Soften your senses, ways to become a better speaker, listener and follower.
This episode recorded live at the 2023 National HVACR Education Conference.
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All right.
Thank you all for joining us.
Man, what an honor to have an absolute powerhouse of industry motivators and shakers.
So let's just take a second and let's each introduce ourselves.
And that'll kind of set the perspective of where we are.
All right.
My name is Angie Snow.
I am with Western Heating and Air Conditioning out of Utah and also Service Titan.
My name is Colleen Kieworth.
I'm with Online Access, a marketing company for contractors,
and on the board of Women HVACR and INWIC International Network for Women in Cooling.
My name is Maddie Sorensen, and I am the project coordinator with Explore the Trades.
My name is Kate Sinimo, executive director of Explore the Trades.
All right.
So we have amazing opportunity in our industry at the moment, right?
So we are starting to witness a transition of, I would say, generations, right?
So we're moving into a time where our industry is becoming more accepting of people in general in our trade.
If we think about the trades over time, it was very limited in people's perspective of who should be in a particular trade, right?
Most of the time, it was looked at if that person looks like me, they're probably going to do a job like me and they may perform similar to me.
And that was kind of the limited perspective of not just our industry, but many industries.
So as we progress in time and we start looking at the world a little bit differently and we start realizing that we we all play on a very equal platform.
And now we have the opportunity to show the world what these platforms look like.
All right. So along the way, our industry, my industry, your industry, the HVACR refrigeration industry has gotten to a point where it's starting to look more
interesting to people. So some of the stigmas are starting to shed and the realities of what the industry looks like is prevailing.
So if we think back in time, I know for my personal self, what did HVAC look like to you when you were a child?
Let's each give our own little perspective. So mine, I'll tell you what mine was.
Mine was a dirty old oil furnace in the back closet that got looked at when it got really, really nasty.
We had window air conditioners. So for me, it wasn't a pretty sight.
It wasn't the most desirable thing in the world.
Mine was my dad at an early age because I knew he worked in HVAC with the extent of my knowledge.
But he came home, he was always getting cut up from sheet metal on his head.
Always had the brown button up shirt and stuff like that and had the truck and everything.
And I didn't know much about that. But then at a younger age, we would sort copper.
My grandpa would pull this in and we'd do scrap and copper and make like five, ten dollars a barrel, which I think we were cheated.
Yeah. You pulled insulation.
And did little things like that. So I didn't really have a concept of what it was.
But I knew it was physical, it was mechanical.
And going to the shop was a big deal or going to the shop picnic and stuff like that with the crew.
But other than that, it was very like, you know, OK, it was just like its own little box of like, I didn't really thought you're curious about it.
Yeah, it was there. It was there.
But I probably could say, OK, my dad works in HVAC or a lot of kids didn't even know what that was.
And I don't even think I could say other than it's heating and cooling. Right.
So it's something. It's something.
And it wasn't so much later when I started working for the company as like doing paperwork or dispatch or stuff like that, that I kind of understood what it was.
And then I was like, no, sir, I want out of this and very promptly was fired for being a punk kid and did my own thing.
And then came back years later and got into it.
And then I was like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Well, what's actually out there?
Two things. So especially with kids.
And that depends on what you're getting into. Like, there's the local level of the industry, which is just the bubble you're into.
Yeah. And then there's the national level, which is so much bigger.
And I think people don't get exposed to that enough to see how big it really is and how important it is.
And I think that was where I just fell in love with it.
Like, I'm not going anywhere now. Like my husband's in it.
My whole family is pretty much inundated. Yeah. Yeah.
OK. Yeah. Next.
So the only thing I can remember from being a kid is we grew up on an acreage in the country and didn't have family in the industry.
We really didn't know anyone. You know, you have a guy in town who had the one truck.
But I remember in middle school when we got central air put in the house, that was a big deal.
You know, and that was sort of my introduction. Yeah. That's what it was.
Yeah. It's when you start having something that affects you on a personal level that you notice it.
Yes. Yeah. Excellent representation. Yeah.
Maddie. Yeah. I'll kind of say the same thing.
Yeah. I didn't have a huge, you know, like a huge understanding of, you know, like the HVAC or the HVAC industry as, you know, as a young kid.
You know, similar to Kate, you know, it's when you kind of have a personal experience with it that you kind of start to understand it.
So I remember going to, you know, going to camps as a young kid and, you know, when they didn't have air conditioning, you know, I was like, OK, I understand.
Boy, there is a difference here.
Why this is important, because, you know, it's a it's a summer camp in, you know, in the in the middle of July.
And I was like, I really miss my air conditioning at home.
Did we just regress a hundred years? What did what happened?
So that, you know, just just those really small experiences.
First world problems. Yes. Right.
You know, exactly, exactly.
You know, and kind of understanding, you know, the really big privilege that it is to have, you know, to have that in my in my home at, you know, you know, just back in Minnesota was just kind of my, you know, just my understanding of it.
Exactly.
Well, for me, it's a lot like Kate. We didn't have air conditioning growing up.
And so we had the furnace in the basement and the one guy in town, the fixed furnaces.
And that was really all I knew about it.
But I was really exposed to the trades through my dad, who was an educator in the trades.
Awesome. So he taught like high school. He taught welding.
He taught a lot of those different classes and eventually ended up in cabinetry.
And so I, you know, I would take those cabinetry and carpentry classes from him and a lot of times be the only girl in the class with a bunch of boys making furniture.
And my dad being the dad, you know, he held me at a higher level of accountability and perfection in my, you know, when I was building my craftsmanship.
And so I really, really appreciated that.
And that was really my introduction to the trades and my introduction to the industry and working in it didn't come until much later through my husband.
So, yeah.
A lot of us have our first introductions almost by mistake or by happen or something changes where it affects us a little bit.
And then we might look at it. And that has been somewhat of a norm in our industry.
Like I myself, I married into an HVAC business. I wasn't on a plan. I just ended up there.
And then as I moved along, I started realizing that it was an impactful part of everything in my daily life, especially when we start looking at refrigeration, all fundamentals of air conditioning and heat pumps comes back to refrigeration.
And so when we start seeing the different avenues all coming from one industry, we look around and go.
OK, if this is everywhere, what else is there besides that dirty old furnace in the basement?
What else does this do?
And by the way, how does that person down the road live so well?
And they're just doing HVAC or they're just doing refrigeration.
And so when we start looking at the entire industry, we realize that the opportunities within HVAC and refrigeration are abundant.
And a lot of that doesn't get shown to young students, definitely doesn't get shown to parents like from my parents.
But my dad was a construction guy.
You know, we had a guy that fixed the oil furnace as a buddy of his.
And for my dad, it's like, you know, I work on them dirty old furnaces all your life.
So it wasn't never really promoted.
Wasn't until later that I learned that, you know, the application of things like that can change your life when you see where it can take you.
Now, will you maybe start working on some of them dirty old furnaces in the beginning?
You know, some of these things that may not be as attractive, but it leads into an industry that is somewhat overlooked.
So let's talk about from your own personal perspectives how the perception, because remember perception is reality,
how the perception of HVAC has changed and how now young ladies have the opportunity to look at it as a potential future
and an opportunity to explore their own passions for being involved in something bigger than themselves,
because that's really what happens when you get into the industry.
You realize, oh, my goodness, I am a part of something that is so significant that no one really told me a whole lot about.
I learn about things in environmental sciences, but I never realized that I could be an environmental scientist by being in this industry.
So let's I'm curious myself.
And I hope everyone really listens to this and gets an understanding of how we can change our own reality by understanding different perceptions.
I think the first thing that hits me when you're talking about that, Clifton, is, you know, like myself and Maddie and Angie growing up,
not with someone in the trade, but learning about it later on.
I think that when you understand from square one, this is what HVAC is, you know, and just think about it at your home.
You know, that's why we can stay warm. That's why there's, you know, we stay cool in the summer.
That's how and I think that's when the pieces start being put together.
Right. You know, yeah. And it's not just magic that that happens.
You know, there's a lot of training and education that comes with that.
And I think with that understanding, then you you start to put the pieces together to say, oh, well, so that's how my air quality at home.
Like if there's someone with allergies in the home, you know, then I think how can I change that?
Yeah, that's a bigger conversation. And now when you think of all of the all of the entities and buildings and industries that utilize that trade,
that's mind blowing. You know, hospitals and health care and the grocery store, you know, all of this is basis is based in HVAC.
And I think that's really exciting. Well, you kind of hit it on the head with that, though, too, as far as the buildings,
because we just recently as an as a world basically had the biggest disruptor ever.
Right. And so being being that we all went through a pandemic, it really brought light into what air quality is, how it works.
Hospitals that had to have change out six or seven times per room. And who actually designs that?
How does that happen? And so bring in that to the world front as far as IAQ as a general career or even the fact that it was so necessary
and how it works in planes, how it works in hospitals, how it works in your home.
I mean, I feel like that was something that really disrupted everybody's train of thought and really brought a lot more visibility to the behind the scenes of what airflow quality is.
Absolutely. And I think I think, you know, we're all wired differently.
We all have different experiences that brought us into the industry.
I remember after my husband and I purchased our our heating and air conditioning company, I was at a family event.
I was talking to one of my cousins. He's like, now, what do you guys do again?
And I said, well, we just bought this heating and air conditioning company.
He's like, no way. He's like, that is like the coolest thing.
Like, you can create weather in your houses.
You guys are going to be like this essentially you will always have work.
And I was like, you know what? I never thought about that.
But yeah, that is pretty cool. That's job security.
You know what I mean? So it is it's it's it's looking at it with a new a new eye, a new light of what does this what do we do?
And how can we, you know, for lack of a better word, make it a glamorous industry again, that is drawing people into the industry and like, I want to be part of that.
Yeah, we want to move from crayons to watercolor for this industry.
That's what we want to do. We're lucrative. We're recession proof.
We're pandemic proof. There's so many cool things about it.
Like we talk about we idolize things like doctors and even talk about lawyers even or, you know, first responders or anything like that, because they're the what kids see.
That's what you. Yeah. But part of that problem and I know Kate deals with this every day is that educators, there's no there's no children's books.
There's no there's nothing in education, nothing in my education that I ever had where anybody ever said, hey, let's talk about just air quality, the air we breathe.
Because like even with all the environmental push that's going on right now, it's such an easy fit in to be able to change that conversation, even have it at a third or fourth grade level to talk about, hey, let's just discuss this.
Like this is the air we breathe. This is how we control the temperatures. It's hot outside. It's cold in here.
Like just at a basic level to say, what does this acronym stand for?
Exactly. Like even just that. Yeah. Just to be aware of it.
And I don't even say like you're converting people then there, but like be aware, be aware.
Just even know that as a commonplace term, just as long as you have a career day, you can say an HVAC guy.
We have people know about the garbage man like in their in their their industry, but nobody still talks about like HVAC or plumbing.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
My mind is just, you know, continually blown as I'm, you know, as I learn more and more about, you know, the the three trades that we deal with that explore the trades, you know, HVAC, plumbing and electrical.
Just like as I learn more about all three of these trades, it's just my it's just incredible, you know, all that goes into, you know, all three of these industries.
It's just it's it's incredible to me what all you know, what goes into, you know, these jobs every single day.
It's just it's it's absolutely incredible what what these people do and they they truly say lies.
It's it's just amazing. You know, a lot of people don't realize that during covid,
the Department of Homeland Security declared that those who installed service,
maintained furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps were declared essential as one of 17 primary categories out of total about 700 jobs.
That helped spark the the the curiosity of what how is a furnace and air conditioning technician in a similar position as immediate response?
And then we started looking at exactly I've heard IAQ quite a few times, you know,
our industry is starting to look more into IAQ and the deployment of air quality and understanding that home, that environment that we live in.
And now the ability to alter to change that, you know, if if you're in an environment that is not comfortable,
you want to learn how to make that more comfortable.
And by the way, do you want to make a career out of it?
And are you interested in making six figures while you're doing that and maybe not have college debt?
There are so many opportunities to look at something from a different perspective and go, you know what?
That is not at all the reality of the perception that I have had in the past.
Well, if you talk to the guys here, so like most of the guys here, especially the educators like that,
they are like obsessed with the craft that they have.
They may get like so sexy because this is it for them.
But if you talk to them about buildings and like homes in general, they're living, breathing things.
Absolutely. That you can control the environment and they love the fact that you can manipulate that
just by the tools, technology and the equipment that they know how to wield.
And that's a whole different type of conversation than like I turn the switch on and the room gets cool.
So it's the obsession with the craft itself and learning how it actually all comes together.
Yeah. And we're at it like an emergence of technology, like some like many other industries have had
that we've kind of fallen short of for a little bit of time.
We look at things like the automotive industry that took a big progression in technology,
didn't really change the internal combustion engine.
They just use technology to make things more efficient. Right.
We've seen it in all communication technologies.
Now we look at the HVAC industry and go, wow, we're able to look at something because it wasn't perceived
very positively because it was just kind of an old clunker, just something that did a thing.
And now we look at it as, OK, so technology is changing and it's bringing every level of STEM
into our industry. And yeah, we can look at a structure, we can look at a home and go,
we can turn this into a very comfortable living environment that is healthier for our family.
As much as anything, and the science and the education and the opportunities are there.
So I love it. You know, we even if we just talk about like the the pool of technicians
coming into the industry and we look at the shortage of technicians and we step back and we go,
why do we have a shortage? Why?
Why are we not filling these awesome opportunities?
And I think it's because of those perceptions.
So personally, how do you feel that changing?
Do you feel that is becoming more attractive to students and to parents, both for boys and girls in younger ages?
Do you see that as a change in recent years?
I think, you know, on behalf of Explore the Trades, it's been interesting that we've seen
a request of information and conversations we're having with teachers and school counselors
coming from the middle school and elementary grades.
And that's really exciting. And I think that they are now noticing, you know, I guess from
our perspective, and I think all of us would agree that over the last generation,
we haven't shared with kids the opportunity because all of the tech ed and vocational ed
has been pulled out of school. So we've taken out a whole generation of skilled labor.
Yeah. Who could be working because they just you don't know what you don't know.
No, they weren't introduced to it. Exactly.
And it's really cool to hear from these educators to say, you know what,
I know that I have students who would be perfect for this.
And now they're taking that step to educate themselves on just to have a high level
conversation of, OK, here's what heating and cooling is.
Yes. Here's how we apply the subjects that we're learning every day, you know,
so it is directly applicable and those students can understand it.
Yeah. And I think on the parent side, everyone's starting to turn the corner a little bit
because so many are worried that, well, you know, the trades are great, but not for my kid.
Yeah. You know, my child's going to go to college. Absolutely.
You want to succeed? You're going to go to a four year college and you're going to.
My favorite, the world needs ditch diggers.
Horrible. Yeah.
But we've been no place arrived necessarily anywhere.
But I bet this is take a step back in perception.
Where are all of us sitting here is where our parents were.
Where when we were growing up to where parents are today is completely different.
I think we need to celebrate that. Yeah, I do, too.
Because I think it took a breaking point of just the labor shortage alone.
And you're hearing about how people are upset about the cost of things and the wait time
and equipment shortages and whatever it was that disrupted our industry.
Then obviously it was a pain point to consumers.
And at that point, they're like, well, why?
Yeah, now let's look at it. Let's look at it. What's going on?
And so then you have, you know, big big organizations like, of course,
explore the trades with HVCR and HVAC excellence out there.
But then you also have Hollywood a little bit, too, being like,
like you got some like the MicroWorks Foundation and you got PBS even doing specials on it.
And stuff. And finally, it's like it's hitting the news channels where they're talking about labor shortages.
They're talking about how how lucrative trades are and how it's such a big deal and how.
And honestly, college is also becoming under scrutiny because there's such a low ROI.
Exactly. And it's now turning the corner.
And so have we arrived anywhere? No. But are we making progress?
Absolutely. And I would say, like even studies that we've done and worked with the E.G.F.
Foundation on have even shown an increase where parents are actually saying it was over 67 percent
on the on the survey that we had there that was saying like they would absolutely be more than proud
if if their child chose a trade. Yeah.
And it's turning a corner a bit where when I was growing up, that wasn't even presented.
And there was even growing up in a family, it wasn't even talked about. Right.
And there was stigma to it. It was like absolutely.
I knew growing up in school, people going to to tech every day, it was like, oh, those kids, you know,
like, like, oh, the ones that that don't get it academics.
But, you know, maybe on their last leg in their parole officers following them over there.
They're going to be changing my oil. So by making more money.
Yeah. Yeah. We noticed in my company specifically, when we were having a hard time
finding good people to hire people with experience, we went out to the schools ourselves.
We went to high schools. We took that initiative to let's go in and talk about opportunities.
And, you know, even though that's just a small step, it doesn't seem like it would make that big of an impact.
Just me and my local community doing that. It did. I was hiring, you know, what was so funny,
someone a girl that was in the class, she actually a couple of years later, she I saw her at one of our company parties.
I'm like, what are you? She's like, oh, yeah, I remember sitting in your class and I told my husband to apply.
I'm like, wow, that came from me visiting a high school a couple of years ago.
She's like, you just, you know, your company and what you were doing.
And now that I think the word is getting out and the stigma is shifting, that more and more people are coming.
And we don't we don't have the we don't see the struggles that we used to see as far as finding people who are interested.
And so I do feel like it's shifting. I do feel like the word is getting out there and people are are learning that.
Yeah, there is a really nice career, like the window of career opportunities and that the money to be made is amazing.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right. Well, I hope this brings a little insight into changes that we are seeing in society and acceptance.
And it opens opportunities to fill gaps that we have previously looked at as challenges and now look at as opportunities.
So I thank you all joining so much today.
I hope to continue these conversations to help paint this better picture, to get rid of our crayons and get out the paints and start showing that there are so many opportunities for success and the opportunities to impact the world that we live in.
A lot of people don't look at HVAC and refrigeration as an environmentally impactful career, but we're starting to hear a lot more.
We're now moving to things like the HFC phase downs.
We are starting to talk more about high efficiency equipment and reducing energy consumption, and it all lands in our lap.
So I don't know what that slogan would be.
I've heard so many interesting ideas of how we can rebrand our industry.
So I don't know that it needs a rebranding. I just think it just needs a little brighter color.
All right. Thank you all so much for joining us and look forward to our next opportunity.
Thank you.