Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 Sherk: All right, everybody. We have Derek foster with us today, who is the owner of my cool neighbor in Southeast Kansas. Derek, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks. I'm excited to be here. All right. So let's,
John Sherk: All right, well, let me start with the questions. Start with everybody, which is what is your origin story? And what is your superpower? How did you make your way into the world of HVAC,
Derrick: My origin story. I've always really been kind of person likes to work with my hands, I like to be technical and tinker with stuff. That was kind of the main of the house growing up because I was raised by a single mother got into high school woodshop, and really fell in love with woodworking and the building and that kind of stuff. That was inspired by my woodshop teacher who actually wanted to send my woodshop teacher. And then as I graduated high school, realized that wood shop is kind of falling out of demand. So it's not a good career path. So then I just decided on teaching, but that's all going online. So that's also not a good career, underpaid, that kind of stuff. So I went to college, just take some some basic classes, just general, math and history and all that fun stuff that counts for everything. And as I took those classes, I tried to find something that I could do in the meantime, and one of my counselors, and actually, my mom pushed me into h fat, and said that it's something that you can do, just to get some money in the bank and use that to fund additional college and you'll always have something to fall back on. Sure. So I followed that. Went into h back got my first job, right before I graduated with my degree. And then I just kind of fell in love with it and never went back to school. So we've been in the field for 12 years now. With schooling before that. So this is this is all I've known.
John Sherk: Very interesting. So then how do you spend your days? Are you in the office only? Are you in the field with your tools? Or what is your day look like?
Derrick: I'm currently I'm a one-man shop. So I play all 17 departments. We're actually new to this area, we're from Kansas City, where I've worked with a bunch of bigger companies up there. And we moved to this area about a year ago, so only a year into ownership. But I'm finding out pretty quick that it's a lot more than I expected. Sure. Or even though we're rural. Everybody down here is a different pace. So it's not as fast paced as the big cities, but it is still a huge demand on me as an owner. So sure, definitely. Everybody thinks they can just jump out and do it. But it's a lot of work.
John Sherk: Well, yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. Because I think in this audience, there'll be a lot of technicians who in the back of their mind are thinking, I'm going to do what Derek did someday. So what would be now a year into it? What kind of advice would you give somebody who's thinking about it?
Derrick: Come up with a thorough plan, a thorough business plan. If you're going to start a company in the market that you're already in, learn your market and the pricing that kind of stuff. Come up with budgets more what to spend when that kind of stuff. The trickiest part for me was we moved two hours away to a totally different market. So I didn't know any of the pricing here. I didn't have any, any network, no friends or anybody around. So we really did it the hardest possible way. moves to a new area. And it's been a struggle, but we're finally starting to get some ground undress.
John Sherk: Good. And then like how do you do your marketing? Do you? Are you like a Google Ads guy? Or are you door-hanging? Or like what kind of stuff do you do to generate business,
Derrick: like I said a little bit ago are kind of rural. So we've got a lot of farmers around us, kind of older generations. Do a little bit on Google, but we don't rely on online presence because it's older, older generations. We found so far that yard signs have been our biggest ticket I put a yard sign everywhere I go put them on the corners and restaurants if they get picked up there then I lose a yard sign but I have all my customers have yard signs. Customer new customer calls they say Hey, I saw your sign here and that's that's been our biggest our biggest marketing tool so far.
John Sherk: Interesting, very interesting. Yeah, I'm confident that somebody who listens to this podcast is going to end up reaching out to you and saying, Hey, dear coach me, I'm, I'm thinking about taking the leap. I don't know, my wife is nervous, you know, so that the experience you're having can be magnified across multiple people's lives. So good for you for taking the leap. Good for you. Was it stressful to make the decision?
Derrick: Oh, yeah, yeah, we, like I said in the beginning, it's, you got to have a plan that allows you to do it, because you can't just quit, and then one day go, start up startup. So we were to develop, my wife and I just came up with kind of a plan. We had a house up in the city, and we sold it right at the peak of the real estate market, and got a pretty good return on that. And we were actually able to use that to pay cash for our current house. So we don't have a mortgage we have to cover. All of our vehicles are paid off. So we don't have any. We're not in any debt, really. So if I don't work for a week, it's not the end of the world, we still have enough to make everything work. She also has a job. So that takes quite a bit of a burden off. But eventually, we'd like to be both employed. Here, my call neighbor? Yeah,
John Sherk: Very good. Well, I'll tell you just to extrapolate out some of what you just said, for the audience who are thinking about, should I do this, don't miss what Derek said about not having personal debt when you get started. Because the pressure goes exponentially up, if you're not is 1000s of dollars a month, because now you're just now you've got to hustle just to have nothing. Because you got to service that debt, you know, and that. And when, when someone is in the space, of like mentally have that stress, it reduces the way I talk about it with my, with my clients, most of whom are owners of air conditioning companies, is internet, I call it inner margins, outer margins, meaning, what kind of personal inner margins I have, do I have enough time? Do I have enough energy? Do I have enough love? Do I have enough sleep? Like, if I've got those margins, that's that's what allows me to have the perspective to create margins in business, right and the to track with each other. If I've got margins, the business will probably also have margins. If I don't, the business probably will not either. Because I'll make short-term decisions, I'll hire someone and expect the return on the investment in seven days, I'll you know, I'll commit to something and then pull out of it too quickly. Because I need, I need a result now. Because the the I don't have any personal margins to lean into. And so the more the business in a cycle with each other, the more the business doesn't have margins, the more my personal margins slowly erode away. And that's what makes guys really crash and burn and when they start a business, because they don't have margins, and I can tell with you, Derek, just your overall tone, that you've got personal margins as you're doing this. I mean, if they're challenged when you start a business, no question, but but you're not, like, you know, this is an audio-only podcast, but I can see you as we're talking. You're not there's nothing about you that looks nervous, or, you know, like, we need to get done with this because I gotta go collect an invoice right now. I'm gonna miss my house payment, you know?
Derrick: So I'm pretty nervous on the inside said, I've never done anything like this.
John Sherk: But yeah, but you're doing great. You're doing great. Okay, so let's talk about technicians. I mean, you kind of have both feet in both worlds, you're a tech doing the work. And you're, you know, you're independent right now, if you're a business owner as well. So from, you know, speak to whatever kind of you feel moved to speak to hear whether it's an employed technician or someone who's in your position. Everything on this, this podcast is all about points, points of view on the wellness and happiness of air conditioning technicians. So from your point of view, what's something important for text to know, with regard to wellness and happiness in mind?
Derrick: That's kind of a loaded question. Everybody has their own version of happiness. So it's, it's hard to say this is what you have to do to be happy. This is what you should get to be happy. Me personally, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I work on my business, I work for my business. And then when I'm not working on my business, I work on the house. So I would say anybody ever asked what's my hobby, it's physical work. I'm always doing something. If I'm not doing something, I feel like I've been lazy You get kind of depressed and not happy in that case. So for me, it's not not going to be this way for everybody or for most people even. But for me, just having something to keep me busy is what keeps me happy. That does get overwhelming, because I tried to do so much. I'm very detailed. So the little details just drive me nuts if it's not perfect. So, as I've said, it does get overwhelming. But back to the Track World went up a little bit. Yeah, that's right. I know one of the biggest things for most techs is Time on the clock, over time being on call that kind of stuff. I think in the residential world, especially the call has gotten kind of out of hand. Business owners have gotten so money hungry, and they only look at the numbers, that's all they look at, don't look at their texts. I think that said on call has gotten so out of hand that we put customers so far ahead for our techs, that we don't care if our techs make it home that night. So one of my rules, one of my one of the things I want to work by here at my company is we're not going to have our call, net proceeds that worked out here in this rural area doesn't really work in the cities, but we're only going to take calls nine to five unless it's an emergency. In that case, there's going to be an additional charge, but it's got to be a proven emergency. Yeah, bus of waterpipes, or
a newborn? No, he that kind of stuff. No, we can cause we're not going to go out and adjust Miss Jones thermostat, because it's two degrees lower than it shouldn't be. Right. I think business owners understand that happy tech makes happy numbers. So they really had to put their text before before their customers, even though the money comes from the customers.
John Sherk: Yeah, I am 100% agree with you there. And again, my perspective comes in from studying labor markets, and, you know, seeing what's going on in the industry generally. And I can tell you without question, in the next 10 years, probably longer than that. The competition is not for business, it's for technicians. I mean, that's, there's no one customer that's worth as much as a good tech, they're just and it's people who own ammunition companies are slowly coming to the realization. And those who come to a quicker are going to have an advantage, that they are going to have to position themselves as competing for talent, not just offering people jobs. And, you know, trying to figure out what that means. Because a lot of times what people take that to mean immediately is I'm going to have to offer more money than everybody else. But not necessarily. I mean, there's a lot of tax if they make a fair wage, and they're treated very well. And they have a flexible work environment. That's that's putting them that companies is put ahead of many other companies in that context. And in certain practices, like, we're not going to tell you when it's the last call of the day, you're just going to keep catching them, or we're going to keep sending them to you. And we'll let you know when it's the last one. So that poor tech doesn't, he can't tell his wife when whether he's gonna be home for dinner. He can't tell his kids, whether he's going to show up for baseball practice. And so those kinds of business models, I really think are becoming obsolete for exactly this reason. Because you can't compete for talent, if that's the work environment, and you can be as well meaning as you as you want to be as an owner or as a service manager. It's not about whether you care, it's about being kind of mentally flexible enough to say is there a way we can do this differently? Because you know, this is a inferior environment for great technicians, they can go somewhere not have to do this.
Derrick: Yeah, and I can speak to that directly to the three companies that I worked for in Kansas City. One of them was the first company I worked for and I was there for five or six years the company very well known not going to mention names but they they ran on call they had their installers which is position I was there their sellers are running service calls and go back after they finished an install my my first week as a lead installer, I was actually supposed to be a helper for another installer. It's it's how I got my promotion there. But the lead there was supposed to be on call heard his back that week. So I took his spot as a lead phone call. And they ended up working now 90 hours that week. Ouch. As my very first right off the bat, here's a truck 90 hours. Wow. paycheck was amazing for that. But, man, it crushed me I was, I don't know that I really want to do this. This is, this is a lot of work. That was the only week that I ever had over 60 hours. But beyond that was was a little more normal paced, I guess 50 to 60 hours, when when I was on a call. And the next company that worked for Your installers just do the work, and then they go home, and they come back the next day to do the work, they go home. They put the happiness above profits. And that's why I can use to explain that there is a week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is popular vacation time, everybody wants that off. If you requested that time off, you got that time off. So if you have vacation, you can get paid. If not then just be on pay time. So my first Christmas season that I worked at that company, I was the only one that was there that week, because I didn't realize you could take that time back like that. But the whole department was got everybody took that week off. Wow, this is really cool. And management there was really relaxed. Everybody was a senator trying to be family, everybody was friends. You go to a company. So yeah, we're a family here. But really, it's more of a friendship thing. Everybody is really relaxed and understanding. If you want a time off, you do get it. It's not going to make your work just because you don't have any more paid time. So that was that's something that I kind of wanted to model that for as far as time off. And sure.
John Sherk: Yeah, you know, and to speak to that you mentioned this earlier, and I'll go back to it about not having on call, you know, to some degree, maybe you'd answer this better than I can. To some degree, that's a decision about what business what kind of business you want and don't want, right? I mean, if you're going to do residential work. That's, you know, again, short of unusual emergency. They can usually wait until eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Right? If you're Durkin, if you're working, low temp for, you know, somebody who's got $50,000 worth of food in the refrigerator. Yeah, nothing, nothing. I mean, you could be at your daughter's birthday party, but you're going if that phone rings, right, right. So so creating a life that you want for yourself, involves thinking through things like that, you know, taking kind of that kind of, there's pros and cons to both worlds. With residential, you're typically paying less than a commercial tech. You have a little more normal hours. You have to deal with customers. But when you're commercial, you get those, those true emergency calls where you have to leave the birthday party, you get paid for that emergency call pretty well. But it's kind of a trade off. So if you're not happy with with your end of the trade off, then go another route. Yeah, there's, there's so much demand, there's can go wherever you need to go.
John Sherk: Yep. And that's, that's part of what, for a technician to live a great life is realizing I can make these choices for myself. I can choose by where I choose to work. If I go out on my own, obviously, for sure. The I will, I will challenge one thing that you said they're there that, that I would not agree. And then in 2023, that residential techs make more than commercial, or excuse me that commercial techs make more than residential techs, because I have clients on both sides. And I think that was true 10 years ago, but residential wages are really climbing fast. And I would say that among my clients, it's actually the residential. So you know, if you're, if you're that guy who's been there 10 years, now, I'm not talking about the helper who's there on day one. But if you're the guy who's been there, 10 years, pretty much you're you're gonna make a good wage working residential. Now, just it's going to be, it depends what you like, it's going to be also a little bit more boring, because it's one 510 split after another. Whereas if you're working in industrial or commercial markets, you know, you get to put your hands on 100 ton mag chiller and really kind of sink your teeth into something interesting, you know. And there's a little bit of that in residential if it's a large house and there's a you know, multi-phase advanced system that you're working with, but But you then on the other hand, have residential, you're also closer to the customer. And you're much more if if what you love as a technician, is this deep gratitude that the customer gives you, that's a lot more of that in residential than in commercial. You know, yeah. So that's the thing. And that and my my point and kind of saying all that is to say, for technicians, when you make the transition from job to career, which is really the trend, that's the fulcrum point, when tech start really thinking about this kind of stuff, you have all these choices in front of you. And you, you know, it's important as a tech that you don't feel locked in to whatever is in front of you, right now. If you want to move in the direction of going commercial, you can do that. And you want to, you want to work on rooftops, and 100 ton units and, you know, really challenging technical environments, 100%, you can move in that direction. And you can have that, if you say, No, I want to be home at five o'clock, just about every day. But you can have that too. You know, or if you want to know, like, we talked about the low temps thing, if that kind of work environment is what you love, you know, and maybe you want to end up not working for an air conditioning company, maybe you want to work for Walmart, and you're just full time with them low temp, okay. I mean, I, you know, I talked to those texts as well. But the point of the whole thing is, you can make that call and go in that direction. If you want to own your own company, just like Derek, you can make that choice as well. So that that the psychological impact of feeling like you have choice is a central psychological component to happiness. And so the more you know, you're there, because you chose it, the happier you're going to be every day.
Derrick: Yep, and that's, that's something I didn't realize, when I was at my first company that I mentioned, the 90 hours, the first week. It was it was a happy company for the most part, but you get down to the nitty gritty and it wasn't really as great as it seemed on the outside. And as my first company I was, I felt like a rock star there, I was doing really well. And then they had a layoff and that was one of the guys that got laid off. And that really humbled me. So it'd be that I am replaceable, and really made me think that if I'm replaceable to the company, the company is replaceable to me. So just just like what you were saying, if if you're not happy where you're at, fire your company and go somewhere else. There you go. That's a two way street. Yep. You know, I was working with one of my commercial clients. And the reality is that as a technician, when you start making yourself a professional, and you put up a LinkedIn, website or page, you start kind of being that guy, not, you know, the opposite of the guy who just sits on his couch waiting for a phone call, like the guy who's out there, he's engaging on a community level, you will be so in demand as a technician, that it's just the reality of what's happening in the labor market. And so wait, I'm sitting with about, I don't know, a dozen or so supervisory technician supervisors. And we were joking how, you know, any of them could get another job in 15 minutes if they wanted to. And they started sharing stories of one of them got like, flagged down at a at a red light, the guy said, pull over, pull over pull over and said you should come to work for me. You know, another guy gets half accosted in the elevator of a hospital just because he's wearing his uniform was going to visit his mom. And they said, Are you an air conditioning technician? Yeah, you should come to work for me. And they were all telling me stories. And so we took a break. And one of the guys in the room said I'm gonna test this. So he called another company, you know, thank God, he didn't take the job or my client was shot me. But he called another company. And in 15 minutes, he had a commitment to a wage, what truck he was going to get. Just don't even think about it. Just drive over here right now. And that's the reality. And so when you if you're a technician, and you're feeling like, Man, I don't I don't like where I'm at right now, this is not good. It's not good. For me at least realize that, you know, there is the reality of putting in a few years. So you have some experience. It's a real thing. You need to know how to troubleshoot. You need to learn some things. But once you get, you know, five years in or so it's time for you to decide that you've got a career that you want. It's more than a job for you now, and make these decisions about what you want your life and just take ownership of it and go get it, whatever it is, and there's really no wrong answer to that. Whatever it is.
: Yeah, I have a story about that the random recruitment you were talking about, as I'm away home from work still in my uniform and stopped at Home Depot, so they could do stuff in my house at the time. And sit in the bathroom, washing my hands, and an owner from another company came into the bathroom, and started talking about how you can be in the bathroom with Home Depot. This is kind of an odd, odd place for an interview. But it definitely happens where once you know what you're doing. Like you said, once, it's more of a career than a job, you do anything you want to do, whatever you want to go, yep.
And you can kind of, you know, once you get married, you have a family or you're less geographically mobile. But if you're, if you're single, you can also kind of go anywhere. I always wanted to try out the Pacific Northwest. There you go, you go try that out. Man, I always wanted to live like South Texas. Okay, they need cold air down there, too, you know, so that I just think that technicians too often. And there's a lot of reasons why I hope it doesn't come across as negative. But hardly anybody in air conditioning is in it, because that was their goal the whole time. They kind of found their way there. And so they're not used to kind of looking at the whole horizon, and making these choices that work out for them. And so what you need to realize, for for the audience, it's, I think it's probably about a five year deal, you need to put in some years to kind of establish that you know, what you're doing and, and you know, this, this isn't something you get right out of to your trade school. But once you know what you're doing, you've got some, you know, experience under you, it's time to start crafting a life for yourself that you want.
Yeah, you hit it. And I like the way you said it earlier, where you compare the job versus the career. For the first couple years, it's just a job, you show up, you're, you're trying to learn, hopefully, you are learning, hopefully, you're a good company, and you're learning. But you're not able to just go out and go fix your grandma's unit, maybe you are maybe it's not that simple. But after five years or so you should be able to be able to figure that kind of stuff out. At that point, you're able to craft a career.
Yeah. And again, speaking from a residential side, you know, you should buy five years in and this is where you can gauge Am I Am I at the right place, you should have enough opportunity at five years in, to have done some troubleshooting, done some change outs, you know, maybe a little bit of sales, maybe a lot of sales, depending on where you are. But sometimes the way companies are set up, there isn't as much upward mobility like that. So if you're, if you're working with a guy who's been there, 10 years, and he's never done anything but change outs, like installs, then you need to be careful with that. Because there are things about it. And it's not a it's not I'm not anti owners, when I'm saying this, it's a it's an efficient business model. But if guys in your company are not consistently moving from helper to install, to service to sales, and that, that movement, then you could get locked in. And it's been 10 years, having only one year of experience 10 times. And so, you know, if you want to have that five year thing, you need a variety of experiences. And if you can't get it where you work, you might have to work a couple places in order to get it.
Yep, there's a beginning of that, I thought of a specific tech that I worked with it at another company. He's been an installer for 2030 years. And he was at first company I worked at, he's just comfortable with what he does. Yeah, he wants to move up. I just don't know that he really has the drive to move up, get out of his comfort zone. So he just kind of sticks with what he knows and goes home at the end of the day comes back next day.
And here again, if that's what makes the guy happy, by all means, live life that you enjoy. I'm just for the guys, you know, and he may be that I feel bad for him, though. If he looks around and says, Man, I'd like to catch a call and not just install over and over again. I mean, I mean, these guys, man, half these guys didn't even have tools in their truck. They just go sell a catch a call and they just sell something they just go to the next call, you know, I'd like to taste that. You know, being able to to have that breadth of experience. So you just even know what you want. You know, I think it's important. All right, well, let me ask you Tell me about some people that in your in your world that you look up to.