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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.
John 00:00:02 Welcome, everybody, to the HVAC Lab podcast. I'm joined today with Lori Tschol. My pronouncing that properly Lori Tschol from Eagle Pipe Mechanical in the Seattle area. is that am I saying Seattle area? Is that the right way to refer to your geography?
Lori 00:00:20 It's it's close enough. We're out on the Olympic Peninsula. And so we're in we're in a town it's like around Poulsbo, Jefferson County, Kitsap County. So, we're actually across the water from Seattle. But we do but we do work in Seattle, so we're a little bit all over the place. Sure. Which is good.
John 00:00:39 But. So, tell everybody a little bit about your background. You you're one of the few female, contractors out there that's owning a successful business. So I'd love to hear your perspective on that, as we get along here as well. But tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to this point.
Lori 00:00:58 Sure. So, I have a very unique journey. I was not in the trades at all.
Lori 00:01:03 when I started my company. it was not generational. Nobody said, hey, here you go. We started it from ground up. so my background really was a lot of business. I used to be a McDonald's franchisee, and so spending many, many years not only in restaurants but in corporate, taught me a lot about business. And, in 2011, I actually sold all my McDonald's franchises, and I should have retired and sat on the beach and said, hey, life is good. But now at the time, I felt I was a little bit too young to be retired. Hindsight, I should have stayed on that journey, but I kind of, you know, took a little bit different track. bought another, or I should say started another couple businesses that were very different. So I went from McDonald's franchisee owning successful businesses, bought Pandora jewelry stores, which is a little bit different, and then said, wow, I need to help my brother who is in the trades and has been in the trades for years and years.
Lori 00:02:09 So that was kind of the attraction and it was much more his experience, my business knowledge. And so I opened up my company and actually started. he was my first employee in 2015. And at one point it was like, okay, you're either going to come help me with this or otherwise I'm paying taxes on a company that has absolutely no revenue that I established. So it was a little bit tricky. And he did. so there was myself and then he came into the business. And then I had hired an office person. And that's how we started back in 2015. Interesting. Same point. Yeah, but same point in time. I was in full time. I was still running my, other two businesses, one in Salt Lake City and one out in Boise, Idaho. So I really went full time in the trades in 2019. So it seems like a long really. Yeah, it seems like a long journey, but 2019 is when I went full time and said, oh my gosh, we need to, we need to make this work.
Lori 00:03:13 And so that's how I ended up, becoming, a business owner. And I'm 100% woman owned. I'm the sole owner. And, my brother and I also have another family member, my amazing comfort advisor, Shelby, who is my niece. and they are employees of the company. but they do phenomenal and and help me in a lot of ways. But I'll tell you a little bit more about our company. So we have 14 team members. We are mainly residential for HVAC, and we also do a lot of commercial gas piping. And people are like gas piping, HVAC. I'm like, yeah, it actually works really well. and have a lot of contracts with some of the major utility companies around here, which allows us to work all over the state and actually in other states. But we added plumbing, so it's been one year since we've had it plumbing. So now I can say we have HVAC, we have plumbing. And our third vertical, when we get my electrical admin will be electrical.
Lori 00:04:22 But we're not we're not there yet. So that's what that's what I do.
John 00:04:26 And so when you say residential is that mostly like service calls or construction side or like which parts of it are you doing?
Lori 00:04:34 Actually all of the above, which is not always a good thing. So we have a long history and relationship with folks. And when I say long history, when you think about it, we started in 2015, I came on board 2019, where my brother's been in the industry for 43 years, so he can go back and say, oh my God, 30 years ago I installed X, Y, and Z, and that's why we kind of work in a few different areas. So we do not only service on on maintenance, we do a lot of installs. That's of course my, my objective is to, you know, do those replacements and, and make some good money for that day. But we also do quite a bit of new construction. And that's kind of a history of working with different contractors.
Lori 00:05:21 we are very selective with it. we do quite a few of the larger projects and we do quite a few, government and other type of projects, depending upon what is available. I'm certified as a woman owned business and a DBE and all those different certifications, state and federal. So it actually gives me a lot of flexibility in terms of the contracts we want to take a look at.
John 00:05:47 Interesting. Very interesting. So then, talk about the journey from, like from, from you and your brother to 14 team members. Like did you? How many of those are technicians in the field and what has been like finding those people?
Lori 00:06:06 So we have eight technicians out in the field. And then of course my plumbing is a little bit different. So when I just think about HVAC and that would be service and install. I have a lot of flexibility with my guys. I have two, journeymen that are pretty phenomenal. They can do service. they're mainly installers, but we have that luxury where it's like, oh, we have to wait for the service guy or, you know, we have to wait.
Lori 00:06:33 We can actually send other folks when we're doing a little revamping right now of this program. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to sit with, all of my guys next week and talk about the importance of, you know, service and kind of go through processes and procedures and, and, and really kind of drill into what it looks like from the customer's perspective. So we're actually doing that next week. We have that meeting set up. So the journey was an interesting one because, I like to think when guys in the trades get to a certain age, they very much can do so many different, areas. It's not just, you know, they can switch or they can do plumbing, they can do HVAC, they can do electrical, they can really do all of that. And when I try to recruit folks, I said, look at as an HVAC person, you have the luxury with, you're really working with all the traits. Plumbers just tend to work with plumbing. Electrical just tends to work with electrical.
Lori 00:07:32 You work in HVAC, you get to move in and out of those things all the time. And again, depending upon licensing, depending upon if you know you're helping out the plumber and you've got a plumbers trainee card. So, you know, you've got to be careful, you don't just like, hey, let me go wire up some stuff and you're not approved. yeah. So so that's been kind of fun working with that concept. My brother actually does so much of the gas piping and that's his passion. When he, goes out and looks at different jobs and stuff. We're very fortunate that we're kind of on a a list of who to call first. So if, University of Washington has a problem with a gas leak, they will call us. They will call him, he will go out. He's doing estimates tomorrow in downtown Seattle for some major gas work with a couple of the universities. So that's kind of the cool part of it. But if I need him, guess what? It's Saturday afternoon and I don't have anybody.
Lori 00:08:33 I need you to go do a service call. And he's like, okay. And he also, will help with the installs and he will do, kind of a different group of, calls where maybe they're very far out, maybe there's a lot of travel. at one point we purchased a fifth wheel to take on the road when he does some of these gas piping jobs. So I guess we're a little bit unique because we're not just your residential sure contractor down the road, you know, putting in whatever name brand that you're looking for. But our guys kind of like it. And we always have work. So as the market tend to slow down, the seasons tend to slow down. We can supplement in so many different ways. We can say, hey, this is a heavy duty month of of HVAC. This is a heavy duty month of of service, especially now with the weather in Washington which has been heating up. We we, you know, we can go into the cold, rainy, November.
Lori 00:09:34 And it's like, okay, we've got to get all of our utility work wrapped up. So that's kind of been the journey, with him and I. And then we have just really tried to recruit people that fit within our organization. him and I are quite a bit older, and we come out of that generation of, you know, work hard and get the job done. So, we've had a lot of adaptability, and I think I'll probably leave it at that. And, so we, go ahead and we actually are looking for individuals. I don't care if you're 18 to 60, you know, if you fit in well with our group and, and you are coming to the table with, you know, your best capability, let's work with you and especially the younger folks we want to train, develop. I'm also president of women in ECR. So what I have the luxury of doing is seeing what other companies are doing across the country. and I'm always looking to recruit and try to bring more women into the trades because I think I can be a very good mentor and role model for them, not only with my company, but with my connections on women in HVAC and women and plumbing and piping.
Lori 00:10:50 So that makes it kind of interesting.
John 00:10:52 Yeah, 100%. And I mean, if you look at the kind of standard approach that goes into residential home service, it's very often if it's a male and female couple, that's the female making the decision about who's going to who am I going to let into my house. And yeah, you know that the idea of women in residential HVAC in particular is very is a very good idea and could be a very fantastic career path for a young woman who will really find herself in a favorable position to be a comfort advisor.
Lori 00:11:25 Absolutely. In fact, the comfort I have one female and one male comfort advisors and, my female, she kills it all the time. I mean, she is out there, and it's interesting because she's actually the one that's working more with the contractors. And so you would think, you know, she would just go in on, you know, some of the, the replacements. But yeah, the bulk of her, what I see on the commission side of thing is it's really it's getting in there working with the contractors, and she really has a knack for working with the guys and going through it.
Lori 00:11:59 So yeah, I agree. And as a as a person that tries to get women in the trades all the time, we look for all those opportunities.
John 00:12:07 Yeah, yeah. And good for you. I mean, it it's and how is it going like your president of women HVAC. So like, how is it? How are the trend lines? Do you, do you feel like the messaging is getting out there? Like what? What are you seeing on that side of it?
Lori 00:12:22 So 2024 has been a really year of change for the organization. So we have close to 1200 members. we just hired an executive director. She came on board April 8th. So now we're really moving and shaking. You know, having a additional person that is a contractor in her own right and has been in the trades for quite a few years. So it's been kind of fun watching this. I call it a journey. And, so the trends are we're looking for a lot more females. We have quite a few contractors that have joined the organization.
Lori 00:12:56 One of my goals for 2024 was to put more women contractors within the organization. We have tons of folks from, distributing and suppliers and marketing and and we love all of those folks. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to sell your service and you come to our conference, you're going to want to be selling the contractors. And we also think those contractors can really help supply maybe more women into the system. Or in our case, as an organization, we give out six $5,000 scholarships a year. So who can we work with to get these young ladies to come in, apply, and we help them either paying for their trade school or whatever type of education that they require to be able to work within the within the trade. So it's kind of a great way to do it. And, we can take a look and see across the country as having an ambassador program, going out to the schools, talking to the young folks about this is a phenomenal career for you. Go into the shop classes.
Lori 00:14:05 I do that within my own community. I'm at the high school and I'm talking to the shop classes and and I always say to the counselors, I'm like, okay, where are the young ladies that are not necessarily interested in college, that are interested in working with their hands, or they are a part of the shop classes so that I can do a presentation for them.
John 00:14:27 Interesting. You know, I'll just comment on that too. On a business level, you know, as a consultant, I do recruiting, but I also do sort of business level kind of consulting. And the, the, my normal conversation about business strategy is that it's, the primary purpose of business strategy is to create unfair advantage, meaning, and and you can't get you can't create that advantage, usually for free, because then someone else can just decide they're going to do it too, right? So there has to be some sort of investment in a direction or a software, something that builds something that somebody else would have to make the same investment to have in order to compete at the same level that you're competing with this, whatever this is.
John 00:15:06 Right. And it I don't think women understand enough that in the trades there are places for you where you are the one with the unfair advantage, competing as a worker for promotions, for business, for all of those things that go with it. Right? Because just like a business wants to have an unfair advantage as an as somebody who's competing for, for, jobs and, and, promotions and that kind of thing in a market. You also want to have an unfair advantage. And it isn't the idea that there's some Dei rule that gives you a job you don't deserve. It's that correct. It's that you can be you can be in a more comfortable conversation Well, there's multiple versions of this, but one version of it is you can be in a more comfortable conversation with certain customers than a man can, and it just makes it possible for you to just have an advantage. And and frankly, the person who hires you, they have an advantage now over someone else who didn't hire you. And that dynamic, to me, is an important part, both of recruiting women into the industry and also just helping women see, because I think the stereotype of the industry, it's a it's a overwhelmingly male industry, and it it comes off as if it's a lot of, how tough are you kind of stuff.
John 00:16:28 And I'm not saying some of that isn't there, but there's plenty of tough women too. And so. Oh, yeah, you know, that that that dynamic just realizing that, you know, there's a there's space for you in, in, in the trades, I would say HVAC, but in the trades as a woman And it isn't simply it isn't crawling around in an attic at 140 degrees. There's more going on than that.
Lori 00:16:55 And I think that's what we really try to show. so women in HVAC and women in plumbing and piping, both of them not only have scholarships, but they also have mentorship. And so I'm fortunate I'm mentoring three women right now. One is a business owner, one is a general manager of a HVAC company, and the third one is a service tech and my service tech. I love that young lady. She will connect with me on a regular basis, and it's always on the weekends because she loves the company she works for. She gives them 110% Monday through Friday.
Lori 00:17:31 On the weekends, her and I once at least a minimum of once a month will connect and we really tried to uncover. So here she is, doing a phenomenal job at what she's wanting to do, paid to do, skill to do. But her goal is she wants to write for, like, Hacker News. She wants to be an editor. She wants to understand what she's writing about. And so sure enough, we've been able to do some connections, she's done some connections, and she's got 3 or 4 articles published already. And so it's kind of exciting because you go like, oh, you're a service tech. Next thing you know, you could be an editor at a magazine writing about the trades, knowing that you can speak to service in the industry, knowing that you can speak to the new refrigerants, because you need to understand that to do your job. So I think that's kind of the cool part of when people look at the trades, it's not just, oh, you know, I'm going to go into somebody's house and look at their thermostat.
Lori 00:18:31 It's like it opens up unlimited possibilities.
John 00:18:35 Yep. Very interesting, very interesting. Well, let's open it up to techs of all genders. and just talk a little bit from your perspective. when our texts well under what conditions and and however you want to fill in the blank on this, but, where do you see is the text that seemed most satisfied and happy with their lives? And what is it about how they have their life set up or what they're what's happening at work that makes them that? Sure.
Lori 00:19:05 So what I'm seeing is the texts that are happy are the ones that, of course, they're making money, but they also have flexibility. So for example, we try to work for ten hour shifts and we do that as design, because sometimes where I'm located we get on ferries in some cases to go to Seattle. So instead of driving three hours, we can be on a ferry for 30 minutes, get across sending that, horrific Seattle traffic. And then, oh, wait, we get to our job.
Lori 00:19:35 So that's not the norm. But we still do some of that, and we will probably send out a service tech like every two weeks. And then we'll of course, make it worthwhile. Compile all the appointments on that day. So I think the ones that are satisfied are the ones. And after I just said that, I'm going to say less windshield time. But yeah, there's a price that goes with that. You know, they get paid for it. So when, when I think about the amount of time. So when we say four ten hour days, it's because if they are in Seattle we know they've had a long week. So let's get them wrapped up by by Thursday. Have off Friday Saturday, Sunday. what keeps them happy is if you have a selling tech because they're making more money, they're flipping leads. I'm getting ready to do payroll for my company, and I can already see what my commission sales folks have brought in. And I can also see where leads been flipped.
Lori 00:20:29 And I'm so excited to be able to put that percentage of money on their checks. So that would be that would be a selling tech. We are not at the point where we've done pay for performance. I probably have 2 or 3 individuals within my company that are great candidates. We're not quite there yet. We? We've done, of course, the research and I need to get something launched, but it's going to be another few more months because I think they will even be happier where they can really get paid based on their performance, not on that, you know, 8 or 9 hour workday. So selling tickets, windshield time, flexibility whenever they can get more time off is amazing. And I think the other thing is it's the little things like for Seattle to be 90 is not necessarily the norm. And we're we're at if it's 90 in Seattle, it might only be 85 by us. And so it's like, oh, they're roasting, cooking, thinking. It's like, oh my God, this is so hot.
Lori 00:21:31 I'm like, okay, you better not go to Vegas or Arizona or Louisiana, okay. Yeah, yeah. You guys aren't going to make it because you'll be out in the pouring rain. so it's like, get the Gatorade, get the drinks get the ice, get the water, make sure they're set up for success. And then the other flip side on that is we get horrible, rainy, cold weather. I was on a, a call yesterday and the woman looked at me. She goes, you're wearing winter clothing? And I said, yeah, I have on a down vest, but I left my house. It was cold. My warehouse is a little bit cold, so I have on a down vest, and she's sitting in Florida at 100 degrees, and I'm sitting at probably 58. Yeah. so then with the rain. So do you get them? they have these umbrellas with their magnetic that they can go on the outside unit outside. So when they go outside and they need to kneel down and get in there and work on the controls, it's not the rain isn't pouring in on them.
Lori 00:22:28 Do they have rain gear? how about making sure that when we send out equipment to a job, not only do you have a two man, folks to help you with the left, but maybe, we send out our box truck with the the left that can, you know, take the equipment right down to ground level and, you know, looking at the safety and, and things like that. I think it's a combination when you interview them. It's not always about the money. I think it's money is a major part. And also benefits. Are you paying for all of their benefits? Are you paying a percentage of their family benefits? But the the keys that I am finding is flexibility. Time off of course making good fair wages and having benefits. But whenever they have the opportunity that they can make a little bit more money, they hate meetings. We try to make meetings as fun as possible. We will go ahead and we'll set up for some, like training like every couple, every couple weeks they get at least every two weeks we'll do a full blown training with with the installers and the service guys and we'll cook them breakfast.
Lori 00:23:40 We keep a black stone right at the shop. We'll cook them all up. Breakfast, they'll grab breakfast. You know, this time it's like 630. 7 a.m. they'll sit down, they'll attend the training session, and they like that because they're getting breakfast, they're getting training and they get interaction. I had one service tech where, he was, I call him. He was just out there. He was the lone wolf because he would go run all those service calls, and he didn't have that guy sitting in the truck with him. So sometimes they need that. They need to get into that group and say like, hey, you know, this capacitor went out and this is what I did. And and, you know, I'm trying to sell some more indoor air quality. What are you doing? And so a lot of it is just getting together. And it's not just coming in earlier, having a huddle before they roll out because sometimes they dispatch from their homes, they take their trucks home.
Lori 00:24:34 So that's a major money component because yeah, some of our guys live, you know, 30, 40 minutes away. So we're giving them vehicles, paying for gas. And I started figuring out some cases. It could be an extra $500 a month that they're not having to pay for because they have vehicles, they have gas and those type of things.
Lori 00:24:55 Yeah.
John 00:24:55 Interesting. Yeah. You know, the the model that I use in my recruiting stuff when I do when I do that with clients, I have a model that I use. It's doing a lot of what you said fit into my model, that there's sort of five levels of issues that one of these, if you've got it zippered up your, your, retention is probably going to be much higher than average. And any one of these, it's not there. It's sort of the leak that opens the door for someone to go from one place to another, whether they're coming to you because you have it and where they are doesn't or it isn't where the where, where you are.
John 00:25:31 And then they're looking at somebody else. Right. And the five five components, five levels are basically short term resources. Like especially you get off season and I don't get 40 hours a week guaranteed. And so like that. You know, I can't pay my rent this month, like short term resource issues, right? That's a reason. Yes. second one is a sense of long term security. And some of these are more 10,000 foot categories. But this could be anything from, I don't I don't like the benefits here. And so I don't think this is a long term option, but I don't feel like I have to leave right now. But when the time comes, this will be a reason I leave. And in the same category is someone who's service manager tells them every three weeks they're going to get fired.
Lori 00:26:12 And oh no.
John 00:26:13 It's the same feeling of insecurity. Like there's a category of I can't be here long term or I won't be here long term, right? That's another one.
John 00:26:22 Third one has to do with teamwork and relationships. Feeling like I'm part of this team. I'm people are not, back stabbing me in the back. There's not a sense of competition where it's like, in order for me to win, someone has to lose. And there's, you know, there's a sense of teamwork there. The. I worked with someone as a technician who told the story. I couldn't believe the story, but he said that they, the owner of the company in their meeting room, put up, painted on the wall wall of shame. And then he had an eight by ten portrait of everybody in the all of the text. And any tech who didn't meet their numbers from last week when they came in on Monday, their picture was on the wall of shame.
Speaker 3 00:27:06 Right? So, like.
John 00:27:08 So this kind of thing, for obvious reasons, is a there's no sense of team. And so they want to feel like they're part of something like that. Right. Fourth category has to do with, a sense of upward movement and respect.
John 00:27:23 Right. and of the five, this one is actually number one where in smaller companies, people begin to feel like they don't have anywhere to go as a career. Like the like where does do I have the next thing. Right. And so that begins to be a reason like, well, if I can be if I'm if I'm a lead tech here. But over there I'm a service manager, even if the company is smaller and the pay isn't that different, if it feels like moving upward, then that's a that's a gap. And then the last one is just feeling like I can do what I do best every day. If I'm good at what I do, it feels great to do it. And if I can do that here, that's what I want. If I feel like I can't do what I do best every day, then the door's open for me to go somewhere else. And then what we do at our end is we build out strategies to make sense of that and go to go to market, competing for those people.
Lori 00:28:12 Yeah. And those those are great categories. But, you know, I'm always trying to learn and, and figure out like, okay, like I just had a service guy give me his notice, and I, I wasn't surprised. he had one of his managers leave, and I think he felt like he lost that sense of security and and even though we, like, stepped in and we're hand-holding and it's like, hey, buddy. And he gets tons of five star reviews and everything else. So right away I'm trying to build and grow so I know I need another plumber this minute. I need another service tech. I don't need another service tech this minute, but it would be nice. And my thought was, okay, let's kind of work. let's kind of help his workload so he can do more of selling, make some more money. Do three, maybe four calls a day. I mean, you got some guys out there that are running seven, and, you know, they might be quick and efficient and get through them, but they're not giving the customer all the attention and going through everything that they should be to make it, you know, a value and quality to the to the customer.
Lori 00:29:24 So then, he brought some things because when he told me, I sat down with him, I said, hey, let's let's kind of work through this. I was not and I was not going to ask him to stay because, I don't know that he would have, you know, you just get that sense, like I can and it's not throwing money. Oh, here's another dollar, here's another $2. So what was his tipping point was we had posted an ad and my virtual assistant put on two service techs instead of one. We are looking for two service techs and we're looking for a plumber. So what he did was he saw that and he's like, wait a minute. If they want two service texts with me being three, I don't know that there's going to be enough work for us all. So instead of saying like, really? And even though he called, my comfort advisor and she immediately said, oh, I think that's a mistake, it should only be one. And we're really trying to back you up and help you and support you.
Lori 00:30:24 That was one factor. The second factor was right after his manager left and I sat with him and I'm like, how can we make you successful? How can we give you growth within this company and really talk to him about how he had the ability to sell his customers, love them, everything else. And of course. Right. And at no point did I say we will not give you more money. But I never came back and said, you know what? If you do this. It's $2 more an hour or $3 more an hour. Because we're in Seattle, we're paying the highest rates in the country. So you don't get a service tech for less than $40 an hour. So you're sitting in that range and that's like their base. And so because I never came back, but he didn't ask for it. I said, look at these are all the ways you can make money. So I laid out kind of a plan. This is, you know, your five star reviews pay.
Lori 00:31:17 If you sell this pays, you flip this page. Da da da da da da da da. I give him all these options to make money. He's not hearing any of it. So when he has the conversation with me, he's like, at no point did you say you would give me more money. Now I would like to rip my hair out and go, what do you mean? I gave you ways to make so much more money than a dollar. $2? $3 for an hour. But that's not what they hear. Just like they don't think about compensation packages or compensation. They look at their check and say just how much I make. That's it. It's all hourly. Yeah. They don't look at last year I made this or because of truck and gas and all the things that's combined and the benefits package and the matching 401 K and the yada, yada, yada yada, it adds up to this. Yep. They don't look at any of that.
John 00:32:12 That's Lori. That is such a good point you're making.
John 00:32:15 If you're a technician and you're listening to this podcast, catch what Lori just said. Just because someone offers you an extra $5 an hour, it doesn't mean you're getting better financially by taking it. You have to really assess like what? What are the insurance deductibles? What is the insurance out-of-pocket for my check? What is. What's the situation with the truck? What? What are all of the other? they're not intangible, but they don't show up in an hourly wage. Things that come with this job. I have a client down here in Baton Rouge that they had a good tech who was being drawn away, by another company. And they put down as they they kind of they knew they needed to, but this triggered them finally doing it and made a very detailed list of all of the compensation and dollars and put it all in one page and said, yes, go ahead if you need to leave, but realize this is your compensation here. I encourage you to go to them, fill in their column and compare apples to apples.
John 00:33:18 And the tech came back and said, wow, I'm so glad that you did that, because had I taken that other job, I would have been made more per hour, but just the insurance would have taken me below where I was or where I am now.
Lori 00:33:31 Right?
John 00:33:31 Exactly that. If you're a technician man and I get it, I get it, I get it. The idea of three bucks an hour, it doesn't take very long before you in your mind, you calculate what that means per check and that. But different places do different things for technicians. And very often the companies that throw around the most per hour are doing the least everywhere else, and.
Speaker 3 00:33:54 So correct that.
John 00:33:56 It just is what it is. You need to know if you're 25 years old and you're single, you may not really care that much about the insurance, right? But if you have a spouse, if you have children, if these are things that are part of your reality, boy, look into it because three bucks an hour, there's who knows if that's better for you or not.
Lori 00:34:15 Right, exactly. It's so true. And these are things that business owners, not only technicians, business owners, need to think about. because even when I was a McDonald's franchisee, they'd be like, McDonald's, you know, minimum wage. I'm like, are you kidding? And look at what McDonald's is now paying. Yeah, they're paying. They're paying more than some of the apprentices are getting. And I'm thinking, okay, something's changed here. But, you know, back in the day when I had these, we offered insurance, we offered scholarships, we offered a whole bunch of stuff, and we would always try to give that employee a benefits package. So they totally understood not only what they were getting, what they could get, and they didn't look at just that hourly rate. It's it's very hard to do, but it's I think it's worthwhile. Yeah. If anybody takes the time to do it.
Lori 00:35:04 Yeah.
John 00:35:05 100% I mean and at the end of the day, most, most technicians, they care about more than money, but they do care about money.
John 00:35:12 And so making sure that there is a way to equalize all of this, and it can easily get lost because it's not easy to, you know, someone can say, we have good insurance, but what does that mean? You know, I mean, what I've found is that usually they'll find another technician who works there and they'll say, how's the insurance And if it covers that guys, whatever, then they'll say, I think it's pretty good and that's all that they don't. There's not an easy way to assess, you know, do they cover ozempic for weight loss or do they not do they what what do they you know, you it's hard to know. And so the, the insurance thing becomes a bigger question mark. That's sometimes really difficult to answer. It's it's a perception more than something. You can put numbers on a page, too.
Lori 00:36:01 Sure.
John 00:36:03 Well. Very good. Well, listen, we're just about out of time, Lori, but, tell everybody how to get Ahold of you two ways.
John 00:36:10 One, if they would like to talk to you about coming on board with you at, your company there in northwest Washington state, and, that's that's my safest way to say that. And then. or the, is it the Olympic Peninsula?
Lori 00:36:27 I said that, yeah, it's.
Lori 00:36:28 The Olympic Peninsula.
John 00:36:29 Olympic Peninsula. and also women in HVAC, if they want to reach out to you and make a connection there. How do they do it?
Lori 00:36:35 So let me give you my email. It's Lori Lori at Eagle Pipe mechanical.com. And I can put you in contact with everything. So women in HVAC are women in plumbing and piping if you're a plumber, if you're a plumber apprentice. And again, women in HVAC are women in plumbing and piping. Not that we don't have men as sponsors, but but women, plumbing and piping the females actually join or the company joins women in HVAC. We have a lot of folks that join and they can get training and zoom calls and everything else. So that's on that side of it.
Lori 00:37:15 But my email will be able to get you to all of the above, and we would love people to come join us out here. It's a beautiful part of the country. you won't be 160 degrees in an attic, I'll guarantee you that. You won't have to be out there at 4 a.m. in the morning, because you're trying to prevent that from happening. you might get a little cold and damp, but I think that's better than having heat stroke.
Lori 00:37:38 So they told.
John 00:37:39 Us down here in the bayou this morning that on the morning news that it was whatever was the thing after the heat advisory and they said, you should expect it to feel like 115 most of the day, but, but but by 10:00 tonight, it'll go down under 100.
Lori 00:37:53 Oh.
Lori 00:37:54 Oh, yeah. And we'll be like in the 50s that night. Yeah. It's like I have to close my windows and doors because it's cold. I, I might use AC once or twice a year. Oh that's it. That's it.
Lori 00:38:07 And even then I'm pushing it. I have yet to use it this year. And we've had a, I don't know, 32, 35 what they call streak of hot weather.
Speaker 00:38:15 So that's remarkable. Yeah. That's remarkable. Yeah.
John 00:38:18 Well, listen, Laurie, thanks so much for doing this. You're taking the time to be on, HVAC lab, and, I'm sure we're going to keep in touch after this, so.
Speaker 00:38:26 it's good to talk to you.
Lori 00:38:28 All right. Take care. Thanks.
Speaker 00:38:30 Bye bye. Okay.
Lori 00:38:31 Bye.