What if building a billion-dollar business required becoming so obsessed that you worked seven days a week for 12 years, manufactured your own products from scratch with zero experience, and publicly burned all your boats to ensure there was no turning back?
David Heacock, founder and CEO of Filterbuy, shares how he bootstrapped an air filter company from zero to $250 million in annual revenue through vertical integration, relentless focus, and treating air filters as a “Trojan horse” into 8 million American homes. His journey from Goldman Sachs trader to manufacturing entrepreneur reveals hard-won lessons about decision-making, building systems, and why obsession beats willpower every time.
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Key takeaways
- Obsession wins where willpower breaks because when you’re truly obsessed with something, it becomes all-consuming and natural to pursue relentlessly.
- Fast decision-making combined with risk awareness creates a competitive advantage; make two-way door decisions instantly, but carefully evaluate one-way doors that can’t be reversed.
- Vertical integration from raw materials to delivery creates unbeatable cost structures because eliminating middlemen and controlling every step allows you to compete on price while maintaining margins.
- Values only matter when they’re used as coaching tools; “bias to action” becomes powerful when you can tell an employee, “that excuse violates our core values,” rather than just criticizing their performance.
- Learn the details: Building systems yourself before hiring creates irreplaceable competitive moats because understanding every function at a granular level prevents competitors from simply hiring away your advantage.
- Momentum is everything in business. You’re either progressing or regressing, never standing still, and regaining lost momentum requires conscious effort to return to fundamentals.
- Direct-to-consumer is a limiting label; true brands meet customers wherever they shop, whether that’s Amazon, retail stores, or direct channels.
- The air filter is the Trojan horse into the home, creating customer relationships that enable expansion into adjacent services like HVAC maintenance and indoor air quality.
- Private equity’s financial engineering approach often leads to unhappy employees, as it prioritizes short-term gains over long-term success, which is why mission-driven companies attract better talent.
- Self-awareness about what you want from life is the ultimate cheat code because most people’s unhappiness comes from trying to live someone else’s definition of success.
- Burning boats publicly through personal branding creates accountability that forces you to achieve your stated mission because retreat becomes impossible.
- Experience in seemingly unrelated fields compounds over time; early eBay selling and affiliate marketing experiments provided crucial skills for building a D2C business years later.
Building Through the Back Door at Goldman Sachs
David’s path to Goldman Sachs wasn’t traditional. There was no Ivy League pedigree or wealthy Northeastern connections. As the top economics student at George Washington University, he wrote a paper on predicting currency crises that his professors forwarded to Goldman’s economics research department. This led to an unconventional hiring process and a role that taught him crucial lessons about rapid decision-making and risk management.
He distinguishes between reversible “two-way doors” where speed matters most and irreversible “one-way doors” requiring careful consideration. Despite feeling like an outsider, he stayed for years out of stubbornness and because he had manifested this exact job through years of focused pursuit.
“It’s really the ability to make a decision quickly and then own that decision and manage the risk of that decision.”
The Power of Obsession and Burning Boats
Obsession isn’t negative. In fact, it’s necessary for competing at the highest levels because you’re facing others who wake up thinking about their business seven days a week.
David deliberately went public with his personal brand to burn all boats behind him, making retreat impossible from his mission to build the world’s leading indoor air quality company. There are no hobbies, no downtime. Only family and business.
When people debate work-life balance on social media, he sees it differently: wanting to do something big means being all-in, with your business as the first thought every morning, even on vacation. This isn’t for everyone, but pretending you can achieve extraordinary outcomes without obsession is naive when competing in the global marketplace.
“If you want to do anything big, you have to be obsessed, because if you’re not, you’re competing with somebody who is.”
Manufacturing From Zero Experience
Starting manufacturing with zero experience was an act of hubris. David had never been inside an air filter plant but decided to build one anyway.
For three to four years, it would have been cheaper to buy filters from established manufacturers and rebrand them. He commuted weekly from New York to Alabama, managing manufacturing during the day and doing programming and marketing at night.
A pivotal moment came during a humid Alabama May when glue wouldn’t dry on their production line, threatening the entire operation. He desperately found a hot-glue laminator in Indiana, drove through the night to get it, and nearly severed his finger training employees, but solved the crisis that could have ended everything.
“I was younger and I guess I was very self-confident and I just had the self-belief that I was going to figure it out.”
COVID Acceleration and Geographic Expansion
COVID presented a critical decision point when Amazon stopped accepting third-party inventory and FedEx capped shipping capacity from Filterbuy’s Alabama facility.
Rather than raise prices like competitors, David chose to expand geographically, opening an Ogden, Utah plant in May 2020 and shipping products by July. This decision to lean in during a crisis transformed the business from $70 million in 2019 to $250 million today.
The pandemic provided a massive customer acquisition opportunity for consumable products, and his choice to scale operations rather than milk temporary advantages built lasting infrastructure for growth.
Building Operating Systems and Living Values
After studying frameworks like Traction and Rockefeller Habits, David realized the operating system itself matters less than having a clear mission flowing down through the organization.
He spent months developing Filterbuy’s mission (to build the world’s leading indoor air quality company) and core values that serve as coaching tools.
Different departments require different systems; for instance, manufacturing plants with 350 employees operate differently from marketing teams.
The breakthrough insight is when he realized that values only matter when used actively. When an employee makes excuses, pointing to “bias to action” as a violated core value creates teachable moments. They now give monthly awards highlighting employees who exemplify specific values, making abstract concepts tangible.
“What matters is bias to action as a core value that allows you to frame all discussions in the way that you as a company expect.”
The Art and Science of Intent-Based Marketing
Marketing starts with brand reputation that’s built over time (and can be destroyed instantly).
From day one, David focused on packaging and differentiation while competitors shipped generic filters. The strategy: “suck all the oxygen out of the market” by dominating every search variation for air filters across Google, Amazon, and Bing.
With complete vertical integration keeping costs low, Filterbuy could afford to own intent-based marketing even when unprofitable initially. Today, they capture between one-quarter and one-third of all filter purchases on Amazon. Next year’s $42 million marketing budget still runs largely on campaigns David built 10-12 years ago, now supplemented by top-of-funnel brand awareness through giveaways and content unrelated to filters.
Becoming a Logistics Company, Not a Filter Company
Filterbuy isn’t really an air filter company: it’s a logistics company that happens to move air filters.
Manufacturing 300 standard sizes plus daily custom production, they ship same-day for next-day delivery. While competitors like 3M primarily sell through retail with maybe 20 sizes, Filterbuy serves both residential and commercial markets (70% of air filtration is commercial). This positioning allows them to manufacture a commercial-grade product and sell it at residential prices. They’re unique in playing in both markets, with distribution infrastructure that eliminates the multiple handling steps that burden traditional retail supply chains, creating fundamentally different unit economics.
“We’re a logistics company because the reason we exist is we’re able to deliver an air filter to an end user as cheaply as, if not cheaper than, anybody else.”
The Retail Expansion and Channel Strategy
Despite building the business entirely online, David recognized that 84% of retail transactions still happen in stores. After launching in 505 Walmart locations, they’re now moving 10,000-20,000 units weekly, each representing a potential new customer relationship.
The retail value proposition differs from online: Filterbuy can offer single filters at competitive prices in stores, while their online model incentivizes four or six-packs for shipping efficiency.
This isn’t abandoning direct-to-consumer principles but recognizing that limiting yourself to one channel when you own a brand is “incredibly naive.” Even David’s wife, a radiologist, bought Filterbuy filters on Amazon rather than directly: customers want convenience above all else.
The $4.5 Million HVAC Mistake and Recovery
David’s biggest failure came from buying an HVAC service business in Florida for $3.5 million that ultimately cost $4.5 million in losses. That was more than the purchase price.
The business wasn’t what was represented, and rushing into a new industry without being close enough to the transaction proved costly. But failure taught valuable lessons: now he’s building Filterbuy HVAC Solutions methodically from the ground up, creating operational playbooks that can scale nationally.
The vision is ambitious—building the first truly nationwide HVAC service company that could effectively run a Super Bowl ad. With 8 million customer relationships where air filters serve as the “Trojan horse” into homes, they have a unique positioning to disrupt the fragmented HVAC service industry.
“I know that I was not going to be happy if I just became another rich guy that spent all of his time at the beach and on the yacht all day long.”
The Failed Freight Business and Focus Lessons
During the COVID freight crisis, David purchased 50 tractor-trailers and 60 trailers, believing he could operate his own freight business and capitalize on accelerated depreciation tax benefits. Despite freight rates being high, they never operated profitably. The venture cost $3-4 million in direct losses but far more in opportunity costs and lost focus. He liquidated everything by late 2023, reinforcing his number one principle: focus. These expensive mistakes serve as constant reminders that fooling yourself is easier than fooling anyone else.
Momentum as Life Force
Momentum defines everything—in business and life, you’re either progressing or regressing with no steady state. After technical failures during Amazon Prime Day cost $2 million in expected revenue, David watched his new CFO panic while he remained calm from experience.
Rebuilding momentum requires conscious effort: returning to fundamentals, grinding daily on marketing and sales building blocks, then waking up one day to find you’re overindexing again. This pattern repeats across health, relationships, and business. When cracks appear and things slow down, successful people immediately ask, “What fundamentals must I return to?” while others linger in decline until recovery becomes exponentially harder.
“Either you are improving and building on something day in, day out, or you’re declining.”
Personal Principles for Sustained Success
Four principles guide David’s life: focus, persistence, resilience, and accountability.
- Focus means every activity must serve the singular mission—he’s started and shut down multiple ventures when they proved distracting.
- Persistence recognizes that everything takes longer than expected; you overestimate yearly achievements but underestimate what’s possible in a decade.
- Resilience assumes every problem is solvable: it’s the entrepreneur’s responsibility to find solutions.
- Accountability structures compensate for weaknesses: working with Dr. Gurner weekly for business decisions and training with a personal trainer six days a week for three years, even over Zoom while traveling. Willpower isn’t a strategy; obsession eliminates the need for it.
The Real Meaning of Success
Success means reaching your deathbed without regrets about things left untried. Two years ago, David faced his own crisis: at 40, he could sell for hundreds of millions and retire to a beach. But he knew that would bring misery—becoming another rich guy pretending to run a foundation wouldn’t provide purpose. This led to crystallizing his mission of building the world’s leading indoor air quality company, something worth pursuing for life. Going public with his personal brand, despite years of privacy preference, eliminated any escape route from this commitment. The fear of “if only” drives every major decision, making even scary choices like public exposure necessary to avoid future regret.
“When you’re obsessed with something, you don’t need willpower because it’s all-consuming for you.”
Resources
- Traction (Book)
- Rockefeller Habits (Book)
