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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.
Welcome to HVAC JoyLab, the podcast that asks the question, what makes a great life for an HVAC technician? The goal of this podcast is to over time, build a solid and enduring model for an optimal life for an HVAC tech. We can't do it for you, but we can't light the way. I'm Dr. John Shirk, and I am the host and joining us today.
Is Ruth King. Ruth has for decades consulted the HVAC industry, working with contractors, distributors, and manufacturers on their businesses, especially on profitability. She is president of HVAC Channel TV and holds an inactive Class II Unrestricted Contractors License in the state of Georgia. Ruth is the author of the courage to be profitable and profit or wealth along with four other books And we are happy to have Ruth join us today with our topic.
How do I make more money?
Treat the good life at the HVAC.
So Ruth, thank you so much for joining me today on HVAC joy lab. You were my very first guest. Terrific. You've been great. Generous with me, talking me through some of the podcast game. I just, so starting up front, I appreciate you doing that for me. My pleasure. Hope this does really well. Thank you. A lot of people.
Thank you. I hope so too. I hope so too. So let's start here, Ruth. Tell me your superpower and your origin story. My superpower is communication of the financial side of business and also personal, since we're talking about tax here, you know, everybody talks about the technicians, or excuse me, owners have a profit and loss statement and balance sheet.
Well, guess what? You as techs have one too. I mean, I did a presentation, I'm doing a presentation for women in HVACR on this very topic. It's not the business P& L, it's your personal P& L and your personal balance sheet, which are just as important. I mean, you know, you can be a great tech and if you spend every dime that you make, you're not going to be happy when you're 65.
That's right. Well, in fact, you're not going to be happy this week. That's the, there's anything psychologically foundational about happiness in general and happiness on the job. If you don't know, if you're going to pay the rent this month, you don't care about teamwork. You don't care. There's a lot of stuff you don't care about.
That's true. That's very, very true. Very much so. So how about your origin story? Tell me about you. I started as a chemical engineer, had two sons in chemical engineering, loved them, got in the real world and hated it. Went back to school, got my MBA and found out I love numbers and teaching numbers and communicating numbers.
And I'm really, I found out it was really, really good at it. And I started up a branch of the small business development centers before they were funded forever. And we didn't know whether it was going to survive or not. And I started teaching business owners about the financial side of business. And that's where it grew from there.
I found the industry through Ron Smith and service America and found a niche. Love it. Still love it. still do a lot of work in it and help a whole lot of contractors and their technicians and employees too. So it's not only the, it's not only the head guys, you know, we helped everybody. Yeah. Well, you know, that's interesting.
So let me just ask you a little bit about you know, the, the, the individual financial wellness of a technician. What would you say just on a personal level that are the, that's the basic minimum that they need to have in order to feel like. I sort of have my stuff together, or I, I can feel, I know I'm going to pay the rent this month, like having that established.
That type of thing. I will tell you another backstory to answer that question. I'm sorry. There's a gentleman out there by the name of Frederick Learman that I found when I was broke and I mean broke. All right. I mean, this is many, many, many, many, many years ago, but I have followed his processes and I still do it today, believe it or not.
Yeah. What he talks about is for a month. Just write down everything you spend and it can be on a little notepad in your pocket and go spent, you know, 52 cents here and 47 cents here and 1. 50 here. And, you know, went to QT and, you know, bought a Coke or whatever. And at the end of the month, tally it up in terms of, okay, what did I spend on rent?
When did I spend on the utility bill? What did I spend on clothes? What did I spend on stuff? I mean, it's amazing what happens as a result of that. So to start, figure out what you're spending now, you know, and, you know, and where you are. And the reality of it is once you do that, it really truly opens your eyes.
And then he has these four jars. He says, you can live on 90 percent of whatever you bring in. The other 10 percent is divided up into four pieces. Good. I'm going by memory now. Let's see investment income, annual savings. There's one called fun and I don't remember what the real title of it is. And then there's a fourth one that says future purchases or something along those lines.
And if you want to add a fifth tithing or whatever you want to do from that perspective is fine. And so in the beginning, I had these four jars and, you know, I'd find a dime or I'd find a dollar and I'd put 25 cents in each one of the jars. I'll never forget one day I was running and I found 10 bucks and I dutifully put Nine of the 10 bucks I could use in the buck 25 cents a piece went into those jars.
Well, you know, if once you learn that habit, it never goes away. I mean, you know what, where, what is happening for every dollar that's walking in the door. So my suggestion for those who, you know, don't know where they're going to pay the rent is figure out where, what are you, where are you spending money now?
And that, and that's really the first step. And it will probably open your eyes to some of the things you're. Doing that are, you know, letting money drain out and you're just not paying attention to it. And that's what I would do first. And then from a budget perspective, and I know people hate the word budget, but if you can literally put 10 percent of everything you earn in a, in a savings bank, you know, and I know we're not talking about owners, but I make owners put away 1 percent of every dollar that comes in the door in a savings account.
All right. Frederick Lehman talks about putting 10 percent away and in different buckets. So you can do it. I did it when I was broke. And quite frankly, it gave me the process and procedure to get out of being broke. If that makes sense. Sure. And so the book, there's not a book anymore. You can go and get it through mp3.
Or, you know, something like that. I think eBay has some copies of it and things along those lines, but it's Frederick, Liam and prosperity consciousness is the name of it. And it really and truly does work. It's not expensive. Not, you know, not hard to do. Just do it. And I'm living proof that it works.
I'm absolutely living proof that it works. Outstanding. Cause I was broke and I mean, yeah, you know a formula that I like to work with anybody, also technicians, it is the, a fraction or a division formula that calculates your happiness and it is what you have divided by what you want. And if. You know, like if I had a fraction that was eight divided by two, I'd have a four.
And if what I have is the eight and what I want is the two, my, my happiness is pretty strong, but if you flip that over and what I have is a two, but what I want is an eight. Or is a, is a, is an eight that I'm going to only 0. 25 and my happiness is actually going to be much lower. And so you can, from a happiness perspective, you can manage it both ways.
You can go after making more, or you can go after learning to want less and taking deeper satisfaction of what you have already. Yeah. I mean, listen, I I've traveled a lot in third world countries. You've never been in a third world country. You have no clue what we have. Versus what a lot of people in the rest of the world have my thing has always been, you know, if people want to complain about living in this country, go live on the economy for three years in a third world country and then come back.
You will appreciate what we have like crazy. Yeah, it is. It's amazing to look at what's going on versus what's not going on from there. Hold on. I never, there we go. It, it's really important from that perspective to, to take a look at who, what, when, where, why, and how in terms of what you actually do have and try not spending money for a while.
Sure. One, I'll just throw in one little tip to do what Ruth was talking about earlier in terms of tracking your spending, you can also, if, if it's a challenge to kind of keep a pad and, you know, track it all that way, just say for one month, no cash. Cause there's going to be a paper trail for every single expenditure, every Coke, every, every coffee.
And you can go at the end of the month with your statements and still put all that together. You know, based if you, if you remember all the, the transactions based on how you Spent. So let me, let me jump in with Ruth into the question. You work with owners and you work with profitability. And so here's the thorny question, especially for a lot of technicians.
Cause I, I talked to technicians probably eight to 10 to a dozen a week individually for different reasons. Some of it is my clients and some of it are people I'm recruiting and different things. But I hear a theme, which is. I'm working to make someone else rich. I'm my, my effort is not appreciated financially.
I'm some guy takes home a million bucks and I get a ham at the end of the year. So can you talk a little bit about from the technician's perspective? A, the benefit of an a company owner who does make money and then B you know, help them interpret the, the owner's desire to make money to, you know, in a way that maybe there's a dovetailed everybody wins situation.
So most owners make that 3 percent in this industry, 3 cents of every dollar, that's it. It's not a situation where the owners are rich because, you know, this comes from a tech. Well, I'm only making 20 an hour, 30 an hour and the charge is 250 an hour. Well, they forget about all the time that they pay you for vacation and holiday and the time that you can't bill.
They forget about all the overhead expenses, you know, think about how much it costs you personally from a, you know, cost of your car insurance and gasoline and all that sort of fun stuff, nevermind that your rent and your mortgage or whatever. So I mean all these things come out of that big number that they think you know I'm making 30 they're making 250 they're making a killing.
And this is why a lot of techs go out on their own and fail. 'cause they think I can do it better. Well, they don't understand the financial side and what the financial ramifications truly are. No, you can't do it better. You will fail, you will be miserable and you'll be in debt. Yeah. So, you know, the reality is, is that you know, if you, if you made a dime of profit for every dollar you took in the door, you're doing better than most contractors.
You really, and truly are. And as a result of that, you know, owners don't do a really good job of explaining to technicians what the really and true, true costs are. The ones, the ones who are very successful at that share, share the profitability at the end of the year, and everybody knows what the bottom line is.
And I'm not saying that none of the people who are listening to this podcast have that situation. Some will, some won't. However, tax installers feel people have to understand that it's not only the top line, it is what they make. And if you look at anything in this industry, the average net profit is 3%, 3 cents on every dollar.
All right, and it's not because you're taking these huge salaries. It's because of all the overhead expenses and all the expenses of producing the work so. A technician has to look at it. If I'm not profitable for this company, I don't belong here. Because if I, if an owner, if you can, or can't make some little itty bitty profit, you know, from your work, you don't belong there.
If you're costing the company money, why would anybody keep you? Sure. So, so essentially if I can summarize what you're saying, You should kind of dispose yourself, your technician of the myth that there's this freewheeling Cavalier owner who's swimming in cash because of all your labor and all your after hour calls and all of that stuff.
That's it's unlikely, even if it looks like, well, his house is nicer than mine. His he's probably not swimming in cash the way it may seem. Yeah, his house may be nicer than yours, but I'll bet he has a bigger mortgage on his house. His truck may be nicer than yours, but I'll bet you his truck payment is bigger than yours.
You know, so I mean, look at it from that perspective. It's the owner's name on the bottom line. He's responsible for making payroll every week. You don't have that headache, you know, and the months that the, that it's slower, he has to take money out of savings or out of his personal. savings to pay you. So look at it from that perspective, too.
Yeah, I have a client that the reason he brought me in was because he was tired of taking money out of pocket to make payroll. Yeah, he said, I get your help. Yeah. There's not this killer amount of money that honors me. They'll be the one out of a thousand or one out of 2000 that that happens to, but as a general rule now, yeah, you know, and for technicians, I also encourage them get a perspective on the meaning of money, right?
There's, there's multiple things money can do for you, not just what you buy. There's, and there's technicians have five levels of satisfaction and money relates to all five of them. There's the ability to make rent this month. And that just the security of, I can make rent, right? Then there's the feeling that I can keep making rent.
I'm not about to get fired, you know, and all of that. Then after that comes my relationships that I have to have enough stability and security that, you know, I'm great with my family. I've got people at work I care about. I'm part of something. After that comes status. And do I have respect for what I do?
And then lastly is the question. Do I get to do most days what I feel like I was born to do? This is a pathway to satisfaction for technicians. Money has a role in each of those and it's different. I mean, there's their technicians and I talked to them who they have enough to pay the rent and they even have enough to fund doing what they were born to do every day.
But more money equals status, and they feel disrespected in the company because someone else became the service manager because, you know, again, there's, there's nothing more common in a residential air conditioning company than a 10 year veteran service guy who is always the one who gets called out because that's the one they trust.
You know, the owner has sent a rookie and he's burnt a circuit board. And now this guy has to leave his family on a Thursday night to go service a customer. And that guy feels like, you know, in response to that, by saying, I want more money. So to the technicians, I would say, be careful about trying to solve every problem with more money.
It's not always money. And there's a pathway there where, you know, Not when you have a hammer, everything seems like a nail, but more money is not a solution to everything. So I would, I would encourage technicians to think that way as well. I would agree. Definitely. So, so let me just ask you this then Ruth when it comes to technician wellness, whether it's financially or in other parts of their life, if you, I'm asking you this question out of the blue, so forgive me for the broadside.
So what would you say technicians should start doing, stop doing and keep doing? Well, they have to figure out number one, what they want. And sometimes that's really hard to do. I mean, they may be good at being a tech or they may be good at being an installer, but if it makes them miserable at the end of the day, why are you doing it?
Life is way too short. Right? So, I mean, if they absolutely love being in tech and love being in tech and love being, and they want to be a tech or they absolutely love being an installer and love being an installer and everything like that, terrific. That's step one. You have to know what makes you happy.
In terms of your career and those types of things, if you don't like this industry, get out, go do something that you want to do that, that you enjoy doing that you get great deal of satisfaction out of doing that step 1 and then step 2 is alright, you've got that, you know, what are your goals and objectives?
Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? Where do you want to be in it? And just start planning it. In terms of, okay, I'm going to put, you know, two cents away or 2 away a week towards my trip. There's, there's a guy who I'm, I'm, I met years ago. And back in the day. A package of cigarettes was 50 cents, so we're talking a long time ago, and he stopped smoking and every day he put 50 cents away for his pack of cigarettes into this jar instead, and he used that jar to go on vacation every single year.
I mean, so it doesn't take this huge amount of money. It just takes consistency. And if you know, I'll give you the example of one of the texts for one of the companies I work for. He, he loves duck hunting. Is it duck hunting? I don't know. It's hunting of some way, shape, or form. And so every November, he takes off for the month.
He gets his two weeks of vacation. He takes two weeks of unpaid leave. But he spends the entire month of November hunting, and I don't know what kind of hunting it is. It's probably not duck hunting. I just don't remember the kind. But that's what he does. He saves enough money. He builds enough through the year to take his two weeks unpaid vacation.
It's not a busy time of year for the owner. He doesn't care. I mean, this is what he does to make this guy happy. So figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Well put. Yeah. I, I would throw in when it comes to money in particular when it comes to what do you want to start doing, stop doing, keep doing, if you want to make more money as a technician and let's be honest, we're having this conversation in September of 2022 and my, I have some expertise around labor markets, what's happening nationally with unemployment and.
If your goal is to make money in the air conditioning business as a technician, times have never been better. No, that's true. The supply and demand for talent right now is generating very high wages in some cases. So how do I go get them? Here's what I want to say to the majority of technicians. Now, listen, if you've been doing this for 30 years and you can chew gum and look out the window and fix the compressor on a hundred ton screw chiller, this is not the same thing for you, right?
But for the 95%, it's. Right. Customer service being known for it, being an all star at it is the pathway to a career upward across the board. My friends as technicians, if you want to make money, you were not in the air conditioning business. You were in the customer service business and the better you get mechanically and technically the better service you can give.
Because I can tell you every single client I have, and I have many across the board, they're all stars are not. Genius Mechanics. It's that guy. Who went to see a customer and that customer emails and says, will you always send him? Right. And then they say, well, who should we send to chiller school or who should we give the next opportunity?
Who do you think is the first guy they think about? It's this guy. Yeah, it is this guy. Absolutely. Right. So if you want to make more money, don't play a game in your head about why it's a shoe, you know, you're the victim. Cause you're not already getting it. Don't do all that. Just commit yourself to stellar above.
Like way above average customer service, and it will all start to come to you. Okay. That's my recommendation for y'all. All right. Now listen, Ruth, we're just about out of time. Tell everybody how they can find you online. You can go to hvacchannel. tv, which is the website that has all of the products we do.
You can go to ruthking. info, which is all about me. You can call us at 770 729 8000. I mean, I'm accessible. All right. Perfect. Listen, Ruth, you've been so generous with me, giving me your time and your, your counsel, your advice. I can't appreciate you enough. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you enough.
And thank you so much for joining me today on my very first episode of HVAC JoyLab. My pleasure. I'm looking forward to seeing future episodes and doing really cool things for our industry. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ruth. We'll see you next time. All right. Bye bye. A good life is had at the HVAC Joy Lab.
A good life is had at the HVAC Joy Lab.