Tales from the trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
This episode brought to you by Cocoon Thermal Mass Furnaces.
Learn more about Cocoon at CocoonRevolution.com.
Alright everyone, thank you for joining us once again on Did You Know?
The ESCO HVAC podcast. We're hanging out with our dear friend Alan Coggins.
Alan, how are you today?
I'm well. Thank you for having me on the show today.
Now, for those of you who can't see us, since this is just an audio podcast,
you know, Alan may be struggling to keep straight face today.
I'm actually in full confidence down in the studio doing some recording
for a new video covering Fractionation and Bubble and Doom.
Going over Glide and just talking about things in the industry.
And it kind of sets us up for this conversation.
So for those of you who don't know Alan, Alan is like myself.
Started out as a technician, understanding how to work on equipment,
but never stopped pushing himself and along the way has really found
new places within himself.
And we have to remember that, that no matter what we do or a career,
it's our passions that really drive us to becoming something new in our own self.
And so, Alan, let's spend a little bit of time setting the stage of your evolution
and help people understand that you never stop learning
and you never stop pushing yourself to new levels and new limits.
No, you know, it's so true.
I mean, I got to say I was never in high school.
I was never a modeled student, right?
You know, I did not have my priorities in line to say the least.
Sure.
And looking back now, part of that was due just the way that I was learning,
you know, the way the school was set up, you know,
I just didn't do well in it, right?
Wasn't your learning format.
Exactly. You know, it's like, you know, they all I feel like a lot of public schools,
they want to tailor the kid around the education instead of
right, instead of tailoring the education around the kid.
Exactly. And opening up their opportunities to explore themselves.
Right, right. You know, and so looking back on it, yeah, I was kind of bored.
I was, you know, dealing with other things, too, you know, of course,
being a young adolescent man and whatnot and all those things.
So I was always learning that I love to work with my hands.
I just love to tinker in the basement and, you know, all those kinds of things.
And, you know, kind of going back, how I got into all of this is, you know, early on,
again, I was that tinkerer and me and a friend of mine, we would go
dumpster diving of all things.
For parts of stuff to tear apart.
Exactly. Not so much, you know, you know, never go to the food ones.
Those those are bad, you know, that's right.
But we would find stuff, all kinds of things.
Radio, TV, speakers. Oh, yeah.
All that stuff. And then we were just, you know, tear it apart and build things.
And, you know, just, you know, that's how we were learning.
And everything is is what I realized at that point is like, no,
I really enjoy working with my hands.
I learn, you know, by doing more so and, you know, all of those kinds of things.
I just learned better, I should say. Yeah.
And so I went into tech school, you know, and first went into tech school
and South County Tech in in Missouri here.
And, you know, again, it was a really a lot of hands on education.
And I love that.
And that's what really started to kick everything off.
And then, you know, later on, I seen a buddy of mine who was in
one of the union programs and he said, man, you got to get into this.
And then there I had more schooling. Right.
You know, and it just I just kept eating the schooling building and building.
Right. You know, just I mean, just going in, learning, you know,
Duckworth, learning, you know, service.
I mean, just the whole nine yards.
And then, you know, really getting into like testing and balancing and,
you know, really progressing through the trade, if you will,
and just finding different facets of the industry that I enjoyed.
And also the facets I did not enjoy, too.
They come along with it.
Yeah, it's not all peachy keen.
There's addicts and girl spaces and nasty oil.
And there's a there's a lot of things that aren't the funnest,
but it's all part of the experience. Exactly.
You know, and so really kind of looking back, you know,
and just kind of how I was and how I came from school into the trades, if you will.
It was a nonstop educational experience.
And even today, after now, I mean, I'm still in the trade, of course, you know,
but from a different facet, we're manufacturing at this point.
And, you know, and there's things that at this site, had I not been in the trade
and learning and continuing the education and just trying to make myself better,
I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing today as well.
I believe that. Let's talk about some of those sparks along the way.
Yeah. Well, a lot of different life events.
So I was a very young man and again, school wasn't my best.
And I was busy chasing my wife, you know, right.
Needless to say, we had children at a young age.
Yeah. Well, I guess that's a big spark.
Yeah, that changes things right there.
You know, redirect your focus a little bit sometimes.
Absolutely. You know, and it was it was that point of, OK,
no, now we've got to work and earn and we've got to, you know,
make the best life that I can for my family.
And, you know, hence another reason why school, school, school.
I knew that the more school that I took, the more employable I was.
Yes. You know, the more opportunities.
Exactly. You know, and not to mention, how about more opportunities
to get into those those jobs that I did like?
You know, it's like, you know, I'm at a level, if you will,
that you get to a level at a certain point. Yeah.
And it's like, you know what? No, I want to do this.
I want to focus on this and not this because I am trained to do this
or I do this better, whatever, you know.
You know. And so, yeah, I mean, family was a big spark.
Oh, gosh. Just just the drive to, you know, of myself, of wanting to better myself.
I came from very humble beginnings.
And, you know, I didn't want my children or myself to live in poverty
and wanted to just, you know, do the best that I could, no matter what I did.
Yeah. Amen.
You know, so that's therein lies, you know, some of those sparks that are,
I mean, really, you know, you think that, you know, oh, it's you know,
this is what I want to do. This is my ambition.
And this is, you know, I love to do this. Right.
They say if you if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.
But, you know, work is work, right?
Work is still work. It doesn't go away. It's still there.
Right. How many people want to go to work instead of go fishing?
You know, are you know, whatever goes to the balances or something?
Who knows? I don't know. Yeah.
Well, at what point did you decide that, you know, maybe I can push myself
and really put my brain to work and try inventing some things.
So that was always there at a young age.
Again, like I said, I was always that tinkerer.
And I, you know, I had a whole book full of things, you know, and here's some,
you know, if anybody's got an idea who's listening to this,
the first thing you need to do is write it down.
That's the first step in making it into a reality.
And, you know, that's exactly what I did is I had these ideas
and I got a book full of them and I just, you know, wrote them down and,
you know, kind of went from there.
And, you know, but what really, I think, you know, made me kind of take that step
was even my 96 year old grandmother, who had a lot of wisdom behind her in 96.
And luckily, the
a supporting wife, let me tell you, I wouldn't be half.
Yes, you know, wouldn't been able to do half of what we've done if it hadn't,
you know, hasn't been for her.
But, you know, my grandmother, she was reading an article in the paper
in our local paper in Arnold, Missouri.
They were having problems with street lighting.
So lighting is the number one thing that, you know, deter crime.
Sure. And so the problem is these subdivisions were built in the 50s
or 60s and all the electricity is at the rear of the house instead of up front by the road.
Right. And so they had no streetlights in the subdivision and they were wanting streetlights.
And at the time I was messing with solar.
This is going back in the early 90s at this point.
Or, yeah, early mid 90s.
And my grandmother read this paper and she was,
Alan, you're doing something with that solar.
Why don't you try to do something?
She goes, you know what? Just try it.
I said, light bulb went off.
I said, OK, I'll give it a go. Right.
I had this idea that I wrote down.
Yeah. And I actually, you know, we brought to market the nation's first hybrid LED streetlight.
I invented the nation's first hybrid LED streetlight.
You know, in the process of going through HVAC school, you know, I feel that we are
the most skilled trade, if not one of the most skilled trades out of all the trades.
You've got to know so much electrical, chemical, you know,
list goes on and on geometry, everything.
And, you know, so I just I said, you know what? Yeah, I could do something with that.
And I just started building it.
And sure enough, we had the nation's first hybrid, which was 100 percent off grid,
used wind and solar power LED lighting.
Now, this comes into play a little bit later on.
You know, it was all you know, that was the big push, I should say,
you know, was my grandmother back then.
And then, you know, hey, try this.
And really, it wasn't so much in the HVAC realm.
It was in the lighting realm. Sure.
Electrical, but electrical, mechanical.
I mean, exactly. What do we do?
We work on electrical mechanical devices that have refrigerant inside of them.
Right. And, you know, dealing with different light spectrums, too, you know,
you can put in different color bulbs and, you know, all those kinds of things.
You know, that's really it started started me towards, you know, really
seeing how energy is, you know, is utilized and, you know, exactly.
And so, you know, that kind of started me down the road.
And then I always had this idea with this furnace.
And it's funny how even that lighting industry is now it has intertwined.
It's a piece. Exactly.
I mean, there is there is a definite crossover, you know, in
in some of the science behind it and, you know, in all of that as well.
So, you know, but yeah, it was it was really the big push was that.
And like I said, have you know, I not had a very supporting and understanding wife.
I wouldn't have been able to do half of it.
Yeah, that's super, super important.
Well, I find it, you know, intriguing that, you know, you pushed yourself.
You had support, yes, but you pushed yourself to do something
from an idea that you had.
And I think many of us get stuck at that little point.
We have some great ideas.
I have had some wonderful conversations with young technicians, old technicians.
People have been in the field and go, you know, if we just did this,
we could do this.
And I go, why don't you try that and see where it goes?
It may go nowhere.
But what else are you going to do?
Flip through your phone, flip through the TV.
Why don't you go out and try it?
You might let the magic smoke out of something, right?
You know, I mean, yeah, you know, you don't want to burn your house down.
I do the flammable stuff outside in which, you know, right now,
if everybody could see this, you know, it's like, OK, I'm talking to the mad
scientist right now.
This is great, so love it.
But yeah, it was, you know, yeah, really, the reason behind it, too,
has changed throughout the years.
You know, at first it became a, hey, you know, let's let's do something
different and something better, you know, that that has meaning.
You know, in the beginning, it was knows about let's let's put food on the table.
Right. Like, you know, let's do something, you know, all of those kinds of things.
And as as these projects came up, Streetlight, the furnace now,
you know, my reasoning for doing it all has changed over the years, too.
Yes. You know, I want to make big, ugly piles of money.
Who doesn't write, you know, a dream, right?
But also the things that I didn't expect, the things I didn't see,
you know, that that were coming along that just blindsided me was,
you know, a we had a family tragedy.
I lost my son in 2019.
And he has a he had a daughter who was 11 months old when he passed.
You know, we now have her.
Yeah. But again, that reasoning that, you know, even at that time when we didn't have her,
it was about, OK, you know, I still wanted to leave this world a better place,
you know, than when I found that's right.
That's our thing.
You know, at least try.
That's all I can do is wake up and try every day.
Yep. And then now that then I have grandkids, now it's time to do something.
I have grandkids. Now it's like, no, I want to make this world not just a better place,
you know, but a place that they are going to be able to enjoy and love.
And, you know, if you just take all the politics right out of global climate change
and all that other kind of stuff and just look at common sense thinking, right.
Smart energy management.
To me, that's some of the best things that we can do.
How can you go wrong? Exactly.
You know, take all the BS out of it. Forget about any initiatives in there.
Right. Just the responsibility.
How can I be more responsible with my time on this planet?
You know, if and if we look at things, how HVAC, how our industry is done,
really on a worldwide scale, which, by the way, I didn't get that crash course
until a few years ago. Yeah.
I was an HVAC guy, right?
I fixed things. I didn't worry about what was coming.
I just fixed what was here.
Exactly. And, you know, what we have seen and what I've learned from now to then
is that, you know, the whole world's in a crisis.
Yes. You know, I mean, if you look at what's happening over, you know,
in the Ukraine war, you know, you got Russia targeting, you know, infrastructure.
Why? Because it creates chaos.
You know, well, if we can put some of that power back into the people's hands,
if you will, you know, we have less chaos to be spread.
Right. And during during those kinds of times.
And, you know, so again, even still, I find my reasonings, you know, changing
for, you know, just just just different facets, you know.
OK, well, maybe this will help alleviate this issue if, you know,
it means all those kinds of things. Right. Yeah.
Now, I get it.
I think we're very much becoming a society more aware of that,
especially with our younger generations.
You know, they are very in tune to making a difference in the world.
And I think it's flowing backwards towards us, who may not have grown up
with that exact same perspective. And I love it.
I absolutely love the fact that we have our young students,
our young technicians now becoming educators, you know, here at our own conference,
our National HVAC, our education conference.
And we had like 500 new educators at the conference, all hungry
for knowledge and hungry to be able to make a difference.
And so at the backbone, I'm going, be like Alan,
make a difference, do something, take something that you think
could change the world and go give it a try.
What's the worst case that you let the smoke out?
That's right. That's the worst case scenario.
Have a fire extinguisher, have a garden hose and go have fun.
That's right. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, I remember even in school,
you know, when I was a cub and, you know, just, you know, go and OK,
go over there and troubleshoot that furnace.
I didn't know what I was looking at. Right.
And he, you know, the instructor knew that, too. Sure.
But he also recognized, you know, how I learned.
And, you know, he was able to help me in regards to that.
I'm like, no, just go get in there and hey, if you break something, let me know.
You know, just don't blow the place up.
You know, it's easy to do.
You know, many of other people's mistakes as well as many, many, many of my own.
Yes. Yes. So, you know, I mean, really, I love this industry,
you know, just for the journey alone that it's really given me
and the opportunities that's given me and my family, too.
I never would have thought, you know, that a career in HVAC could take you around the world.
And, you know, I have been I've been in all, you know, some some really cold places.
Right. You know, for sure.
But some really cool places, too.
You know, you know, and I just never would have thought that in HVAC,
you know, a guy running in a truck and everything else, you know, could could end up, you know,
I thought like that was my life. Right.
Oh, I was just in a truck and I was going to be a service guy.
And that's it.
And really, if everybody just takes a moment and kind of look at their industry
and see where they're at and see how they can better themselves,
I think who knows, they may end up finding themselves running around the world,
doing startups or whatever.
I believe faithfully in it.
You know, I spent 20 years in the field thinking that I would retire from the field.
And I was fortunate enough to have a recruiter reach out and say,
I think you missed the bar.
If you have breakfast with me, I'll tell you why.
And that set into motion things that I hadn't even realized.
I mean, I my first year, I went to college for TV, radio, film.
So I had a DJ business when I was a teenager.
Very cool.
When I had kids, I set those ambitions to the side to go make some money.
Right. And there was good money in HVAC and I'd married into a family business.
I was like, OK, I'm an HVAC guy the rest of my life.
And so we don't know until we explore and we don't explore until we do.
Until we push ourselves just a little bit.
And I'm just so grateful to hear these stories.
And you know, that's that's even part of it, too.
It's like, you know, I and I'm sure we all have the story.
You know, you come across the, you know, let's say the the engineer
that's closer towards his retirement, you know, that kind of thing.
And boy, he doesn't want to rock the boat.
You know, this is the way we've always done it.
You know, and I think that is so horrible, not just as a business practice,
but also as a personal practice.
Yeah. And you know,
everybody gets complacent.
I don't care if you're the CEO of the company or if you're the janitor.
Everybody will eventually get complacent.
And really, that's when you got to, I think, dig down inside and go, OK,
what's going to get me up in the morning?
What is going to get me rolling here and what's going to get my drive back?
You know, maybe it's a vacation.
Maybe it's a new a new facet of the industry that you didn't know before.
New class and opportunity.
Exactly. It just and you know, really, I think just, you know, finding that
and finding that drive again, you know, when you get to that point.
And it's hard to recognize it.
You know, you go through life and just, you know, oh, this is it.
Here it is. And then boom, either a something that you do changes it
or be something changes you, you know, an event changes you.
So, you know, I think that's just a big thing in the industry.
And a lot of, you know, a lot of technicians and a lot of the young ones
I talked to today, you know, is to keep that ever wanting to learn.
And you will not go wrong.
You will always be employed or at least employed more than others,
you know, kind of thing.
And not to mention, you're going to be a, you know,
have better working conditions and all of that.
Yeah. Yeah.
You improve your life by improving yourself and it does trickle down.
Alan Coggins, thank you so much for joining us.
Where can people learn more about Alan Coggins and.
Yeah, come to our website, cocoonrevolution.com.
Give us a call. 314-931-1004 actually.
But yeah, Cocoon Revolution is the place to go.
And we've got some some videos and all kinds of stuff on there.
And there's a little bit of blurb in there about us and my career
and everything as well. So love it.
If I don't see you beforehand, I will see you as well as anyone else
joining us wants to hang out with us at the 2024 National HVACR
Education Conference in Vegas.
I look forward to hanging out. I might have to bring this costume.
We'll go have some fun.
Yes, that'll be a blast. I'll try to find one, too.
We can really have some fun then. We'll go get thrown out of somewhere.
I think it.
Alan, have a wonderful day, my friend. You too.