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Ways to become a better speaker, listener and follower.
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All right, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining Did You Know?
The Esco HVAC Podcast.
Once again, we're hanging out at the National HVACR Education Conference, and I am spending
some time with my new good friend, Kevin Hart.
How are you, sir?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me.
And this is, by the way, Kevin Hart, the Canadian, not the comedian.
That's right, not the comedian.
Not to be confused.
Yeah.
And this is my first Esco show, and it's been fantastic.
Isn't it a lot of fun?
Yeah.
And it's packed, yeah.
It is packed to the hilt, and we are just absolutely ecstatic with the amount of people
that are here just trying to improve their self, to have a better understanding of the
environment around them, and to learn what it takes to be better in the role that they
have.
So we have educators that are here.
We have contractors that are here.
We have distributors.
We have manufacturers.
We have a presence of contractor trainers and distributor trainers that we don't typically
get.
And so for me, what it signifies is that our industry is very aware of the transitions
that we're making in technologies, the innovations we're making in equipment.
I mean, you yourself, you're right at the forefront of IAQ and understanding how technology
can make our lives better, right?
Yeah.
So we can't be afraid of all of these transitions.
And that's what this conference is, is reflecting to me personally, is that an industry is aware
of the surroundings, and they're doing what it takes to move forward.
And sometimes it's difficult.
Sometimes there's a little work in making ourselves better, right?
Yeah, I've been in this industry for 10 years.
So not a long time, but I feel that there's so much change happening, and it's accelerating
in the A2L and all this new changes that I do see.
I don't know if it's opportunistic or if it's out of necessity, but I do see a lot of people
starting to engage in like, oh, we probably should keep up with all these changes because
they will impact our business.
Yeah, it's to the point to where I've had, I had one interesting conversation.
I had one educator come over to me and we were talking about A2L training, because that's
one of the things we're promoting right now, getting everyone prepared for the A2L transition.
And an educator come to me and he said, I gotta have the A2L training from ESCO.
I'm like, okay, that's great.
He's like, no, you don't understand.
Like I gotta have it.
I need to leave here with it because my administration came to our department and said we had 30
days to get A2L certified or we didn't have a job.
Wow.
I was like, all right, you need A2L training.
Wow.
Crazy.
Yeah, it is really crazy.
So there's all of these different dynamics and we're going to see transitions.
We're going to see rules and regulations at a federal level that is fantastic.
But we are also seeing local jurisdictions and states that are going above and beyond
that.
And we're seeing opportunities for us to push the industry into a place that's needed for
a long time, where we have a better understanding of our environment.
We work harder at the professional development and we start becoming the industry that you're
super proud of.
I'm very, very proud of my industry.
But if we can conquer all these transitions and come out on the other side being very
advanced, then think about how much better we're serving the people around us.
Yeah.
And I want to say I'm really proud of the industry.
I love the industry.
I love the people in the industry.
And it makes me sad that I look at like other professions, you know, software developer,
lawyer, doctor, and there's such highly regarded professions in society.
And I look at the lack of young people getting into the trade.
And it makes me a little bit sad because this trade is really cool.
Like, it's highly technical.
It's also very hands on.
It's like, it's a lot of really cool things.
And I used to be an electrician and I sort of capped out after the first four years and
we're like, there's not a whole lot more to learn.
There's so much breadth and depth to this industry.
And I just hope to see this industry continue to evolve into the type of industry that attracts
more people who want to do good work.
Yes.
Yep.
I think part of that issue is that we have, we've kind of lacked in the certification
side of our industry and the professional development.
And there was a period of time in our industry where we didn't have a lot of change.
We went decades without having a whole lot of change.
And unfortunately in that we didn't push forward.
We didn't dive into what should be standard practices.
We actually called a lot of things best practices and they really should just be standard practices.
And going into some of these new refrigerants and new technologies, we're going to be required
to do things that in the past was kind of considered best practice, right?
It wasn't always required.
So we have an opportunity to become an industry that's actually very advanced and highly technical
and highly demanded from the consumers, which means anyone who takes advantage of that opportunity
and elevates themselves, gets comfortable with new technologies, gets certified to work
on products and actually becomes a very credible technician and contractor, there is a lot
of opportunity.
I agree.
Actually, it was funny.
I was just talking to Craig Migliaccio from AC Service Tech and he was talking about how
his books that some people in the industry and even manufacturers have regarded his books
as like the gold standard.
And then he told me, you know, I kind of developed this for high school students, which is just
kind of funny.
It is when you think about it.
And they are amazing books and the process and the amount of detail that they go through.
But I think, yeah, we need to have the elevation across the whole industry and in particular,
like I focus more on the indoor air quality side of the industry, where a lot of what
we've been seeing is these solutions getting pushed that don't necessarily come from anything.
They don't come from a need.
They're not diagnosed.
They're not measured.
Just sort of like, well, the homeowner asked for it.
I'm going to throw this thing at them.
I don't really understand the fundamentals of indoor air quality.
I don't understand the science.
Yeah.
And so that's kind of where I came into the industry and was like, okay, this needs to
be improved.
Yes.
Because there's actual harm being done to consumers, to homeowners.
And I think part of this is homeowner education.
Absolutely.
But I've just been seeing this trend now that I've stepped outside of just indoor air quality,
starting to look at the rest of the industry.
It's like, oh, well, this is there's a similar story in different areas of the industry.
Yeah.
I completely agree.
I've spent a lot of time in residential service.
I've spent some time in residential construction and installation.
I spent a lot of time in commercial refrigeration.
And when I step back and I look at it and I go, you know, all of those had things that
were fairly advanced.
And there were a time where we didn't have the educational tools that we have today.
And so today's learning obstacles are much less than they were in the past.
Yes, we have a lot of stuff to learn.
But we have tools and technologies that can advance that very quickly.
And so then we have to start looking at as an industry, we want to make sure that people
that invest in their self to do better at the things that they are working on and working
with are recognized for that.
And that consumers as well can validate that they can look for those validated resources.
And I hope that we all take advantage of the opportunity to go, you know what?
We are like at this pivotal moment where we can elevate an industry, we can start being
received at a higher caliber, which typically comes with higher pay.
So we can elevate the worth that we should be actually investing into ourselves and into
what we do.
So we're starting to see some, I would say movement within the industry.
Yeah.
And actually, just in the past few weeks, I've seen popular YouTubers who have millions of
viewers talking about like, why would you do a load calc?
You know, why?
How come most HVAC systems are oversized?
They're actually starting to bring awareness to the general public.
And I think that's something we need to do more of is educate homeowners that they're
asking for these things.
You know, and then another thing you said about technology, I think it used to be like,
technology, no, we don't need that.
Like we're good.
Yeah.
You know, the status quo, you know, but in the move to be better, I think there has been
more of an acceptance that, okay, technology is going to be part of the strategy.
I think we're still arguing on the tactics.
Yeah, exactly.
Right?
Like a lot of people, there's debates right now, like, well, I want to get paid to open
up this tool.
I paid a lot for this tool and I'm not going to perform this test for free.
Exactly.
I know other people that are more of the camp of like, well, I'm specifically going to use
this tool because it doesn't take a long time because it's technology and they've simplified
it made it easy and they spit out a report and I'm going to use this as differentiation
yes to be better so that I can actually give the customer what they need because I just
don't accept selling things that people don't need that are size wrong.
And all you know, I decided not to do static pressure testing, airflow testing because
the homeowner wouldn't pay me to do it.
So I definitely see debate and there's valid points on either side of the argument.
But I think we've gotten to the point where we both agree that these tools are needed
to be better at what we do.
Yeah, 100%.
100%.
So when we start talking about getting past these stigmas of change, getting past the
stigmas of innovations and technologies and refrigerants that we're uncomfortable with,
and we start moving in the direction of, okay, we know that we have all of these new technologies
and it's going to be more important than ever to install, commission and service these pieces
of equipment because there's a lot of changes happening.
We are very quickly shifting from a single stage to stage environment into an inverter
driven environment.
We're going to be working with a lot more technology even with your refrigerant detection
sensors and our A2L residential split systems and light commercial equipment.
So we have a lot of opportunity to focus in on these technologies and go to the proper
training for them.
And also in that, make sure that we're retaining the knowledge from the trainings and actually
paying some attention to certifications.
Yeah.
Actually, and I listened to your podcast with Ben Reed and you talked a lot about very specifically
like is the information being retained and that is something you can test for and ESCO
is actually able to help certify.
That's what we do.
We focused all of these years, decades of making sure that we have these tools available
for educators to be able to, all right, if I'm an educator and I'm teaching something
and I have students that are learning this, I need to make sure that one, I'm delivering
the content properly and two, that the students are retaining that information, they're learning
it.
So when doing certifications along the way, you take that data, you're all about data,
right?
Data is the only way we can actually validate what our inputs are and our outputs.
So we have to measure things.
We have to quantify what we're working with.
So when we use certifications that actually use that data and put it into databases so
that we can break those down and see our deficiencies, then it becomes a tool for ourselves.
I don't want to take a test and be compared to the rest of the world to see how good or
bad I was.
I want to take a test so that I know the things that need improved.
And that's really what it's about.
It's about doing certifications, which are really more about self-certification of yourself,
evaluating who you are, and then being recognized for the accomplishments of that.
And so as our industry progresses, I really encourage everyone to start spending more
time focusing on the certifications that are available to you in ways to make those available
to consumers in particularly who are looking for those specific services, those specific
quantities and qualities of people.
So in that conversation with Ben, we dove into the movement that is starting to develop
called Better HVAC, right?
So when we talk about Better HVAC, we're really just talking about better practices for the
HVAC industry and for ourselves.
And so how are you involved and how are you seeing things develop like that?
Yeah, so there was probably a fairly substantial group of people who wanted to see change and
formed what we're now calling Better HVAC.
And I think you were part of one of those early meetings.
And I'd still think we're in this forming stage of what exactly we are, what we're going
to do.
But I think in general, we could just call it, hey, it's a mindset.
Whatever this future state is that you and I are talking about right now that we want
to get to that all these people are here to learn and to stay on top of things.
But also moreover, that we want homeowners to start asking for better services.
Yes, 100%.
And because they ask for it, we'll be able to charge for it.
And yeah, maybe ticket sizes will go up, but homeowners will be comfortable.
They'll actually get the value of their investment.
You know, and just generally, okay, we want to see this future where the industry is better,
better practices are being done, education is being delivered.
And there's people who want to get into the industry.
Homeowners are asking for these things like that.
That is the future state we want to get to.
And so we're calling it Better HVAC.
And how we get there, there's clearly organizations that are helping work towards that.
And ESCO is definitely a big one of those.
There's other ones.
There's a lot of work that HVAC school is doing and they have their symposium and there's
work that NCI are doing and there's work.
There's a lot of people.
ACC's, AIA, and there's so many organizations that are contributing.
Yes, exactly.
But I guess the thing that was missing, because we don't want to do something like again,
I think this is about how do we collaborate to accelerate change, transformation?
Really, that's what it's about.
It's like, what is the gap that we can fill that's going to catalyze this change to happen
quicker?
And one of the things we can think of is let's take all of these groups that are already
doing great work and just make them more easily accessible, discoverable, and push and bring
awareness to those groups doing good work already.
That's what it's all about.
We keep saying that there's no one organization that can do it all, but all of us can do it
together.
Yeah.
And that's really what I feel is happening.
And even in this conference, I mean, you're already starting to hear people coming out
of classes and you can see the energy, you can feel the energy, and you know that everyone
is striving to be better.
Whatever you're doing, they're striving to come to a common place where they can elevate
themselves.
They can elevate standards.
They can elevate the services that they're providing.
And I highly encourage everyone to start thinking about that.
What could you do to be a little bit better than what you're doing today?
And think about that.
If I can do things, if I can go to trainings, if I can improve what I am doing today and
I can tomorrow step back and go, wow, look how much better I am today.
And in 30 days down the road, you're like, and you do that consecutively, right?
30 days down the road, you're like, I am so much more proficient and efficient than I
was in the past.
And this is what it's about.
It's about taking minds and sparking a little bit of curiosity.
I had a really good conversation on one of the earlier podcasts on a completely separate
topic, but we both came to the same conclusion that generationally, I think Gen Z and now
we're starting to see Alpha are growing up with concepts about change and not challenging
standards but just asking that they be evaluated to see if we can improve things, if we can
do things better.
And so now even us older generations like X, we're actually looking at going, you know
what?
We have been doing the same thing over and over and over.
And is it correct?
Because the world has changed around us.
Our equipment has changed.
Our practices have changed.
The tools and techniques could have actually changed.
And so is it time for us to step back and go, hmm, what can I do to make things better?
Yeah.
And I think people want to belong to something and know that there's other people out there
who think like them, be able to find each other, be able to find these resources.
And I think like a lot of this is about training the trainers.
And while the trainers are out there, and I think even just like you on this podcast,
you meet people where you're talking and you go, oh, this person also cares about making
the industry better.
Better A-Fac is something that we both kind of belong to whether we know it or not.
Exactly.
It's not an association.
You know, I wonder.
I just had an epiphany.
I was speaking to an, I won't call him an older, I'll call him an experienced educator
earlier.
And he said, are you hunting the juice?
And I'm like, the juice, tell me about the juice.
He's like, you know, the juice.
That's why you do what you do.
And I went, oh, is the juice what we're all talking about?
When we talk about Better H-Fac, we're all wanting that same thing.
We're all wanting to make a difference.
You know, in really kind of in reality, I find that most people that are involved in
the service industry have servant hearts.
So it's like we're all in the business to do things for other people to make their lives
better.
Well, look, we're essential workers here, right?
Like the economy got shut down.
We're like, well, we still need air conditioning and heating, right?
Like it's such an essential service.
Absolutely.
I mean, even on the, I mean, there's safety, there's health, there's comfort, there's efficiency.
And these things like in different rankings matter to different people, but they matter
enormously because we're talking about homes in a lot of cases where we spend a lot of
our life and raise our children.
And I mean, to be comfortable, to be efficient in terms of what we're spending every month
to have that, but also to make sure that we're safe and we're healthy.
I mean, these are important, critical things.
This isn't like I was in the airport and some of the family inside of me, they were all
wearing like, they had just come from a Pokemon tournament.
They look like professional Pokemon players.
And I was like, that's cool.
But like, I'm going to sit back here and be like, we do something really like critical
and essential and important.
And there's something to that.
Yeah.
You know, Howard Weiss made this really cool thumbnail for a social post that we did a
few months back and it was, are you an HVAC superhero?
And it was really about, yes, you are an HVAC superhero, whether you realize it or not.
Yeah.
And so it's like, we're all part of something so special and we're all finally talking about
it.
It's such a roller coaster because some days it's like, oh my God, look at this group that
just got, you know, I don't know, consolidated.
Now they've put in these bad sales practices and they're taking older homeowners for a
ride through rental, like whatever it is, like you can wake up one day and be totally
demotivated and then the next day, like have a great conversation like we're having and
be totally inspiring.
Yeah.
And you realize, oh yeah, this is what we do.
Yeah.
Oh, that's such an important topic.
And so I really want everyone to be thinking about how to make yourself better in ways
to do that.
And I want you to know that there are resources out there.
There are people that have you back.
There's an entire community that is gathering and growing.
And we would like for you to be better at HVAC.
Yeah.
BetterHVAC.com.
You can read the declaration, sign the pledge, become a champion.
There's a map.
There's I think close to 200 members.
I mean, we just got going this year.
So I think, yeah, we're onto something.
Kevin Hart, the Canadian.
Clifton.
I appreciate you, my friend.
Thank you for having me.