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Dr. John Sherk, owner and president of Operations Laboratory reveals all of his HVAC technician career happiness strategies, income improvements and killer tech-happiness tips and tricks so you can get ahead of the curve with your HVAC technician career. Discover how you can create a quality negotiated agreement with your manager that works for you so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love, whether it’s coaching your kids’ teams, getting out there for hunting season, or just living comfortably at home with your family. Since 2010, he’s been consulting his many HVAC clients on how to develop and manage a culture that is friendly to tech-happiness, and here he openly shares his wins, his losses, and all the lessons in between with the community of energetic but humble HVAC techs, managers, and owners who follow him. Self-proclaimed “Technician Happiness Guru” you’ll learn about getting paid what you deserve, building genuine and loyal relationships at work and at home, recruiting winners (tip: they all already work for someone else), building a tech-happy culture, quality communication, skills mastery, optimizing performance, negotiating compensation, professionalism, , and productivity tips so that you create an amazing, tech-happy life without burning yourself out. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from John you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the HVAC JoyLab podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Sherk . This podcast focuses on creating more and more conversations about what optimizes life for an HVAC technician. My goal is to produce the most helpful content available for techs. Full stop. Well, hey, everybody. Here we are.
This is HVAC JoyLab. And for this first one it's just going to be you and me. I wanted to introduce myself to you, tell you why this podcast is coming into existence what it's going to be about, and hopefully get enough of your attention that you maybe want to listen to it some more.
The reason it's called HVAC Joylab is because the entire goal of this podcast is to create. More and more conversations develop more and more points of view on what optimizes a terrific life for an HVAC technician. I myself am not a technician. My grandfather was a tech and my mother worked for Johnson controls for 40 years.
But if you put a fluke multimeter in my hand. Something's gonna go wrong. I'm just not that mechanical. So but I do really care about technicians and it's kind of a family thing as well as just, I don't know, it's just sometimes people ask me, why do you care so much about technicians? And I think the answer partly is because of my grandfather and my mother and partly I've just spent enough time as a consultant working with. technicians that I'm just really invested. So I have a unique point of view. I'm not a technician, but I wrote a doctoral dissertation on air conditioning technicians what makes them committed to the companies that they're committed to working for or not committed to the companies they're working for.
And And I really keep an eye on the overall labor market trends that are happening. I'll be able to reach out to you all with wage data for your labor market that'll be coming in 2023 every, there's no reason every technician in America shouldn't know what people are getting paid in their market.
This thing keeps happening with wages and I see it over and over again, because there's so much influx right now. I mean, there's so much demand for technicians right now. So. One guy will have one story of making 50 an hour, and then it makes everybody else unhappy because they're not making that, but that story is usually not the whole story or, or anyway, there are some guys making that your chiller text.
But anyway, the, the, the point of this podcast is to give you everything that you need. Concepts as well as tools and tactics to just really optimize your life, both at home and at work. So I want you to have this as a resource. And I also want to invite you to join. I have a private Facebook group called HVAC JoyLab podcast.
It's a private group, but If you, you know, ask to come in, we'll let you in and that's where you can interact with me more specifically about your situation, what your frustrations are. And I can give you some direct feedback. That's really more specific and customized than I can do in a podcast.
That's for everybody. There's some problems that only commercial techs have. There's other problems only residential techs have. You know, there's a lot of similarity across board technicians, but you know, the problems that tech has in Louisiana are not the same as the problem that tech has in Montana.
There's some are the same, but then some are not. So just as a way of kicking this off I want to let you know that the initial model that I have of understanding what are the challenges technicians are facing. And again, this is broad brush. I suspect if you pause and said, what am I most frustrated about right now?
It would fall into one of these categories. But your specific version, you know, it, it may be very unique, but these are the categories that I, when I talk to techs, which I talked to quite a few of them, these are the problems they fall into five categories. Number one, our immediate resource needs, meaning they're completely overrun, overwhelmed financially.
They can't pay their rent this month. They don't know, you know, this is off season kind of issues or the opposite. They're working a hundred hour a week after a hundred hour a week, and they just feel like. I'm going to keel over if this keeps happening. So their problems have to do with money or time usually, but they're right now problems.
I have to solve this right now. The second category are long term resource needs. And this is where they're not drowning, but they just look out into the next few years and they know this isn't sustainable. What they're doing, they can't keep going this way. Sometimes these are benefit issues in the compensation package.
Sometimes it's a work schedule. It could be dynamics that are going on in the company. It could be, I just talked to a technician a few days ago. He was doing fine in Denver, but his parents are getting older and they're in Cleveland. And so he's got to make a move to Cleveland. And I helped him connect with a company in Cleveland.
So that's, it's a way of looking at your current state. And it's not that you're drowning, but you know, it's not sustainable for some reason. Third, our relationships. And if it's a problem, it's those relationships stink. This can be at work or at home, and there's a lot that goes into this. I'll you'll hear me talk about this more, but the technicians in my research, 85 percent of technicians communicate with an introverted communication style.
An extrovert just with you watch them talk and extrovert starts talking to decide what they think about things. And they'll say four or five, six things. And on number five, they go, ah, that's what I'm trying to say. And they feel like they've just been so clear, but the other person heard six things and they're not so sure the introvert, which is most technicians pause.
And form their whole thought before they say anything, right? This creates a kind of silence problem in communication. And it can be, it can happen at work, it can happen at home, where you're processing what you're wanting to say, and the person you're talking to is uncomfortable with that little bit of silence in the conversation, so they come fill it up.
And then you get maybe three more things you're supposed to think about before you talk. And pretty soon you're just like whatever. And, and this is a common source of frustration and relationships, both at work and at home. Okay. You will, we'll probably talk a good bit about clear communication. How do I form agreements with people?
Then on how do I hold them accountable for the agreements that I form? We'll talk a good bit about this in the. In this podcast, because the whole zone of people and relationships is super important. If you're going to optimize your life, that's number three. Number four are issues of respect or a feeling of status.
This one is pretty common. I don't know if you're aware of this kind of research, but there's people who just research happiness and unhappiness. And I read a, an article recently where they researched, they asked to just a bunch of Americans, what are the things that are making you unhappy and like what's making you most unhappy?
And the number one thing, number one was conversations with my boss. That's both funny and not funny. At the same time, the dynamic of wanting to feel respect and by status, I don't mean look at my shiny Cadillac. I mean that I am, I am rightly acknowledged for what I bring to the table here, both at work and at home.
There's a very common problem for the residential guys. There's this dynamic of, we're not going to tell you when it's the last call of the day or a certain tone that the dispatcher takes or You know, you on whatever level you're just not, you're not receiving the appropriate respect or status that you deserve for what you have accomplished for what you deliver.
And, you know, sometimes it takes the form of an owner goes home with a million dollars at the end of the year and you get a ham. And that's when you feel it. But on some level, there's a problem of respect or a feeling of not having status. And then the last one, I'm just calling the pleasure of expertise.
This is where if you're good at something, doing it feels good. It creates pleasure. If somebody is really good at basketball, basketball feels good. If somebody is really good at playing the piano, playing the piano feels good. If you're really good as a technician, Like if you're really good at troubleshooting or you're really good at customer service, just doing it feels great.
And the problem version of this is because some sort of policy, some sort of restriction in the way your work is set up, doesn't allow you to do what you do best. They just, for whatever reason, they're not letting you do it. And these are as I talked to technicians, these five issues are the top five reasons.
Why a technician will choose to leave one company and go to another company. And there's a lot of talk about, Oh, well, I want another 3 an hour. Sure. Who wouldn't? But at the end of the day, If you got all five of these needs met where you are, you're going to say no to those three dollars. And so somewhere in this is, is your a piece of your optimizing formula.
So those are the kind of things we're going to talk about. Every week there'll be a specific topic. We're going to do some different kinds. I'm going to experiment a little bit and see what really works. Things I'm thinking, I'm saying why I'm thinking about so that when you listen to this, you can give me feedback about what you want to hear.
Sometimes I want to talk to Company owners or service managers because I want to hear their point of view on what makes life great for a technician And I we just need to have this conversation to be so Common and so normal that we just get out there what needs to be said I I've thought about having some third party experts come in I want to have a a trainer, a physical trainer come in and talk about what kind of exercise a technician, like that technicians need that specific to a technician.
In other words, if you're going to climb a ladder and be stable on that ladder. There's certain exercises you should be doing that someone else wouldn't have to do if they didn't do that. I talked to someone about this already and he said things like well, he would recommend low weight levels, dead lifting, but instead of a normal bar using a bamboo.
Bar, because the weights will jiggle and the jiggling weight will make you more stable stuff like that, but bringing in third party experts and hydration or personal financial stuff that will just contribute from their expertise. I'm going to do some of these myself because I, I do. You know, I, I've been a consultant for a while and I have a PhD, so I want you to have everything that's in my brain.
I want you to have access to and be able to use it. And then lastly, we thought about maybe bringing in some technicians and just saying, just walking through what is your current situation and what is your game plan for your own. For optimizing your life where, where the leaks in the boat right now, what's working and how can you get more of it?
And just kind of talk through those things as well. So we'll just, we'll experiment with those things. And, and again, I'll need your feedback. I, I won't know for sure what's really helping and what's really landing. And I, my sincere, my sincere promise to you is if you tell me what's working, I will get you more of it.
That's the whole point of this podcast. There's no grandstanding from here. There's no need for me to, you know, the whole point of this podcast is to optimize your life and help you have some kind of game plan for it. So that's it. I hope you'll be patient with me. Give me some grace in these early podcasts.
Usually the pathway to doing something really well begins with doing it really badly. But if you hang with me, I'll get us there. And I will, I promise you bring you the best content available anywhere when it comes to optimizing your life. All right, we'll see you next time.