Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. We are live here at AHR, having ourselves a blast in lovely Chicago, the windy city full of gloom and rain.
Maybe just while we were here.
Yeah. We had David Rames on this episode he is with Midea and wow what a fantastic conversation from a company that's been around since 1968. But only three years into the US market and we had some great conversation around what it is that they've got going on and how they're trying to evolve with technology. What was your favorite part of that episode?
The stats that they dropped in talking about Heat pumps and what people think they are and what people actually know what they are I think that the whole idea in and around that and what's gonna be coming as a result of electrification but giving that broader understanding, but the more important part It's how do you get that understanding to everybody?
Absolutely. Which is the biggest challenge, right? Being able to communicate that back to the end consumer and help them understand what it is in layman's terms so that they can make sense of it for themselves. For me, I mean, the big concern with all this electrification is what is it going to do to the grid? And so we got to hear from David what it is that they're doing at Midea to help reduce that strain a little bit and so I think that was a great part of the episode as well.
We definitely want to hear from you leave a comment down below. Let us know what your favorite part of the episode was. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.
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Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors, revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan where we have good conversations with good people and any good conversation worth having it's worth having a little tipsy. Waters today so far but we'll get into some beers later. They do have beers here so maybe after the show we'll have a we'll have a brewski.
We are live at the AHR 2024 Expo in lovely Chicago Town and we have Midea I'm super excited to dive into some of the stuff that we're talking about earlier. Walk us through, you've been in the trade for 21 years. Walk us through some of your journey.
Spent 17 years with another major manufacturer, sales side working with contractors, working with applications, working with all of that got a call three and a half years ago from Midea had said, hey, you want to come join us? And my first response was, nope. And then a couple months later my current boss called me and said, no, really, do you want to come join us? And there was no sales pitch. He told me what we were planning on doing, where we were going and I couldn't.
My juices got to flowing. I told him it was in June when he called me and he's like, you got a minute? I said, I'm in HVAC and it's June. No, I said, but if you call me back at six o'clock, I'll have more time. I said, I'll give you 15 minutes. 45 minutes later, we got done talking and I'm like, I got to go.
So what was his value pitch to you?
The value pitch was we have to start. In the U. S., a central ducted heat pump business, how do we do it? Let's, we need you to help us do it and it started rolling, man, I started getting excited and I came on board and just hit the ground running and that's what they needed too, right?
Someone who, with a lot of experience, with the contacts, with the clientele, hit the ground day one, let's go, and let's start developing world leading efficiency products and that's what we did three and a half years later we're crushing it.
It's not a new company though.
It's not a new company based in 1968. So we didn't start in HVAC we morphed our way there, but then like mama says, find out what you do and do best and do that and that's what we do and we've got a whole different appliance line and all of that I'm on the Midea residential air conditioning side of things.
So everything we do is residential single phase inverter products, horizontal discharge, high heat and we got some beast products and we just love to get the name out and I'm super excited about it.
Nice, I'm super excited and even talking to somebody before, the wording that you use is, it's not your grandpa's heat pump. And I think that's a very important thing because a lot of people have this misunderstanding of what a heat pump actually is or what it actually does. You had some stats on that.
Exactly. It's not grandpa's heat pump everybody complains about grandpa's heat pump. It got to 40 degrees outside. They're freezing their you know what's off and they go, I don't know what I'm going to buy next, but it's not going to be a heat pump. The technology's changed, right? So us along PR company did some research and I think it was 2000 contractors and homeowners that they interviewed and they said, hey, do you know what a heat pump is?
And 80% said yeah, I know what a heat pump is, of course. Next question, do you know that there are heat pumps on the market that can give you 100% heating output at negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit? That 80% quickly dropped to 4%. Yes, I know what a heat pump is, but I had no idea a heat pump can do that. I had no idea I can pull out a gas furnace, and I can put it in a heat pump, and I can get heat out of it to keep my house at 70 or 72 degrees Fahrenheit in the coldest of weather.
They had no clue it's up to us to educate them about that.
What about 74 degrees? Because, there's a big debate. What do you keep the thermostat out in the winter?
Listen I am old and I'm bald. I am cold natured, man. I got guys who are like, I keep my house on 64. I'm like, where do you store the parkas? Because I would have to wear one if you did.
I'd take 67 when I'm sleeping and 72 during the day.
72 is good for me and in the winter, maybe a little bit more than that right.
Now, when it comes to this misunderstanding, unknowing of the information of what the heat pump is capable of. Who do you think that falls on more? The manufacturers or the contractors themselves to get that information out there?
Originally, I would have said the contractors okay. But if the manufacturers don't let them know what this stuff is capable of doing, they're busy running their own businesses. I say this, even though the Internet's out there and people are as intelligent as they've ever been, but there are things they just don't know about and I'm not, to me, HVAC is like the most exciting thing I do. I'm weird, right?
So it's not for most people but they can get online, they can look at the products, but the technology has improved so much and the government and local utility companies are incentivizing heat pumps and incentivizing variable speed heat pumps and get the gas furnace out, decarbonize, and now we've got that technology that can put this heat out where you stay comfortable without gas, without fossil fuels, especially propane, which is ungodly expensive and that commodity is very toxic with its
price. You never know what the price is going to do. Heat pumps all the way that's all we do.
Yes and the DOE, Department of Energy, and their clean heat pump challenge, that's what comes up to mind, for me when you're talking about this and getting those sorts of things out there and educating the homeowners and you mentioned to me of some home valuation things that down the road that people aren't considering or people aren't even educating about. And I want to get into the education piece a little bit later, but walk us through what this DOE clean energy challenge is all about.
So in, in 2021 department of energy came out and said, we want to challenge the major manufacturers for the next level of heat pump efficiency and technology, right? So it was optional you didn't have to be in it being Midea and the way we are and we're pretty confident with our products, we're like, oh, we're doing it. So within that challenge, there were two tests one test was what is your heat output at 5 degrees Fahrenheit? 5 degrees Fahrenheit is not difficult to do anymore, right?
So we were doing it in 2015, other manufacturers were as well. That was the mandatory test, but there was a second part of that test that was voluntary. You did not have to do it if you didn't want to. So that is, what is your heat output at negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit? My Midea being my idea, we said, do we want to do it? We looked at each other and said, of course we want to do it during the lab testing we were fairly confident we were going to do well.
So we got the negative 15 Fahrenheit test results back, and they said, how does 118 percent of rated heating capacity at negative 15 Fahrenheit sound? And I said, sounds good to me and I must admit, I didn't know we were going to be that powerful, but we are.
you know what the limit is when you're 100%? Do you know what the temperature is?
We can't go past negative 15. So there are only a couple labs that can even do negative 15. So we would keep running and keep running. Would we lose capacity at some point in time? But we can't find a lab to go that cold. We'd love to have one. We'd love to have one that'll keep going. How about nature?
So third part of this test is we have to do actual field installations for the product because performance in a lab is one thing performance in a real world application is something completely different. Take it out of that controlled environment. Because it's, because the real world is inconsistent, right? The nighttime temperatures are lower, then it warms up.
Someone goes to the thermostat, sets it back, this, they want this degree during the day, this temperature at night and so that's a real work doors are open, dogs are let out, all of this. How do we do in real world applications? And the goal to all of this through the DOE is, we've got to take the strain off of the grid and so through inverter products in high heat, we're not relying on auxiliary heat strips.
So if someone comes home at 530 and cranks the thermostat and the auxiliary heat strips come on, it pushes the grid to its max and so our goal is to stay out of the auxiliary heat strips. In many climates, we don't need auxiliary heat strips because our heat pump does so well.
In fact, it was last year at this very show, I had a lot of people come from each coast in California, especially it seems like the push for the trend start on each coast and push toward the center of America and they said, we don't want auxiliary heat strips. We want to take gas out, we want to put in air handlers. But what are we going to do? And I said what if we make one that runs off of the same 115 volt voltage that your furnace did?
So there are no electrical upgrades, and they go, we'll take it and we said, we'll do it and so we, what we want, we've got a saying. It's pretty simple. It's pretty generic, but it is we want to be easy to afford, easy to install, and then easy to enjoy once it's installed as easy as possible, as inexpensive, and to get as many of these high efficient, high heat, inverter driven heat pumps into as many homes as possible and that's the mission, because we know that's what's best.
You mentioned getting this education out there in and around the heat pumps and to the contractor's hands to the homeowner's hands. To be able to make sure that they're doing it and this is a common theme I think that we've had from conversations with a lot of individuals at AHR so far is that there's no educational requirements from a manufacturer to the contractor to say, hey, here's how you need to install it, here's how you should install it. Here's our shit, figure it out. Figure right.
Here's your box. Right. Gimme your money. Thank you.
Bye. In way you go and yeah, I'm sure there's other contractors that do, or manufacturers rather that do a pretty good educational piece, but I think a lot of people are missing on that. what's your not necessarily the Midea philosophy, but your generalized philosophy on education from a manufacturer. You've been in it for 21 years, down to the contractor.
Yep. So manufacturers have to take the reins of this, right? We can rely on others and we can rely on the contractors. We can rely on the distributors. No one knows the product better than we do we innovated, we designed these products. So we know every bolt, every screw, everything in it. So who's better to do the training than us?
And my team, and I'll brag on my team, I've got industry experts and a technical team that travels the country and we go to all of our distributor partners, and it works we want them to know how do you install it, how do you service it, how do you troubleshoot it, so they have the confidence in the product. We've taken that a step further.
So we've said while we're doing this for our distributor partners, invite your contractors in too hear it from the horse's mouth, from the guys who created this product and they leave and they send me feedback and go, that was the best thing that I've ever seen. I had no idea. No one has ever supported us like this and my guys travel like crazy and I, what I love about Midea is they have never said, David, you travel too much. David, you guys travel too much. David our expenses were too high.
They say go we want to forge the trail, cut the path. People can get it behind us other manufacturers get behind us, but we want to cut the trail and we're training like crazy and we're inviting those contractors into that training too. So they hear it directly from us.
I love it. Cause as a, so I was a comfort advisor. When you have that level of conviction going into a presentation that this is the best, it's going to outperform everything else in the market. This is why I represent this brand. You got it right sales is an energy sport and if you're not convicted on the product that you're selling. You've got no shot.
And it's about confidence, right? It's our job to inject confidence, not only in the brand, but in the performance and listen, it's a lot of work now I'm not going to say, I always say days, nights, holidays, weekends, I'm on, but that's what has to happen and so when you want to be the trail cutter and the blazer, that's, you gotta be out in front.
And so we push and I continue to add guys to my technical support team because we know If a product is installed incorrectly, the efficiency drops, and the consumer isn't really getting what they paid for and that's not what we want to do.
What about when it's installed correctly? a number to me that if all, was it all heat pumps, or if they're all installed correctly?
All units in general. That's the statistic that I heard. In the industry, unit that's in North America now, if they were all installed correctly, there would be a two sear point jump across the board.
There you go. Just by having it installed correctly. So there you go have it folks. Education is important. Get with your manufacturers they're not giving it to you or just use Midea and they'll just come to you and put pressure on your manufacturers. If they don't offer it, put pressure on them. So if you're a contractor and let's go let's put the contractor hat on for a second and we just have this I don't have support from a manufacturer.
How would you advise them to go about getting that support? You mean beat the drum like okay, if they're not listening then what?
If I was a contractor, I would go to my distributor and I would say I need technical support I need to represent your brand my customers call me because I'm the expert and I'll give you a quick story. We were heavy into consumer research on a new product we're going to be developing soon, we did consumer research and we wanted to cover all geographical areas. So we did Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Boston.
We interviewed both contractors and consumers because from the contractor, we want to know what do you want? What do you need? What will make your job easier from the consumer perspective? We want to know how they make their buying decision, right? And the one thing, when I talk to contractors and I stress this. The majority of those consumers, when we ask, How do you make your purchasing decision? Their answer was, I did what my guy told me to do.
Do you know the power, contractors, that you have over the consumer? Yeah. When you are a product expert? When you are an installation expert? When you know your products, the features, the benefits, the bells, the whistles, the advantages. When you know all that, they will do what you now lead them the right way. Give them what they want on the application, what they need. And always offer options as well, right?
At Midea, we say options for everybody because we've got to have them for every area and all of that.
Well, You think about the sales, it's the good, better, best philosophy, right? In having that, but and you're right, when you have that educational baseline, that educational background, today's buyers are educated buyers. They do their research a lot of times beforehand, and they know that Google information that they seek. They don't know all of the technical side of things, but they are an educated buyer. So you have to meet the buyers where they're at.
And you have to do it with confidence. You have to do it with confidence. Because if I'm a contractor and I walk into Mr. and Mrs. Jones house and I'm scratching my head and I look dazed and confused and I don't know about the product, the confidence is not going to be there. I've got to know it and I've got to live it and I've got to be very confident with that offering and they will go, okay, that sounds like what I need.
Yep and that's exactly it, right? Because now they, they have that, ability. But again, that starts with that educational piece, right? That starts with the training piece. And it's funny we had interplay learning on earlier today too and they had like the VR simulations for different things and that was the big thing. But when you have the part of your training and your culture of your business, yes, now it'd be just become second nature, right?
And that's, and you've got to be passionate about it, and we are very picky about who we hire for our technical training side of things. Most of our guys spent many years as contractors. Because I want guys who have had their hands in the equipment, on the equipment, been in a crawl space, been in an attic, been in a basement, and can do it. Most of them then moved up through distribution technical support.
So now, instead of equipment from homeowners, they're now assisting the contractors and then they move up to the manufacturers. So that's where the majority of my guys have come from and combined my team is about a hundred and fifty years experience they know their stuff. They're flexible. I could call one of them today and say hey you need to be in Sacramento, California tomorrow. He's okay. I'll start looking for flights now. It's passion.
It's dedication That's the only guys we hire and that's why we're doing what we're doing.
I love it well and we talked about the understanding of the equipment and having a deep knowledge of it I was just trying to look up his name to make sure I quoted it correctly but when we had Brent Buckley on oh, yeah, way back when he was like episode 30. This is a long time ago now before he became an owner. He was like, selling tech. But his average sale was almost 20, 000. Exactly. Why? Because he had the inverter system at home. Yes, he had all brand new ductwork.
He cared about it in his own home. He was able to transmit that conviction back to the consumers.
And that's why with all my guys, my colleagues, we want to get this equipment in their house. So if they run into somebody on the street, or my guys are out training and they go, that's the question, what do you got in your house? You're coming in here telling me how great this stuff is, what do you got in your house? I got a 1974 X brand and they go, oh, so your stuff's so good.
Yeah. And I haven't changed my filter in about eight months.
I just had the filter notification reminder come up for me today.
And in the cold weather is no more important than then, right? You get the filter changed, you just get out of the airflow. But I've got a colleague that is in Montreal and it is frigid, fricking cold in Montreal. So we send him a unit, say install it he puts it in his house he does not hook up the auxiliary heat strips, and it's our extreme heat product. The first winter he went through with no auxiliary heat strips, Montreal gets cold, minus ten. Never needed the auxiliary heat strips.
He finally put them in. He actually was, he put them in, he was traveling, and it got brittle. Super, super cold and his wife calls him and said, it's time, right? But it was well below zero. Yeah. But In many applications that aren't Montreal, sometimes we don't even need auxiliaries. If you want them in there as a backup, wonderful. put them in mine just in case. But we don't need them. It's an insurance policy, right? It's an insurance policy.
Yep, Exactly. You don't want to pay for the car insurance, but when you get in an accident, you're glad you did.
Maybe you should watch more cops, because apparently you don't have to have it, because everyone they pull over doesn't have it.
Touche. I would just rather just put the money aside into my own pool somewhere.
That's what I'm saying. Let me know how that turns out.
Yeah, except for if somebody sues you for millions. Yeah.
At the one point I wanted to come back to too, is you talked about the ability to put less strain on the grid. We saw a couple of years ago when California said, by 2030, we are eliminating gas powered vehicles. There can be no pay house powered vehicles, right? The next day they come out and say, okay, can you please take it easy on charging your electric cars?
In Alberta, just this last week, when it dipped down to minus 40 minus 50, they said, please stop plugging in your electric cars because it's putting too much strain on the grid.
Turn off your lights. It was an emergency alert.
Yeah. So having that ability to take that strain off the grid is incredibly important. So I just wanted you to talk a little bit more about that.
And that's why, and that's why we have to work on our staging, right? Yes. We have to let the heat pump do the work and the auxiliary heat strip is the most inefficient way to heat anything. And when you get, say you got a 20 kw heater in the system and that booger comes on, and it always happens. People scale it back when they're at work and then all of a sudden at 5. 30 in the afternoon or six o'clock, all right, man, I want it back to 72.
The auxiliary heat strips come in, the lights dim, and they have to do that. We want to stay out of the auxiliary heat strips. We want that heat pump to run all day long and we want to find the load line of that home and stay there all day. So the old, we always have automobile and car analogies, right? So is it better to have a transmission in your car that has two speeds, zero and 70? Or is it better to have an automatic transmission in your car that can go any speed between zero and 70?
Which would have better efficiency? Any speed between zero and 70. Some roads are 25, some are 35, some are 45, some are 70, right? We can go any speed in between though. We follow the load line of the home, so we're not on, we're not off. Because compressor kicks in, is very high. So we want to run all day. So funny story, this has been a few years ago. Whatever these inverter products really started to get in. I had a contractor buddy of mine call me and say, I need your help, man.
And I went, oh. I said, for what? He's like, I know it's not your job, but I got a homeowner that's pretty ticked off at me right now and I'm like, thanks, Jimmy. Thank you. Appreciate you calling me for that. Now, you don't call me. Hey, David, how you doing, man? Yeah, I haven't talked to you in a while. So I go out. I'm talking to Miss Jones. And she says, I hate it. And I'm like, all right, settle down. What do you hate? She said, the thing runs all day.
I said, I paused and I said, okay, I said, I've got two, two questions for you. I said, are you more comfortable than you've ever been? She said, yep and I said, has your utility bill gone down? She said, yep and I just paused and I looked at her and it hit her. I said, set it and forget it and let it do its thing. It's got advanced algorithms that do what they do. Don't turn it on, don't turn it off, let it run.
Because it may run, if there's not a load, it may run at 20 percent capacity all day long. But it's cheaper to do that than to turn it off and to come back on several times. So that's our mission.
I guess in that nature, a lot of people do turn that temperature down. Yup. They do turn that temperature up. To do it when they're at work and when they're sleeping, right? Our household is the same, like we cool it down at night because I sleep better when it's cold. My wife, not so much. So if you want to set it and forget it, would you still be able to use those auto schedules with something like this?
You can still use it. But I can tell you this. People think that they save money by setting it way back, but they, in most situations they don't. Because if you think about 5:30 or 6 o'clock, and let's say in the summer, it's hot, man and so now all of a sudden you've set your thermostat from 72 to 78 and now it's gotta work like the devil to get down. So did you really save any money?
Would it have been more efficient to keep your house at 72 all day than to go crazy and try to get it from 78 down to 72 and vice versa in the winter? Yep. So I keep it at 72, but I'm gonna kick it back to 66 while I'm gone set it and forget it. Can you do that? Yeah, but we don't advise major temperature swings. Because we wanna be more efficient. So if you wanna set it back a few degrees. No problem.
It can overcome that, but don't get crazy on it because you think you're saving money because technically you're not right.
I actually, so I have a nest in my house and I actually tried that to see, okay, cause it tells you how much, how long it's ran and so I actually did a test for a week with it all the same time and a week when I turned it down and turn it back up and turn it down and turn it back up and you can tell you like a, it was like a half hour difference of runtime on the, setting it for getting it being a little bit more for my unit, right? And I'm talking gas furnace, right?
And so it was, but it's still, it's really not that big of runtime when it's minus a lot outside in Canada.
Exactly and so what we want to do is we want to maintain the temperature of the space, just maintain it. We don't want to jack it up and jag it down. Let's just maintain the temperature, but that's what this inverter technology does because it ramps up and ramps down, right? And so set it, forget it and again, if you want to set it back a little bit, that's fine. When you're sleeping for comfort, right? If you do it for comfort, that's one thing.
If you do it because you think you're going to save a lot of money, you're not going to save a lot of money. So I would just prefer, because if you think about it, in a house, whether it's air conditioning or heating, if you set it back from 72 to 66, basically everything in your house is 66 degrees now. So you got to heat up everything in your house, the floor, the ceilings, the furniture, the everything, right?
Because it's all the same when your house, you go from 72 to 78 while you're gone on the air conditioning side, everything in your house is 78 degrees now. So it's not like a car where you jump in within five minutes, you turn it on and you're at temperature. You've got 1, 500 square feet that you've got to condition. So let's maintain temperature. Let's not have any wild temperature swings.
That makes sense. That's the way we work from home. So it's it's all the same time all day long.
I've got a tiny little office in the basement. It's right beside the mechanical room. So it gets hot as hell in there and the rest of the house is frigid. It's great. It's my own little tropical paradise.
One thing, if we want to talk technology for a second is applications like that, right? So we've got multi zone ductless products, right? Within that multi zone ductless product, we can put a central air handler on the ductwork. But we've got what we call a Midea N, which is a one way cassette that actually countersinks in the ceiling joists and so my favorite application is this.
You take our Xtreme heat pump, you put the air handler on the ductwork, you take this one way cassette, you countersink it in the ceiling of the master bedroom. It has its own wall control. Now, you can turn the master bedroom with independent control on whatever temperature you want, and you're not doing it to the whole house. That's the next generation, right?
When can you come install that in Calgary? Cause that would be great.
And we're actually doing that in a colleague's house soon and everyone I talk to, I say, that's what's next. we had the, we were honored to do in Louisville, we have what's called Homorama. So it's the best home builders in the era build these beautiful homes and one of the builders asked us, hey, would you put your product in our house? And we're like, of course. Yeah, and so we've got a unit in the garage.
So I'm keeping this garage warm and keeping this garage cool We've got our one way cassette in the master bedroom. And then we got the Evox air handler for the rest of the house we're tickled man the garage stays hot in the winter and cold in the summer when he's out tinkering in the cars you're doing whatever he wants man. He's not sweating or he's not freezing to death.
Even that one way cassette like our house, above our garage, is our, is one of my kids bedroom. They got three walls exposed to the elements and something like that goes in independent control, and now you have the ability to adjust the temperature of that room, specifically above the garage, if that's an issue in your home.
And what I did for mine in that exact same scenario is, I've got a garage, I've got a bonus, big bonus room above it, it's my son's room, three exposed walls, and I'm above an unconditioned space, so it does get cold. I ended up putting a single zone ductless in that room and it keeps the room whatever temperature he wants it. And then what I do is, if the bedroom door is open, I aim it down, out the door, out the hallway, and down the hallway.
It helps the upstairs, and I don't have to do the entire house. I can just do it from that one space. And if you think about it, if that's running and I can keep it warmer upstairs if I want to, I'm not doing it for the whole house. Independent control, man.
So if we're putting this in a child's bedroom, is there also the ability to lock the stat so that they can't fuck around with it?
Actually, you can. It comes with a wireless remote. Perfect. So you set it, you take the remote, you put it in your nightstand, and you set it.
No punishing your kids with too much hot or too much cold in their room, okay?
Exactly. And if they misbehave, if they misbehave behave and it's winter time. You can sit, I'm taking out your knee. You go, when you start acting right, daddy, I'll turn this thing back up, put your coat on.
Last topic that I want to touch on and then being respectful of your time here at HR, I will have our signature last question after that. Don't get me wrong. So be ready for that. Just that educational piece. And you mentioned something to me that at the beginning we were talking about it and first off you said any trade school out there you want to get equipment into their facility to work on trade. Get in touch with them. Midea, Evox. So M I D E A E V O X. com.
But you said there's a big gap in the education in the school side of things. And okay, not every state has schooling that they need to go to. There's no license requirements. I think there's 14 or 16, if I remember correctly, they don't have that, but the other ones do. And you have. Walk me through or walk us through what you told me that it was like, oh yeah, how do we fix that?
How do we fix it? So in other words, we want to work with trade schools. There's a huge percentage of the HVAC contractors that are about to retire. We've got to get new blood in, right? Not only are they about to retire, but the equipment is changing. Like we've talked about grandpa's heat pump old single speed compressors, right? They don't communicate. It's on off. And so now we're. ingesting this variable speed product and this high heat product in.
But to your point, who's going to train them? So we want to work with the trade schools. And so I've got a lot of equipment, right? That, that they shipped me and said, David, do with it what you want. And I said on the education side, but here is a caveat that I didn't even think of. We want to train them. We want to get this high efficient inverter product and heat pumps into the trade schools. Their concern is I don't have anyone here that actually knows the product and can train on it.
So I would love to have the equipment, but who's going to train? So we are shouting out to all the trade schools. If you need product, you need support, we've got a system in place. We've got to get this younger generation trained on this. And they should be going crazy. These things are computers now, right? It's not the old saying, was it? You charge it, if the line sets beer can cold, it's ready to go, right? Those days are over. They are computers. You got to hook them up, right?
You got to program them. You got to set them. You got to do all that. We want to help with that as the manufacturer, but we also want to make sure we get this equipment in trade schools where we can get these kids trained on it and ingest this younger generation of talent into the trades.
Super important. Oh, huge. It's not just this industry that has that disconnect from an educational standpoint and we don't necessarily need to go down the educational rabbit hole here But the idea is here like you have professors teaching people that have been either A out of the field or B Don't know the product. Yeah, see you have Those who don't know Teach or those who can't do teach, right?
That's the old saying and now not no disrespect to any educators out there of course, there are some really good ones out there, but there's also a lot of no, you just got canceled. I got canceled It's probably not no hey, we've actually been pretty good. We've been fairly PG today. So I haven't had the alcohol in us yet that's probably why that's what yeah, once that happens and loose lips start happening Yeah, but it's a big it's a big thing.
It's a big disconnect and that's something that Not just you guys, I think all manufacturers, all contractors need to beat that drum louder to be able to get that in there. And not just HVAC, all trades.
Exactly. And we need to, and I'm going to get off topic for a quick second. And my son's a perfect example. You've got colleges out there and listen, college is great. It's not for everybody. I want to challenge these kids who don't know what the next step is. Your first step is probably not going and giving a university 20, 000 a year and taking out a lot of debt. Okay? It's not. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a quick story about my son. So my son, it's 21 years for me in the trades, right?
Doing this. So my son graduates high school. He was a good student, but he hated school. Hated it, but got A's and B's. Dad, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, there's a lot you can do, but the only wrong answer is nothing. Okay? So let's talk about it. And I said, you got the military, you got college or he said, dad, I think I just want to go to work.
And I'm like, there's nothing wrong with that and so there was a lady across the street from us who unfortunately lost her husband, needed some help and Aaron goes and helps her, my son. And she had a plumber over. Okay. And he's talking and talking. I don't know. He's putting in a water heater or something and Aaron came home and said, think I want to be a plumber. And this freaks people out when I tell a story and it's true and I said, okay, cool.
I said, if I were you, I'd probably go online and I'd probably fill out an application or whatever. And he's I think I'm just going to drive there and walk in and shake their hand and introduce myself. He was 19 at the time. Good way to do it and I said buddy, you're probably only gonna have to go to one and you're going to have a job. So two years ago he did that. I'm going to tell a story and he won't mind. I'm talking to him about investing, right?
And I said Hey, man, you're working full time, you make a little bit of money. I said, let's invest some of that stuff. And I said, if you could just give me a number that you would be worth just letting go of, what would that be? And he said, I don't know, dad, how's 40, 000 sound? A 21 year old kid who went directly into the trades has an extra 40, 000 in cash laying around. Where others are no disrespect to colleges, but they're jacking up a lot of student debt.
Yep. He's got 40 grand laying around that he would be willing to do something with and invest at 21 years old and I do an investment calculator for him. Retire at this, right? It is. How's 1. 6 million when you retire sound? Let's go. So it's not for everybody. The trades aren't for everybody, but I would challenge the youth of America.
If you want to make money this is simple economics and it's supply and demand the supply of tradesmen is very low the demand is very high a single the economic scale will tell you the price is going up. Yep Extra 40k laying around guys So if you want to make some money and you don't want to take on a lot of debt going to the trades.
Well when we had Michael and Shreya on Michael was a plumber. He now works for service MVP with Joe Crisara. Yep Retired at the age of 30. Yep Didn't need to work anymore. Live like no one else today. So you can live like no one else tomorrow.
And I would say, and give some of it away. You know what I mean? Those of us who are blessed, give some of it away. People have not had some of the opportunities that I've had. And so I do challenge, if you've got something to give away, find some folks who need it more than you do give it to them.
Not even just the monetary thing. If you have time, give away your time. Volunteer, go do those things with. Different types of programs to be able to open up your eyes to other areas to be able to help those that are less fortunate and privileged than yourself. Yep. I agree with that 100%. Yep. So I wanted to tell that story about my son and people are like, that's crazy.
I'm like, it may be crazy, but it's true.
It's 100 percent true. I went and got a business degree and how much of my business degree do I actually use running our marketing business? Not much. Yep. The ability to read a P and L and a general ledger and that's about it.
Hey, it is paid great dividends for me. So again, when I talk about college it's not for everyone, but it is for some. and I get my degree and my idea takes very good care of me and it's a great job and I'm blessed to have it. So it's not, but if you don't know, yes and what I told Aaron was, oh, they'll always take you. Oh yeah. You decide five years later you want to go and you got money. Oh, they'll take Yep. But try the trades. Yep. Make some money. Be in demand. Yep. Grow your worth.
Yep. Grow your value. And then the other way you save money is in your own house. Now you can install your own water heater. You can install your own air conditioner. You don't have to pay someone to do it. So it's also, it's a win.
Yeah, that's it. That's true. I wish I would have listened to my dad's advice when I was younger and say go into the trades. But my path probably would have taken a different turn and I probably wouldn't be sitting here now. We wouldn't be sitting here now, right? So everything happens for a reason. He tried to push me into the trades.
I'm like, nah, I'm gonna, I already knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do though, so it was a little bit of an exception, but if you want to be a doctor, but if you want to be a doctor, then go to university, right?
But what an interesting perspective between the two, your dad pushing you into the trades, you saying no, your son coming to you and saying, I think I might want to do this. And how easy would it have been for you to push him into it because you've been around him.
It would have been very easy. And I'll quote him and it just came to my mind. He said, dad, I don't understand why would I pay someone to train me? When they will pay me to train me. Yup. And I'm like, you got your mother's intelligence thing.
Dad's looks mom's smart.
He didn't get dad's looks either. Thank goodness. She's got a lot of hair. Unlike me. The follicle gods were not kind to me.
That's funny. David, so much for taking the time out of the expo to sit and chat with us enlightening aspects and look I guess we did go down the education rabbit hole a little bit even though I said I didn't really think we needed to, but we'd probably keep going on it, but I don't think we need to. It's okay. We're loosey goosey here, man. We're loosey goosey. We're loosey goosey. As we do wrap up though, we have one final question left for you.
What is one question that you wished people would ask you more, but they don't?
At what? Through my life?
Anything.
Gee, man. Christmas.
To translate, that means holy shit.
It does. One question that I wish people would have asked me. I wish people would ask me what passion is, right? I mean, Got guys who, and listen, you guys can tell I'm passionate about what I do, whatever you do it with 100 percent passion. And again, with my son, if you want to go into the trades, do the best you can build your brand, Build your reputation, but whatever you do, be passionate about it. I don't care what you do, but would ask me, what should I do?
What is the one trait that I should take on? And my answer would be passion. Whatever you do, man, do it at 110 and kick the door in. Don't knock and then you'll build your brand. You'll build your worth. You'll make a career out of it. And then you'll look back and again, give some of that money away if you're blessed. I love that answer.
Yep. Passion.
It took me a second.
Passion.
What did your dad always say about your last name?
Oh, no, it wasn't my dad. It was an old boss. Old boss. That he said, and this has stuck with me, that at the end of the day, you only have your reputation and your last name. You better protect both. So if you have that and you have passion while that's essentially your reputation and your last name. Correct.
And put yourself in a position to succeed. Correct networking. Yep asking questions. And we've got co ops that come through our office all the time. And some of them actually physically come up to me and go, what did you do? And I love those questions, right? And then you got some of them who just sit at their desk and they don't look at anybody. And I'm like, man, you gotta ask questions about guys who have done some stuff. How'd you do it?
That's what I tell them have passion and network and build your brand and build your worth and build this community around you that can help you and then let your name, if I'm sitting here and there's a group of people over there looking at me and I don't know what they're saying, I know what they're saying because you build your brand and you build your worth and you build your reputation because you got your reputation and your last name. That's what you got. was a long winded answer.
And then usually that question is, yeah, and then you snuck it in. You sneak that in on everybody. Nice.
Yeah. Every episode. Sometimes it can, it actually has the episode going for like another 15 minutes, depending on the question and so it's a question, right? Yeah. It's, yeah it's a doozy. It is a doozy. your answer was good too, because passion is true and you can see it, you can see it in you and what you do and what you represent. I can see it.
In you guys too. Appreciate it. Yeah. Cool, man. This is awesome. Thanks for this opportunity, guys.
Thanks for coming on and until next time,
cheers.
Well, that's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.