Yarbrough & Sons: Faith and Family United in one Fine HVAC Company

Yarbrough & Sons — now in its 31st year — is a family owned and operated business based in Blanchard, Oklahoma, a short drive south of Norman. 

Darren Yarbrough, company CEO, and his wife Leisa started Yarbrough’s in 1988, three years after Darren graduated with
honors and a perfect attendance record from the Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology. During those three years he learned much about running a company while working as a service technician servicing HVAC systems and ice machines. 

In those early years Darren worked as the service technician, installer, manager, planner, and air conditioning advisor, while Leisa kept the books. The business had 10 employees by 1997. In 1998, Yarbrough sold the business to a consolidation company.

After honoring a non-compete agreement, he started a new business, and called it Yarbrough & Sons, operating out of a 1500 sq. ft. office. The well-established company now occupies 6000 sq. ft. of
office space, and a sheet metal shop, which was added in 2015. 

The company roster totals 34, with eight installation crews, five service technicians, an installation and service manager, two commercial estimators, two comfort advisors, one customer service representative and two employees in accounts receivable. 

William, the eldest of the three sons, works in Y&S Construction and Y&S Metal Works. Kolby, the second of the three, worked as a service technician for a time and is now one of a team of residential advisors. Tucker, the youngest of the three sons, gained experience as a service tech, and now works as an
accountant and marketer, handling the website and all social media.

This $5 million company focuses on residential and commercial service and installation. It has a strong residential service and replacement business, with an even larger amount of commercial installation business.

Guided by Faith
Key to Yarbrough & Son’s success is their faith-based approach to business. 

“We’re a Christian based company, and I think I lead by example, in a Christ-like manner,” Darren Yarbrough said. “You treat people the way that you want to be treated, and take ownership of what you do. When you screw up, fess up. Because, people are pretty quick to forgive if you say, ‘Hey, you know what? We screwed up. We should have done this a different way.” For example, we do a lot of horizontal attic installations. If we cause water damage to a ceiling, we fix it. Get the sheet rocker in there, get the painter in there, and get it fixed. Do whatever we’ve got to do.”

Prominent in Yarbrough’s audiobook collection, is “Extreme Ownership,” by Jocko Willink, an American podcaster, author, and retired United States Navy SEAL. 

“The book is about taking ownership of everything you do. If you do that, then you can’t help but be successful,” he said.

Empowerment Works
Yarbrough’s management philosophy is equally simple, but so hard for many companies to master: empower people to make decisions. 

“I tell the guys, ‘I don’t care what we do, as long as we do it on purpose.’ If you make a decision that’s in the best interest of the customer, or that’s in our best interest, or if it’s not in our best interest, do it in such a manner that you did it on purpose. Because we can live with anything, if you do it on purpose. But, whenever you’re making decisions, always have a reason behind your thought process. And then, I would say, just try to learn every day.”

Always Learning

Learning opportunities available to technicians include technical and sales related training provided by a variety of reputable sources. Two have attended Joe Cunningham’s sales school. 

“Joe Cunningham helped us streamline our sales process by creating a presentation booklet, and a price book, which allowed us to spend less time working up estimates, and more time interfacing with the customer,” Darren shared.

The company has used the “Go Time Build a Tech” training, and several of the team attends quarterly financial management classes sponsored by Lennox. Shearer Supply, Yarbrough’s American Standard distributor, provides lunch-and-learn classes throughout the year. 

Technicians receive technical and sales-related training provided by a variety of reputable sources. 

“The heating and air conditioning business has grown so much, and things have gotten so much more high-tech than they were 15 or 20 years ago, that you’ve got to stay on top of your game,” Yarbrough said.

Yarbrough often leads the technician team in “15 Minutes of What I Know.” 

“Before the guys start, I’ll, draw something up on the white board that they might be having questions about or are having problems with. We also belong to Service Nation. I think we have better luck now, with bringing in a person and training him, than we do going out and finding him,” he said.

“They have to work. If we have somebody who has no training, we get them an apprentice license, and they have to work as an apprentice for two years. Then, after they work as an apprentice for two years, they can take their journeyman’s test.

“I believe, and others do as well, that we have to show prospective students that there is a path. And, that comes through the training. I think we’ve heard that parents and high school counselors turn their noses up at trade work anymore, which is totally different than when we were growing up.”

Yarbrough shares the numbers with the team during monthly breakfast meetings. I’ll share with them whether we made money this month or whether we didn’t. If we make over a certain percentage, then I throw some money into an end-of-year bonus fund.

“I think sharing those numbers with them empowers them to see where we need to improve and which practices are worth repeating. We also give our team members the ability to make decisions and do what they deem to be right in the customer’s eyes,” he explained.

Yarbrough & Sons’ recruiting includes participating in Career Days offered by the Blanchard school district. 

“Any time they have a Career Day or something like that, we try to go and represent our trades,” Yarbrough said.

Many Acts of Charity
Every Christmas, our local police station does ‘Shop With A Cop’ and we donate money and give time toward that. For under-privileged kids in the community, that may not get to go Christmas shopping, the policemen will take that child, and they’ll go to Walmart.

“We’ll also make up Christmas boxes, and send them off to orphanages overseas. This past year, we gave a little bit less than $1000 to three of our local teachers, at three different schools, for Teacher Appreciation Month.

“One year, we provided labor to help remodel the football field house here in town. We helped fund the sprinkler system on the football field. During a slow period one year, we installed a pipe-and-cable fence around the football field.”

Yarbrough & Sons started a “Bringing The Heat” program, and obtained support from American Standard and Lennox.

“We started taking applications, in about the middle of November, to a family in need, where there was somebody down on their luck that needed a new furnace, or whether they were a policeman, or a veteran, just anybody that needed a new unit. A lady in Oklahoma City won. She was a veteran who had served in the Iraq war, a school teacher, and a single mother with three kids. We gave her a new furnace, and installed it, and gave her the gift of heat.”

The company invested in a spiral duct machine and plasma cutting table in 2015 as useful additions to its sheet metal operation.

“We’ve always had the cutting tables, the Pittsburgh machines and the brakes. When it was in this building, we did it by hand. We’d lay it out by hand and build it and ship it out. Then, when we got the building across the street, in about 2015, we bought the plasma table, so we could cut out things faster. That really helped accelerate the fabrication process.”

Communication Begins in the Sales Process
Yarbrough & Sons’ customers appreciate the communication practiced by the entire team.

“We let the customer know up-front what they can expect from us. We begin by laying out what buying an HVAC system from Yarbrough’s is like, from the service tech to the final installation check. We guarantee we will work with the customer until they are 100 percent satisfied,” Yarbrough said.

“We begin by working with the homeowner, walking them through what to expect from us,” he continued. “We then preform a heat load analysis on the home, to properly size the new system for the home and the application. Then, we lay out all of the options, and walk alongside the customer, showing the benefits of each system and how it will best serve them,” he said.

Yarbrough & Sons represents the best that any residential HVAC can offer to its customers: honesty, efficiency, prompt response to problems, and excellent home comfort solutions. 

Congratulations to Yarbrough & Sons, a 2019 Residential HVAC Contractor of Excellence!