I started Ironclad in 2010 after eight years running service calls for a national HVAC chain. I was good at the work. What I wasn't good at was pretending a capacitor swap needed to become a $1,800 repair package to hit the daily commission target.
Our first year, it was me in a used van with a tool bag and one referral list. I had six regular customers by the end of year one — all from word of mouth in East Tampa. By year three we had three trucks. Today we're eight trucks, eight NATE-certified technicians, and a roster of over 900 maintenance plan customers across Tampa Bay.
My wife Stacy came on full-time in 2014 to run the office. My brother-in-law Luis joined in 2015 and now runs our install department — he's the one who does the Manual J on every replacement. Angela Reyes joined us in 2017 as a senior residential tech. Daniel Okonkwo runs our emergency and after-hours work. We're nine people total, all paid salary — nobody here is working a commission sheet.
We turn down work we can't do well. If a customer's system is in a crawl space we can't get to safely, we'll refer them out. If somebody wants a system we don't stand behind, we'll explain why and let them go buy it elsewhere. We'd rather lose a job than put our name on something we'd have to argue about six months later.
If you want the cheapest HVAC in Tampa, there are fifty companies who'll undercut me. If you want the same licensed tech who sized your system to also be the one who services it three years later — that's what we do.
NATE Master Tech