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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 Hey, everybody. Welcome to HVAC JoyLab. I have today Ty Branaman. He is a trainer, a content developer, and certified master HVAC educator.
00:13 He's at love to HVAC.com, the number two. Love to HVAC.com. Ty, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.
00:21 I, I love talking about HVAC any chance I get. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So tell us the story of Ty Braneman and love to HVAC.
00:31 Oh my gosh that is a crazy story. I just started out, I grew up in a small farm in the middle of nowhere.
00:39 I struggled through school because back when I was going through, they didn't really have a name for ADHD. It was just, we'll whip it out of you.
00:47 You know, we're going to sit out through recess. So, you know, I knew that college wasn't going to be for me and working with my dad just doing sheet metal and I love my dad but I did not want to work with him at all and I really didn't like sheet metal being in the same shop all the time and lots of
01:04 numbers and I would get numbers mixed up and backwards and so I got a job doing air conditioning install and I hated the people I worked with but I really liked what I was doing and I knew what I'd doing wasn't right but there was this guy that would drive up and he wouldn't even get out of the van like
01:20 everybody he would leave the job, go out and talk to him. I had to stay in the attic. And he wouldn't even get out of the van.
01:26 He had his big old cup. He would step out of and then he would drive off. And you might not see him for a few hours or maybe even a few days, he'd come by.
01:33 And I'm like, man, is that one of the owners? I'm like, oh no, that's just a service tech. Like, well, how do I get that job?
01:39 I said, well, you've got to learn like how all this stuff works and be able to like read manuals and stuff.
01:45 And I'm like, man, I hate reading, but I want to get in that truck. And so that started my journey of reading manuals, which was difficult for me.
01:54 And I started going to every class that could possibly take. And I moved to another company and got into doing better installs and then the service and maintenance and then become a lead service service manager.
02:06 I got into having my own company, which was a whole other learning experience. Then I got into refrigeration, which was super exciting because everything was new, learning again.
02:16 And then I get into teaching and Miami of all places. And I love the teaching because man, you can fix a problem but trying to get information to another person.
02:27 Man, that's a whole another challenge because you can have something that works every day and you meet a new person.
02:32 And now it doesn't work. You gotta think of an entirely new way to explain it for them to get you in.
02:38 Interesting. When they call you back and like, hey, I understand this. I get this. Oh man, and that's the best feeling in the world.
02:44 Wow, that's awesome. You sound like a natural trainer. Like that's the love that burst of happiness. That's every great trainer I've ever worked with has that same reaction to that.
02:56 That's excellent. So I'm curious, just so there's a bunch of different things we could talk about here. But I saw on your website, you have a section called how to get into HVAC.
03:07 So, everybody knows the shortage of talent in the industry, not as many people realize the quality of opportunity that air conditioning is.
03:18 And it's an opportunity for anybody who just need to get started with something. But once you get a few years under your belt, man, if you want to travel the world, if you want to live a year in Europe or Japan or whatever, if you want to travel the world and commission systems, if you want to, there's
03:43 all, I mean, there's a lot of things you can do in this business and actually did that. I have moved to Australia and lived there for a year.
03:50 There you go. Perfect case and point, right? So, so I say that to say, if someone finds a way to this podcast and they're still just thinking about getting started, what do they do?
04:01 How do they get started? Oh gosh, and today there are so many different ways of getting started. And there's not one set right way.
04:10 There's multiple ways. You got to find out what's what's going to work best for you and also to vet out your options.
04:15 And today with we have such a high demand, if you have a work ethic like you want to learn this, you want to get started, first thing is just go find out what HVAC companies are around and go talk to them, go there in person with the resume and say, look, my resume has nothing HVAC related, but I want
04:32 to do this career and they'll either tell you, hey, we'll take you on and train you from there, or they'll say, hey, go get your EPA first or go invest in yourself first and then come back to us or come back to us in the spring and fall.
04:45 So that's the first thing I tell people do is that's the cheapest way. Just go out and start talking to companies and see.
04:51 And of course this is just to clarify. So then you're recommending step one, don't go and roll in anything, don't even think, not even think, but don't even go EPA license, just go talk to some companies and say, hey, I'd like to get into this business and see if you can engage with the right person
05:11 because I will say I've talked to some people and they're like, well, I should go get the EPA license first and then they're more hireable.
05:19 And I'm like, yes and no, I mean, it maybe it puts you on a, first, but it doesn't necessarily make you more higherable, they're going to hire you based on something other than an EPA license.
05:34 So you would say just go, just go engage in a conversation with them. The worst thing they're going to say is no.
05:41 Over not right now. It's the worst thing they're going to say. And you didn't lose anything, but now you've made contacts and now that at least they've seen your face.
05:49 So when you go back to them again, now they have that familiarity with it. So I think that's a huge first step.
05:55 And I've had people that have gotten their awesome first jobs doing that. And I've had other people that said they went to like 15 or 16 different companies and they all got turned down.
06:04 No. And I said, well, did you learn anything? They said, well, yeah, I learned that I needed to get my EPA first or they wanted me to go to a school first, but now they had a starting point.
06:13 So the ones that didn't have to do it, they had a job right away. And they started learning while they were working.
06:19 Yeah. And I did a podcast, it's in, I think, last season with a young man from Oregon who did exactly this, not knowing he was walking into a chiller company.
06:31 And they said, come on. And he's just three year veteran in the industry working on chillers all day. And, you know, which is not the typical past, the chillers.
06:41 But for where he was at, they brought him in. They trained him. And now Here's here is 25 years old and and really growing a career as a chiller attack That that is awesome when I was in Australia I couldn't legally do HVAC work because I had to go through their Prinyship program was very long process
06:59 , but there was a sugar mill and they needed a high-grade Fugal operator and I'm like have no clue what that even means But a lot of the stuff is HVAC related mechanical stuff the electrical stuff It's plumbing fluid dynamics.
07:11 I went and just applied for it and they took some attitude tests and I aced it. And then when I left that job, they thought I'd been doing this for years.
07:20 I just went up and applied. You know, I didn't have to have experience. I had to have somebody that wants to learn.
07:26 Like, it shows up. It's excited to work. That's a big thing. Yeah, I think people who aren't in the industry, they are intimidated by the mechanical and technical side of it.
07:36 But a lot of people hire based on attitude more than that. They feel like, you've got this attitude I can train you with the other stuff and and but if you walk in the door stormy and and your shirts untucked and you won't look them in the eye and you all the other stuff they're like you know go go to
07:53 trade school learn something to come back maybe we'll teach you how to do some other things too. And that's a good point in trade school and my class is I didn't just teach the mechanical side a lot of things I taught was how to look somebody in the eye or how to look here so it's not as intimidating
08:10 how to communicate with people, how to have that firm handshake, how to deal with customers or how to deal with other technicians that are from a different generation and how to communicate with them and what they're really saying So these are some of the things that I personally teach in trade school
08:24 to make sure They're prepared beyond just that mechanical stuff beyond just that EPA card. Yeah, 100% So tell me about the rest of love to HVAC like do you how does this work for you have like on online content and they go and gauge your content, or do you coach guys one on one, or like, what does that
08:43 look like when you're training guys? Oh, so love the HVAC is just, it's purely me giving to the industry. There is, it's not a business.
08:51 I do have a little bit of income from YouTube and a few pennies from Instagram and Facebook, but it's about getting content out there to help people.
09:00 So online, and I get a lot of instructors that are very upset that I'm giving this information out for free because they charge for these classes, is, but I see that there's a lot of really bad information being spread out there.
09:11 And I can't police it. And it's not my job to say, Hey, that's wrong. So I said, well, let's put out some information that's positive.
09:17 That's good. That's actually, you know, it's sound information. So I started putting that information out there for the people that want to learn it.
09:24 I don't care about followers or amount of people. I care about anybody who wants to learn. And maybe they're like me, maybe they struggle understanding how this book stuff is written or they struggle understanding that technical manual.
09:36 So I explain things like me, somebody with ADHD that struggles with that. And I explain it from my viewpoint or a different viewpoint.
09:44 And ideally, I help close that gap. So now they can actually look at these manuals and understand what the manual is trying to say.
09:51 So that way, they can be successful throughout anything they're working on. Interesting, interesting. Do you find, this is just a question coming to me right now, but do you find that there are different tweaks based on different regions of the country, you guys kind of check in from because I mean,
10:07 I know here in South Louisiana, we're guided with a few environmental things like the air is so humid and it's so hot in the summer, feel it down to buy you far enough, you get salt in the air, like but it's a, I'm sure maybe Miami is similar, I don't know, but and then we've got industrial plans here
10:27 . So there's another dynamic there. And then my son is a tech up in Indianapolis and he's like, oh my god, that is 85 degrees.
10:34 It's so hot today. And I'm like, that's, you know, that's not that. Come on, come on, come on. So what do you see that way?
10:41 Do you see these regional dynamics and the guys who check in with you? Absolutely. And so I've lived in Miami, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.
10:50 So I've seen multiple different climates. I try to avoid that white stuff that falls from the sky but the climates do change and even vocabulary from one place to another or what one person seems as standard I'll teach about a best practice and somebody says well nobody does that here I'm like well you
11:05 can be the guy that starts yeah so it is different and that's one thing that people forget we think about air conditioning is just cooling people but we have to really think bigger like even just cooling people from high efficiency homes to tightly built homes to, I mean, there's so many aspects of that
11:21 in their air quality side. But if we think about what there's almost 8 billion people in the world now, that's only possible because of refrigeration and transportation.
11:30 We can grow food anywhere in the world and transport it by having it the right temperature. So without refrigeration, we wouldn't be able to support life on this planet.
11:38 But even, like Willis Carrier, his first air conditioner was for the printing side. So HVAC is massive. So many products that we make need need refrigeration, need air conditioning, all the communication stuff, there's people have had students that work for these data processing centers that they have
11:54 to have this equipment at a precise temperature, and then they have redundancies and backups. And then they're thinking how much energy it costs to cool that.
12:03 So they're looking at all these different aspects. I got a friend of mine. It just works on tour buses like it's all he does, he specializes in addiction tour bus problems.
12:11 So, HVAC is so much bigger than just simply, oh, I want to have a comfortable room, and you can never learn it all.
12:19 You get bored with it, there's another layer that you can learn about what you're already doing, or you can switch into another career inside of HVAC itself.
12:27 And that's more true every year. I mean, to me, I've been, I tell the story a lot, but my grandfather was a tech and my mother worked for Johnson Controls for 40 years and I wrote a doctoral dissertation on technicians and organizational commitment and my son is a tech, right?
12:43 So I've been around it a lot and do you service calls with my grandpa and his van in the 70s and all the whole thing?
12:51 But the degree to which technology has advanced specifically in the residential side. I mean, you know, what used to be, I mean, it's a pretty straightforward system.
13:04 Now if it's a big house, there's some kind of eight phase, like this kind of crazy controls and somebody off-site is like keeping track of your unit and it's still even residential like the tech that's really evolving right now is substantial.
13:21 Absolutely and a lot of people we struggle with that but we think everything's evolving. Our phone, our computers now have my phone and my computer you know and calculator in my hand.
13:32 I used to have an actual calculator in my tool bag for doing this stuff and now there's apps that do all this forest.
13:38 So vehicles, look at how much vehicles have adapted in the last, you know, 50 years, 20 years even. So the technology is changing and then we have to adapt to that.
13:48 I have a lot of people that they're mad at the refrigerant change or mad at new compressors or mad at all these things.
13:53 I'm like, Hey, look, I can connect with you and be like, I remember the good old days of a contactor and capacitor.
14:00 But the fact is these things are changing. So if we just use that same energy of being mad and angry of let's learn about this and let's adapt to it or let's learn a different part of the career that maybe is more comfortable with me or, you know, worst case narrow, maybe, maybe it's time for the retire
14:17 . And I don't, I say that lightly because I see people at our conference in Las Vegas that are, that are, they've been doing HVAC longer than I've been alive.
14:25 They're in their 90s and they're still there learning new stuff. Yeah. And I think that's the key. You can be on the learning side of it or you can eventually be left behind, but the learning side is so much more fun.
14:36 Yeah, 100%. How much are you seeing new use of the AI stuff on specifically like chat GPT or Gemini?
14:49 Are you seeing it coming? I'm seeing a little bit of it starting to come up. What are you seeing on your side?
14:54 I'm seeing a lot of it pop up from companies using AI from even when I'm looking at a tool company and I start to chat about it's it's clearly AI and some of the stuff there's been some tech support that was AI that's been like kind of decent but some of it's very misleading because it's looking for
15:12 generalizations and a lot of things you see on the internet is false information talking about pressures and so the chat AI will follow that same path And it kind of leads people down the wrong road.
15:23 So on the other hand, for me, I use AI because when I'm typing stuff, I struggle with getting the letters in the right order.
15:31 Something spelled wrong, I can't see it. So I can put in a generalization of what I want to say, use chat GPT that makes me sound intelligent.
15:38 You know, so I use that in some of my writings and communications with people. So I had a lot of people that are forward or against it.
15:46 And for me, it's just it's another tool and every tool can be used for something good or for something bad.
15:51 So it's it's just another tool. You know, I've talked I talked to quite a few technicians and that what I'm hearing them say is they're quietly using it in the field, but they kind of don't want anybody to know, you know, like because they can take they can take their phone, they can take a photograph
16:08 of the unit, maybe take a photograph with the cover off, say, this is what's happening. And then give me 10 possible things that could be the reason for that.
16:18 And it just helps them kind of it doesn't it doesn't it's not good at saying this is the problem But it is good at saying here's a list of 10 maybe's and then I've only thought of five of those So it like it it you know more stuff to follow up on but but it's it's I feel like it's becoming the next important
16:38 tool that technicians have in the field I agree, I'm a huge fan of MeasureQuick because it takes actual numbers and actual measurements.
16:47 But I predict that I could be completely wrong that we're not too far away from equipment that can communicate with your phone directly, and it will have all of this data because it's already collecting all this information itself, it just doesn't communicate with us.
17:02 But it's a matter of time before that gets into an app and it's actually telling you what to look for next.
17:06 And it's going to be using AI to help guide those technicians to the problem. So as technology advances and gets more difficult to work on, it's also going to be kind of easier to work on at the same time as we move forward.
17:19 So I don't know if it'll happen yet, but I've already seen people talking about it, and the manufacturer's very, you know, close with that information, but I think that it's on the horizon.
17:30 So let's just kind of not with AI, but it's kind of lean into the concept of tools. When you're doing your training, how much of your training is sort of conceptual, like a refrigeration cycle, versus you need to know how to use these eight tools.
17:49 Do you know how to use a meter, like that kind of stuff? Where does that factor in for you in your training content?
17:58 Everything comes down to the basics. So if you understand the basics, So, if you understand, really, really understand that refrigeration cycle, you can work on a refrigerator or a 20,000 ton chiller.
18:09 It's the same refrigeration cycle with issues different things to manipulate that cycle. And the same thing, electricity. If you really understand how electrons are moving, you're often in current, it doesn't matter if it's three phase big equipment or 110 volts or 24 volts system.
18:24 So, if you really understand that basics, you can understand anything. So, when I teach stuff, I teach connecting it. So I do the refrigeration cycle.
18:33 I don't just talk about the theory and then we go to the lab like we draw a compressor we say that sucks in low pressure vapor pumps that high pressure vapor we go to the lab and Then we touch like they have to actually touch the compressor.
18:45 I don't want you just looking at it I want you to physically touch it and say verbally out loud This is a compressor and this is what it does and then while they're in the lab looking at it I make them draw the the compressor and so as we do the refrigeration cycle I'm teaching that it's not just this
18:59 theory, like here's what it actually is on a residential air conditioner. And then we modify that to, you know, refrigeration compressors, refrigerators.
19:08 So now they're connecting not just this theory and book stuff, but it is what we actually do. And the same thing with using a meter, we start with some boards with some simple electrical circuits.
19:18 But once you understand open and close switches, testing with the meter for an open and a close switch, guessing, what do you think it's going to be?
19:25 Now, let's actually do it and see what you're going to be and then following schematics like one wire to time I don't I don't want you to memorize this wiring diagram because that's not the point.
19:34 The point is a follow the wiring diagram You know one wire one highlight. So that's how I do it now a lot of instructors are different of how they teach but I found I want to connect everything I'm talking about to something that's practical.
19:47 They're going to be working on so if we connect those they're going to be successful. And today we have more people that have less mechanical aptitude than before, not because they're not born with it.
19:59 When I was growing up, I worked on a farm. We fixed everything. Everything was, how can we make this last a little bit longer?
20:05 How can we fix this? How can we get this by? People worked on their cars, but now we have people that grew up with a digital world.
20:12 So they don't have those mechanical abilities, like which way you turn of valve sometimes is for new people. And for us my generation like I think originally like that's funny how can you not know which way of valve patterns.
20:23 But understanding somebody that hasn't actually played with that they they don't know they just need time associated. And that's where some of the schooling have really been official because it gives them time to get that mechanic aptitude so that they can be successful in the field.
20:38 So that's why it's not just one path only, you know, having these different varieties. But ideally, the school should be very lab driven.
20:46 Everything you're learning in theory needs to be applied right here with the hands because this is what we're working with.
20:52 Yeah. So, so let's let me ask you this question. So the technicians who listen to this podcast are going to be asking themselves, so should I engage with tie and love to HVAC and like who's the who's your ideal person who's going to reach out to you.
21:10 Oh, so I love it when people just want to learn and there's some people that really love my content and there's some people that just do not they like me but they do not like my way of teaching.
21:20 I say that is okay. I just want people to learn like my friend Craig McElachio he has some great books his his his books are written with a larger text it's easier to read He's to understand.
21:31 He has great videos. My friend Brian Orr with HVAC School has tons of varieties that short articles long articles podcast.
21:39 He's got the videos 3d animations. He's got an app with tons of solutions. My friend Chris Stevens, he does videos recording while he's walking and talking his way through problems and learning stuff.
21:50 There's some other books, some of the books from me are difficult, but some people they learn best with that I don't want to be like the source of information for everybody I want to be helping connect people and motivate people just to overcome these steps And I want people learning regardless of where
22:06 they're learning from to be learning to be growing to be improving and that's Ultimately what I want and if I can help a few people with my style that is awesome And if I can just have people say I don't like your style but it motivates them to go find the information somewhere else.
22:20 I'm happy with that too, as long as we're learning. Interesting. Interesting. So then let's say you've got a technician. They want to learn their, you know, the company that they work for has a certain kind of training program, but they don't feel connected to it that much.
22:37 They get a little from it. If they offer a class, they'll go take the class, but like, what should they expect from you?
22:44 Do they, do you fill in gaps? Or do you have like a nose to tail come to me and you'll get all of it kind of like what what should they expect when they come to you?
22:55 So I have a on YouTube. I have a course just like I would do a school and it starts with your your basic fundamentals of theory and it just step by step The videos are literally in order and it just I call it the scaffolding effect.
23:07 We build a layer. We go to the next level build a layer and so they can learn from zero all the way to the end, and it really breaks down those basics.
23:15 So somebody who can't go to school, can't afford to go to school, that information is available. And it's not just for somebody to learn on their own, like, actually, they're ideally doing some stuff in the field, and they're applying these things directly.
23:28 That's where that is. And then I also have my other stuff, which I call fun learning, which is like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram TikTok, not YouTube, YouTube is my long content, but there's short content.
23:40 So there are ideas people ask questions, or like, hey, I don't believe that that's how that works, or I don't understand how that works.
23:47 And I'll do these fun experiments. Usually, things are less than five minutes. I'll collapse 50-time gallon drums, or do things to just get people thinking about something in a different way, or somebody can ask a question like, well, I was told that it's always this way.
24:01 And I'll be like, okay, let's explore that. So it's kind of more of the fun learning. It doesn't, it's not, you don't give you everything you need, and it also works for ESCO Institute, and when we do full classes, so somebody wants to do an official learning, they want actual credits, they go through
24:17 a course, and it's got video reading everything, step one, step two, step three, they take a quiz, step two, step three, step four, they get a certification, then it unlocks the next level.
24:27 And so companies use that, and individuals use that, and even schools use that in their program to have structured learning.
24:33 So I'm in multiple aspects, my website isn't about teaching somebody specifically, although I used to do some consulting work where I did that in-house for people.
24:45 It just wasn't profitable for me, and it was a lot of expense for the company, having me come out, and by the time transportation, everything, it just gets to be a big expense.
24:55 So I work with Esco for all their training because I got the full support of that team, And then my YouTube videos to help people that want to learn more of a structured method without test or quizzes and then the fun content just, you know, we do fun interesting short bits of information.
25:10 Very good. So here's another question that just comes up a lot question or point of view. Look, if my company isn't paying me for this time, I'm not going to this class.
25:23 Like, can we speak to that? Absolutely. And I think that's a great point. And so I think a lot of the younger generation, we see that if I'm not getting paid for this, I'm not gonna go.
25:35 And like, I see both sides of that. I can see how companies have abused the fact that somebody wants to learn demanding that they learn on their own.
25:43 So as a company, and you're gonna have this piece of equipment installed, like really the company's responsibilities to make sure they train their employees to actually do that job.
25:52 So I think on the employer side they have a responsibility to training on a technician side whether your company is paying for or not It's your your career your responsibility to learn and if your company is not paying for that You should still invest in yourself investing in yourself as the most beneficial
26:08 thing you can do and then It's gonna open up new opportunities later on So when that company is not paying for training here comes another one that is or once a higher level of technician Now they're gonna be appreciating you and hiring that So many jobs that I've had because I was learning stuff that
26:25 didn't apply to what I was doing But it opened those doors later on for more opportunities But my biggest concern is the mindset if you get to the mindset of well I'm not paying for that.
26:36 I'm not gonna do it. That's very very dangerous You should always be in the growth or learning mindset And if you feel like you're getting to where you're complacent or you're not learning That should be a red flag like hey warning what have I learned this week?
26:48 And if you haven't learned anything, be like, hey, let me go do something. Let me go and roll in an Esco course, or let me go watch a YouTube video.
26:56 Let me go do something, read a service panel, do something to learn something new. That mindset, that growth mindset will keep you successful throughout your life.
27:05 So let's assume it's not the busy season for some for technician because then it's kind of all bets are off.
27:11 But what is a good kind of time commitment, whether you're on the clock or not, but like you're they're gonna ask you for 40 hours, right?
27:21 Maybe, maybe a few less so if it's your off season, but different things for different people. What's a good kind of like a good paste commit this amount of time to my educating myself from my career?
27:34 Is it an hour a day? Is it less more like, how would you place that? That's a hundred million dollar question and that varies by everybody.
27:43 I say at minimum at least an hour a week, at the bare bare minimum actually learning, not just fun stuff, just actively learning, but the more that you can invest, the better.
27:54 And like you said, I love the fact of having scheduled time to do this, like listening to podcasts while we drive is great.
28:00 It's a great way to utilize that at that time. But if we devote some time to actually learning to sit down, I'm in a quiet room.
28:07 I'm away from the family. Look, I need at least an hour a week to devote to the career so that I can support everybody here in this household, that's important.
28:16 And if you can schedule an hour a day, man, that's awesome. That plus listen to podcasts while driving, man, that's a winning combination right there.
28:25 And I'll just, for the technicians that are listening, not wearing a black hat when I say this, but just let's just be realistic.
28:33 If you're still single and you don't have kids, now is the time to spend lots of time doing this. Does that available time will go away if the time comes that you do get a spouse and do have kids, right.
28:44 So it's exactly right. It realized that. Now, on the other hand, if you are the person who has the spouse and has the kids, let me give you some coaching in the other direction.
28:55 All day long, someone else is telling you where to go and what to do. When you come home, there's all these duties, right?
29:02 This is your zone where you can go find your space, even if it's just with your eyes closed and the headphones are on.
29:09 But but hopefully something will live video too. But this is your opportunity to say, for the sake of my career, I'm a breadwinner for this family.
29:19 I need a time where all I do is focus on learning for my career and I promise you, I promise you my friend, I promise you, you will also get a little mental health break in this thing and you will get advancements in your career.
29:36 But this is how to fit this in, right? right? Most technicians did not choose to be, they weren't, well, they were eight years old and their friends were playing Cowboys and Indians, they weren't playing tech, right?
29:47 That's not the, everybody kind of, everybody's got some story where they'd lost a job or something. Maybe their dad was in it and they kind of, kind of like the story you said Ty, you know, well, my dad was in sheet metal, but not really what I wanted to do.
30:01 You know, no one thought, man, I'm 15 years old and someday I am going to be a technician, right? But the nature of that means you fell into it, the nature of service is someone's calling you and you don't know where the next call is and that can be fun, but you're not.
30:17 You're in a reactive mode a lot of the time, right, and that's the rid the original reason I started this podcast was to create proactive conversations for technicians to flex their muscles to think about what do I want.
30:34 how do I go after that and not just be reactive in making a great life for myself right what tie is talking about today is ground zero like take control of your career by taking control of your learning curve everything else will fall from that everything and you're going to find when you start this
30:57 this path of learning that some things that you thought were true were not sometimes we get to the habit of we do A and we get the result of B.
31:06 But when you start learning, you step back, you start looking at a bigger picture and say, oh, there's some other letters down here that that also affects.
31:13 So sometimes you'll say, hey, if I did this, I get the result I wanted. But now you're seeing a bigger picture, a bigger problem of the compressor, how that's working.
31:21 Or the house as a whole. Because so many times as technicians, we get so focused on the appliance. We forget to look at the whole entire house.
31:28 And it's a system. The biggest d*** in the house is the house itself. So when you start learning, you're going to find some things that may challenge you and be like, Hey, this is differently than what Bob taught me 20 years ago, or this is differently than what I've always done.
31:41 And that's good. When you start feeling like, Oh my gosh, I didn't know that. And you start thinking, Oh, I've been doing this wrong for so long.
31:49 You can't change that. But now you can start doing it, you know, a better way. And we call best practices, not just the right way, but a better way moving forward.
31:57 Right. And that's exciting when you learn something new. And then you want to go tell other people. Hey, look at what I learned.
32:01 This is this is really cool. That's my son. When he calls me he's like, Dad, that's what I learned today.
32:07 Every time. Yeah. So listen, we're almost out of time, but I'd love to hear kind of, you know, your general thoughts.
32:16 Like, do you have this audience for the next few minutes here, Ty? What do you want to tell them about learning their craft?
32:23 And there's there's no better investment than investing in yourself and spending time learning this because the trade is going to be changing.
32:30 Regardless, you have to be changing with that. So ideally, you're ahead of that curve. Like we have new refrigerants that people get so upset about, Hey, I don't care what the government says.
32:39 I can't control that, but I can control me. I can learn about it. And when you learn about it, it's not nearly as scary.
32:45 I used to hate heat pumps. And then I learned about them. I used to hate 90% furnaces. And then I learned about them.
32:51 And then once I learned about them, they were so much easier to work on. And next thing you know, you're the you're the leader, you're the professional on that just because you learned on it and then you applied what you learned.
33:00 And there's nothing better than learning new stuff that keeps you young, it keeps it exciting. And then when you learn something new, help other people, right?
33:08 Not everybody wants to be helped, but when you're trying to help other people and sometimes that's just something as simple as smiling or open a door for somebody or nodding to somebody that can change somebody else's entire day.
33:20 So every day, learn something new and try to make somebody else smile or help somebody in some other way. Perfect, perfect.
33:27 So listen, Ty, is your YouTube channel also love to HVAC? Yep, love the number two HVAC. My Facebook is, I got to love the HVAC page, but also it's just Ty Branneman.
33:40 And then there's a Esco Institute and the E-Learn Network. There's a lot of free content on there. There's a subscription with some low-cost content.
33:49 Chris Stevens, HVACR videos, there's so much content when I was learning it was very difficult getting this information and now we have so much information out there, utilize it, grab it, find out what works best for you and start learning.
34:04 Yeah, and I'll tell you what somebody's going to listen to this podcast, the technician, and this is going to be the conversation that flips your switch from job to career.
34:14 It sooner or later you got to take the ownership, you got to believe yourself and you got to start investing the time in saying, I'm going to learn this stuff in a way that doesn't just get me through next week.
34:26 And Ty is a great place to get started. Like Ty's YouTube channel, love to HVAC.com, reach out, get to know Ty and you're going to be better for it.
34:38 Ty, thanks so much for being on the podcast day. I couldn't thank you enough for giving us your time to be here.
34:43 Oh, thanks. Like I say, I love talking about HVAC. All right. Well, hopefully we get to meet in person and talk to each other again soon.
34:49 I look forward to that. Thank you. Bye bye.