Sitting around isn’t his style.
He is not retiring, he said. “I’m re-firing.”
McAfee is continuing his business coaching and podcasting work, but in July, he sold the business he started in the early 1990s, McAfee Heating and Air, and is readying to market his latest venture — a temperature-controlled RV, bus and boat storage facility, Platinum RV Storage in New Carlisle.
He says he has invested more than $6 million into the new business.
“I’ve got to do something,” he said. “And I find it fun.”
“Greg is a doer. Retiring to a rocking chair doesn’t cross his mind,” said Kelly Ammon, a longtime financial advisor, board member and friend to McAfee.
The last five years have delivered a torrent of change for McAfee. He says he has emerged with a forward-looking attitude.
“I’ve been through a lot, but I don’t necessarily look at it that way,” McAfee said. “I look forward all the time. We can get stuck on what we’ve been through or what’s happening now, but things are always better than they seem, and they get better with time.”
In June 2020, he apologized after he made statements on Facebook insinuating that the the death of George Floyd was somehow planned.
“I said something very insensitive during a sensitive time in America,” McAfee, 62, said in a recent interview at his RV storage business on South Dayton-Lakeview Road.
He said his Kettering business and his family received threats, and his company took a financial hit. He had long prided himself on supporting local sports teams and children’s causes, installing or repairing heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems at no cost for select Dayton-area patients who were suffering from lung and breathing ailments.
But after his social media comments, Dayton Children’s Hospital and the University of Dayton said they suspended partnerships with him.
“It kind of knocked the air out of me,” he said.
The period saw another significant change. Persistent upper shoulder pain and fatigue sent McAfee to the Miami Valley Hospital South emergency department in late 2021, where a cardiac catheterization found a 99% blockage in his right coronary artery — a classic “widow-maker” heart event waiting to happen.
“I thought it was stress,” McAfee said. “Everything I googled, I thought it was stress. It would dissipate for a while, then come back the next day. It was really weird.”
A heating and air-conditioning business is a 24-7 enterprise, McAfee said. He considers the business an “emergency service,” and down time is impossible sometimes.
“For 15 or so years, I had either a pager strapped to my hip or a phone by my bed,” he said. “Even though we had a great team, I made myself always available. That’s both good and bad.”
One Saturday morning, he found himself at his desk at work unable to lift his arms to type.
“I called my wife, and I said: ‘I got a problem,’” he recalled.
The next morning, he was being prepped for a quintuple coronary artery bypass graft operation.
After the surgery, he lost 100 pounds in nine months, adhering to a regimen of intermittent fasting, a healthier diet — foregoing most breads, sugars and dairy products — and exercise.
Sale to Champion
Though his business took a hit after his Facebook remarks, he said it recovered — revenue grew 88% from 2021 to 2024 —and he was poised at one point to sell the company, but that transaction fell through, even after a contract was signed.
“We sat there for three months thinking, ‘What do we want to do?’” he recalled.
A connection with a broker led to a conversation with Champions Group, an Irvine, Calif.-based holding company that controls 19 brands in seven states, many of them HVAC and home repair work brands.
From any prospective buyer, McAfee said he wanted protection for his workers and a culture that would not clash with the one he created in Kettering.
McAfee said he sold his business for a multiple of 12 times his company’s EBITDA, or his earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a key corporate measurement of core performance.
In his last year overseeing his company, annual revenue was close to $15 million, he said.
“In Dayton, Ohio, that’s hard to do,” he said.
He initially intended to stay on as a consultant to the Champions ownership team for a year, an arrangement he said he decided to reduce to six months, then 90 days.
“It was harder on me being there and not being in charge,” McAfee said. “I didn’t want to step on any toes if these guys wanted to do things any differently. It wasn’t any of my business — it wasn’t mine any more.”
“Honestly, it was hard on me,” he added. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years.”
Platinum RV
Launching the RV business has taken time.
He initially launched the effort with a friend. They wanted a location close to an interstate, with a grocery store nearby for families ready to take long road trips.
He found 32 acres of farm land near the intersection of Ohio 235 and Dille Road minutes from I-70.
The land was not yet on the market.
“I talked to the owner,” McAfee recalled. “We came to an agreement, and I purchased it.”
Ground was broken for phase one of the project last year. The site offers 90 climate-controlled storage units. He will break ground for the next phase if he can get 80% of the first batch of units leased.
His vision is more than 600 units built in the next five to six years.
Units offer 35-foot or 50-foot heights, sealed floors, electric outlets, lighting, electric doors with digital entry pads, a nearby dog park and climate control.
McAfee welcomes change, Ammon said. “He’s not afraid of it.”
“In addition to his faith in Jesus Christ, Greg has surrounded himself with people who truly care about him as a person and not what they can get from him,” Ammon said. “So when tough times come, regardless of how they come, he has a circle he can lean into.”
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