Boiler Technologies, Training, & Empowerment w/Eric Johnson

Dive into the world of boiler technologies, the growing role of automation, and the power of training and development. 

Join us with, Eric Johnson, CEO of Boilearn, as we enthusiastically tackle the pivotal topic of training and development in the mechanical and boiler industries. We emphasize the value of a diverse skill set, allowing technicians to collaborate effectively with professionals across various trades. 

We later explore the necessity of structured training programs that cater to the needs of newcomers, highlighting the vital importance of investing in people and their technical skills. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Boiler Service Technician Life Story
• 15:00 Training and Developing Future Industry Workers
• 20:25 Developing Initiative in Service Technicians
• 32:01 Empowering Employees Towards Homeownership
• 42:45 The Importance of Technical Expertise
• 47:10 Training for Burner Linkage Troubleshooting
• 59:23 Technician Training Challenges and Solutions
• 1:10:10 Training and Resources for Service Technicians
• 1:23:11 Promoting Automation Ladies Podcast and Community

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, welcome back to an Automation Ladies episode. We are recording here on a Wednesday in our remote studio, and our guest today is somebody that Allie brought on. Allie, why don't you introduce our guests or tell us what you're expecting or why you invited him to come on the show? I'm sorry, I know we said we wouldn't do that ahead of time, but I'm going to do that now.

Speaker 2: 0:23

I you know, delved into creating technical content Um, and I still have a lot of aspirations um to do that in a lot of, a lot of different things. But, um, I my passion has started with controls, or process engineering, cause I'm a chemical engineer, so I studied chemical engineering Um and uh, that got me to, at the beginning of my career, kind of fall in love with different types of equipment like unit ops, um, and definitely you know, boilers, um was in that category of like utility equipment that we had to learn about. We had to learn how to size, and I have in my life bought um or spec'd out you know, different size boilers. Um, and then you know, used steam to do various things, um, you know, in the process side of things, because it's a huge utility um in a ton of process industries, um, and so I saw eric was doing, you know, teaching people, because I I'm also like a burner technician.

Speaker 2: 1:26

So like NFPA 86 is furnaces and NFPA 85 is boilers, so like the way that we like run the burner controls is like similar.

Speaker 2: 1:37

They just have like high pressure considerations and so it's a little bit different, but like, so to me it's like super exciting um, just to talk to somebody who has, you know, put their hands on, um, the NFP 85 side, um, so all the stuff that's like kind of used to run and do the controls, and even just like the equipment itself, cause he knows, you have to know everything about how you're making the steam, um, and then there's just a lot of piping considerations and just a lot of crap surrounding just just steam and boilers, um, and producing steam for all for a lot of different things, including, um, heat exchange is a giant one.

Speaker 2: 2:14

So in a lot of cases you may need to heat stuff and you'll use low pressure steam or high pressure steam, um, but you need a boiler to make the steam, and so there's a lot of places that use this. But anyway, I found his content and I just wanted to hear his story because I don't think enough people I think people know how to work on stuff and nobody wants to talk about it the way that he's doing it, so that other people can learn and even get excited and be like, oh, I could be a boiler technician. Like, oh, I would, I could, I could be a boiler technician. Like, so I think, um, it sounds it depends on what you know and what your background is like it could be boring to me.

Speaker 1: 2:49

It's like super cool, because I really like that equipment well, I'm pretty interested, even though I don't I've never I've never worked around boilers or had any interest in in the past. But now that I, you know, know that they're there just like everything else, I'm like oh, tell me all the things. So, johnson, welcome to automation. Ladies, thank you so much for being here. How are you?

Speaker 3: 3:07

I am doing well. Thank you for having me. This is my first podcast, so I'm excited oh or what.

Speaker 1: 3:14

What a cool milestone. Thank you so much for letting us be your first podcast. This is where. Don't take this as any kind of bar for what podcasting is like. We don't know what we're doing, but we're setting the bar high. So our first question, our standard question, is if you could just give us a little intro of yourself, and we like to ask kind of like what's your story of how you got here to be making content for boilers and you know the stuff that you're doing today?

Speaker 3: 3:40

So my family my grandfather actually started a boiler service company and my dad is in the business. So I've always been around boilers and I grew up around boilers and service and I'm very mechanically inclined and just like taking apart something taking apart, you know, maybe a four-wheeler or working on something in your garage, working on your car it's always interested me in how stuff is made and how stuff is manufactured and a lot of that goes into the focus with boilers. And what I found was it's just an outlet for mechanical things. You know I really like bulldozers and the yellow equipment. Since I've grown up around boilers, it's just the avenue that I chose.

Speaker 3: 4:32

So, uh, after high school, um, I wasn't super into college but I was like looking at construction management. But I found a uh HVAC engineering technology program, ferris State, go Bulldogs. It's up in Michigan and essentially the first two years is teaching you how to be a HVAC technician at a very high level as much as you can in two years. I mean they have labs, probably one of the most in-depth labs. I've seen a lot of industry, sponsors and whatnot, so it's really great experience. And then the next two years, which is a bachelor's degree, is designing. So essentially my senior project, my last semester, was design, like spec design, a mechanical system for a museum in the middle of Pennsylvania. So you got to pick out all the air handlers size, all the piping size, the chillers size, all the duct, and so essentially, coming out of college, I had a pretty good idea of mechanical equipment and building environment. That's what they call it. So if you walk into a building and you don't realize the temperature, some engineer has done a very good job because you are comfortable without you knowing being comfortable. Anytime you walk into a building and you go, hey, it's cold, then something is off in the controls and it's probably not to the greatest design or it's not operating correctly the greatest design or it's not operating correctly.

Speaker 3: 6:03

So after college I, you know, I looked at construction management and whatnot and I really just didn't want to be in a job site trailer and like just sitting around and I really wanted to do some hands-on stuff and get field experience. So I ended up working for a boiler service company being a service technician with a bachelor's degree. But you know a lot of people being a service technician with a bachelor's degree, but you know a lot of people say, oh, college is a waste of time and whatnot, and it is if you go for the wrong degree or you're just showing up to show up. I used a lot of my college experience because there was a lot of controls classes, pid loops and all that stuff. Logic that I used day one out in the field that if I hadn't gone to college, I would be walking into a mechanical room not knowing what anything is, not knowing what an air handler is or a chiller and how they work, and that would set me back. So while I don't work on chillers or air handlers, it is something that you should know about, because every, every building or process uh has connected components and while you may only be working on one component, which in my case is a boiler, all the other components uh work together like heat exchangers. So that's like something I learned about and you know humidity and how to use steam for humidity and hospitals and all this stuff. And so it goes beyond.

Speaker 3: 7:34

I think people get very narrow focused on well, I just need to learn boilers. Why would I learn anything else? And, like, life isn't binary and you can't learn one avenue of material and just avoid everything else, because everything is connected, and even more so in building controls. So I was a service tech, slinging wrenches, doing on call, just working like twenty eight hundred three thousand hours a year, like 2,800 to 3,000 hours a year. Uh, I loved it, Um and uh, just learning so much.

Speaker 3: 8:08

Go home, read manuals at night and, uh, you just try to show up and be the best person for the customer, Cause you realize, like you know, my company's billing me out at 120 an hour or whatever, and you want to show up and represent that 120 an hour.

Speaker 3: 8:26

If you show up unprepared, I just I felt so bad. And while I always tell people to be the expert, you just have to know one more thing than the customer. And that's a lot of. What I did is read the manual, memorize what I need to know, walk in, have the right answers for like two or three questions from the customer and then figure it out. And at the end of the day, as long as the problem is fixed correctly, it doesn't matter how much you know or don't know about the problem. And so I did that and then probably year four, year five of doing being a service technician, probably year four, year five of doing being a service technician. I had learned enough, I'd probably reached the point of like I was competent and got got into a groove of and knew what I was doing, and a lot of people like, oh, how can you do that in three or four years? Well, when you only work on boilers and burners and like that's it.

Speaker 3: 9:22

Oh, you can yeah and then all like your life is consumed by it. You go home, you read stuff at night and all this stuff you would be amazed at what you can know in three and four years, especially if you start working on the same equipment, same job sites, and then you, you learn how every mechanical room starts to work. So know, I would start trying to teach people and obviously you know companies trying to hire people to, you know, be service techs. And it's definitely a difficult job and it takes a special kind of person and I found that you know there's a lot of people that just want to show up and just be kind of told what to do, and a service tech is something like you have to have. You have to be a self starter and be some initiative yourself.

Speaker 3: 10:12

Yeah, initiative and be somebody who's going to fix a problem, like in a mechanical room, like cause you're normally not working with anybody else, the customer's not standing over you and if you go, ah, I'll just leave this for somebody else, or, you know, nobody will know it will come back and bite you, whether it you know, whether it's a callback or the problem doesn't get fixed correctly or whatnot. So I'm trying to teach that and instill that in other people. As long with the technical stuff and you know all the new people or people that the company was hiring, it comes down like, oh, where can I learn stuff? And all this? I'm like, well, you know it's in the manual and all this stuff and you show them and it just never, uh, seemed to be like too too much of structure of learning and I think some people can read a manual and learn, but a lot of people have different learning styles where, like the reading, the manual isn't going to do it for them.

Speaker 3: 11:07

Yes, yes. So reading a manual, you have to be able to visualize what you're reading and especially if you've never seen what you are reading about is very difficult. But I was like. So I'm looking around the industry and, as we probably all know, the blue, blue collar industry tons of baby boomers are retiring. There's tons of need in the industry for people, especially people that know something, and all the companies that are having boiler training or burner training. They seem to be running the same plane book over and over again and while, like, they do great training and whatnot, it doesn't. The outcome of their training isn't affected by the service technician, so whether the service tech learns or not, they still get paid. And then the service tech goes home and there's a disconnect between training that the company is training the service tech on and what the service tech actually needs to know, and it ends up being a one size fits all approach. So I looked at other industries and I think the HVAC industry is a leading indicator of boilers. Boilers are just really a niche of HVAC and HVAC has a lot of online learning programs that are helping HVAC technicians and even chiller technicians to learn stuff, and with the boiler industry, there's not too many online programs that are great that I would recommend to another service technician to take. So by year seven of being a service technician, I was like you know I'm young, you know not married, like there's only one time to do this and I'm like, if nobody else is going to do it, I'm going to jump in the ring and be the person who tries to make the change in the industry, because a lot of people wait till they're like 50, 55, or you know 60 or you know whatever, and semi-retired to try to like give back and teach, which is fine. But sometimes I realize that I have to remove myself from the customer problems of the industry to actually work on the problems of the industry and try to apply knowledge and learning programs to empower service contractors and mechanical contractors to train their own people. And so I quit my job and started Boilern and it's boiler and learning together, if that's the name, so Boilern and essentially I try to make training programs and systems for companies that actually move the needle on their service technicians and learning.

Speaker 3: 14:01

So the biggest complaint I've heard and learning so the biggest complaint I hear about, like offsite training is the managers who send their people don't really know what to expect of the people that come back. So the service technician comes back, manager asks hey, like, what'd you learn? And the service tech goes it was fine, I learned a couple of things. But then they don't really know, like, okay, what skills like, prove it out. Yeah, what skills is this things? But then they don't really know, like okay, what skills? Like, prove it out. Yeah, what skills is this person supposed to know? Or don't know. And if they come back and go like, oh, I didn't really learn anything, now your employer I mean they're out, probably three grand at least and you know what do you do? Do you just resend them back to the class and hope for a different outcome? Know what do you do? Do you just resend them back to the class and hope for a different outcome?

Speaker 3: 14:47

So it ends up being this balance, yeah, the struggle and balance of managers get very frustrated when they send people to offsite training and then they come back and they haven't really learned anything or shown initiative to learn.

Speaker 3: 15:00

And a lot of times people think offsite training is you know, I deserve this and if I learn something, great.

Speaker 3: 15:09

If I don't, great, you know they're still going to pay me to be here and with a internal training program for contractors or mechanical contractors, having a small amount of training over a long period of time is much better than an information dump of two or three days.

Speaker 3: 15:27

So the biggest thing is, like all these contractors they're all experts in the industry, they're all experts on boilers but putting that expert knowledge in a way, in a pathway that is structured and also able to be digested by somebody, because I'm not teaching anything new, like everything I know, I could give you 15 books, but you know you can't buy 15 books for somebody and say, hey, read all this, and now you know it all. But it's, yeah, it's breaking it down, just like a teacher would break down mathematics in a school and assuming like, since we are now training people who you know, maybe 18 years, right out of high school and they don't traditionally maybe have like farm experience or mechanical experience, and you know, I I worked with a guy and I assumed he knew how to read a tape measure. So then he goes oh, it's like people don a tape measure. So then he goes oh, it's like people don't know, lefty Lucy, righty tighty.

Speaker 3: 16:28

So it's, it's six and three lines or whatever. I'm like three lines, what are we doing? And he's like I've never read a tape measure before. And so I taught him how to read a tape measure. So then I asked somebody else knew that I was working with. And I'm like hey, you know how to read a tape measure. And he's like well, I'm not dumb, I'm like they're offended.

Speaker 3: 16:49

I'm like I didn't know Cause, like I've worked with somebody who didn't know. So it's really removing the barrier of, hey, you should know this and get with the program. And hey, do you know this or not? And if not, we can teach you it. As long as you want to be here and you're driven, we're happy to have you and we're happy to teach you, because that's what companies are going to need in order to survive in the future. They have to be able to develop their people in-house, and relying on outside resources is it's a step in it. I wouldn't say outside resources are bad, but it is a step in a larger system and program that they need to put together. And a lot of the super, super big companies are starting to figure it out because they have the money and the people to hire a full-timetime trainer, hire you know and build a full-time training lab and you know whatnot. But then the all the smaller companies there's tons of service contractors out there 30 to 50 people that can't afford a hundred thousand dollar trainer to just sit around and build stuff. So as an industry, we can collect knowledge and put together learning systems that all these contractors can just implement into their companies and that's really why I started Boiler and what we're trying to fix.

Speaker 3: 18:19

I don't have the magic answer right now. I am working towards it. I'm just me at the time. I am working towards it. I'm just just me at the time. I'm self-funded. So I see people, you know companies come in. Oh, you can train our people. Well, I can, but you know, I don't. I don't have like a four year boiler degree for you, but that's what we're going towards and we'll get there eventually.

Speaker 1: 18:42

That's really impressive. I appreciate the, I guess, the kind of person that says sees the problem and says, well, I guess, since nobody's doing it, I'll try to do it. That's the kind of people we are.

Speaker 2: 18:53

That is what you did, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:56

I'm a big fan.

Speaker 3: 18:57

I'm a big fan of the Theodore Roosevelt man in the ring quote and taking initiative. And yeah, I just. I'm like I can't complain about a problem and not try to fix it. And I tried to fix the problem. Um, and it's impossible to fix the problem when you're working 2,800 hours a year and also try to build training systems and whatnot. And that's when I ended up going like I need to remove all my customers problems and like my job problems and only work on problems of helping the industry.

Speaker 1: 19:36

You've mentioned initiative a few times and I think that's really important. Like you can hire for that, but you can't really teach that, the skills you can teach if somebody has initiative, but you kind of mentioned as well that, like these new techs, they need to. Is that something that you found? Somebody can learn to take initiative or to become a self-starter, or is it kind of when you, you know, work with these people? So they're either going to show that initiative or they're not.

Speaker 2: 20:06

It might depend on who they watch, because people are going to mimic their, their leaders. So if the leaders are like like what you said, you said you need to show up and represent that 120 dollars. So many people don't give a to represent that 120 dollars. They're representing their, their 45 or 54, whatever they're getting. Um, I'm here and to feel like the ownership of the work that you do, even though you're not the owner of the company, is like the highest asset workers we can, even freaking have. Like I always felt that way that I was representing my reputation, not just my company. I was representing me and like and I want you to know that I have integrity and you can definitely trust my company to have integrity, cause they put me here because I have integrity and like I'm going to not like paying up the phone and I'm going to like eat my dinner I'm known for that Like eating my dinner on the phone with an electrician some other place and like I could have just dumped them, like it was 5 PM, but I don't't do that and that's why I'm me and have what I have. But like I don't know.

Speaker 2: 21:07

It's like Nikki saying I don't know how you teach that I think you just find it in people. But the only chance we have maybe is like the few of us that are already like that. You put them at the top and then you have everyone be you know, work for them, and that's the only chance you really have is just like put the ambitious ones in the lead. That way the other ones can see and maybe feel proud and be like I wish I was like that guy or that girl, um, because she obviously like really, really, really cares about not just going home, um, but the job that she does. Like yeah, we all care about our family and ourselves first, and we should, but we should care about the quality of the stuff that we do for a living. And some of us do and some of us, like don't love what we do and so we just do it for the paycheck and it shows and it sucks.

Speaker 3: 21:53

So part of being a service technician is how you fix a job, is your signature and you'll develop relationships with customers and you want your signature to be when the customer, when you show up, walk through the door and they see your face, they know the problem is going to be taken care of. If they see your face and are constantly calling your, your company, after they see your face, they get a negative view of you and go, oh well, he's not going to probably take, he's not going to. You know, take care of the problem.

Speaker 2: 22:28

He doesn't care.

Speaker 3: 22:29

And. But you know, and that's what I tried to be a rock star for my customers. And a lot of people will say, like you know, oh, you need work at life balance and you know you, you can't work all the time and you know all this stuff.

Speaker 3: 22:47

But, like you know, like with a boiler, you know it can be three o'clock or 3 30 and you have two more hours to go approximately. You can't really just go like, oh well, I've got, I gotta go home and I'll see you tomorrow. Like there's a manufacturing line that's down and, like they, they need it fixed and they need it fixed now, because that second shift of people are relying on you and that third shift of people are relying on you and that third shift of people are relying on you and the plant manager is wondering like, hey, are we gonna have a boiler tonight? Or do I call my 80 people on third shift and tell them that they're not working tonight? So it's a lot of responsibility and, downstream, of more than just like oh, you know, I'm just gonna go home and you know, I think that I mean that bleeds into the purpose of it. But going back to your original question, can you teach initiative? You absolutely can, otherwise the Marine Corps wouldn't exist, you know.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Okay.

Speaker 3: 23:38

And the you know they got.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Touche Yep.

Speaker 3: 23:41

They got their slogan the few, the proud, the Marines. And even recently, you know, the total recruiting in the armed services is down, but the Marines still keep hitting their numbers because they try to push people to a higher purpose and be a part of it. But do they accept everyone? No, no.

Speaker 1: 24:05

Yeah, so you have to have some amount of initiative to even apply to the marines in the first place like you, like you can't be like really dumb either, like yeah and then they won't just let you in if you're just like, well, I kind of want to be a marine, because it sounds, you know, all right, like I mean, but I mean I just as well. I could be also in the army or in the navy or whatever, I don't care. Like they probably wouldn't let those people in right so well.

Speaker 3: 24:27

So you gotta pass a like a test, like and I've never been in the armed services, but you gotta pass a test. And then you gotta like pass a physical. And how you pass the test is based on essentially what you can do, and you know there's plenty of people who get in the marines that are not like you would think, your typical marine, but a small. But what makes them different is, once you're signed up, you can't quit, for you know your period two years, four years, whatever it is and like if uh, I think it would be interesting, like if you could quit boot camp in the Marines and like, just be like, ah, this is hard, I'm done Like you would probably have so many more people wash out, but you they push them to get over that hurdle and believe in themselves, and so many people come from you know terrible upbringing and terrible homes and you know nobody has believed in them and you know so. Then they think you know like their world is way different than other people's worlds and like it's hard to know that. So then when an employer goes hey, you need to take initiative. They don't even know what that is and you have to show them that. But the first minute it gets hard. A lot of people think hard equals bad and that's simply not true. But since there are so many blue collar service companies that are dying for people, they, they will just start throwing money around. So they'll find a service technician hey, we'll give you three more dollars an hour, four more dollars an hour. And this person jumps ship. Oh, of course I want more money, money. They jump ship and now that employer, who's invested all that time trying to train them, has just lost them to their competitor, and then that competitor will lose them to another competitor who pays them a little bit more, and it ends up being you can't get somebody to commit to learning and push them hard, because if you push them too hard of like hey, like this is going to be difficult, but we believe in your future, like in three years it will be amazing.

Speaker 3: 26:34

And a lot of people can't see three years ahead. They're worried about the end of the month and that's about it, and they see three more dollars an hour and that gives them a little bit more money. And then they bounce, and it's not always the best career decision. While I do understand it in the short term, in the longterm, chasing the money is probably not going to work out for you. You know everybody's like oh, you know, chasing money, you get huge raises and stuff, but at a certain point you end up especially being a service technician you end up with a pay scale that is higher than what you can fix, because eventually, at the end of the day, you still have to go to the job site and you have to fix stuff. So now, if you're getting $35, $40 an hour or whatever and you constantly have callbacks and whatnot, and your employer starts going like, well, what do you actually know?

Speaker 3: 27:26

What am I paying you for? And the skills don't match the pay rate and it's just very difficult. But initiative, if you can get somebody who can see the long term and hasn't made extreme poor financial decisions before that, so that they're bootstrap for cash and just trying to survive week by week you know, because they're in survival mode and they're not in career mode at that point then you can definitely, um, have them learn, like I know of people myself, like I know a guy who was a waiter and I know a guy who washed dishes and they trained him to be a service technician and he's been with the company like 24 years now. So like it's absolutely possible. It goes back to the managers have to be able to push and lead the people and the problem is with that is you know you're when you show up to work, you cost the company money and if you keep costing them money, they can only push you so much before they just get frustrated and be like, well, this guy's never going to work out because a lot of these smaller companies don't have endless budgets to invest two years of just throwing away money into you and hope that you work out. So then they just keep putting out job applications for senior service technicians with people for five years, 10 years experience, because they can't get people over the hump. And that's what I'm really trying to help companies with is get people over the hump of how do we take them from zero to kind of know what they're doing in the boiler room, and it seems like a big gap but it's really not. But we need probably a structured training program of probably a year to two years to get them there.

Speaker 3: 29:21

And I think if we can get people to commit like a you, you know, like a trade school almost of, hey, like at two years, you're going to make this amount of money and you're going to know this, and that's kind of really, um, how the union does it as well. Um, I wasn't in the union, but they essentially say, hey, at the end of five years, you're going to be a journeyman and you're going to make this amount of money, and it helps people see a future, because a lot of people can't set goals for themselves, especially five years down the road down the line. So essentially somebody else is telling them hey, this is what you can have and this is what you can achieve at the end of five years and they can work towards it. And a lot of employers, union or non-union, don't do that very well, even outside of just technical stuff, like, hey, how are you doing, where do you want to go in your life? And when you go home, what do you want to do?

Speaker 3: 30:18

And so many people go home have no ambition to do anything. They just kind of sit around, maybe throw on netflix, which is fine. But then you know they start growing up and you know 30, 40, 50 years old and then they go. You know, where did my life?

Speaker 3: 30:35

go and it's, it's very, I don't know all this like, do you read psychology books?

Speaker 2: 30:41

or you just like know about people, like you just know a bunch of people. You're right, that is how people work, especially technicians. It's a huge portion of the population is doing exactly what you're talking about. How old are you? Why do you know that?

Speaker 3: 31:00

I'm 30. I listen to a lot of podcasts and a lot of business and personal development and my biggest thing from day one has been my parents teaching me how to work hard. And you can't get that. Luck is made essentially in most of life. You know, luck is made essentially in most of life but how you grow up in your childhood and what you're born into is essentially the only luck that you can't control and so many people don't have that and I recognize that.

Speaker 3: 31:41

I had a great upbringing and my parents taught me hard work. I had a great upbringing and my parents taught me hard work and that has instilled in me the the drive of always wanting to do better for myself, for other people, to help people, and I always thought everybody had that. You know, cause when you're young you don't know, but as once, once you get out into the real world, um, like especially when I started working, like there were so many people like I would go to plants and there's like operators and whatnot and they're you know they'll be, you know probably 50s or 60s, as most of the industry is, and you know they'll tell me, you know about their wife that they got divorced from, that they hate and there are two kids that don't want to see them and, you know, hopefully their nfl team wins on the weekend and that they can drink beer.

Speaker 3: 32:35

I'm like well to me I like that just sounds depressing you've talked to the people if I get to 50 years old and like that's what I'm talking about and that's all I have in life is just living for the weekends and like trying to instill that in other people and share that with them is also part of development of employees. Because uh and Dave Ramsey talks a lot about this is like you can't have great employees if they're constantly worried about money and if their parents like if you can't reliably have people be taught money and how to manage money. You as an employer now need to take that on, and a lot of employers see that as, like you know, that's not my problem.

Speaker 3: 33:21

I pay you to show up and do stuff, but it becomes your problem, whether you want it to be or not as an employer, you need to almost shield people from the hurt of the world and be hey, how can we get your family life better? You know what are your goals. You know like, oh, I want to buy a house one day. All right, let's work backwards. How can we get you to buy a house, like you know, and like actually lay it out for them, because a lot of people haven't had that or haven't had the time to think about that and they just think, you know, oh, I'll never be able to buy a house. That's for those other people, and that's such a poor outlook on life. And as an employer, you shouldn't have employees that. And as an employer, you shouldn't have employees that think stuff is impossible.

Speaker 3: 34:08

I'm a big person of like, you know you can always work hard and achieve. You know what you can. And you know I know a guy. I know you know I couldn't believe it at the time, but he was like, oh, I'll never own a house that's for those other people at the time. But he was like, oh, I'll never own a house, that's for those other people. And you know he's like, oh, I just I've made too many poor decisions to change my life, and he was probably 34, 35 at that point and I'm like like it's not, like you're so young, like you've maybe made poor decisions but you can change so much in such little time, and like this is like you're, you can't check out on life and you know you, you just you know you can't make the change for them, but you can instill in them and you know, just drop little things of encouragement and you know like, hey, you know how's this going.

Speaker 3: 35:03

Hey, how's your kid? You know how's it, you know anything I can do for you and like love on them and like show them like life's not over, like you can redeem yourself and redeem your life.

Speaker 2: 35:14

You know who you remind me of? Well, you don't know, but you remind me of Drew Crow in that, like you don't just know boilers, you actually know the workforce. You, boilers, you actually know the workforce. You should be on a lot of other podcasts where you talk about the workforce because, like, people don't understand their workforce and that is a huge, huge problem. Um, and yeah, every, every single workforce is the same. Like if you, if they don't believe in themselves and a lot of people don't, and it's not even their fault, and it's amazing that you're like saying that, like we could, as employers, take on basically parenting some of these people into better lives. Um, we tell them what to do, they're going to do it themselves, but like you could change people's lives by just telling them or showing them that other people did it. That's part of why we love automation, ladies, is we wanted to show that you know people with any background. If they don't stop and they don't let everybody else tell them no, because they're going to tell you no anyway, they're like you can't do that. Your family will tell you you can't do that. Like all kinds of people will tell you you can't do something. And if you don't give up and you go get that thing. You go and you turn around and tell that story to people. It inspires people to do something. They're like well, they did it. They see it. They're like there's proof that other people that look like me or make as much money or not as much money as me, could turn their go to school, figure something out, take a training like, start talking to people on the internet.

Speaker 2: 36:47

That's what we're trying to do is teach people to not give up, because, yeah, a lot of us did already come from pretty much desperation. A lot of us have seen the bottom and a lot of us were really like you said we had opportunities that other people didn't have and we're just, for some reason, uh, able to see that and able to turn around and tell people like, hey, it's not your fault that you didn't have anything. It's not your fault that your parents didn't raise you to to manage money. It's not your fault that, like, your parents weren't even hugging you. Like there's all kinds of things that aren't your fault, but you could have a better life and it's not over. And even if you're 34 or 44 or 54, I'm 37. Like, I've never owned a home, but I don't feel like I don't know. I'll own a home eventually, but yeah, I think there's just. Yeah, the human aspect is really cool.

Speaker 1: 37:47

I'm going to bring this up and brag on Allie a little bit. She's helped at least one of her employees buy a house and like you were aware of that and you guys were aware of that, that was a goal and like supported that employee and getting that done.

Speaker 2: 37:56

So I think that that's huge because so many people don't know what ways there are to homeownership, because there's many first FHA different right, and then my employees are veterans, so like there's many first fha right and then my employees are veterans, so like there's veterans loans yeah, so va entitlement, of course.

Speaker 1: 38:11

Surprisingly, a lot of people don't know how they actually work, and the fact that it's a dollar amount, not a number of houses, or also the fact that fha is not we should talk about that in an episode it's just that you can only carry fha at a time, like I know so much about this that I just forget that people don't know.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Um, and the other thing is is like, oh, let's say you buy a house and then you want to take a job in a different city or you need, you know your your income stops or gets low or something. Right, you can rent out that house and not, you know, have to sell it right, as long as it's you know, somewhat decent investment, or you know, of course, it depends on the as long as it's you know a somewhat decent investment, or you know, of course, it depends on the situation. But like, there's just so many options for people that I think a lot of times like the front line of an industry, like and I will get another episode about like real estate agents and realtors and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 38:59

But somebody that goes through the basic training, like to get your exam, they know the bread and butter, what the contract is, what the terms are, how to go look at a house, right, they know those sorts of things, but they really don't know anything outside of the very basics and they need to choose to become educated in lots of different areas if they want to really be a great resource both to their client or to their seller or whoever. But I've heard I don't know on how many occasions I've heard somebody tell me or a real estate agent tell me, oh, you can't do that or that's not how it works, when I know very well that you can in fact do that and that is exactly how it works, but maybe not in most situations, right, and I think, yeah, it's very common for people that know the bare minimums of any kind of profession or whatever to kind of like think that they know all of confidently say things that they don't know.

Speaker 2: 40:07

So be careful. And that's technicians, engineers, older people, younger people, men, women, like I see it a lot in men, but like everyone does it, like you're just, maybe there's just an air of confidence to them that's already there and it's like you could accidentally like shut something down for someone else's life, because you just said that so fast and it wasn't like all of the considerations. And it's like if you let yourself be that person who just well, because I've done it before, like I think, uh, the job before my last w-2 job, before I went out on my own, I they said, like we can't do that. And I and I just said I guess it's over.

Speaker 2: 40:43

And my dad was like, well, why don't you just counter? And and I was like, can I do that? And he's like, well, if you can't, like they'll say no, and I'm like, okay. So I countered and they're like okay, and I'm like, holy, I almost walked away and a lot of people don't ever counter. So that's I think that's what I'm trying to say is that like don't take the first no as the truth. Like make sure it's really a no, that's not like you know, yeah, just get a second opinion. Like if someone says you have cancer, like make sure you really have that cancer. Like you know, yeah, don't necessarily take that first.

Speaker 1: 41:21

No, that also speaks a little bit to the broader point that you made that like, even though what you learned in college isn't exactly what you ended up using, knowing that was really helpful in your job. Right, and I think again, when you stick to the very, very, very basics, the only things you had to learn, right, your bare minimum, you're not going to be able to troubleshoot or or confidently know whether there's a path forward to something or not. But the more you learn about other things that are adjacent to what you do, even if they're not that exact thing, you become a much more powerful problem solver, right Cause then you can also know, kind of like, who you should talk to to get something done, rather than just speak to your customer more intelligently, um, or the other people that are there will be like, oh, this guy knows, or this girl knows More than just one thing, and so I'm willing to talk to them because they're not an idiot.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Some people will open up because they're like, yeah, they know that you are speaking their language versus just speaking just the technical stuff, about just your thing. When you start explaining to them that you understand their thing in the grand scheme of the technical stuff, about just your thing, when you start explaining to them that you understand their thing in the grand scheme of the other stuff, um, or maybe just the company itself, like that, like that gives comfort to the managers, to the operators in you and, like you know, we I I try so bad to sell the glory of technicians because the people are like you know, I'm here to. A technician job is a high glory job because you fix the thing, like if you actually know how to fix the thing. That is one of the most incredible feelings, because I fixed many things in my life and it happened after. People were struggling for days, trying to look at it, like different kinds of people were looking at it Engineers, electricians, operators are looking at it and I come and find a blown fuse and they're like damn it, or just like I find things right that people just didn't see, and like it doesn't take me that long. But like that glory of like solving that for them and getting them going again is like huge and like I think that is just worth it by itself, is just like knowing that like people call you they call your name because they know you. You have a reputation that you fix it and they've already seen you fix it before. So they're just they don't even waste time. They're like get Eric over here right now and they do it to me. They're like I need Allie, not her people. Allie has to come here. Eventually I'll have my people prove themselves and they'll call my people by name, but they call my name and they need me there and I'm like I'm in another state, I can't go.

Speaker 2: 43:54

But yeah, that glory is amazing and I think that that is something that makes the technician job worth it, because people know your name, they you know that you're just going to fix it. You don't even know where it comes from. I don't know where it comes from. I just show up and I'm like I've built one of these before or I've seen this problem before, or both like, or I've just. You know, I know enough about how to build these that I know where the things could be broken.

Speaker 2: 44:21

And the other thing about me is, uh, I can fight with electricians. Some programmers just ended there. They're like they can't speak on the circuit and so if you can't speak on a motor control circuit to an electrician, he can say all or she can say all day long that it's a programming problem. But if I can't prove it's not that it isn't me and it is them, them then they can just basically say it isn't me and I, and I have to prove it.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Um, so like there is a huge value in knowing other people's stuff and being able to argue with them about it, because you can come up against other trades, people, and if you do not speak their language or other managers or whatever, if you do not speak the language of all of those people, then they're going to stop you in your tracks and not let you do something. And if you can't argue with them intelligently, then you're kind of stuck and you're just like not going to be able to solve the thing. So it's actually incredible to know more than just your thing. And you should, because you're going to come up against all the other players who are like who's this? Is it wiring, is it mechanical? Is it in the plumbing? Is it? Did someone? Did the engineer size the whole thing wrong to begin with, like who messed this up? Like where is it broken? And then, yeah, the customer's freaking out like and everybody. It's a high stress and eventually someone will solve it, but the glory is definitely there for us.

Speaker 1: 45:43

So I want to tie this back to Eric's training content. Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like today in terms of the type of content you have and then maybe what you're building and like? Does that have a module that says, if you don't know how to you know, use a tape measure like here's, here's how to show you that, or like those things that are kind of like not the core of your training focus, but the peripheral things that people are going to need to know?

Speaker 3: 46:06

so since I just started, probably a year and a half ago, I've been very focused on boiler related stuff that gets somebody from zero to knows something and a lot of the like oh, how to read a tape measure and whatnot. There are so many general courses and general, you know, construction courses that have that that in the big picture I go how can I most effectively make a impact as fast as possible? And that's what I, going back to, the you know, outside resources are great, but they're not the end solution. It's how can I be a cog in the wheel and not try to be the wheel of everything? And I think so many employers and whatnot want to see a wheel of everything. They'll get sold a training program of hey, this will teach them absolutely everything they need to know and that's probably not going to be a great training program. So it's right now I'm very uh focused on, like specific topics.

Speaker 3: 47:10

So, uh, like honeywell mon motors are a very common stepper motor in the industry. They're on a lot of burners, a lot of feed water valves, um, and it's a very simple motor once you understand how it works. But, uh, part of the my experience and like building this company is like I've struggled myself with Honeywell mod motors and trying to troubleshoot them and not have a step-by-step process and that's one of the few manuals that is terrible and it won't really. It doesn't like tell you like, is it this or is it this? And so then you end up learning from other people and it becomes this like phone, you know, chain of stuff where you start learning knowledge and you're like well, is that true or is it not? But it's not written down, you can't read it in the manual. So it's very difficult for somebody who's starting to look towards a resource and I want this course to be hey, this is everything I know about it and I was able to figure them all out Like, this is everything you should know about it. So also, I haven't released it yet, but have a burner linkage trainer course and, um, essentially.

Speaker 3: 48:28

So burner linkage is one of the few things. So, uh, if you're not familiar with burners, a stepper motor will drive linkage on a linkage burner and the linkage drives the air and fuel which controls the firing rate of the burner. So if it's a full modulation burner, you have to open the air damper for more air and open a butterfly valve for more gas and it ends up it deals with like angles and like travel and arcs, which is very easy once you learn it. But it is like I can remember looking at a very small burner probably 1.5 million input, and like I had just put it all together and it was making tons of CO and I'm staring at it, I have my combustion analyzer, I know it's wrong and, uh, like this was probably, you know, probably year two of me working, like I kind of knew what to do, but it was the linkage was so messed up on the burner that I was like man, like it was more than just like, hey, let's move a little rod or a connection connection here.

Speaker 3: 49:39

So, luckily, I worked for an amazing company, had amazing people. So another person came out and just showed me like hey, like this is what we're going to do, oh, we need to do this. Uh, we got to increase the speed of the air here and do this, and they got it all fixed up and so many people don't have that one, because a lot of those people are retiring out of the industry. Or two, they just work in a general HVAC company and then, um, they two, they just work in a general HVAC company and then they just get anointed the burner person and they don't have another person to call and you know who do you go for that resource and you know there are how to adjust linkage in a manual or there's YouTube videos. But as an employer, it's how do we, how do we pick and designate one resource that we know is reliable and then consistently use that resource? And if you have to constantly go and say, hey, look up this YouTube video, and then this one and this one and this one, and look at this manual, it's all the information is scattered everywhere and, like I said, like I'm not really making any new information, the value of my company is putting that information in a linear format where the managers and the employers don't have to think about what am I giving this person? Or you know, is this information good? It's hey, we know this is good. This is a solid resource and you know we can give it to you reliably over and over again. And then on top of that, that's an electronic course, video course there's.

Speaker 3: 51:10

I actually built a burner linkage trainer which is essentially it'll teach you Honeywell Mod Motors, burner linkage and gas butterfly valves. And you know a lot of people. I've had comments, dms, like oh, this is, like you know, like the trainer's expensive, like it's custom machine stuff. But I can remember and I can think back to when I was learning linkage, like there's so much mystery to it and you're training on a customer's job site with an older service technician but, like you know, you're still there billing out hours. So, like you feel, like you can't make a mistake and in front of a live boiler when you're not comfortable around them, you put up so many mental roadblocks that you're not comfortable and all learning stops and it becomes a survival situation and it's essentially how do I get this linkage adjusted to the point where the CR on my analyzer and my O2 look good and I got to get out of here? And getting people out of that frame and mindset is the only way that they're going to learn. And a lot of older people have been like, oh, I just figured it out on the job, so you have to. And, yes, like there is an aspect to that. But also, at the same time, what can we do and innovate in the industry to help people learn stuff without having to go through all the hardships of the people before them? And that's where this trainer came from.

Speaker 3: 52:38

So essentially, the trainer gives you an in-house ability as a company to train people on linkage and they can make all the mistakes they want, because there's not a flame connected to the linkage, there's just precision. It's machined and laser engraved angle markings that give you feedback so you can walk through and be like all, all right, my stepper motor made this much direction change in this way and then my gas valve made this direction change and my air damper, you know, made this change. And having that feedback is very valuable. You know, I have a lot of people say oh well, we have a, you know, an old burner that we pull off a boiler in our shop. I'm like that's absolutely great, but there's no feedback to a uh, a air damper. That has no way to measure it. You're just kind of measuring spatial position based on what you see. But when you make a linkage change, sometimes you're only changing the air damper by four degrees and it's very hard to look at blades of an air damper and go oh yeah, that changed by four degrees and it impacts the learning, whereas the boiler and burner linkage trainer, it outputs numbers so you can know hey, my stepper motor is at 45 degrees, my gas valve is at 27 degrees and my air damper is at 36 degrees. Valve is at 27 degrees and my air damper is at 36 degrees. And then it's building it's.

Speaker 3: 54:09

I've made like lessons, like, hey, you know, if your air damper is this, how do we, you know what do you have to do to make it open farther, and knowing how to do that eventually clicks like I, like me, like it's. It's like seeing the matrix and like I just I could walk up after I learned it. It's probably year three or so I I learned it like I was so scared that parallel positioning, which is like independent motors on burners, I could do that all day. But linkage I was so scared every time I walked into a boiler room and saw that and just hoped it was right. But after I learned it it's like, oh, this isn't right, rip all the linkage arms off, rip all this off and then reset everything and let's get this right.

Speaker 3: 54:56

And I think a lot of employers discount that step and just say like, oh, I learned that. Like just get out in the field and learn it and that's you're essentially ignoring like all the hazards that I've talked about of you got a live burner that's running, so they're worried about that. They're worried about the heat, the noise most mechanical rooms aren't lit properly and it's just not a good training environment. And even with a senior service technician there showing them and you know, if you're you're at a customer site and like, at the end of the day that senior service tech wants to go home and a lot of senior service techs like they mean well and they'll, like you know, train people or whatnot, but it's not repeatable. Like if you send the same person, even with the same person, if you send them out with 10 different people, they're going to get 10 different experiences back and that's not scalable, especially when they retire. So how do we get scalable experiences and have new people learn stuff the same over and over again, so that if I hire 10 people in my company, ideally they get the same training. Now your outcomes are going to be different and that's based on personal. You know whatever, how they are as a person, but since you have an internal training program, you can recognize and measure that and if they aren't achieving what they need to, you can always loop back and go hey, where did we, where did we stop? Where are you struggling with and plug them back into the program where, if you're sending them off to an offsite training or if you're just doing on the job training with somebody else, it's just like oh, did you learn this? At the end of the day, yes, no. If no, there's no visibility of why they didn't learn it or what they're struggling with.

Speaker 3: 56:51

I think a lot of frustration of newer people is they're probably at 80 or 90% of understanding it, but you know it's the, it's the. You know don't stop giving or digging, don't give up. You know you're almost to the gold. And people, you know, stop at 80, 90% of understanding but they feel like they have no understanding and they just need that extra 10 or 20% and then it'll click. And then they'll be like well, how did I not know this? And you know I always, I always take it back to like mathematics of.

Speaker 3: 57:22

You know I can remember sitting in high school like geometry class and you know you sit there and the teacher's like, hey, we're going to learn this new concept. They're doing it on the board. You're like, yeah, that makes sense, like this is easy and whatnot. And then they like draw another problem on the board. And then they call on you and then you get up there and you're like holy moly, like I don't, I don't know how to do anything, I didn't even know the first step, and it's so, cause you were like passively learning.

Speaker 3: 57:52

And then, once you're actively learning, it's hey, I don't even know where to start, and then the teacher can guide you through that. And that's what this burner linkage, trainer, any linkage or any training course that I'm trying to build is. It gives employers an active approach to training their people and it makes their people also responsible for the training, because you know you can track it and whatnot. So like hey, did you do this or did you not? Whereas like a YouTube video, you know you can't really, unless you plug it into a system like an LMS or whatever, you can't really track that. Somebody watched a YouTube video and a lot of YouTube videos. While they may be presenting great information, they're not presenting in a way for a learning format.

Speaker 1: 58:32

Yeah, so do you put your content out on YouTube or like any shorts or things like that, or are you primarily? I see you know on your website that you have some of the video courses that people can buy, as well as documentation type like checklists and stuff, and some of the price points are definitely at a point where you know a technician, somebody that has the initiative, could even, you know, take a look at this themselves, but you're primarily basically targeting this to the employers being able to offer it to their technicians and have it be part of a larger program so funny.

Speaker 3: 59:06

Bring that up because, well, that was my initial offering or thought of. I can make a lms system, learning management system, and I can have employers put their people into the system and they can track it. And I found that I was dealing with a lot of managers that really didn't care about the outcome of their technicians. They just, it ends up being like you, you, you waste a ton of time with people who don't really care about the outcome and uh, you know, after talking to a lot of people and whatnot, I decided to kind of pivot and deal directly with technicians and that's actually what you're seeing. That website's like four days old at this point, but it's.

Speaker 1: 59:57

It looks really good.

Speaker 3: 59:59

It is like, hey, you're the one that is actually going to benefit from this, and if somebody is willing to sign up for a course online, even if their employer is backing them up and reimbursing them, if they're willing to sign up for that course, they probably have the initiative to be a great service technician and they just need the guidance. And that's what I'm now pivoting towards, because I was wasting so much time emailing, calling managers and, you know, on on my end also, like I don't have the three year, four year magic course that they want of like, yeah, buy this and yeah everything you need to know and all in one place.

Speaker 3: 1:00:40

It's also like you know I would have people sign up and like they would never even log in and I like so, like I've only talked to the managers. So then they signed three people up and then I, like, you know, I feel bad, like they've given me money. I'm like I want, I want feedback. Like you know, are you guys learning anything? And then, you know, you talk to the manager and they're like, oh, we're just so busy right now we don't have time for that. And it's just like you know, on one aspect, like I want to help them and at this other aspect, it's like you know that's their decision. But at the end of the day, like that is not. I've recognized that that's not going to be my core customer. If they're going to constantly say, hey, we're too busy for this because of just how mechanical trades are is, you're always going to be busy. Unless you're like a residential HVAC, which is, you know, you'll have the mid seasons of fall and maybe spring where people really don't need heating or cooling. But in commercial industrial, especially if you're doing process stuff, there's always demand for stuff and people are always busy and since most employers are understaffed, it is running their current staff to the wall, 100% and a lot of them are just trying to fight through their week, fight the fires and then go home and there's no thought of, hey, we just need to train our workforce now Because they're all I mean. I see it on LinkedIn there's so many employers that post. Hey, we want a senior service technician. We're a dynamic family, something. All the buzzwords. I'm like where do you think these senior service technicians are hanging out? If they're unemployed? There's probably a reason there's unemployed and most senior service technicians are in a groove where they love the company where they're at and money doesn't mean too much for them and like that's a huge jump, even if they are getting paid more money. And this goes back to company culture of like you're taking a risk on that new company and especially if you go to a company that's desperate and they just expect that senior service technicians just work way more and then do a bunch of on-call or a bunch of travel where the company they're at. Maybe they're getting paid $5 less, but they're not traveling, they're not working weekends, they're not working nights and they love it. Traveling they're not working weekends, they're not working nights and they love it. So it's. And that that's another topic of, uh, just the culture aspect of it.

Speaker 3: 1:03:09

But tying this back into training. I'm now going after the people who are directly learning and was planning to hold live classes over over the internet. Uh, that is integrated also with these classes. So essentially you can take an online class, have a live class and then go back and forth and through that you know a lot of people. There's a big misconception in the industry of I'm a service technician. I can only learn hands-on and you know there's nobody more than me that learns hands-on Like I. I love to feel things and you know pick up a wrench and turn bolts and whatnot. But at the start of everything you need to learn, like the fundamentals, because a lot of problems in the industry, or in any industry, something's not broken, but something may not be operating correctly, and this can come a lot of times with new equipment, startups.

Speaker 3: 1:04:10

So you have a new building, all new equipment and I have yet to start up a boiler system where you just flip the switch and everything's great and so you know, like maybe the balancer didn't balance the building correctly or the pumps are wrong or they, you know, inspect wrong, or you know the strainers are full of something from new construction, like there's always something to do and you know. You don't walk in the room and, oh, this is broken in half, let me fix this and throw a new part on and then leave, like it takes a higher understanding. New part on and then leave, like it it takes a higher understanding. And if you're not solid on the fundamentals of what is the sequence of operations of a burner and you know of a boiler and how does steam actually move, you know steam is pressure and you know steam carries heat and you know how does water move. You know how do you heat water, why do you need so many GPM to go through a boiler and like all that stuff? Like that you can't see it.

Speaker 3: 1:05:04

But you have to understand fundamentals and that builds you up to a service technician that you reach a second tier of understanding where you can walk into mechanical rooms and you know, see process systems and you know there's not something that's broken, but at the end of the line the widgets aren't coming out correctly and hey, we don't have the proper heat or whatnot, and it's not, you know, a part you can fix it's. Maybe it's a setting you know, maybe you know combustion's off or something. But you have to look at it at a deeper level rather than just being like, oh, I'm just hands-on, I just go in there and just fix it and then I'll leave.

Speaker 1: 1:05:45

Yeah, and I think also, when you do get that hands-on, it's really helpful to be a bit familiar with what you're getting your hands on in. You know making that same point in another context. So I think that you know video content more bite-sized content rather than you know Um, more bite-sized content rather than you know hose it all down in the period of, uh, two days or two or a week. I just remember once one of my jobs that hired and they didn't really have an internal training program. So my first job out of college they trained a lot Like they are set up to train people in the industry out of college, uh, and so you know they have a really long training period and then on to job training and things like that. And then, second place I went, they hired almost exclusively or they did anyway at the time this was a while back from their competitors, people that already had the experience.

Speaker 1: 1:06:36

And then I was coming from a slightly different technology, going from machine vision into pneumatics, and I didn't know anything about pneumatics and I was very like candid about that in my interview. I said I don't know anything about pneumatics and how they work, but I'm a quick learner. This is really interesting. I know some of the stuff. I've seen them around on the line a lot. You know, when I kick out a bad part from the vision system or I say it needs to be kicked out, something has to kick it out. Oftentimes that's an air cylinder or you know something like that.

Speaker 1: 1:07:02

So, but it was a very different cultural approach, like a company that set up to train people versus a company that expects people to already know everything when they come in. And my manager said you know, why aren't you going out to see customers yet? And I said, well, I'll go when I have something of value to add, like I'm not just going to show up with no nothing. And I ended up kind of having to. Well, that manager wasn't a manager for very long and, you know, maybe that was pretty easy to tell why my next manager ended up getting me a lot of training with applications engineers, but it had to be sort of you know, ad hoc put together, because the first training I did get sent on was a week long training that was meant for distributors that pretty much already know most of the industry and they're maybe going from selling one brand to another or they're picking up this line and it was an entire week's worth of just class after class after class after class in a basement room with no windows, no light, like nine to five, and I think it's the longest training I've ever sat through.

Speaker 1: 1:08:07

And also the training where that I retained the least amount of information because it wasn't at my level. It assumed I knew a bunch of stuff that I didn't, and then it was just crammed way too much into a short period of time and I also had work to do. I had customers, you know, asking me for things, and so my my attention was scattered and I can only imagine that getting that same training but in, even if it was the same training, it probably would have been more effective if I had been able to space it out a bit and then follow up with each one of. Hey, these are all the things I didn't understand in this module before having to sit through the next one. So I absolutely think it's fantastic that you're taking this area of the industry that doesn't seem to have any, you know, training in this manner. Make the leap to go out on your own and make it Huge. Prop to that. Excuse me, my dog just came in and decided to yawn really loudly. She's like time's up, okay. So I think that this is an amazing initiative that you're doing.

Speaker 1: 1:09:13

We at Automation Ladies we've had a lot of dreams too, for things that we feel like. Or we've seen that there's gaps in trainings Allie's actually coming up with, or she already came up with the curriculum, but like a masterclass for designing and building panels, the way that she learned to do it from a non-electrical engineer standpoint, maybe because she has a chemical engineering degree but then ran a panel shop, and I think you know there's a lot of different ways to teach the same thing and there's also a lot of different ways to learn the same thing. So not everybody is going to learn in the same way. Some people are really going to gravitate to the way that you're teaching and the format that you have it. It has a couple of classes on there, a couple of other things. Is there anything you want to tell us that we should be looking forward to? That should be coming up on the website soon If people want to go check it out or bookmark it for themselves.

Speaker 3: 1:10:10

So, like I said earlier, coming out with a digital burner linkage class how to adjust linkage and, if you are interested, it's at a company level. If you are interested in buying a burner linkage trainer, I also have um I think, two available um. It is a bigger cost, um investment, but it makes perfect sense and your payback is um, depending on your numbers. Uh, training seven to eight people on burner linkage and motors, instead of sending them off to different classes or on-the-job training, which has different areas of effectiveness. I will say I don't claim to be the end-all be-all and if you are an employer or a manager, and if you are an employer or a manager, your path to a trained workforce is finding the resources that work for you. And while I'm building resources, there are other companies in the boiler industry that also have resources that are amazing and great.

Speaker 3: 1:11:16

And, like I always tell people, I don't really have competition because there's so much need and there's no one size fits all approach and one person may learn from my videos and whatnot and another person may learn by taking home a part at night and just taking it apart and doing whatever. And as an employer manager, you need to recognize that and not just go like, oh, go to this class, and if you didn't learn all right, well, we just give up. And so I just try to position myself as an option for the industry and an option for employers, and especially now that I've turned toward an option for service technicians to turn to. They're not going to learn everything from me, I'm. I'm not an engineer. I've only been in the industry now eight or nine years, but I have enough knowledge that I know I can put it together and teach people about it. You don't have to be in the industry 30, 40 years to essentially teach people.

Speaker 1: 1:12:15

No, no, you don't. And I think a lot of people shy away from putting together any content or teaching because they feel like they're not an expert. And I like to say there's always somebody that's a couple steps behind you that could really learn from what you've learned. And sometimes it's easier to learn from someone that's not too far ahead of you versus someone that is knows everything, because then they forget some of the basics that you kind of you know. They assume that you, you know things that you don't. But when somebody that you're learning from is a little closer to your level, you're much more likely to kind of remember what it was like back in you know, when you were in their shoes, and be able to have more actionable learning that is closer to kind of where you're at, and not to say that learning from industry veterans isn't as valuable or even more valuable. But I just want to encourage people not to hold themselves up to some sort of perfection standard or that you have to be some sort of expert, as I've now gotten to know some of the more veteran, like experts or people that are training in the automation industry, for instance, like experts or people that are training in the automation industry, for instance, I realized that even they don't consider themselves experts of everything, and usually the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know and you become more humble about what you know.

Speaker 1: 1:13:33

And I find that usually, a lot of times the best teachers too, they don't claim to know it all. It's kind of dangerous when somebody thinks that they know it all, because then they're not open to new information or changing their mind or understanding that there are always limitations to what any one person can know or even just understanding something from a different perspective. So, yeah, I kind of threw out our last question, but I made it specific to your website. So now, if people are interested in learning more about becoming a boiler technician or our audience is more so you know, typically automation techs or mechatronics technicians or people that work in. You know manufacturing facilities. Do you have, yeah, any resources or things that you want to throw out to people that they should be aware of, or just where they can follow you if they want to become more boiler adjacent and maybe learn some from your content along the way, even if they're not candidates exactly to be purchasing or going through your?

Speaker 3: 1:14:32

training. I started on LinkedIn seriously probably a year and a half ago and I recognize that I got to put myself out there beyond just cold calling and emailing, and LinkedIn has been such a valuable resource for me and that's how I met Allie, and just there's so many people that see LinkedIn as, oh, this is how I get my next job or next job or that's for you know, the C suite to be on, and there's less people on there that are just maybe a service technician or a lower level Cause they don't see any value from it. But there's so much that I learned from LinkedIn and so many people that I've met on LinkedIn that I now see it like trade shows and whatnot that I, they, like you know we met virtually and whatnot and you know comment back and forth, made dm and call, but now I seem in a trade show and it's just opened up another level. Whereas like facebook, like you can't really search, like you only search by like people's names or like Instagram is another good one. But LinkedIn, like you, can search and just find people from boiler companies and people in your industry and, like most of my following and people are just boiler related people and I learn so much from people and like, hey, you know, this is something cool I did. And LinkedIn has become a platform that is greater than oh, I'm just looking for a job or, you know, I'm just trying to share leadership techniques or whatnot. And especially if you have a niche like boilers or automation, it is so easy to talk about it because there's thousands of people out there that love the industry and love their job, just like you, that love the industry and love their job, just like you, and just I would just encourage people get on LinkedIn. It is a growing platform, I would you know. It's been around a while, but there's still tons of people that are not on it compared to the other social medias, and I just can't like. Linkedin has changed my life by posting consistently on it and being active of just the people that I've met, the business that I get from it and I would also.

Speaker 3: 1:16:49

I want to comment real quick on your comment about being the expert. I always tell people to be the expert. You just have to know one thing more than the next person. And, um, at a customer level, uh, like I talked about earlier, uh, at about year four, I hit a level of I understood most things, and it's not that I knew everything. I just understood how to fix problems and, being a service technician and going out to a factory, you know work on automation or boilers or whatever you do.

Speaker 3: 1:17:21

It's not about memorizing everything with how much information and digital controllers and you know each manufacturer is coming out with their own thing you can. There's no way for you to keep up with it, even if we were to stop innovating and you were to learn everything in the industry. But you know there's so much innovation going on you're never going to keep up. So it's understanding the fundamentals, but then it's also understanding the resources that you can put together to solve the problem, because a customer is not paying for you to know how to solve the problem. Your customer is paying for you to fix the problem and as long as you can fix the problem, it doesn't really matter how you get there.

Speaker 3: 1:18:01

So for me it was a combination of knowing the fundamentals, just zooming out on the problem a little bit and then having a process in my mind of like hey, this is how we do it, and then also referencing the manuals and manufacturer's resources. Manufacturers spend so much time on manuals and resources on their websites that people just never even access and give up. And there's so many service calls that I went to where I just opened up the manual. I looked at the manual diagram and I looked at the problem. I'm like, well, I don't know, I've never seen this before, but the manual diagram says this and the problem is not this. So then you change it to the manual diagram and everything works magically. I'm like, wow, that's amazing.

Speaker 3: 1:18:44

And people are like, well, how'd you know that? I'm like, well, I didn't know it. I just opened up the manual and I read the page about this part. I didn't read the whole manual. I don't memorize the manual. I just understood the information enough to fix the problem. The customer's happy, I'm happy. I didn't understand their entire system. I didn't. You know, it's not about understanding everything, it's how do we fix the problem in the most efficient way. But that compounds over time and you know, with 20 years experience, 30 years experience you go through enough problems that you don't have to reference the manuals or whatnot as much, and you've seen stuff from experiences before. So then you get faster at solving things. But don't put, if you're starting out, don't put too much effort or into solving things fast. It's about solving things correctly, because the callback or the lost money from something not working is always way more than the hour to extra of you making sure you're fixing something correctly.

Speaker 1: 1:19:46

Yeah, great tips. Thank you so much for spending time with us today, eric. I know Allie had all kinds of boiler questions that she probably didn't get to, but she had to drop off. Unfortunately, we're also in the middle of a very busy day. I was telling her before we got on recording that I feel her pain now. I have not used to this, but to be in the middle of, like a very large spreadsheet that you're working on and then have to take a break to go record a podcast. I love the podcasts and they're great, but it's a different type of feeling to like rip me away from my spreadsheet that I was all the way into. So I know she had to jump back to another meeting, but I'm really glad we were able to get this on the books. Thank you so much for coming on our show and we feel very honored that it's your very first podcast and I'm sure we would love to have you back for an update, maybe in, you know, a year or two, whenever we'll, we'll stay in touch on LinkedIn, uh, as you get your program larger and you get more people through it and you get some more feedback. I'm really excited to see where it goes for you and you have a couple of big time supporters over here in the Automation Ladies. So thanks everybody for listening. If you haven't yet, we do have. If you haven't subscribed to this, you're listening to your first episode of Automation Ladies, maybe because you're part of Eric's audience.

Speaker 1: 1:21:06

If conversations around automation are of interest to you that are like partially technical but mostly people we really, like you know, care about A, you know hearing people's stories, giving people a wider look into the industry and the types of people, the types of jobs, the types of you know things that are going on out there, Uh, we talk about all kinds of stuff. We mainly have conversations that we want to have because we're a couple. I used to say I should say three now three very curious, very hardworking, uh, ladies in the automation industry and we were always been the type that take our work home or, you know, watch the training videos on the weekends or whatever. We can't stop. So we're going to continue to have these conversations and we'll keep pulling in more fun and interesting. You know, disciplines that are related to automation but maybe not quite automation.

Speaker 1: 1:21:59

So, yeah, and if you like lots of rambling, like me, asking compound questions and saying too many things all at once and run on sentences, then please do subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening probably Apple podcast or something like that, or if you're on our website it's. If you're not on the website, it's automationladiesio. But we also have a YouTube channel and currently the YouTube channel only streams our live streams, so you have unedited content on there live demos that we've done, live interviews that we've done, but hopefully with a timely introduction from Eric's friend, of a friend, somebody that can edit video or some other resource that we put in place. We hope to have video episodes coming out on YouTube, uh, soon as well. So we'd love for you to uh hit that subscribe button, as people say, um, those of us that create content and maybe Eric, you can chime in on this it's, you know it's.

Speaker 1: 1:22:55

It's not always rosy, um, it can be daunting and it can be kind of exhausting, especially if you feel like nobody's actually watching or listening or doesn't care, which we thankfully have a very nice little community, mostly on LinkedIn, that we know listens and we know that they care, and so that really helps us. But it would also be great to, you know, get to see that people are actually picking this up and wanting to see it next time. So I'll give a little plug for ourselves automationladiesio and you can pretty much search for us on any of the podcast platforms and or YouTube as Automation Ladies, and we would also love any of your reviews or comments. There is actually a function on our website where you can leave us a voicemail, so if you have anything to say good or bad, please let us know.

Speaker 1: 1:23:39

My only ask for you know, constructive feedback is please be kind, um, and take that into the rest of your week. I hope that you can be kind to yourself and be kind to others that you work with. Try to lift people up, try to make them aware of the possibilities for themselves. If they don't know, um, you know, go out there and be a good coworker, friend, person in the world, because there's always something that we could be doing better and, you know, helping others makes us feel good At least it does for me. So, with that said, thank you very much for joining and we'll talk to you next time.