Family-Owned HVAC Company Grows 50% In One Year

Meet Royal Heating & Air Conditioning

Royal Heating & Air Conditioning has kept commercial buildings in Cleveland, Ohio comfortable since 1979. Owner Chris Collins's grandfather founded the company, and today Chris leads it as the third generation of Collins family ownership.

That kind of history comes with real strengths. Royal Heating & Air Conditioning has a long-tenured crew (many of its technicians have been there 20+ years), deep relationships with its service customers and a reputation built over four decades.

It also came with an owner who was carrying the whole thing on his back.

Chris is a licensed technician with an Ohio contractor's license and an MBA. When he joined Breakthrough Academy (BTA), he wasn't short on knowledge. He was short on structure, and on time.

This is the story of how Chris stepped out of the day-to-day, implemented the systems that let his team lead and started building a commercial HVAC business designed to support his family and his employees well into the future.

Before BTA: The Badge of Honor Problem

In 2020, Royal produced $2.6 million in revenue with 18 staff. Net profit was 1.6%.

On paper, that's a solid commercial HVAC company. In practice, nearly every question, estimate and decision ran through Chris.

"In the past, it has almost been a badge of honor for me to work the most hours, see how much I can do and answer any and every question."

• Chris Collins, Royal Heating and Air Conditioning

Plenty of contractors will recognize that mindset. Working the most hours feels like leadership, right up until you realize the business can't move without you.

Royal's toolkit at the time was a CRM (FieldEdge), QuickBooks and Dropbox. There was no written strategic plan, no clear job descriptions and no regular rhythm for reviewing performance. Chris wasn't even tracking his own hours.

What Royal Heating & Air Conditioning Implemented With BTA

Working with his BTA Coach, John, Chris started with the foundation: a one-page Strategic Plan, quarterly planning and reviews and quarterly owner's meetings. From there, the work got tactical.

Job descriptions with real deliverables

Chris broke every role at Royal into a job description with clear deliverables. That exercise showed him exactly where time was going and where the gaps were in the operation.

It also shaped his hiring. One early hire, a service dispatcher, quickly became a key driver of service department profitability.

Knowing the numbers by department

Royal began using classes in its books to separate departments and see true margins for service versus install work. The team also started tracking job leads and bids each month, including lead time, win ratio and average cost.

By 2024, Royal was tracking employee hours by class too. Chris called it one of the biggest wins of his year.

Goal Setting & Review meetings the team owns

Royal implemented Goal Setting & Review (GSR) meetings with key office staff, then expanded them across the company. It wasn't easy, and the breakthrough came from a change in mindset, not a new template.

"GSR meetings have been a battle for me since I started. I finally made the meetings my employees' meetings with me, instead of me with them. That mentality shift made a world of difference."

• Chris Collins, Royal Heating and Air Conditioning

The Results: A Bigger Business With Less of Chris in the Weeds

In Royal's first year with BTA, revenue jumped more than 50% to nearly $4 million. Net profit nearly tripled.

The bigger shift is in how Chris spends his time. He now works around 45 hours a week, with most of that focused on his role as General Manager instead of day-to-day operations.

The Lesson for Contractors

The biggest change at Royal wasn't a piece of software. It was a question.

Chris stopped asking "how can I make time to get this done?" and started asking "who can do this for me?" Every system he implemented, from job descriptions to scorecards, made that second question easier to answer.

If every question in your business still runs through you, more hours won't fix it.

Book a complimentary implementation call to see what that looks like for your business.