a good time. I'm going to enjoy being in Las Vegas. There's some shows out there. Actually, the Eagles are performing live in Las Vegas during this time period. But they're already sold out, but I would love to be able to go see them. So I'm just going to try to enjoy myself, maybe find a real good restaurant. I got a friend coming with me. I hope you have a good time in Las Vegas. I don't know your real name. I would like to see you too. Merry Christmas from the UK. Is it already Christmas over there? If it's not, it's real close, isn't it? No, not yet, but closer than it is here. So, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. All right. I appreciate all the people coming for the live. Like I said, I haven't had one in two weeks. It's not on purpose. I wanted to. I invited a couple people, but one didn't respond. I actually tried to get JKHVAC, or is it K? I think that's it, to talk about sponsors and how you give out sponsors. So, y'all needling maybe, or is it HK? I can't remember. I don't know. Another YouTuber asked me to come on and talk about it. Let me see. Thanks for what you do, bud. You have been there. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I'm just showing what I do, and I'm not doing anything special or above and beyond what thousands of techs are doing out there every day. I just happened to film it. None of y'all have mentioned what your goals might be for the next year as a technician or a business owner. I think we all just, we would all like to make more money. Personally for me at this point, I just, I want to be happy and healthy and making more money does, helps you be happy. That's not the key to it though. I do want to make more money and stay healthy. Like I said, this year taught me that I'm getting older. If y'all have not noticed, y'all see all that white hair? When I started the business, how long has it been now? Fifteen years? There was almost no white hair on my head or on my beard. That's what a business will do to you, really. Most of it has been enjoyable. There's been a few people associated with the business that weren't so enjoyable. But most of running the business has been enjoyable. Yes, is Christmas here? Wow, and you're watching me live. It's after midnight and you're watching me live. Thank you man. All the best for you in 2026 and I hope you and your family have a great Christmas. Now go to bed. Leave out some cookies and milk for Santa Claus. Well anyway guys, I'm going to keep it short. I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and send out best wishes to everybody. I may produce something tomorrow. I'm definitely not working tomorrow. I do have some more video from a job I did yesterday. I do not do duct cleanings. I sub it out. That requires some large equipment if you're going to do it right. And in my area, Stanley Steamer does a pretty good job. So I kick that to them. And I don't do duct cleaning, no. To me, it's not worth it. So y'all just Merry Christmas. I was thinking about y'all and wanted to give a live, in a more personal way, say Merry Christmas to everybody from my family to yours. One of my viewers made some stockings, and you will notice handmade these for me. Right now Riley's is the only one that has anything in it. Maybe Santa will come overnight and those will get filled with something. So Merry Christmas to Merry Christmas to everybody. Uh, probably I'm not going to do anything working-wise tomorrow. Try to play some games, watch TV, eat good, and open some presents. So, Merry Christmas, and, um, now forgive me, and I'll...