Hey everybody, welcome to the HBAC ADHD vodcast. I'm here with Rob Larson from
Rob, tell us your company name. General Plumbing Supply. General Plumbing Supply. I met Rob at a
MeasureQuick train to trainer and he seemed like an interesting guy and he has an interesting story and he's one of
two uh distributor representatives that were at the training. So, I'm super interested uh in his take on
MeasureQuick and a whole bunch of other stuff. So, hey Rob, how's it going? Good Jeremy. Thanks for the invite. I'm
happy to be here. And before we begin, let me just uh say thanks for your gift.
Oh, you got it. That's awesome. Yeah, I tried to get everybody in the class one. I hope everybody got theirs so far.
Yeah, couple sizes we didn't have, but yeah. No, no, you're good, man. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. You're a man of
your word. The shirt and I got it. So, great stuff. appreciate that.
Um, so tell us what just tell us a little bit about what you do, what your your distributorship sells, what brands
you have, what what services you service, all all that type of stuff. So, we're a Lux Air dealer of equipment,
which is a product made by York. Uh, they just recently uh was bought out by Bosch. So, as they move forward, they're
going to be a Bosch company. So, I'm not sure what that's going to look like yet. We have our first meeting back uh here
in November of this year. So, we'll know more details as far as how that
transition is going to go with us, but as of right now, everything basically is
the same. I'm dealing with the same contacts at the factory, stuff like that. So, yeah, we have a dealership
that we have, you know, um dealers that we support through the product. They
hired me as a tech support guy and a trainer. Um, I do have an assistant, Zach, who uh helps out with those tech
calls and training that we do here at our training center uh in Piscatoaway, New Jersey. Um, so yeah, it's it's good
stuff. So, that's kind of what I get involved. I think that's pretty exciting though, York uh Bosch because Bosch is
such an innovative company and they have such an innovative product to be able to combine theirs with the York distribution and and you know the
reputation that York has as a solid Americanmade piece of equipment. I think that's exciting for you guys um from a
technology standpoint. Yeah, I agree. I think that's where it's going. Right. So, from what I
understand, Bosch really pushes not that Luxer didn't push the training part of it because I've been at the factory a
couple times and they really kind of keep you up, make sure you keep up with your training and make sure you keep up
with training for your dealers. So, there's required hours per year with
your your dealers to make sure that they're up to date on what's going on and they kind of track it. So, Luxair
did a good job with the training side, but I think from what I understand, Bosch will even do a better job. So Bosch is going to be more the training
side of it, which we all need. There's a lot and there's a lot of guys at the top level of our industry right
now that that are doing a lot of innovative things with the Bosch product. And on LinkedIn, you'll see
there's a couple guys, a friend of mine, Tim, and a couple other guys that have really latched on to that Bosch brand
because of the um uh versatility of their their inverter and their their
non-inverter communicating pro or non-communicating inverter products. And uh I'm actually going to be
commissioning my first Bosch system next Monday. I used it in one of my designs and it kind of plays into this
conversation a little bit because the thing that we all thought was really cool, the streaming feature of MeasureQuick, we're going to be using so
that my friend Tim who knows everything about Bosch and how to commission it can be seeing what I'm seeing while we're
doing the commissioning. So he can help me dial it in so to speak. So it's pretty cool. Um, tell me so what we met
at MeasureQuick. What got your attention about MeasureQuick? What got you in that class? What what path led you there to
to the MeasureQuick thing? So again, I I was hired about seven years ago out of the field. So I'm I'm
close to 42 years in the field. Love it. I whistle to work every day, Jeremy. I love this field even at as long as I've
been doing it. And one of the things that we did here during uh our training
like so one of the unique things I have is I get to take a technical call for
the most part right and as these tech calls come in from our dealers I'm like wow you know I didn't realize maybe
these guys are struggling in certain areas so I've collected those tech calls and I've created classes to focus in on
what the guys are having problems with and my findings actually is less more of
a technical problem because most of the guys we deal with are technically sound. They know what they're doing. They're
good tech guys. They got some basic stuff for the most part. The biggest challenge I I find that they're facing
is is kind of like the therapy part of it. Like I feel like I'm a therapist because
that's hilarious. They they get so caught up in everything other than what the problem is. They lose their sequence of operation, which
I like to call it, right? because they start at A and then they wind up skipping B and C and they go to
someplace else. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't don't, you know, keep your path. Keep the sequence. Don't skip
anything within your sequence. If you stay within your sequence, you're going to find a problem, right? Whether it's
be a technical problem or an install problem, right? So, what Measure quick does, which I love, and that's one of
the things we started training here. Um, Measure Quick allows you it it takes you
step to step. It doesn't allow you to skip a step, right? So, that's what I loved about it and that's kind of where
my focus is right now is to make sure I implement Measure quick within our dealership. So, when they're having
challenges, we're they're using the same information as that's required for me to be able to give them technical support.
So, and then from the training side of it, what I found prior to measure quick, what I found myself doing was teaching
guys how to do static pressure tests, teaching them how to do gas pressure, heat rise, temperature rise, refrigerant
uh checks and stuff. And for the most part, when you when you separate those types of training and you basically
teach somebody how to do static pressure, if they don't understand what it means or why they're doing it, it
falls. It falls apart. They they don't retain it. So, I realized when I do
individual classes just to teach them individual stuff, they don't retain it
as long as they should. So what I started thinking about was well listen what's our ultimate goal is to fill out
a startup sheet right when it's a new commissioning or a new install. Sure. So I started I brought startup sheets
into every single one of my classes. So I'd show them whatever we're learning has to go within this startup sheet. So
that's basically my training I started over two years ago where I all my
training had to do with startup sheets and startup sheets could relate to um
service too because most service guys go in there and oh I'm going to just fix the problem and they might find a wire
burnt off fix the wire and they move on and they shouldn't. They should start just like installs do start at a cover
everything so that you don't miss anything. you might find other problems while you're there. And the last thing
you want to do is have a re, you know, a call back. So that's kind of where we changed with MeasureQuick is allowing me
to change the way I train so that everything's steep. And one of the things I'll get an opportunity to show
you a wall of equipment and different things. And one of the sayings up there is learn to learn the sequence, rule the
world. Right. Order of operations matters, right? I mean, I preach that, preach it, preach
it, preach it. like you can't you can't uh set your refrigerant before you set your air flow. You shouldn't put a heat
pump in before you look at the load of the house. I mean there's a whole bunch of little nuances that order of
operations fall into where they really matter a bunch. How do you see um how do you see measure quick like you've t you
touched on it a little bit but how do you see measure quick directly training like your training sequence and in um
where you said you had the um startup sheets like take that away. How does Measure Quick replace that with the
guided workflows? Is that what you're you're planning on teaching through sort of like how Joe taught us?
Yeah. There what I like about Measure Quick is you can go anywhere, right? You can do the startup where you could do
the step by step or you could just jump in and and focus on one area whether it be air flow or temperature or whatever
which I like. But one of the things especially with these guys that just don't understand all the numbers yet.
The biggest challenge is getting the probe placement right. Joe always talked about probe placement is the most
important thing. And I try to tell especially new students that are newer to the field, listen, learn where to
place the probes and don't worry about the measurements. Just learn how to get the measurements because if they write
all the measurements down and they don't know what it means, like they got all these numbers down and they're looking at it not sure what it means. Well,
yeah, first few times you do it, you're not going to understand what it means. But as you get used, as you write these
numbers down and you start getting a pattern going with the way the numbers are coming in, you're going to see
challenges. You're going to say, "Wait a minute, that number seems high or low." But you'll learn what the numbers mean. We could always teach you what the
numbers mean. But if you give me bad information in, we're not going to get good information out, right? You know, I
can't help you with bad information. Oh, that that's a fact. Everything it's so funny. Like it doesn't matter if it's
a load calculation or if it's a pressure measurement on the commissioning side. It's all garbage in garbage out. Like
you if you're putting bad information in, the result could be anything. And the funny thing is a lot of guys in in
this field want to lean on bad numbers. They're like, "Oh, I got it's a number I got. You know, this I put I did this. I
did that." And you know, it's the the number is the number. But they their information going in was all trash. It
had nothing to do, you know, it doesn't represent what's really going on there. So the number the numbers coming out
don't represent it, you know. So that is one thing I think MeasureQuick does a good job of kind of getting in front of
because it gives you a lot of warnings when it see to get in their mind like, "Hey, yeah,
maybe that's, you know, maybe this number, you see a warning over and over again enough times, you're going to
start, you know, understanding that maybe you're doing something different, you need or you're doing something wrong and you need to do something different."
Do you see I see in the industry um and I I'm I mean this is just the way the industry is structured a little bit but
there's a different there's a lot of shots that isolate in install and service and install guys don't ever
really some of them don't graduate we'll say into service like that's a little more technical. Um, do you see measure
quick changing that dynamic a little bit where guys can be we can see more cross trainining in shops because of the way
MeasureQuick is set up and the ease of understanding what's going on? You know, in in their little marketing they say we
make a junior tech a senior tech. Do you think that that um is going to help in
shops where the install sort of isolated? You know, I I see some guys where they're just like, "Oh, I do
install. We're going to have to get service in here." and they can't diagnose the problem until the service guy gets out there. You think measure
quick changes that game a little bit? Oh, no. That's that's a really good question, Jeremy, because that is the
biggest hangup when I talk to these guys, and right now, believe it or not, I seem to get a mixed message. So, some
companies do bring their service guys in after the fact to do the startup, but
majority of them say, "Look, I don't have the resources to do that. I can't just pull a guy off a service call to to
have it never lines up. The timing is never there because by the time the installers are actually done with the
install, they're looking to turn a switch on. Most guys are just turning switches on just all right, it's
working. We'll get the service guy here within the next day or two to actually do a commissioning. And that's not always the best option to do that.
So, it's going to be interesting. But I I I believe it is going to be measure
quick will definitely be a tool that installs could use. They just need to learn placement of probes. They don't
have to do the math. If they can place the probes after they do their install and run it for 15, 20 minutes, get that
recording, send it to their service manager, he can look at that, have a picture, snapshot of what's going on
with that system, whether it's low charge, overcharge, whatever the challenges are, and they can either make
adjustments there on the fly and tell the guy, hey, you're you're grossly overcharged, you're undercharged, let's do this to move forward until a service
guy can get out there, or maybe they can just continue with that start up start
up and install and just move forward if everything passes. So that's a that's a
very good interesting question I'd like to propose to most of my dealers and see how they would move forward with measure
quick. I think that um there's a lot of value in putting something to bed day of
like I I'm an AD I'm ADHD per the name of the podcast and if I leave stuff
hanging out sometimes it never gets taken care of. So I've been like taught myself over the years. One one thing
anything that I can um make into to a
sequence that I can get done in the same day I do like for instance if I'm when I was doing green inspections a lot of
guys would take all the pictures take all the information and then they'd go home and then some days later get the
report out. Like that's how I was trained up. Like for me that never worked. Like that report never got out after that. So I would have to go I
ended up leaning on technology and figuring out hey if I just take my computer in the space I enter everything
in you know right into the computer right then and there boom as soon when I walk out send the follow-up email right
from from the house and when I walk out that thing's done like I have nothing else to do and I look at this install
service thing like that is goofy to me. Um, it's something that's went on in the
industry for some time, but not having the guy trained to close close the deal right then and there. And some of them, like you said, there's a lot of them
that do. They train their install guys. Like, whatever their process is, it's done when that guy walks out the door,
good, bad, or otherwise. We're not saying the stuff's working right when the guy walks out the door, but their process is over when the guy walks out
the door. Measure quick, I think, gives guys an opportunity to put business to bed the same day. Send in a report to
the homeowner the same day that says your system's operating the way that, you know, we expect it to, and here's
everything that says it's like that, you know, and here's where the benchmark is on your system. Boom, Mr. Homeowner, here's your report that, you know, the
people at the at the office, their job is done the same day that job's filed, however people file it, and everybody
can walk out and feel good about it. And the best thing about it is you shouldn't have any call backs. If you're doing
everything that you're supposed to be doing, then that should be a solid, you know, pin in the job that should be done
and you should not have to worry about that for the foreseeable future. That com that customer should just be
experiencing the comfort and everything else that comes along with that system. So, I think that from us, from me and
you and anybody that's doing training, I think it's a little bit of a training thing. Like we need to, like you said, I'm going to pose that question to my
guys. Like beyond even posing it as a question, we need to say, "Look, man, this is really how this is meant to be
used. This is a tool for your installers to walk out the door and feel good about what they did the day of the install and
you never have to think about it again because you know that it got done correctly. You know what? That's the ultimate the
ultimate solution is exactly the way you described it. That is what I if I had a vote, I would vote to say that's the way
we're going to move forward. Okay. So, you nailed it. I mean, that's the that's what we need to do. We need to deal with
it right there. And the example just the other day, I had blood work done on a on
a Thursday. I had blood work and went to the doctor. They took blood. In 24
hours, I had the results on my phone, right? So, I'm reading my results, which thank God is all good stuff, right? So,
it was all normal blood work. My doctor calls three days later to tell me, "Oh, you're normal." But I already got the
report, Jeremy. So, I was like, "Okay, thanks for calling, but I didn't really need you." Yeah.
So, to your point, if we're able to do that where in the past blood work would take weeks to get back, they're not
doing that anymore. It's within a 24-hour period, we're you're suggesting, and I agree with is we're suggesting you
do it right on the spot. Look, you're done. Boom. Press it. Send it. That's
the results. There's no There's nothing to fudge. There's nothing here. This is what the results say. These are the
measurements we took. Here's your results. Let's move on. Yeah. And I think more money in our
pockets than anything, you know, just getting that done and that customer taken care of. It's so funny that you use that analogy. Like by the time this
airs, I have a blog. I just put it up. I haven't rolled it out or anything. It's it's going to go along with a little concept that I'm uh I created to try to
market our trainings. It's called um your HVAC superpowers and why you may not have them yet. And it basically it
part of the an that that piece of it is like conduit tech. There's a new there's a new um software out that that I a guy
that I met and I've been dealing with named Winston Chi. He has a software called NOS and it's basically an HVAC um
AI assistant that does a whole bunch of things. It plugs into Service Titan. It'll talk to you on your way to your
job if you wanted to give you a summary of the job. It has 15 million pieces of
HVAC paperwork and uh programmed into it. It has the biggest database of of HVAC manuals that's ever been created.
And so it it'll allow you to like basically why you're doing a service call if you take a picture of what
you're looking at or if you say what it is, it'll find the document that supports that and show you what you're
working on. So, it's really really a a really really robust uh solution and it has an always on feature that basically
um throughout the service call or throughout the install, it records everything that's happening and by the
time you sit down at the table with the customer, it has a nice proposal or a nice summary of service printed out for
you so that the guy doesn't even have to do anything and anything the customers talked about in there and addressed and
everything. So, like it's super robust. that and then measure quick like I'm saying these my concept is these three
things are your HVAC superpowers because the load calculation done with conduit
tech housed in your ERP gives you a permanent record of how anything that can affect the HVAC system um in from a
house perspective that would be exerting pressure on the HVAC system would be doing it you know what the load is in
the perpetuity if they get new windows all you have to do is put the windows in and change the load you know so that sort thing and then with your your ERP
your service titan and your uh no you have a permanent record of what went on
at all these calls and then measure quick you have your system benchmark so all of that basically creates x-ray
vision for the house you know what I mean it's like you're these three things are your HVAC superpowers using them the
way that they're intended these three or four pieces of technology give you superpowers that we didn't used to have
we didn't even have it five years ago you know I mean it's like We're in a really amazing place. So in that blog I
I referenced my chart. I'm like one you know the ERP records like my chart from
the your medical records. As soon as you go home you can look in your medical record and you could see what happened
at that call. And that is the way we need to be looking at doing business in this era because that is what this era
of of technology demands of us. like these kids that are coming up and buying homes and everything else, like they're
used to that type of recordkeeping and that type of instantaneous response and
they're not going to want to fool around with the guy that has to dig through or send somebody out to give them, you know, little basic pieces of
information. So, I just thought that was really cool that you also brought that same exact analogy up.
Yeah. No, it's great. It's great stuff. Listen, um I I was out in the field for years, right? So I'm a young tech. So
whatever I look at my experience when I tell people ah it's 40 plus years but reality it's not because the first 20
years is in a museum somewhere that's information that's garbage today. So I
had probably just as much experience than a 10 or a 15 year guy right because the technology changing so fast. So
these are the things that I point out. So I'm constantly learning every day too with these guys and I share that
information. But being out in a field for as long as I have and and when you're out in the field, you're doing
service. You're you're a lonely guy, man. You're by yourself. You're in a truck. Most of my conversations with
myself, right? We didn't have all the phone technology we have today. That's a bigger point.
So, I'm graduating from that and I'm thinking about it. I'm saying to these guys, guys, you have measure quick. Do
you understand what that means? you have an iPhone or you or a Droid, an analog, whatever phone you have, and you have
Measure quick on it. That's like having a partner next to you, a really smart
partner, right? So, it's going to take those days that you're not 100%. And you
got a guy who's never going to let you down. He's always there. That's measure quick app on your phone. He will always
be with you. When you have a question, you have a measurement problem or if you have a brain fart and you're saying,
"What does that mean? What? Why is my sub cooling here, my super heat here?" Like, the numbers aren't adding up. And
Measure Quick will be there and say, "Hey, dude, relax. Calm down. Take this measurement again, and we'll figure this
out." So, you literally have a partner with you through Measure Quick, in my opinion, and a very smart and a super.
You You said it right, the word super. Super super. Super super. So you have a super burn
next to you within measure crank and that's what I love about it. Yeah, I agree. It's a uh wild time.
That's for sure. Like it's a wild time. Um what do you think the biggest challenge in in the industry is right
now? Like overall like if you had to pick one thing, what would you say the biggest challenge we face in the industry is?
Um well listen, I I I don't have to begin to tell you about manpower. I understand that's every field. Um you
know, ever since the computer bubble burst, right? Like everybody wanted to be on a computer screen sitting at a
desk and air conditioning space. I get it. Nobody wants to be in an attic. Nobody wants to be on a roof. But for
the last couple years, I'm hoping the trade, especially this next year or so, I'm hoping more guys get the opportunity
to go into the trade and start learning this trade. And with the tools that are available, it's not as hard as it it,
you know, that it used to be where we had to really figure things out. Now there's a lot of support with within the
field through apps and the phone use and just tech support generally and
manufacturers seem to understand what the texts are going through. They're making the wiring schematics a lot
easier to read. They're color coding it. They're actually putting what the wires mean. In most manuals in the service
manuals, you do have a sequence of operation. It'll tell you, hey, in heating mode, this is what happens or
this is what's supposed to happen. So, they're giving you a lot more information than they do they've they've had in the past. It's like going from
the road maps that we used to read to get from one house to the other to using, you know, Google Maps where it's
telling you make a right here, make a left there. You know, it's going to find you the shortest route. So, it's it's all cool stuff. So, I'm
looking forward to it. Um, love the conversation. So, it's all good stuff.
what your what is your um train training schedule like look like? Do you see
anybody that have good Well, let me that's not really what I meant to ask. This is what I'm asking. Training or the guys you deal with, do they have solid
apprentice programs or are they bringing guys up through the trades or what do you see there? Um as far as like the
contractors you're dealing with? So, I'm seeing more guys out of high school. They're hiring guys just as
bodies right now that are eager to work learn, you know, they they want to work with tools. So that's a good thing,
right? You have to be able to at least do that, right? So we do have a group coming in and they basically did that.
They they lost a lot of their good texts to maybe guys that were paying a little bit more. And in the residential market,
you're limited on how much you could pay a guy, right? There's only so much money. Guys want to make, you know, 80
bucks an hour. You're just not getting that in the residential field. So you're getting guys that are coming out of high school that are more than
happy to make 25, 30 bucks an hour, you know, starting. So, those guys is looking at this saying, "Hey, great. How
do I learn it? How do I figure it out?" And I'll tell you, I've had one of those students come in and we we did a
one-on-one class with him just as an I wanted to see how he was going to respond to Measurequ. So, we kind of
introduced MeasureQuick right from day one with this guy and I said, "Listen, this is important. These measurements
are important. You have no idea what they mean. But if you can learn how to take these measurements, put them into
the software, the software will tell you more than you'll ever be able to tell you. The software will tell you more
than your service manager will tell you. So, I thought that was a great opportunity for that guy to learn
something, learn a field in a short amount of time, right? I can't can't
give him 40 years of experience, but I could give him combined like just summarize that 40 years and just say,
"Hey, here's the information you need to know. You'll understand why that will come later when the light bulb goes off
when you figure it out." Do you think so? Do you think that's vi like that? This is super interesting to
me. You just said something that turned a light bulb on in my head. So you're what you're saying is we could take guys
out of high school with a little bit of training. We can put MeasureQuick in their hand or a similar app depending on
what they're doing on the sales side. Conduit tech I think would work the same way for training a sales guy up. But um
let's just talk about MeasureQuick. Put a high take a guy out of high school. No trade school. No because some like
there's certain and we need more of this but there's certain high schools that have like what's called oaks programs where I come from. They're called
different stuff, but they start teaching trades right away as part of the curriculum and working them in. But this
guy, let's say he did not have that. He just came out of high school. You hired him and you want to get him going in the
field as quickly as possible clearly because you need help, right? You hired a high school guy because you don't have manpower. So, putting measure quick in
his hand, do you think that how soon is that guy where you feel good enough about what he's doing out there with
measure quick um that you can let him go, so to speak, without sort of, you
know, having a leash on him? All right. So, again, that's going to be a tool that they can use once they get
past the safety ends of it, right? So, we need safety. We need to talk about pressure with refrigerant gauges and
gloves and safety glasses. We have to get them. We got to make sure we put them in an environment where they're
safe, right? We're dealing with universal to be useful. So, let's say let's let's say they have their
universal at a minimum. Yeah. So, we get them past that. Jeremy, I think you're you're going right into
measure quick. Once you you're able to hook up gauges and and put some pro placements, you're in measure quick.
There's no reason why you shouldn't be. In my opinion, there's no reason why you shouldn't be wh why not why not learn to
fly with the instruments that are going to make your job easier, right? Yeah. I I I talk about this all the time and I
actually went for my my uh pilot's license. I went through some training and of course they want to start you
with manually, you know, they want to teach you how to manually fly because instruments fail. I get that. But in my
head, it's like, let me use the instruments because the instruments are going to help me fly. You know what I
mean? They're going to tell me, "Hey, if you go at more than this degree, you're going to go into the ground." You know what I mean? If you start floating away
this way, it's going to make adjustments. So, I want to learn by using the tools because the tools are going to tell me what's going on. And
then I think the manual part, the guys will actually start figuring it out, right? They'll start saying, "Well, wait
a minute. That measurement before they even put it into the app, they'll take a measurement say that measurement seems
to be off." Well, why? because the last 10 measurements they took in that similar situation were not those
measurements. So now they're starting to get a routine repetition, right?
Yeah. And that's all we want to have these guys do. So why not start at day one?
I I agree. And like for me personally, the way I learned, that's how I learn anyway. Like you put a man like test and
balance for instance. Like when I started test and balance, the guy set a big old NED thing down in front of me like boom, like here's everything. you
know, you need to read this whole manual and pass this test and do all this stuff before you get out in the field. I never
got through that. Finally, they're like, "Here, we need you out." Like, they put me out there. I started holding hoods and turning dampers and doing all this
stuff. Pretty soon, the stuff in the book started making sense to me because when I went back to finally when I had
to finally go back and get certified, I had already done the stuff 20, 30, 40, 100 times. You know what I mean? So then
it really was just even though I understood what I was doing out there to get paid, you know, to make everything
work and to do what we needed to do, I didn't really understand the math. As a matter of fact, the engineers that I worked with, he'd be like, "Don't
worry." And it was actually good. I didn't like that he did it at the time, but he'd be like, "Don't worry about the math." He's like, "That's just a number.
We know what it means. This is what you need to do right now. You know, this is what goes in that blank on that on that sheet." And all that. And I I hated him
doing that. I felt like he was talking down to me at the time. But later on, I had learned I came to realize that he
was doing me a favor because we just needed to get through the job and get it done. And it wasn't going to make I
could sit down and do the math all day long. It wasn't going to make sense to me right then and there anyway. So, learning what we were doing and then
going back and learning the math and everything behind it for me. That worked out great. And that's just the way I learn. I learn by doing. And I think a
lot of guys that come into the trades, they come into the trades because they learn by doing. They don't want to be sitting in a chair. They don't want to
be sitting in a in a classroom. and they want to get out and do stuff with their hands and they can pick it up. And I think that is there is value. Exactly
what you're saying like when guys learn like that, we put measure quick in their hand. The cool thing about measure quick
is not only are they doing, but they're also learning a little bit too because it's telling you, you know, this is
wrong and this is why and there's little hints. It's not full school, but it's in the field school enough to get a guy,
you know, acclimated and going. So, I I love where you're going with that. I think that even at a high school level,
if we could get into some of these high school trade schools and even like let's not even get into like just HVAC school
in general, like that thing needs a whole entire overhaul. Like there's usually it's guys going through all the
the refrigerant stuff, all the you know, all the universal stuff and a little bit more electric and stuff that you need
the basics, but there's no technology introduced. There's no modern concepts introduced. Like there's no low
calculation stuff introduced. There's no airflow, real real talk about airflow uh
in the class. Like none of that stuff is taught. It's all stuff that you have to
either learn out in the field or go learn on your own. I just think that like from an educational standpoint, the
way we teach aid fact needs a big big overhaul for the for the modern kids.
Oh, I agree. And and you're right about majority of us guys in the field we
learn well here I I could be honest with you I learn if I have to read something I have to read it three times at least
three times understand what the hell they're talking about right and then I have to do it I have to physically do it
right so there's a few guys out there that comes in that'll come into the class and they'll be books smart I mean
these guys have the answers for everything but you go to have them hook up gauges you want to see a fish on a
deck flop hop flop around these guy. I'm like, "Wait a minute. What do I want? Do I want a books smart guy? Do I want a
guy that can actually hook up gauges?" Yeah. So, you you're in that battle too to your point. But
thank God majority of us are that way. We want our hands-on. We want to learn it. I don't mind the books smart guys.
We could always convert them to actually do the physical work and understand it, which we still It's just levels of of
knowledge, right? It's level each of us learn differently, right? So, but I'm
okay with that. But to your point, we do we do tend to, you know, want to work
with our hands more. And I we do do every opportunity I get, I try to do on the job training. Like if I get a group
of guys that want to meet on a job because they have problems or they want to learn something, hey, let's go for
it. Now, I do a lot of stuff at the training center, but there's nothing beat real life stuff. And I tell
contractors, the owners of contractors all the time, listen, don't don't think you're going to send this guy to a
40hour school and he's going to come out and be productive. It just that's not reality. Reality is send him out there.
He may not be totally productive the first 40 hours, but I'll guarantee after that 40 hours, he's going to learn so
much doing it, physically doing it, that he's going to be productive the follow week. So, we just have to
even know it might not be the right fit. I mean, that's the other thing, too. Like, this it's not for everybody, just like everything's not for everybody. So,
like you get a guy out on the field for a couple weeks and he, you know, he's struggling mightily, then maybe he does
need, you know, he either needs some additional training or maybe the position's not right for him or something like that. Like, so there's a
lot of value of trial by fire. I mean, that's how I learned most of the stuff that I've ever done. I've learned trial
by fire and I guarantee I probably wasn't doing what I thought I was doing in the first place for the first 20 to
40 hours of doing it. I probably did everything completely wrong whether I knew it or not, you know. So,
Oh, yeah. I tripped a lot of breakers in my early days. Oh, man. Dude, tell I'll tell you what,
I have some people that don't, you know, are not used to doing what we do. They they they think it's crazy, but like
I've tripped out a whole side of a hospital before up on the roof messing around with a fan. I mean, I just, you
know, you're you're up there when you're first learning to take, you know, take your electrical readings and stuff that, you know, somebody doesn't tell you,
don't let this thing hit metal when you're, you know, it's gonna it's going
to tr It's literally like because of when I learned TAB in the biggest
setting you could ever learn it in. Like giant hospitals, that's all like when we when I when I was a TA helper, that's
the company that I worked for. That's all they did was like hospitals and giant universities and schools and stuff like that. And so like, and the guys
were like, "Get up there and do it." You know, here, you know, he worked with us for here's what you do. See you later.
Bye. And then they turn around and leave. And so I was so scared. I I called the boss and I'm like, you know,
I I don't know what happened, but this whole, you know, side of the hospital just went dark. He's like, "Don't worry about it. I'll call him. I'll get him
back up. You know, I'll get them to get it back up." But he called the maintenance guys and they went and nipped the breaker and stuff. He's like, "Don't do that again."
You think? Yeah. No, we're not. I didn't mean to do it the first time, man. But stuff had to the point. You
just got to go do it, man. I didn't never do it again. I mean, I learned it's like putting your hand on the stove. You're definitely never going to
do that again, you know, like some stuff like that. As long as you don't kill somebody, I think it's or kill yourself.
One of the two. I think it's probably a good lesson learned. Yeah, I got all my fingers. Thank God.
So, yeah. Well, yeah, that's another thing. I have all my fingers. I did smash my
pinky. like it's still flat to this day and a pulley like and doing tab. I was trying to go too fast and instead of
loosening stuff up the tension on it, I was pulling trying to pull the pulley on uh the belt on the pulley and without
loosening the tension, I pulled it right over my finger. Just boom, flattened. It like the tip of my finger just exploded.
Blood went everywhere. It was not fun at all. And I had to It was like the day
before Thanksgiving. I wanted to get out of there. I just wrapped it up in electrical tape and kept going. Dude, my
doctor was so mad at me. He's like, "Don't you ever do that again. You get in here if you got something this bad
going on." Like, "You like your finger, don't you?" Yeah. It's good stuff.
Good stuff. So, I think we're running up on our time. I want to give you a chance to showcase your shop and tell us about,
you know, shout out anything you want to shout out. um let people know who you are, what what you do and where to come
to find you at what your next few trainings are. Anything you want to say. Um feel free to tell everybody.
Yeah. Well, we have um some training stuff going on. Uh Samsung training next week, September 10th. Um we're going to
have a trailer here, uh Samsung trailer that's going to show a bunch of product
on the trailer itself. We're going to do a mini class in a training center just to teach guys like simple things like
you know when you talk about hooking up the wires to those terminals. They you know all the guys just strip the wire
down. They'll put it on tighten up the screw on it and it's like no it's in the book they want you to use a ring
terminal right? So the ring terminal with the crimping tool right on the wire. So you crimp it and now you have a
solid connection you put under the screw. Tighten it up. Done. So, we're going to actually have like tips on how
to install these things so that guys could say, "Oh, all right. I didn't think of doing that." Because they don't
read the book, right? And it's um but these are things we're going to show. So, it's going to be a lot of fun. just
a quick little 30 minute class just to give guys quick tips on hey here's the tools we're using to make it you know
work um when you're installing these mini splits because the communication wires and all those connections are
important so stuff like that all that's the Switz watch piece of it you know what I mean like that's literally
before we were never thinking that way man you know what I mean guys were twisting wires and nuts and going on about their business like what you're
talking about is such a good example of the precision that is required in the installation of this modern equipment.
Um Rob Faulk or Dominic, one of somebody from NCI, I forget which one it was, um
said a great analogy that he's like it used to be, you know, we were working on Timex's. These days we're working on
Swiss watches. He's like things are not the same. It's not comparable. And I'll like I agree with like that little thing
you just said. So important but also probably overlooked 97% of the time
unless somebody's pointing it out to them just like you said because it's in the book. It's not taught really. It's
not a thing you can learn. Yeah. We stay basic. Um I'll see if I can give you a quick little tour of the
place. Uh I am at the training center now. Um and let's see if I can make this
work. Okay. And uh
the way we uh set up our training is don't have a lot of equipment per se. We
just take equipment, strip it down, throw it on a wall. You can see up there's the HVAC playground. Love it.
Um and I actually have something running over there. I don't have a long wire.
Maybe another visit we could do. I'll set it up with a camera that we can actually uh tour the each facility. But
I'll just give you like the 360 version of what's going on.
So, this side of the room is our hands-on side and then the other side is
where our students will sit. I could fit about 30 guys here comfortably.
Uh we have boilers over there and we have a wild MLAN boiler
uh without the boiler, right? We just have all the controls that go to it and it works. We put power to it and it
works. And there's our there's our wall of fame right there. That's the wall
that you know all these social influence guys and Measure Quick, all the all the
stickers that are out there um we kind of put on that wall. Love it. So, that's
kind of like a quick little tour of our facility here. Are you uh are you Measure Quick official yet? Are you Joe Are you Joe
Joe approved yet? Yeah, I have the Yeah, I have the certificate. No, I mean the lab remember that thing
he sent us for the lab like this is the basic requirements for a measure quick lab. Oh, I don't know if I'm there yet. Um I
do have some some stuff that we could use to measure stuff. So, I may not be there. I gota I got to double check
that. But, we're starting to Listen, we're we're getting to a point where I might um I asked our sales guy,
the um the sales director for HVAC to go to our dealers and say, "Look, if as
part of being a dealer for Lux Air, got to have MeasureQuick. We're going to promote Measure Quick. I don't care if
we find a way to co-op it or figure out how to buy the program to to get these guys to use it."
Yep. Um, but when they're doing commissioning or startup or service and they're calling us for tech support,
dude, it's it's like I'm at a it's like I should just have been a dentist and just started pulling teeth because I
think it would have been easier than getting information out of these guys because, you know, we started talking about it
earlier, Jeremy, about just taking measurements. Give me what's your voltage and I'll get an answer
like, oh, it's 282 230. And I' I'd just be like, "God, why don't you just pick
one?" Because it can't be both. Yeah. You're like, "So, you're not reading the voltage, you're reading the name plate." Okay.
Now, I know that here already I know what the amps are going to be. Whatever the amps on the name plate is, you got
to read that to me. I need to physically take it. You're like, "That's not the reading I was talking about." But, okay.
So, I always I always ask them what's the digit, right? So, it's got to be like, you know, two 210.9 or something.
ask for that point something because then at least I know they can't make that up. Yeah, that's in TAB engineers. They know
when I was training TAB, they're like the engineers hate round numbers. Even if it's a round number, put a decimal on the end of it because they're going to
question if it's a round number. But no, I I listen, I'm I'm so excited about Measure Quick. I really am. I'm
looking forward to getting our our guys into it and uh showing them. Um my my assistant tech support guy,
Zack, he's downloaded the app. he he has it. Uh we have our our instructor's
version. Um so we're going to we're really promoting it this this year going into it and hopefully in 6 months or
maybe this springtime here in New Jersey, you and I will have a conversation about how well it's going
with with our dealers. Oh, I want to hear. Yeah. Well, let's definitely do a followup. I would love to hear how what what what you guys are
doing uh once you get it fully implemented and you get training programs set up with it and stuff like that. I think that, you know, we all,
this is all brand new, like even the guys that came before us, nobody's really doing full-on measure quick training. Well, I shouldn't say nobody.
Brian Feny and uh Huff, those guys are doing big measure quick trainings. But n
in most of the industry, there's not a lot of people doing full measure quick training like you're talking about,
John. There's a guy Colorado JSON or Pennsylvania JSON, one of those guys. They're they have a pretty robust
measure quick and they're like pushing it. You know, all our texts do measure quick. I personally write it into my
like on the design side because you know I'm not a distributor or anything like that but on the design side we write it into all of our specs so that way you
know whoever that when the thing goes out to bid and it comes back guys are always like this contractor wants to
know what this measure quick thing is you got written in here and I'm like okay well then this you know then I get
to explain to them this is what it is and this is why we want you to use it you know if you don't have it you know it's one of the requirements of
installing our design and that way guys are forced into it cuz I know once they use it once, they're never not going to
use it again. You know what I mean? Like there's no way that a guy that knows what he's doing and values what he's doing, once they have buy all the probe
to do it and use it, they're not going to put it back in the bag and not use it. They're just not. You're going to love it.
Yeah. No, I totally agree. And and it's it's great that you're implemented within your your program and what you're
doing. I wish manufacturers would would figure it out. And I know why they don't because nobody wants to add more
restrictions on contractors to do certain things because they're all afraid, well, they'll just go buy from
somewhere else. But they really collectively should get together and say, look, find a commissioning software
and and I ab absolutely promote Measurequick as being a commissioning software to utilize.
Yeah. and to offer additional labor warranty or extended parts warranty if
you fill this out. If if your systems commissioned with Measurequick, here's the benefit that you're going to get
from the manufacturer. So, if they don't do it, we got to figure a roundabout way to do it like we're doing it. Hey, you
want to be a dealer for Lux Air and and buy equipment from us? Here's what we're requesting you to do. Now, you know, I
can't put a gun to you and tell you to do it, but I'm going to encourage you to do it because we're going to come up with some incentive to be able to get
them to do it. And and listen, ultimately, it's going to lessen my load and my assistance load on on silly
questions and and challenges that they're having out in the field, especially when they're setting up, you
know, they're installing equipment in undersized duck work. I mean, how many times I get calls about it? It's like,
guys, your static pressure is like one and a half points or whatever. It's It's too high. Like, what are you doing? You
got 4in duck work. I mean, what are we doing here? And these are things that they should figure out. The sales guy should be
figuring out before it even gets to the install. Wanted a little air over there. Yeah. Right.
So, we're It's good stuff. And I I really appreciate you reaching out and having this conversation and looking
forward to, like you said, the followup on it and making sure that, you know, hey, where do we go from here, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. So, we're going to get ready to get out of here, but this is one thing I ask everybody before they leave. If the world was ending tomorrow
and they asked you to write on the wall some advice for the next generation that comes after after the civil civilization
is reestablished, what would you write on the wall? What's your one piece of advice for the industry, for the world,
it doesn't matter. What would you write to take every day and as a challenge
every day in your life so that the day that you take your last breath in this world that you're going to say I've done
everything I could up to this point. I I did what I wanted to do up to this point in my life that there's nothing I left
behind and that's pretty much it. I love it. Love it. All right, Rob.
Thank you very much. All right, buddy. Good talking to you. again. Absolutely love it,
/ @generalplumbingsupply6598 
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