Julian Picard Of Centerline Mechanical: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A Founder
…As founder and CEO, you are basically chief problem solver. Which means all major problems are going to flow through you. It can be an absolutely killer for your personal wellbeing, and emotional status. A way that I have been able to wade through these rough waters is regularly zooming out to see the big picture…
As part of our interview series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became A Founder”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julian Picard.
Julian Picard is the Founder and CEO of Centerline Mechanical LLC, a full-service HVAC company based in Massachusetts specializing in innovative and energy-efficient solutions. A proud Mass Save Heat Pump Installer, Julian combines his hands-on expertise gained from a trade high school focus on HVAC with a degree in Marine Engineering from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. With extensive experience as an HVAC and home improvement expert, he is dedicated to delivering top-tier service and sustainable comfort to homes and business across the region.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Yes, absolutely! I have been involved with HVAC and thermodynamic principals since my freshmen year at my local technical high school in 2008 when I was accepted into their HVAC program. I graduated from Blackstone Valley Tech in 2012, and instead of going directly into the field to start an apprenticeship, I got into the only college that I applied to — Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After 4 years, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Marine engineering in 2016, where I was licensed through the U.S coast guard to man the engine rooms on US flagged Merchant ships. The shipping industry was a little slow in 2016, so I took a role with a property management company to coordinate operations for a few of their properties in Florida. The year I worked there, I noticed inefficient air conditioners on life support since the company did not want to replace them. I quickly got burnt out from this job, and realized I did not like being unheard when I was sounding the alarm for permanent fixes, but would only get a roll of duct tape and a pat on the back to solve the problem.
After I learned what that job was, I resigned and joined the American Maritime Officers union, where I worked my way up to 2nd engineer and found myself as part of a permanent crew on a heavy lift tramp ship that had two, 350-ton cranes where we took various cargos all around the world. One time going around the West Coast of Africa, we needed to outfit a shipping container to be able to house security guards and needed someone to install the mini split system. I was the engineer of choice, with that being my background since 2008.
I had always pictured myself owning my own business, but was never sure what business I wanted to start. While I was installing this system, rocking back and forth in pirate waters, I realized the business I have always wanted to start was right in front of me, doing install and service in residential HVAC. Shipping salary and benefits were great, so I could not justify the move just yet. But about a year later, Covid rocked the world and it became increasingly evident that I would no longer be able to fly home from other countries making what was normally a 90–120 day hitch, into 9+ month rotation.
We do not always get to choose our timing, and it was about 3 years earlier than I wanted to stop shipping when I decided to start Centerline Mechanical LLC in October of 2020 where I started offering residential service and installation of HVAC systems out of my F-150.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
I wish the hard times were only in the beginning! I have realized as a CEO, the hard times never really stop, they just get upgraded as long as you keep making correct decisions. But the biggest issue in the beginning, besides Covid 19, was cash flow. Luckily, I did not have a bunch of overhead however I still had a life style built around a 6-figure shipping salary. So, any profits I was making job to job, I had to reinvest back into the business in order for it to grow enough to support our life style. My saving grace was my wife Lindsay, who kept the lights on in our house working as a nurse while I was trying to scale CLM. She had faith in me, and now we run the business together so it was worth her efforts!
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
Besides my friends and family cheering me on, I found my drive to keep going through a simple mantra I would repeat in my head: “At least you get to sleep in your own bed tonight”. I was never foreign to hard times or difficult situations with my past career being in transoceanic shipping, at least this time there was no worry of drowning, and every bit of my efforts were going into my own equity in a company. So, it was a perpetual motion of, if I give up now, I will be forfeiting my self out of the delayed gratification that would be coming after the hard work I put in.
So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
Things are going well today thank God! The company, Centerline Mechanical, just turned 4 years old, and we currently have 11 employees. We are a full-service HVAC company, however we found a niche installing high efficiency heat pumps through the Mass Save Heat Pump Installer program. This past year, I also hired a friend of mine as Government Contract Coordinator and he has been finding us all kinds of install and service contracts through the state. It was a little bit of a risk, but totally worth it with the opportunities that we have gotten so far.
Once I saw the formula of Struggle🡪 Find Solution🡪 Make efficient🡪 Monetize pan out for me and the company from big issues to small ones, I got more confident in taking risks which overall increased our revenue.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Oh boy where do I start? The first big mistake I made was the first fully ducted system I installed for some family members. My local supply house offered a system designing service if you bought the equipment from them. So, I sent the engineers the floor plans and what I was thinking, and they may as well have just thrown it in the trash. They got their own information from an old Zillow listing from 13 years prior, and based the system’s design on what they found. What they did not know, is that the home owners had done major renovations including a 1500 square foot addition. So, the system we installed was about half the size needed. When I received their design, I had a feeling something was off but figured I was not smarter than their engineering software. Which I was right about that, but I had better instincts than the engineer using the software! After the system inevitably could not keep up in the peek of summer, I went back and installed a system double the size, with the bigger duct work to go along with the bigger units, and jammed into a very small attic space. I got a crash course on the importance of duct work sizing, equipment sizing, and how different duct work layouts can be better or worse for different homes. I may have done the same install twice for the price of one, but I count any losses in revenue as tuition, because that is a lesson I will NEVER mess up again, and have made great profits with that knowledge since then.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
One thing that makes our company stand out derives from the vision for what I wanted the company to be, and how it is structured now. When owning a trades company, and things are going good, it is really easy to expand. Before you know it, there are 60+ employees and there is a gamble for home owners that when they are buying a new system, they cant be sure if they are going to be getting an “A” team or a “B” team doing their installation. Bigger the company, the harder the quality control.
My vision for CLM has always been the special forces train of thought: keep a smaller company with no more than 16–20 employees, a heavy office staff so no call goes unanswered, and implementation of two quality control visits for every install we are doing. These quality control visits are to ensure that even the best of the best installers are not having a bad day, and that the home owners are getting everything they have paid for, even if it hurts our bottom line. When I shifted my mindset to be providing the best service possible instead of growing my company as fast as possible, the profits and great work environment followed.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
First thing I would encourage them to do is take the time that they need to come up with proper pricing because nothing will burn you out faster than realizing you have been working for free by not taking overhead into consideration (been there). By pricing yourself right, you will attract the clientele that will respect you and your company the most. Right now, the average net profit for a residential HVAC company is around 2%. Can you imagine doing $1,000,000 in gross revenue, which is no easy task, then at the end of the year all you made is $20,000? I cannot think of a quicker way to burn yourself out. The sad truth is that a decent proportion of home owners who are willing to use a new, “one man in a truck company,” do not have the purest intentions of supporting you and your businesses future. They are more interested in you supporting their immediate needs for the cheapest price possible, not caring at all about anything else that it takes to offer the best service possible. And believe it or not, most of my experiences with this were from people in who owned homes worth over $1,000,000. I am not saying that there are not tradesmen out there who are not great, but it seems like most of the time when things go south between a home owner and trades business, it revolves around pricing, expectations, and communication. This goes both ways, if you grossly misquote a job for someone, and you never took the time to set up proper change order procedures, you are most likely going to have one of those “tuition” moments and take the experience for a net positive. I always say, “It may not be good for the bottom line for that particular job, but it is good for the bones of the company.”
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Aside from the numerous company owners, tradesmen, and awesome clients that all gave me great feedback and advice, the particular person I can credit the most is my wife, Lindsay. She never questioned my vision, and had complete faith in what we could turn Centerline Mechanical into. All the way to the point where she was supporting our home and life style while I was learning the hard lessons with Centerline, and she never complained even once about it. Now Lindsay is a full-time mom; while also doing the books a couple days a week so she has a good look into the health of our business. This makes me beyond happy because I remember the days when she would be leaving the house early in the AM to go to work to support us, while I was scrambling trying to find work for CLM, which is basically working for free.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I have made an effort to do fundraisers every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas time for different charities. I also make it point to make visits to my local tech school, where I learned my HVAC training, to give them tips on how to apply their knowledge and how to run the business side of things too. Whether these kids plan on starting their own business someday, or work for a big company, it will give them a better-rounded idea of why the business owners are making the moves that they do daily and can avoid a lot of the negative talk that can spread like wildfire when you are not looking at the big picture. I have had friends my age, that work in the industry saying things like “My company charges too much money” and I am like “You have a matching 401K, full medical benefits covered by your company, Dental, life insurance, and a brand-new van that will never break down on you. That doesn’t come for free.”
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my company” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
1 . Not everyone wants to be managed the same way you do.
I am the opposite of a micro manager, because I absolutely HATE being micro managed. When I was a marine engineer, the chief engineer would give me a task, I would read the directions, and knew where my resources were to answer questions when needed. My time management was never in question. There was a time where I gave a past installer (who no longer works for CLM) the task of coordinating the install of 6 gas furnaces with some duct work alterations. I gave him the exact directions, resources, and my attention any time he needed. I wasn’t watching him closely because we had a lot going on, then before I knew it a month had passed and when I inquired about what could be taking so long he got defensive. I ask the home owner how things were going on their end, and they informed me the installer was taking daily naps on the job site, and some days just hanging out in the van all day. This installer was a professional time killer, which I didn’t even think was possible for a grown adult. Tuition paid!
2 . Not every client is the right match.
Going back to what I was saying earlier, not every client has the best intentions. There was one client one time, who had an old oil-fired furnace. They called me to have an annual maintenance done, so I showed up, cleaned the system, test ran it, and all was good. I got a call 2 days later saying that the furnace unexpectedly shut down. Most people don’t know, but old oil systems can be very tricky. The homeowners made it seem to me like everything was working great before I had got there, so after giving the home owners about 8 hours of free labor trying to correct my mistake, I over heard them talking upstairs through a vent I disconnected while troubleshooting saying this furnace has been doing this intermittent shut down for the last 2 years. At this point, it was obvious they were taking advantage of the new business owner working out of his truck. Now the first question I have my office staff ask whenever someone calls in for an annual maintenance is “how has the system been running?”. And you would be surprised how many people like to leave out the fact that it had not been running correctly, changing an annual maintenance call into a service call instead.
3 . It is always your fault.
Whenever something does not go as planned, it is your fault. You are the one running this whole thing. You can blame managers, but guess who put that manager in that position? You can blame clients, guess who decided to do business with that client? You can blame the economy, guess who decided to make aggressive moves when home owners were unsure of the economy? It is ALWAYS your fault, and if you can’t accept that, it’s going to be a rough road!
4 . Be careful utilizing available resources
When you are new trades business owner, there are going to be suppliers that want to grow with you. A lot of outside sales guys would love to build a great relationship with the next 10M a year company. Each of them will offer different services to help you grow, from business coaching to factory tours of the equipment you will be attaching your name and reputation to. Like when I used the system designing service on my first install, I automatically assumed they could not be wrong. I am sure that supplier has passed on many good experiences to contractors with that service, but hey happened to give me (the low-level purchaser at the time) the new designer they had just hired out of school.
5 . Build and develop your processes unit — they are perfect for the current environment you are in.
Your business will only be as successful as your processes. If you are asking your team to work with inefficient processes, you are going to get inefficient results, along with a confused and aggravated team. There are many ways to get a system installed or fixed for a client, but the process of doing so will determine the profits, which ultimately determines the life span and success of the company. There was one point where my office manager was working 10+ hours a day, and was getting burnt out. We made a few changes to our processes, and she was bale to get everything done within normal working hours, and sometimes getting out early making her salary go that much further.
Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?
As founder and CEO, you are basically chief problem solver. Which means all major problems are going to flow through you. It can be an absolutely killer for your personal wellbeing, and emotional status. A way that I have been able to wade through these rough waters is regularly zooming out to see the big picture. Shifting my viewing of the problems, to an opportunity to solve a problem. And most importantly, reminding myself what was considered a major problem last year, is now minuscule to the problems I am dealing with now. That means that the heart and headaches that come with each issue are relative to the situation you are currently in. If you get the answers right, this problem will seem minuscule a year from now. Remember, you got to the theme park for the roller coasters, not the food court!
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Do not be afraid to share your ideas, learned experience, and knowledge. I was talking with a very skilled HVAC technician and he had been in the industry for 16 years. He has some of the most in-depth knowledge of residential systems than anyone else I know. He was saying how he knows so many tricks of the trade that he learned through years of hard work, but also said, “I am not sharing these tricks with any helpers either!” I could not help but fixate on that portion of what was a pretty light hearted conversation at a mutual friend’s party. I knew this guy was not a bad person, but hearing this ego trip was disheartening. I could not help but ask “why?” followed by explaining how if everyone on his team is as sharp as him, that makes a lighter load for the whole organization, thus giving him the ability to learn even more with the extra free time he would gain. But the problem was, I was looking at it from founders’ perspective, and he was looking at it from a technician’s perspective who works in a company of over 200 people. The reason he took such a hard stance on keeping these tricks of the trade to himself, was because if he shared those ideas to everyone, that it would make his value less to the company. I can tell that he did not just come up with that idea on his own, but that it formed in his mind like a pearl over years of seeing greed, from the top down in this organization that he had been part of for most of his professional career. I also know that this guy quickly made his way to a Forman position in the company, but has been stagnant in that position for the last 10 years. I think there is something to be said with that, that there is nothing wrong with being a life long Forman, however with the number of problem-solving capabilities my friend had, he could be making multiple 6 figures just offering consulting services if he directed his energy in that direction. So, I guess this is a long winded way of saying, “What goes around, comes around,” and that you are only get to enjoy the fruits of the trees that you plant, so why not plant as many as you can?
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Instagram: @centerlinemechanical
Facebook: Centerline Mechanical LLC
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
