Soften your senses.
Ways to become a better speaker, listener and follower.
This episode brought to you by Delmarva Veteran Builders.
Learn more at DelmarvaVeteranBuilders.com.
All right everyone, thank you so much for joining Did You Know?
The ESCO HVAC Podcast.
So we spent a lot of time talking about the shortage of labor in our industry and we also
talk about how wonderful of an experience it is to be in the trades and actually do
things with your hands and to make a difference in the world that we live in.
So we're going to take a slightly different twist on this and we're going to spend some
time with Chris Eccleston and Jenny Schroen.
How are you folks today?
Doing great.
Thanks for having us.
Oh, this is such an honor for us because it expands what we think of for education in
the HVAC and refrigeration industry and just the trades in general.
So we want to spend some time talking about your book, Grit Leads to Greatness.
It's a children's book that is now available to the industry and I was turned on to do
it by some fellow podcasters and I stopped for a minute and went, man, we talk about
this all the time how as an entire industry, as a group of industries, the trades, we don't
do a good enough job marketing what we do to hands that like to work on stuff at young
ages.
Right.
I mean, I think back about our own experiences.
You know, I always tell someone if you like working on bicycles, you're going to make
a dandy HVAC technician, but it could also be if you like working on bicycles, you could
be a dandy electrician.
You could be a dandy construction person.
Do you like working with wood blocks?
You like working with Legos and you know, any person that can check that box can have
a successful career doing that.
And they go, wait a minute.
I mean, I can have a successful career tearing things apart and fixing things.
Yeah.
Right.
Make a mess.
Make a mess before you make it look pretty.
Absolutely.
So let's talk a little bit about your adventure in this because this is really a cool combination.
This is not just, you know, let's spend some time talking about what we need to have in
the industry.
We're talking about two professionals that come from not just the contracting side, but
also from the content development side that got together and went, you know, if we do
this together, we can paint a really cool picture.
So tell us how this picture started and learn a little bit more about grit and greatness.
Sure.
Well, thanks.
I'll go ahead and go first.
I'm a general contractor.
Our company is called Delmarva Veteran Builders.
And for the listeners out there, that's Delaware, Maryland, Virginia.
We're a peninsula about two hours east of Washington, DC.
We've been in business for about 10 years.
We're a commercial general contractor.
So we do a little bit of everything.
We're a small, small business, have about 20 folks on the team.
And a few years ago, we just kind of saw that the workforce issue was changing.
It was aging.
I kind of started to wake up to the realization, man, like in five years, this is going to
be a really, really tough, hard time finding folks to just do the work.
So I kind of saw it as it was going to be affecting our business.
And then it was going to affect our subcontractors who probably weren't really thinking about
that.
Not preparing that far ahead.
No.
And so I said, man, we've really got to do something about this.
And I'm not really sure what it was at the time, but we started sitting in rooms and
brainstorming.
And so that's kind of how we ended up with the idea of a children's book.
So it's been a fun ride, and we've learned a lot, met a lot of great people.
We're talking to contractors now all over the country.
We've talked to some folks up in Canada and Guam.
So it's starting to trickle out.
Starting to spread out a little bit.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's interesting because we're hearing the same message that it's not just
a United States issue.
It kind of seems to be international so far from what we've been hearing.
That's very true.
We see the same thing.
So about five years ago, Jenny came to work with us and hired Jenny to rebrand the company
to really look at making us kind of unique and different in the marketplace and just
kind of putting ourselves out there.
So Jenny.
Yeah.
I'll jump in a little bit.
Yeah.
So you heard from Chris.
He's in the construction business.
He's been doing this for a decade or two decades at this point.
We'll go with a decade.
Okay.
All right.
A decade safe.
Yeah.
So I've always been a creative growing up.
I'm a graphic designer by trade.
I lived in Florida and moved all over the US over time, but I ended up moving from California
and married a widower who had four kids.
And I moved to Salisbury, Maryland where we are now.
And I never had heard of this place, but love conquers all.
And I moved here and kind of just started a new life and just trying to get my bearings
here.
But it was really cool.
I got through friends and they eventually invited me to come work at what we call DVB,
but Delmarva Veteran Builders.
So like Chris said, Chris already had, he's really into marketing.
He's really into just thinking outside the box, like we'll say over and over again probably.
But I kind of understood his ideas.
I really like to look at things differently.
So we started this whole rebrand thing.
This kind of started in 2019.
For me, as I sit here in the office and I hear a lot of our project managers, our superintendents
are going in and out, I'm always hearing about all the challenges that happen and the problem
solving that happens every single day.
And I'm sitting here amazed at how things can go wrong and how we have to fix it all
the time.
And it's stuff that can be completely out of your control.
You have a million moving parts.
And it's like, man, this is not for the faint of heart for sure.
But it's also, like I said, super rewarding to see the things you put all of your hard
work into actually come to fruition.
And they're buildings that people need and use for decades.
So I thought that was really cool.
And I really wanted to try to present our company in a way that's more about our people.
Chris has always been, it's all about the people that work here.
And obviously that's super important.
So I was looking through different words, ways to describe who we are and the word grit
kept coming up.
And obviously we're a veteran based company.
Chris is a Navy veteran.
Awesome.
Congratulations, Chris.
Thank you.
Yeah, very, very, thank you for your service, Chris.
Obviously very proud of, I wish I were a veteran, but I really love to honor that service mindset.
So we did a rebrand and I ended up coming up with a tagline for the company.
It was called grit leads to greatness.
And that kind of came from thinking about more of a battle cry of not just like in construction,
but what can our company kind of present to the world?
What can we kind of encourage people to think about as they go through life?
And so we believe grit is obviously, you can use that in your everyday life.
People can use it regardless if you're in the construction industry, but it's something
that makes you, it can make you great by going through the challenges and obstacles.
And Chris has always been a real fan of stoicism and he's had me read books and I really got
into it as well.
And I really liked a lot of the, just a lot of the stories were about how people look
at challenges and challenges are not something to run away from, but to like see how you
can use it to better your life.
Embrace and develop yourself.
Right.
So we did an ad campaign.
We used all of our different employees and we made them look heroic and we used them.
We used them.
The example of World War II, how not only military, but civilians came together in the
U S and we all worked together, men, women, children.
And we really, it was something like we were challenged against something evil force and
we were able to do something incredible and it was really inspiring.
And so I love history like Chris does as well.
So we did these really cool World War II propaganda style posters and it became a success in our
community and then people really understood what we were saying.
So that was kind of the beginning of where we get to talk about the book.
You know, the thing that I love about this is the way that you build that and you compare
that because we have to use history to be able to evaluate the future.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, huge history fanatic myself, especially World War II.
And so if we look at history in general and we see repeats of trends, you know, we can
see that when, when we start promoting hard work and determination and exactly that grit
in what can come out of grit, that greatness that can come out of it, we've kind of set
that on the sideline for a couple of generations.
Right.
You're right.
And it was that time period where as a nation, as a world, we do things together and we have
greatness out of that.
And so we had that technological development for a couple of generations.
And then that labor, that mechanical contribution fell to the wayside.
A lot of our trade programs got removed from the schools.
A lot of that ambition to do something for the world with your hands has escaped where
we are.
And I do believe, and I promote this on almost every show, that we are in a transitional
period.
I call this like the evolution of education in our industry, that we are now approaching
a period where the world will have to come together to make changes.
Whether we are a proponent or against global warming, it's real and it's making changes
in everyone's life.
How do we combat that together?
How do we make a change for the world?
Not just for global warming, but just for advancements in technology and structure and
infrastructure and development.
If you don't have those mechanical skills and if you don't have those construction
skills and those building skills and electrical skills, mechanical skills and plumbing skills,
we're not going to go anywhere.
So as a country and as a world, it's crucial for us to reestablish who we are and what
we can do with our hands.
Technology is in a shift.
We're all seeing things that are changing technology.
AI.
We're using artificial intelligence to replace people's jobs.
Well, what do those people do?
Well, have they ever thought about putting their hands to use and actually making a difference
in the world?
That's where this book comes into play.
So let's talk about some of those principles that you put into this book and how they grow
on these young children as they move into adults.
One thing that was really important to me was to make construction heroic in the eyes
of children.
And so I think that was one thing that was really important to us.
So that's why we went with magical characters that are kind of fantastical in nature and
kind of superhero like Jenny and I are both nerds, like Lord of the Rings, comics, all
that kind of stuff.
So that's kind of powerful characters.
Yeah, powerful characters.
So we wanted to create powerful characters because one of the things I see with the industry
is kids love construction.
It's really more of a parent and an educator issue.
Yeah.
And so and the more I've gone down this rabbit hole with this book and learning about this
issue, I really believe it's an education campaign to parents and educators.
I think the reason why educators don't talk about our industry is because they don't know
about it.
Most of the educators in the world, or at least in the United States, they spend their
adolescent, youth years in education.
Then they go to college to learn about education.
And then they go back into the school system to teach education.
So unless they have a personal connection, they don't really have any exposure to our
industry.
That's exactly right.
They don't have any knowledge to speak on it.
To compare to, sure.
And so I think that's kind of one of the things.
And then coupled with that, we as a construction industry or industries, we haven't done a
good job of promoting ourselves.
If we're not out on the front waving the flag about how awesome we are, nobody else is going
to do it.
Nobody knows.
Yeah.
Lawyers and attorneys get that kind of recognition through movies.
And people see all like, there's kind of this evidence of like, oh, he's an attorney or
she's a doctor.
She makes money and all these things that get glorified and they don't, those are just
not, it doesn't really get that.
There's so many different aspects.
It doesn't get that recognition.
And I think people try to, there's just no, I don't think necessarily everybody's against
it.
It just doesn't get as much of that forward front thought.
And so kind of going back to history, if you look at the foundation of society, these characters
that everybody still knows their names today, they were artisans.
They were trades folks.
And they were the upper section of the society.
I mean, the Ninja Turtles are named after them.
So another nerd part.
Right.
But so I think that's another thing is we want part of these character developments is
we wanted to have that kind of artisan flavor and that heritage of this means of doing something
and providing value and this like nobility and necessary to society and having kind of
that piece of it.
So I think those were kind of where we started to go and how we storyboarded this and kind
of like that.
Yeah.
So when we were kind of trying to think of the concepts, there's the typical construction
books, how something made or just visit to a construction site, which are kids like those
books.
And obviously, our mantra is always trying to be different.
So we kind of the big thing was this whole labor shortage, this workforce crisis that
we keep hearing about, you know, we're like, what are some things that we could solve or
at least attempt to solve with a book?
What can we teach the world?
What can be set straight that has gone off the rails for lack of better words?
But yeah, so I mean, we just started thinking about like, yeah, this whole heroic thing,
like construction really is something that kids as we wanted to reinforce it to kids,
like to remind them.
So as they age and they get older and they read this book, they'll remember that construction
matters and it's important.
And so, you know, so that's where we took the idea of the idea came from the tagline
or at least greatness.
The idea was like, first off was like, what if greatness were a place that kids could
find?
So that was like what set what set the tone?
It was attainable.
Yeah.
And so it's like, OK, well, if you were on a path to greatness, what would what would
that look like?
And so and as we were thinking about that, the obstacles and about stoicism, all these
different things about how obstacles actually shape your life became kind of part of the
story.
So we're like, OK, if you're going to find greatness or you're on your way to there,
you're going to run into obstacles because the obstacles shape you and make you better.
So OK, what if those obstacles were were traits that we obviously had kids as our protagonists,
but what if these kids met obstacles along the way, which happened to be the trades,
but the trades, they learn things.
They don't realize it because when you're going through like, you know, a crisis or
an obstacle in your own life, you don't realize how it's shaping you until you kind of look
back and you look back at it.
Reflection.
Yeah.
And you recognize it.
Yeah.
So the kids, you know, being kids like anybody else, they'll run into these obstacles.
They're kind of frustrated.
You know, they don't they want to keep going there.
They have a goal in mind.
But, you know, they meet these characters.
They learn something and it builds as they go.
And then at the end, they kind of have this realization that what they learned along the
way actually, actually brought them to greatness.
The journey was was what made them who they were.
So yeah, so that was kind of the beginning of that story.
Yeah.
And the context is it's in this imaginary city where the world is crumbling because
people have forgotten how to build, how to fix things.
Yeah.
And so these two kids decide to go on an adventure and and then they to save the world.
And at the end, the two kids, you know, they go through a series of five.
We put five trades in the book, carpentry, masonry, electrical, plumbing and welding,
like steelworking.
They have to build a bridge.
And all of these characters are magical, heroic, and they each have, you know, really things
from the trades that we put into the book and into each character.
We met with a lot of our subcontractors when we were in character development.
How can we make this, you know, more authentic and real to the job site?
So Copper, the plumber, she they have this magical like water slide world or whatever,
and they have to end up fixing like this high, high pressure water line that's been damaged.
So the kids are working with Copper, the plumber, and she's got this huge wrench on her back
like a like a brave hard sword.
Right.
That's kind of the flavor of the characters that we did.
But at the end, these kids are saving are saving the world.
And all these trade magical trade characters show up to help.
And this is like this transformation of kind of what you were talking about, where we're
at right now, a pivot point in the country or in the world where we're going to have
to come together and recognize the construction trades do add value.
You can have a meaningful life.
You can give back to the world.
Yeah, you can serve your community.
Yes, you can create change in your own community and serve other people and have have nobility
and necessary impact to to to your own local community.
And I think that's kind of the flavor that we wanted to create with the book.
I love that.
So let's take the pick on two characters.
I know we have two primary characters and we have some sub characters.
So Jenny, who is your favorite character in the book and why?
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
That's a tough one.
But they're like, you know, part of my life.
You know, two and a half years of writing it.
And really, it was cool to see it come to it's come to life in the illustrations.
Like I've been picturing these in my mind.
So I mean, two characters, one one I like, it's kind of personal.
It's her name's Rowan.
She's a snowman, snowman is a gnome that lives in the snow.
And this is a side story that my son and I kind of helped write together for one of his
school projects long ago.
And I'd been to Iceland and saw all these different like talk about fairies and trolls
that live there.
And so it kind of it kind of inspired the story.
But Rowan is this, you know, this little small character.
But they're in the in the book.
I kind of like how she responds to social.
The kids are in this in this magical kind of winter wonderland.
But there's a terrible snowstorm in the middle of night and the snowmen are all building
their master carpenters and they're building a lodge academy.
It's like a big school for the kids.
And the snowstorm, they call it snowstorm of the century comes and just destroys the
like the construction site overnight.
And in the morning, the snomes all kind of get up, but they're like they're upset, but
they get up and they start to rebuild in the morning.
Like they all come out as a crew and the kids stay in there and they see the they see the
community coming together to rebuild.
And the kids decide they're like, we're tall, we can help we can help get the heights of
the structure back to where he works.
They're so small.
So they could have gone on to greatness, but they realized like they they want to stay
and help the kids.
And they kind of like that.
They just see the the community come together.
So to me, that was something that I really, I really liked.
And I think with her with Rowan being a woman, you know, trying to get more women involved
in construction.
I really like that part.
And I don't and I don't believe it's just women can solve this.
I just want it to be normal that women and men work together on a job site.
Right.
You know, it's kind of like it shouldn't be strange that there's a woman out there anymore.
You know, this needs to go away.
And like I said, they're not going to solve it all.
But we need it to be this this cohesive feeling of, you know, everybody welcoming and deciding
that.
Yeah, like everyone has a piece of the puzzle.
Right.
And so just the contributions in that I think that's something super important.
And I like that.
And I just I just want that welcoming environment.
Like we need that for everybody, not just women, but for anybody new into the industry.
Those are things that I just think it's so strange when it's not that it's that there's
some places that it's not like that.
And it really there's a lot of improvements and change.
And I think it's going to get even better.
But so you said two characters.
I don't feel like it went off on just one character.
Oh, that's great.
Even if she shared your favorite one.
That's wonderful.
Yeah.
So Rowan, I go with her.
And Chris, how about you?
I'm going to go with Mason the Mason.
So he was the first character.
Number one, he's a master Mason and he's but he's he's a eight foot tall stone ogre.
And so he's got intricate carvings all over his arms that he's done.
He's also a sculptor and he's not your traditional ogre.
He's very smart.
He's very kind of funny.
But he's also like ancient and wise and he teaches the kids how to to build a retaining
wall out of masonry.
They're like cutting back the mountainside so they can't continue on their path to greatness.
It's blocked.
So he's working with the kids and he kind of knows that this is all happening to begin
with.
And so I liked him so much and convinced Jenny she had to kind of drag her along on this
one.
I went to Hollywood and had Mason the Mason and Copper the Plumber actually produce their
live action characters.
They've been in front of like two thousand kids.
And yes, a contractor calling like I was calling up in like New York around Broadway and then
out in Hollywood.
And they're like, you want to do what now?
And I was like, yeah, this is what I want to do.
I want to make these characters.
And so that's been it's been a lot of fun.
Mason's been probably the most, you know, interactive character.
I guess the kids have super tall.
Yeah, yeah.
His his boots are huge.
So the kids Chris has worn the costume.
Yeah.
All actors put it on.
It gets very hot inside of that thing.
And at one point I was kind of guiding him.
And I could hear like someone's like, I think Mason needs your help.
And it's Chris inside the costume.
And he's like, I'm about to pass out.
I was like, what if he passes out in the suit?
Super character down on the ground.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, we've taken taking these characters to some of these construction conferences.
Yeah, we we typically get three reactions.
One, this is like the coolest thing I've ever seen.
I can imagine.
And number two, what what what is that?
I don't even know what that is.
What are you doing?
But not too many.
But we've had a couple of detractors.
Oh, you're a Turkish Turkish show or something like that.
But I mean, it's a way to get attention.
And I knew I knew we were on to something when we were down in Florida at a convention
and we had the actor come walking out.
And these kids that weren't a part of the construction convention at all ran up.
Were gathering.
They were running up and they wanted to meet them and wanted to hug them and all that kind
of stuff.
And I was like, yes.
Yeah.
OK, you know, we got it.
Yeah.
So now how do we get that on scale and get them out?
Let's talk about that.
So Chris, Jenny, for all of those that are listening to the podcast, want to learn more
about the book and wanting to find the book.
Where should they go?
Yeah.
So we have our website.
That leads to greatness dot com, pretty easy to find on there.
You can buy books.
We have individual books for sale and they also have classroom bundles, we call it.
So you can go there to find the book.
You can also find it on Amazon.
Just type in the book title and it should it should be there.
So we're hoping to maybe go through a few different other educational avenues as well
in the next in the coming months.
So but at this point, there's two places where you can find the book.
And I got to tell you, one of the things that I'm really excited about and was kind of the
probably the most shocking for us and I think the reason why we've gotten so, so passionate
about this is we did a local reading event and this was really kind of a test audience.
This was in March.
It was Read Across America Day or week and we were in, I don't know, five schools and
let's just call it like 60 classrooms.
So we had 50 companies step up and buy these classroom bundles and they all they all went
into the classroom and we went from second grade to fifth grade.
Third grade seems to be like the sweet spot.
Sweet spot.
Sure.
And and I got to tell you, like, you know, being in the construction and around the trades
for a couple of decades, we're a tough crowd.
We don't get super excited about a lot of stuff.
But that day watching the men and women being in the classroom, the pride for our industry
on display was so moving.
I've never I've never seen anything like it.
It was unbelievable.
And I think coming out of that, I said, wow, we have got to get more people in our industry
to see exactly what this is because kids were interested.
They were excited, the men and women, the tradesmen and women were just you.
I mean, they were beaming with pride about what they do for a living.
And like, they really felt like they're you know, what they did mattered.
And so that experience was just so, so moving.
And we were not expecting that.
We were really focused on how the kids were going to respond to it.
And when we saw that, I was like, OK, man, we're game on.
We got to get we got to get as many contractors in the classrooms.
And so what we've done now is we've gone to trade associations and said, OK, this is this
is what we got to do.
We got to get your members in the classroom.
Right.
And the reason why we say this, there's there's a couple of reasons.
One, you're you're introducing the trades in a positive, positive light.
Right.
It's a heroic journey.
Two, you're you're creating you're activating our existing workforce.
We all sit here and talk about it.
We've talked about it for 20 years.
Well now here's a solution.
Go into the classroom and get excited.
Right.
And feel what it feels like to have to have third graders look up to you and look up to
what you do for a living and talk about it.
I mean, we had our storefront guy getting in the connection details on curtain walls
for over an hour and a half.
Kids loved it.
They didn't want to believe.
And then I think third.
So so that's a legacy opportunity for our existing workforce to pass the torch.
That's exactly what it is.
And so to me, when I kind of saw that, I'm like, we have a competitive advantage.
That's something that needs to be talked about.
We have an opportunity to to pass the torch.
I mean, not other no other industry is facing a workforce crisis like we are.
I mean, wow, to to activate the the nine million plus people in the trades and get them to
pass the torch and and and and share with somebody else about what they do for the living,
that how how what it means and how they can be involved and how it can change their lives
and and not just theirs and and others like that.
That's a huge that's a huge message that needs to get out and people need to respond to,
I think.
So absolutely.
And that's kind of what we've been doing.
And we have reading events happening now in in October and March all across America.
And we're talking I don't know if I would say hundreds of contractors, but we're getting
there.
Right.
Reading to thousands of kids.
And and so Jenny and I are kind of say, OK, well, next step is we got to get a lesson
plan for teachers associated with the trades.
We got to get a family introductory guide to to take home to mom and dad.
Right.
And so people that are losing jobs now.
Sure.
And going to well, they can come into the trades.
So this is like a real starting to become like a real inspirational, like active recruiting
kind of campaign that we can start to build off of and build a real national.
Yeah, that's why it's like getting the book to take home with the kids taking the book
home and keeping it.
That's been a really fun, fun thing to see because the kids feel like it's it's Christmas.
They get their own copy.
And we found out there's many kids that, you know, different economical backgrounds, like
they don't even have books in their own home.
So a book that you get to take home with you.
And it's not only talk about the shows that you can make a difference in the world.
Right.
It's talking about grit and how to like do that.
So that was one thing like we're not only teaching about construction, but we're also
bringing an example of a character trait that you can that you can live by.
You know, you can use grit in your everyday life.
So it's kind of nice.
It's kind of a nice in with schools as well, because it's not only about construction,
it's also about those things.
So we was kind of on purpose to kind of, you know, allow that more, not just like, oh,
it's not just about that.
It's about a broader idea.
So teachers like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
I love it.
Well, Chris Eccleston, Jenny Schroen, we thank you so much for joining us today.
And the book is Grit Leads to Greatness.
We encourage everyone to check it out.
And I look forward to seeing you all hopefully at a conference in the near future.
And we can get out there and promote the book as well.
So you guys have a wonderful day.
We appreciate you being on the show.
All right.
Thanks, Clifton.
Thanks for having us.
We appreciate it.