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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.
00:02 Welcome to the podcast everybody. it's a pleasure today to have Mac story from Blue Collar leadership. Welcome, Mac. Hey, John.
00:11 It's a, it's a privilege and a pleasure to be on the show with you. hopefully we can, we can impact some lives today.
00:17 I hope so too. I hope so too. Well, to get started, why don't you tell everybody about yourself about about Blue Collar leadership?
00:24 Yeah, my background is actually in manufacturing the first 10 years of my career, which started way back in the 1900s, back in 1988.
00:32 The first 10 years, I was a frontline factory worker, operated CNC ladies, meals and drills, and all that type stuff.
00:40 And then a stranger actually just believed in me one night. I was on a night shift for those 10 years, second and third shift, and engineer from corporate headquarters came down, and the plant manager actually told him he should go out and do a time study on a specific machine with me because I was the
00:59 most productive, even though I was there, you know, middle of the night and that guy actually came out and just expressed his belief in me and shared the belief with a plant manager that if I go get some additional education that I could probably, you know, start growing my way up in the organization
01:14 . And that was back in 1995. It was about two o'clock in the morning and planning a seed and if you want to talk about that later, we can, but I ain't going to get too deep into it, but that started my intentional growth journey and as soon as I started intentionally growing I started getting opportunities
01:31 to move up and move my way up I did CNC programming and things like that I did process engineering I got engineering type jobs even though I didn't have an engineering degree I had tons of engineering experience I set up manufacturing sales I did cost estimation engineering process improvement an engineer
01:50 . And then I moved to another plant where that plant actually manufactured mufflers. So a lot of sheet metal like the HVAC folks used, but we were making mufflers out of it instead of ductwork stuff like that.
02:04 But there I was hired as a cost estimation engineer and then became a process engineer and then later got into the lean manufacturing process improvement role for the whole company, about 200 people.
02:18 We were one of about 70 plants around the world and about a $2 billion company. So we just had started our lean journey.
02:26 That was back in 2003 or 2005, I should say. And from 2005 to 2008, I led our lean journey, reporting to the plant manager, so I'd work my way up to that position.
02:38 And we went from minus 3% growth profit margin as a plant plus 35%. So we got some ridiculous results. And then 2008, I resigned, started my own lean manufacturing consulting business helping different companies and leaders improve their processes.
02:54 And four years into that, 2012, I had grown into the role I'm in now. I just, in 2008, I started, it's when I discovered the stuff I write about and talk about today, leadership development, personal growth and development 20 years into my career before I discovered it.
03:13 It's one reason I'm passionate. It's one reason I appreciate you inviting me on to share my passion and maybe I can share something with some of the folks that you cater to that be their introduction to it.
03:23 Like it took me 20 years for somebody did it for me and it was a coworker. Yeah, so you said before we started the recording, you made a comment about how your passion There's really at the front.
03:36 Like, just a little bit about that. Yeah, so that's one reason in 2012 I chose to become a speaker and then I start writing books.
03:44 I got 15 books today, but I just, throughout my career, I just realized that especially relative to personal growth and leadership development, that the blue collar folks, especially those on the front lines, they're most often overlooked, they're underdeveloped, they're underappreciated in this area
04:02 . you know most companies they do what they was required to develop the people which is always the technical side, the competency side, you got to do that or the people can't do the job right and even though a lot of companies don't even do that well it's only job training.
04:15 They just hire you in and hand you off to somebody and learn as you go and then and then also expect the person teaching you not to slow down any so it's you know it's a rough and learning environment but what I discovered was, as I got into this world, I realized that everything I'm learning about,
04:33 which I'm talking about, started learning about in 2008. And I've been reading everyday, John, since then, 16 years I've been reading this stuff every day.
04:42 All I need was an introduction to it and a little spark in me and a flame. And what I realized pretty quick, though, was what I was learning was typically reserved for white collar executives.
04:53 They're the ones that get all this good stuff that I was learning. And I started going to seminars and all that stuff invested in myself and and I started realizing there wasn't many blue collar folks sitting around and there wasn't many people spinning their own money to be there like I was and and
05:08 that's when I said that I'm going to create the blue collar leadership brand that was in 2016 when I first wrote my first book blue collar leadership leading from the front lines and that book is literally for the entry level worker blue collar worker this is the book I wish someone would have given
05:24 me in 1988 when I was starting out my career. But I'm very, very passionate about the entry-level frontline folks. And I support everyone from top to bottom.
05:35 I talked to a lot of conferences with business owners. I speak at conferences. Sometimes there's a couple of thousand people that all different levels out out in the audience.
05:43 And my passion is the frontline entry-level folks. And if there's any of them listening today that like to talk to me, my cell phone is three, three, four, seven, two, eight, four, one, four, three.
05:54 I give it out on stage all over the country. People say, why don't you give out your phone number everywhere?
05:58 And I'm talking about this phone number right here. I say your phone. I say, because I want people to call me.
06:05 Yep. Perfect. That's why I'm always open, but I ain't always available. Sometimes I'm doing something like this. I'm open, but I ain't available.
06:13 Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for that. Yeah. Part of my My story too is, and the listeners have heard this before, but for your benefit, Mac, that my grandfather was an air conditioning technician, and my mother worked for Johnson Controls for 40 years her entire career, and then I'm, I'm the least mechanical
06:31 person within 500 miles of where I'm sitting. And so, so I went more in a bookish route, but I ended up in a PhD program in business with the folks on human capital wrote a dissertation on what makes a technician want to commit to a company and what makes them kind of be motivated to connect to a company
06:53 . And then my son became an air conditioning technician in an app list. So that stream is sort of pretty meaningful for me.
07:01 And that's what really draws me to the front because it's somewhere in my psyche and my soul, all these guys are my grandpa.
07:08 You know, I like it. They might only be 25 years old, but they're there's still that connection there for me.
07:13 A little potential where it comes from. They're full of potential. If they got a leader willing to unleash that potential.
07:19 And so that's what you're focused on helping. And I appreciate that, John. So, Mack, let me dive into your kind of approach and your ideas about this.
07:30 Let's specifically deal with that guy who is not the boss. He's the guy who, let's say he's got five years of experience, It feels like he's got his feet under him.
07:41 It's not scary to go in a service call anymore. It doesn't fear he's not going to be able to troubleshoot something when he's in front of the piece of equipment.
07:50 And he's wondering, where does this all go? What is this now my life? And am I just kind of flat lining right here for the rest of my life?
07:59 Where do I go? What do I do? Yep, so the one thing I'd first say is, to that person, if I met that person, and I meet a lot of those people in all different industries, I don't just speak to manufacturing.
08:10 I speak to all kind of industries today and construction is actually our biggest clap base and I meet a lot of those folks and first thing I'd ask them is you know they got their competency squared away.
08:21 Have they been focused on their character development? Everything I talk about is character development and let me just help that person that you talk asking me to talk to right now to understand is there's lots of research out there that basically He says 87% of our results in life are influenced come
08:38 from character and only 13% from competency. So I would ask them where they want to go, where they want to be in five years and if they don't know, they're probably already there.
08:49 I'd make sure they understood that if they don't have a vision for themselves and understand where they're going. But the main thing is they help them to realize the personal growth side of it in developing your character.
09:00 It's going to help you life at home. It's going to help you life at work. If you want to stay in the company that you're in and do the exact same job, you develop your character in the way that I'm talking about to a whole different level, you're going to have a phenomenal career at that place, doing
09:15 the same job. If you're passionate about it, that's what you can do. If you want to climb up, do something bigger within that same company, that's what this type of development is going to allow you to do that as well.
09:25 It's the key. It's a missing link that a lot of people don't even understand because a lot of people that get promoted in most companies that don't do this type leadership development is the one who does the best job and what it takes for me to do a good job is not the same thing that it takes me to
09:40 motivate and inspire you to do a good job. So that's another, that's the second avenue that someone could take by embracing this type content.
09:49 And then the third is, and I encourage anybody with the kind of skills that you're talking about John and skills in other, any other skill trades, you know, I encourage any of those folks, if they want to grow, they can start their own company.
10:04 I mean, they can make a phenomenal opportunity to do the job they're doing for the rest of their life, or they can grow within the company, or they can start their own company, or it could be some combination of all three, especially for a young person.
10:18 But if they do have any visions of starting their own company, this personal growth and development content that I write about and speak about in hundreds of thousands of other the people do as well, it's the key critical component for them to actually go out and execute and excel at leading.
10:36 First thing they got to do is lead themselves well. They got to be able to build trust with people. And again, it's the same.
10:42 It doesn't matter what job. You don't matter which one of those three courses you're going to take building trust, trust is critical.
10:48 And just for them to know when I speak about leadership, I define leadership the same way as John Maxwell. I learned it from him.
10:54 It made sense. It was simple. Leadership ship is influence nothing more nothing less that's that's what he says and and that's what we're talking about and that's why like a lot of texts a lot of texts may be thinking they may not have interest in being a boss they may not want to go out and start their
11:11 own company they want to keep doing what they're doing what they got to understand and all they got to do is ask themself a question will life be better if I had more influence or less it's pretty obvious but most people who having been exposed to this type of content don't know there's content to help
11:27 you learn principles that are going to help you increase your influence you increase your influence 360 degrees from wherever you are at with whoever's around it could be the customers it could be suppliers it could be the boss it could be co-workers it could be somebody who reports to you all of the
11:43 all of these things when you start learning these principles your life's going to get better and life's always better with more options.
11:51 And that's what I want people to have is more options in life. So, let's, by the way, I'm a 35-year student of John Maxwell myself.
11:59 So we can go there as much as you want to. But that concept, that leadership is influence. And by doing the math of that, we could also reverse that and say, influences leadership.
12:13 That's a thing. They're synonym for me. I teach that. It's a synonym. When I say leadership, I could be saying, you know, influence.
12:20 My first book actually called defining influence, increasing your influence, increases your options and that's the subtitle, but defining influence, I could have wrote it as defining leadership, but then a lot of people wouldn't realize it was for them cause they think it's for the boss.
12:35 Yeah. So a lot of frontliers, their perspective, their thought is, I wouldn't have a chance to influence anything unless I get a promotion to a supervisor or something like that, like that's where it actually begins, but what you're saying is influence can happen at the very front line.
12:56 And so talk a little bit more about that, especially as influence relates to character. Yeah, so I'll give you an example from it's actually in the front lines of book that I was telling you about.
13:05 It's in one of those chapters I shared in there. I encourage those folks, like when I was just an entry-level person and I be it on on a manufacturing sale had three different machines, had a CNC laid, had a laid, had a gear shaper, had a CNC milled drilling holes and milling and that kind of stuff.
13:23 And those three machines used to be separate in the old days when it was a batching queue process. And so those three machines had three operators standing in three different places and they'd make a pile and put it on a pallet and move it to store it and somebody'd go get it.
13:37 But when we went to lean manufacturing, we put all three machines together. One person ran it all, you move it for one machine to the next, to the next, get rid of the pallets, get rid of the storage.
13:47 So the guy who had done that before me, he had been on one of those standalone machines and he'd been running this new sale for a year, but they just always say and it won't work, can't work, ain't never going to work.
13:58 He didn't want it to work, obviously. And he was on the first shift working with all the support people, the managers and supervisors, engineering, you know, everyone who's trying to make that work because they thought it was going to work when they put it together.
14:10 So anyway, way he bit off of the job and I I was on the night shift still that was kind of the end of my 10 year run on the night shift when I bid on that job and that's why I bid on it in a way it was a down you know a step down because I was setting up all the machines 70 machines at night I was setting
14:27 them up operating them when somebody was out all that sort of stuff so this gonna reflect on my competency and my character when I when I when I bid on that job my whole point was I want to go make it work because I thought it would work.
14:41 And I didn't ever get to run it full time, but I run it sometime. And I said, help the other guy on the night shift set it up.
14:47 So when I got there, I created a spreadsheet, you know, that's competency stuff, but it's also character because I wanted to over deliver.
14:54 And what I'm describing is how I increased my influence as an operator with all the leaders in that company because I took responsibility.
15:03 I walked into that sale. I could have just pushed buttons like the other guy and waited for somebody to come in there and make it better.
15:09 But if the two things I want to teach right here is that if you'll focus on improving yourself, that's your character development and your competency development.
15:18 But then also improving the processes that you're involved with, the job, whatever that means, how you store stuff in your truck, where it's sufficient, or how you interact with clients and customers so that they want to do business with you personally, but also with your organization and because you
15:35 were representing the organization. So I come in, did all that, I created a spreadsheet of every cycle time, that sort of thing, and started working on what's the bottleneck every different part that we ran.
15:47 I was doing all this stuff, I was sharing it with everyone. And within six months, I had double the output of that sale.
15:54 You know, and everybody knows it was me, although I didn't take credit because I had all the support. I had all these people supporting me.
16:02 but they were also supporting the other guy and they couldn't get him to do it. So, no, I was just a part of the team, but I became a high-impact part of the team.
16:11 That's the language I use. The stuff I teach is how do you become a high-impact individual? How do you become a high-impact team player?
16:16 How do you become a high-impact leader? So because of all of that, I was able to build these relationships. We're talking about increasing influence, right?
16:24 Because everybody wanted to help me. And everybody thought a lot of me. So, what didn't take long after that, a sought after program in position came up open.
16:35 And so, most of the time I would never have gotten that job. Usually, people with seniority would have been around a long time and got that job.
16:42 But what happened was, as I started asking them to make program changes, you know, they'd come out and print out a program and they'd write on the program what was needed to change.
16:52 So, I'm looking over the shoulder and I started learning how to program. So then I'd print off the program and make the changes and call them out there and ask them to approve it And if I got it wrong, they were teaching me how to get it right because they said no, no, you did this So anyway during that
17:06 six months, I learned how to program a lot not not literally, but a lot more than most people who just push buttons do So I got that position and you know part of the thing relative to that was I been I had five or six seven different positions since I had been in that company at that time So I didn't
17:25 have one year of experience repeated 10 times like a lot of people who've been there 10 years I literally had 10 years of experience so when I applied for the job I passed a lot of people who had only you know, they didn't want to learn programming till they got a programming job So I guess what I'm
17:41 saying to answer your question is when you start over delivering when you do things sooner than Expected better than expected before they're expected you're going to develop a lot of influence with the high impact people And let me say this because this is the other side of the low impact people, if
17:56 you hear this and you've been part of that crowd and you decide, hey, this is something I'm interested in and you go out and you get interested in this type of content, you start climbing the ladder, you start developing influence with the boss that a lot of people maybe don't like.
18:11 As soon as you start having influence with the boss, well, instead of them just talk about the boss now, they're going to start talking about you.
18:16 I was going to ask about this. Yes, please continue. Yep. So that's I mean, that's what happens and you got to know that's what's going to happen.
18:23 It happened to me my entire career People say I'm brown nose and sucking up a lot worse than that. I'm not gonna say I don't speak like that But you know what I'm talking about the blue collar folks definitely know what I'm talking about They know what we do to each other, but that's not what I was doing
18:37 I was becoming an influential team member and and that's why I got you know in that book Blue collar leadership leading from the front lines.
18:46 I share how I was promoted 14 times in those 20 years and John, I should have been fired a hundred times.
18:53 character was terrible for his interaction with people, because the people who didn't do a good job, well, I wanted everybody to know who they were and they wasn't doing a good job.
19:01 I told the boss, you know, I'm bad mouthed people. I didn't know all the stuff, you know, and I had a bad temper and I've transformed myself personally because that temper was, it was unbelievable, really, my temper, what it used to be.
19:14 But, you know, when I started reading this, I started getting a handle on that. But the reason I was able to keep those jobs With all that stuff that was wrong with me.
19:23 I had a lot of good stuff going on too As I just described, but I had a lot of wrong stuff the character side and they held me back a lot, but Only reason I could do that was What mattered most was productivity None of these companies I worked in during 20 years all of them were multi-billion dollar
19:40 global companies none of them ever Invested one penny or one minute teaching me the kind of stuff that I talk about and write about today So they didn't value character, if they did, I wouldn't have been able to work there very long.
19:52 Well, I think they valued it, but they didn't know how to teach it and they didn't know how to what to refer to it as.
19:58 They just, they would use the word motivation or something like that. But there's a whole inside job to what you're talking about that's more than some kind of carrot and stick game, you know, that you're, when you talk about character, don't let me put words in your mouth, adjust us as I say it.
20:16 But when you talk about character, you're talking about growing the inside of you into a stronger person who can deliver more and has a kind of moral conviction about not not in a religious sense, but a moral conviction about the right way to do things and to like to handle yourself on that level and
20:40 to carry it as more than just a show off way, it's who you are on the inside. The up character, you know, a lot of people, that's good, that's good stuff you're saying there, John.
20:51 A lot of people, when they don't study character, most people, if you just ask them what character means, I mean, I've asked a lot of people in my life, and most of them say it means you're good or bad.
21:02 That's it. That's the whole definition of character you're good or bad. And that kind of is a low level definition, you're good or bad, But characters what makes you good or bad is everything that you are when I talk to people about characters It's everything you are.
21:20 It's how you do what you do. It's why you do what you do is when you do what you do Is it's what you don't do is who you do it with or don't do it with and I got the Henry cloud wrote a book called integrity And I really like his definition of character.
21:32 He says character is the ability to meet the demands of reality And he says integrity is the courage to meet the demands of reality So, characters, the ability, and we're talking about the demands of reality, like the tech you're talking about.
21:48 They want to make more money, they got a character flow, if they can't make more money. If they want to be treated better at work, they got a character flow because they can't lead themselves well enough to get treated well at work, or they won't make the sacrifice to go change your job and get a job
22:03 at a different place with a better boss, but a better boss may not want them if they don't have the right character, right?
22:10 It all starts in the mirror, but character is going to impact your influence in your whole world. It's kind of like all these principles related to character development.
22:20 They're like gravity. Gravity doesn't care if your white collar, blue collar, if your front lines, you'll see, oh, gravity is gravity.
22:27 Where you go. And it's the same way with all these principles relative to how do you influence people? And you can influence people in a positive way or a negative way.
22:37 Everybody is a leader. When you understand leadership is influence, I ask people all the time in a group of people who ever has the most influence at any given moment, at any given time, in any given situation.
22:49 Is that person the leader of somebody else? old John Maxwell line. If I have to tell you I'm the leader, I'm not.
22:56 That's right. And it changes. It's dynamic. Even in a team of, you know, like a special ops team. There could be whoever's leading in this moment may not be leading in the next moment, may not be leading in the next moment.
23:08 And everybody's willing to shift and become the follower and then the leader and then it's that's what high performance teams do.
23:14 We all have our we all appreciate each other. We all value each other. We ignore the weaknesses and focus on the strengths and and that sort of stuff.
23:23 But yeah, character. A lot of people don't don't really to understand what it is at a deep level. And they're missing out on that.
23:33 You know, John talks about this. I think a lot of people talk about it. talk about character and competency, the value of it.
23:42 Like I said, the 87, 13 is the numbers I use. I learned from John when we were in Guatemala in 2013 as part of the cultural transformation of the entire nation.
23:50 My wife and Ria and I went down there with 150 other people from around the world paid all of our expenses and joined John and Guatemala and we trained over 20,000 leaders in just a couple days and and we taught them that 87 what I call the 87 13 rule 87% of your results come from character 13% from
24:08 competency and a lot of people especially engineering type they like well I don't know is it 87.256 or is it 87 or is that real and I don't worry about all that but but those are the numbers based on several different research studies and but I tell people though forget about those numbers you can validate
24:25 it in your own life just don't worry about the numbers have you and I'll say have you because I want them to know and believe that's true so until they can shake their head and agree they don't believe is true maybe they just don't know yet but I'll say have you ever noticed people get hired for what
24:42 they know their competency the 13% and fired because of who they are their character they 87% you know And John talks about that.
24:51 I kind of attach all these different things to it, but we can't see that throughout my career. Everybody that I've ever seen, get fired, it was because of their character.
25:01 And I had one client, he said, well, Mr. Mack, he said, he said, I had one guy, we interviewed him, he had on his resume, he could do this in that and we hired him in and we got him in here and he figured out he couldn't do the things he said he could do.
25:15 So we had, and he didn't want to learn, so we had to let him go. So he said, Mr. Mac, that was, that was a competency issue.
25:21 I said, wait a minute, I said, he told you he could do something and he couldn't do it. He said, he said, yeah, I said, that sounded like a lie.
25:29 That's a character flow, a character flows what got him in that situation to be, be terminated. And we can see the same thing in our personal life, John.
25:37 That's why I say these principles apply. We made friends with people because of who we thought they were. And then we get to know them, it could be a, know them for a day or know them for a week or a month or a year and then we don't want to be friends with him anymore because we find out who they really
25:50 are. Right. And we fire people in the personal world just the same as we do in the professional world. And people fire their boss.
25:59 A lot of these frontline folks. Oh yeah. And a lot of bosses don't realize that their character can get them fired.
26:05 We call it turnover and to make it sound good in business world. But what it really is is people firing the boss.
26:12 if somebody's got a lot of turnover, they'd be inspired by their by their team members all the time. Why does that happen?
26:18 Character. Yeah. Yeah, this this concept of character that I think it's important for the audience to really grasp the scope of what we're talking about.
26:29 We say character because there's there's a there's a toughness and grit component. There's a I don't always have to be the one who gets the credit component, there's a, I mean, I'm here to serve components, you know, there's, there's, while there may be the toughness and grit, it's not at the expense
26:51 of kindness component, there's a character side of saying, I'm not less of a man if I show kindness or if I, you know, make a good decision that, you know, where I could get into a fight about something I choose not to.
27:06 That's a character component. This is a very sort of the whole breadth of strength of my inner world. Is the is the whole kind of scope of character.
27:16 So there's a lot of pieces to character. It isn't just like it's huge. Yeah, it isn't. It isn't. I don't steal.
27:25 You wouldn't. I mean, that's part of it. But for the audience, you should hear the scope is the the entire inner piece that you bring that's not competence to the game.
27:37 Yep, and there's also bad character. There's negative influence and positive influence. So a lot of times, you know, we talk about culture inside of a company.
27:48 What I tell people, you know, culture is nothing more than the collective values of everyone in the company. That's what culture is.
27:56 And that's what character is on the individual level. My character is nothing more than the collection of values that I line myself behind, you know, if you are a honest person John And I imagine you are and you don't steal but if I am the kind of person who steals I'm going to hang around people who
28:16 steal You're going to hang around people who don't don't steal that's right and you got your character and I got my character And that's that's the way the world works, right?
28:25 And so if you if somebody out there wants to work in a really good company Maybe they don't like the company they're in maybe they don't like the boss they have maybe there's a good boss in the company They're in they just want to report to someone else and move departments or change or locations or
28:39 geographic areas You know, there's always it seems like there's always a good boss that everybody wants to report to yeah, but the thing is if you reporting to a bad boss and you treat them like a bad boss.
28:51 Then the good boss is CU is not a good team member, not a good employee. And that's one of the things I teach in that frontline book.
28:58 One of the key principles and this could really apply to the to the techs that you want to serve. It applies to everybody though.
29:05 But they need to know they're not working. They're not working for XYZ company. A lot of people think I'll ask who do you work for when I'm speaking?
29:13 They'll tell me, you know, they look at me like I'm stupid if I'm in one company because I'm in their company.
29:18 They're like, I worked for whatever company, you know what I mean. And so I said, no, I didn't ask you where you work.
29:25 I won't know who you work for. And as soon as I do that, you can see that it started thinking because I wasn't thinking before.
29:31 Right. They just, they just plan out the handle with their answer. And they said, I, I worked for so and so I said, no, you don't work for free.
29:39 Do you? They're like, no, I don't work for free. So who you working for? And then they finally figure out I'm, I'm working for me.
29:46 And that's what I want people to know is one of the chapters in that book is to help them understand that they're working for themselves.
29:53 Because if I report to you, John, and I don't like you, I might not do such a good job because I don't like you.
29:57 So I'm trying to make you look bad. But what I got to know relative to characters, if I'm making you look bad, I look worse.
30:04 In my company, you know, everybody knows the best kind of advertisements, word of mouth. So when I teach folks that they're really working for themselves, the me, me who I am, I'm trying to grow and develop myself within the world that I live in, whatever that means for me, then I have to know everybody
30:23 out there is talking about me. They're saying good things are bad things. They're either helping me expand my business by saying positive things or they help me shrink my business by saying negative things.
30:34 I mean, some people, they shrink their business so much within a company they get fired. They lose it 100% at that company and then some get promoted and promoted and promoted and and and they get all kind of opportunities.
30:47 So that's the thing. How do I treat my clients? Ain't got nothing to do with the boss. It's everything to do with me.
30:53 I want them to talk highly of me. I want them to give me that good that good feedback on social media or into survey or whatever kind of thing.
31:02 It ain't about the company. It's about me. I want everybody that I meet to talk as positively about me as I can.
31:07 I'm gonna over-deliver. I'm gonna do Whatever it is I can do to over-deliver to get people to give me positive word of mouth advertising And that doesn't matter what level I'm at but but these texts you imagine if you attack and Most of you let's say you on a team of 10 techs Hardly anybody gets any
31:28 positive reviews or anything like that. Maybe they don't have a good leader But, but they hear this stuff. They maybe go read these books or go find some more books or listen to my podcast or your podcast and whatever it is, they, some gets a hold of them like it did in me in 2008.
31:42 They start growing and climbing and becoming intentional about how they lead themselves, why they do the work. Well, it's going to be easy.
31:49 It's going to be easy to shine in that world. You're going to stick out almost instantly. And, and you may say, well, I've done that.
31:58 my boss didn't say nobody seemed to care what's that got to do with you right if you got a bad boss that's another choice you need to make but I always tell people if you're going to be on the team you need to be a starter you need to be an MVP even if you don't like the coach if you want if you want
32:16 a successful career you know when you're on the team you need to be a starter you need to be an MVP if you don't like that coach you don't go sit on the bench what's that what's that going to do for you.
32:26 Right. You keep being MVP. You create all these, these rails of you performing at a high level. Yeah. And you go somewhere else.
32:34 You know, that could be, you know, in this case with the techs, it could be if I go out and I get a lot of reviews, I'm going to be a MVP while I'm on on my, it doesn't matter what team I'm on.
32:43 If I'm on the team, I'm going to be MVP. And if I don't want to be on the team, I'm going to get off the team.
32:48 But I ain't going to quit. I ain't going to ever quit on the team of the coach. I'm going to be a player, a high-impact player.
32:56 So I could print these reviews off, they could go with my resume when I go try to get another job.
33:00 That's how I could leverage that into my future. So let me put this again into the context of a young technician who's going to hear this and they're going to translate it into their world.
33:15 Let me say a couple of things that Mac is not saying, right? What Mac is not saying is take on a piece of equipment that you really don't know how to work on and then not know what you're doing and don't tell anybody because you're trying to impress someone with what you can do.
33:37 That's not what this is. This is actually saying loud. I don't know how to work on this piece of equipment, but I'd really love for someone to show me, and I'll stay after hours.
33:48 You know what, unless they get me in trouble for this, you don't even have to pay me after hours. I just want to know.
33:54 That's the character he's talking about. A lot of technicians live in this world of what kind of equipment do I get to work on?
34:04 Do I only get to install or kind of troubleshoot? Do I only work on regular equipment or do I work on chillers?
34:11 And there's kind of a status that goes with that movement, right, and there's a desire for that affirmation that comes with that status, but that's a different thing.
34:22 I mean, really what Max's talking about is being willing to do things without the status, without someone telling you, you know, or kind of, it's not a scarce commodity that you're going after.
34:35 There's plenty of it available. It's just already inside of you. You have to go get it there. Yeah, build trust, you know, until you master the job, you're actually supposed to be doing none of the other jobs matter to a high impact leader.
34:48 Yeah, you know, even if I'm doing one of those jobs, John, like you said, maybe I want to do this job, but I'm here doing this job because I want the next two or three jobs.
34:57 Yeah. The easiest way to get those jobs is to kill it on this job, I mean, over deliver, over perform everything off the charts and then, you know, adding to what you're talking about, I talked again to a lot of front lines folks and there's so much on YouTube that they could go watch and learn about
35:16 , I mean, just like I read about leadership, if you passionate about what you're doing, you'll go do all this stuff on your own time.
35:23 And it's another principle, John, where there's character competency for these texts and it applies to anybody, but most people who try to get a head on the job, they do it on the job, which means even the best ones doing that, they're still limited to their time on the job.
35:40 Let's say just don't cliche nine to five. I know these guys probably don't work nine to five and ladies, but let's just say nine to five.
35:48 So when I show up, I show up early, you know, I'm on time. I do a phenomenal job. I'm a great team player.
35:54 I learn whatever you teach me and that kind of stuff. Five o'clock, no, I unplug. I'm unplug. I ain't got nothing do with that job till the next morning I show up.
36:03 So that's fine. That's that that right there, though, will separate you from most people because most people ain't even trying to be exceptional on the job.
36:11 They're just trying to most time just, you know, do my eight and hit the gate kind of tall. I'm just here to get a check and a lot of them say it.
36:19 They'll even tell people I'm just here to get a check. What's that doing for your word of mouth advertisement? What's that telling the world who you are as a person?
36:27 But what I tell people, if you really want to get ahead and life in a big way and accelerate your journey to wherever it is you want to go.
36:35 It ain't what you do from nine to five is what you do from five to nine. Yes. When you when you ain't it work.
36:40 And if you're passionate about this stuff, everybody's going to know it. You're going to have something. I watched this last night on YouTube and you're going to be talking about I watched this.
36:48 I tried that. I found because a lot of people think YouTube is just a bunch of silly stuff and a lot of people that's all they watch on their silly stuff.
36:56 I don't watch the silly stuff. There's there's some phenomenal stuff on YouTube. Whatever you can imagine is on there, you know, these texts who are 25, like you said, they can go on there.
37:06 I guarantee you there's texts on there were probably not texts anymore, but maybe they were. Maybe they were passionate about it.
37:12 But there's folks on their 40, 50, 60 years old giving away all their secrets, all their knowledge, just trying to help people like those young guys climb that ladder faster.
37:22 And it's another thing I tell the young folks that there's no shortcut from where you are to where you want to go.
37:28 You got to pay the price. You got to do the work. There's no shortcut, but I'm going to tell you this.
37:33 You can travel at different speeds. You can get there faster if you know how to what you're going to deal with and you know how to deal with it or you can get there slower if you're taking detours or if you shoot yourself in the foot because you know making some mistakes or like John said you go out
37:48 and try to take on something you ain't ready to take on. So instead of building trust, you create distrust. Right.
37:54 Because every single thing that you do in life is either creating trust or distrust. And, and, and then it gets so complex, John, like you're talking about, because I can do one thing to create trust with you.
38:07 Somebody else is standing there and I create distrust with them in the same moment. And how can that be? It's because you and I would have shared values.
38:14 If I'm building trust, the other person we don't have shared values, we got some other different values, you know, like the thief.
38:20 If I'm hanging with thieves and I'm stealing I'm building trust. He's like us. We trust him. Somehow they can trust me.
38:27 I'm a thief, but they can't trust you because you honest, right? And that's, this stuff is very complex and dynamic character development, leadership development, personal growth.
38:37 But if there's anybody out there listening, they want to climb higher personally and professionally. This is probably a missing piece.
38:44 What I found, John, I mean, we can always grow and develop our competency. What I found is, when people really start working on this and I've had some, you know, some HVAC techs who get into my books and just read them all and they start interacting with me and I've spoken with them.
39:00 Some of them I'm going to have on my real people getting real results. We call it a leadership YouTube channel.
39:05 I've already started that about two, three months ago. I got a list of about 50 people. At least one of them is an HVA tech that reached out to me over the years he's got he's launched like a rocket with after he started reading my stuff and and you know he gives me credit but I didn't do nothing I just
39:22 wrote the book he read the book went and applied it in his own life he he gets to credit but but but there's so so much potential for these these folks to launch like a rocket.
39:34 Well Mac let's let's go to that because you're you have a lot of resources they're available online you just mentioned to YouTube channel kind We say again, what's the name of your YouTube channel is blue color leadership.
39:47 It's fairly fairly new, but you know We've put out some some leadership development content there, but the main reason we started that channel was I Think episode 14 comes out this Friday It's actually a sales guy in electrical construction business or he sells electrical supplies So I know one of my
40:08 big clients in Texas is his client HVAC a large MEP so they do it all at that that construction company, but he'll be out.
40:17 So what I'm doing is this real people getting real results serious. You can look for a playlist and see these interviews with all different kind of people.
40:25 Some of them frontline people, some of them are owners of a company, some of them are just different levels within a company.
40:31 And the key component of these folks is I know them to either directly or indirectly through my content. They've used my content on some level plus probably a lot of other people to get results.
40:42 So you can go hear how people are actually telling their story. You ain't got to trust me. I know because I've transformed my whole, my own life, personally and professionally.
40:52 So that's, that's a big component there is, you know, go check, check that out. So, and then also on your website, right?
40:58 You've got some online courses, and are your books available there, too? Yep. The books actually, if you go to the homepage, bluecollarleadership.com, you'll scroll down just a little bit.
41:10 There's some buttons there. one of them is where you can download free chapters these books I'm talking about. You can read the the frontlines book I'm talking to you about today specifically right there.
41:20 It's a you can read the first five chapters of that book. These books are simple too, John. They read for people like me that don't like to read.
41:27 They're 30 chapters, three pages each. People tell me they just love these books because you can read a chapter in six to seven minutes.
41:33 One of the guys on the videos that I interviewed, he said, man, I like your books because they got all the stuff without the flow And I said that's because I want people to read them so they can go to if they want to type it in and then go to bluecollarleadership.com forward slash download and these
41:49 books to John on on my YouTube channel bluecollar leadership YouTube channel anybody interested in all the stuff I'm talking about I didn't invite them to go there look at the playlist go click on the playlist menu and a lot of my books I've done my podcast bluecollar leadership podcasts got over 400
42:07 episodes there I upload those interviews by audio there. But before I started doing that, I had probably 360 or 70 just me teaching this stuff.
42:17 And a lot of them I would do a 30-part series on my book. Just not reading the book, but talking off the cuff about each chapter.
42:25 So there's 20 to 30 minutes of me talking about each chapter. And I upload my podcast now to my YouTube channel.
42:31 And I went and made all these playlists so people could find these series on the different books. So there's a lot of free content out there for folks who want to do that.
42:42 I got a newsletter on LinkedIn. I put out something every day on my social media, pretty much all the social media's.
42:48 I copy and paste from LinkedIn. LinkedIn's my primary platform, but I got a newsletter. I've got over 350 articles on there.
42:56 I'll get how many newsletters I've gotten now, but there's tons of free stuff out there. And if you go to the download page as a button for my wife, she's got a lot of content.
43:07 Her leadership development, her name is Rhea, R-I-A-S-T-O-R-Y, and she's got a lot of content. Her focus is on personal and leadership development for women, but we speak together all around the country to big smile companies and it's just a privilege to be here and see what you're doing for the folks
43:27 . Anybody that puts us in front of folks, we just want to help people have a better life, John. That's what we tell when leaders bring us into their company.
43:35 We tell them that in advance. That's what we want to do. We won't we won't you to be cool with us walking in and telling your folks.
43:41 We're in the room because we want to help you have a better life at home and it worked and That that's That's what motivates me this job for me.
43:49 This 24-7 365. That's why I give out my phone number Nobody needs be afraid to call me. I ain't nobody special.
43:57 I'm just I just trying to make a difference. That's all I'm trying to do So listen everybody Mac story blue collar leadership it.
44:06 This is the first time you've heard of Mac. I hope it's not the last time. Go get on his YouTube channel, go get on his website, website, get on his mailing list, get tied into everything this guy is doing.
44:16 He is a very important player in our space. There's not a bunch of people doing what he's doing. And so there's a lot of resources you can get from him.
44:27 That's why he's on the podcast today. So Mac, thank you so much for taking some time being on this podcast.
44:32 Yes. Thank you, John, for having me and for everyone out there. Keep climbing. The world needs you at the next level, NBL.
44:39 You bet. Thanks, Mike.