This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our fantastic sponsors and supporters out there in the HVAC industry and those are several companies, but a few companies actually Mitsubishi Electric cooling and heating and Mitsubishi comfort, comm carrier and carrier comm manufacturers of many great Products for the HVAC industry, where carrier dealers here at Kalos, the wrs scales and the ue ihubs smart kit from uei both connected devices that work with a great app that you can find by looking up the uei hub on your Android or your iPhone very well Built devices, I think you won't go wrong by checking them out. You can find both of those products by going to true tech tools. Comm TR you tech tools, comm use the africo to get schooled for a great discount refrigeration technologies at refridge, tech, comm, refridge tech, comm makers of wet rag for protecting valves and equipment when you're braising, the Viper cleaners nylon. That is a great thread sealant that I use every day in our business and then the new pan and drain spray that we're using in place of RAM tabs.

Now it recently did a video on that check that out on our youtube channel, also air oasis makers of the whole home air purifiers, the bipolar and the Nano one thing I want to mention about air Oasis is that they are an American made company. They really make a great us-based product, they even source, almost all of the materials for their bipolar and Nano in the US. So it's a really well-made product and I've enjoyed working with air Oasis and the Benner's. Finally, I want to mention biz pal org and mistaken.

Sank: biz Paul calm in my last podcast, so sorry about that Patrick, that's, Patrick Long's, company they're, a great service for helping recruit some technicians. If you're in the need in the market - and you need some technicians for your business, I would suggest that you check out biz pal org. They really specialize in the trades and it's a very custom approach using social media for recruiting of technicians. This is the guy who gets excited whenever he learned something new about HVAC, which is everyday, which means he is always a little too excited for a grown man, Brian or hey.

What do you say this? Is the HVAC school podcast, the podcast that helps remember some things that you might have forgotten along the way about the HVAC trade as well as helps you remember some things you might have forgot to know in the first place I am Brian and today, on the Podcast I've got my good buddy Andrew grieves, a kay grieves, aka HVAC from YouTube Andrews, a funny guy, a good guy, good tradesman works in the commercial sector, and I've been wanting to do a podcast for a while just sort of talking about the differences between commercial And residential at a high level for people who are maybe thinking about getting into the trade and want to know what segments they want to go into, or maybe someone who's looking to make a change. And so we have a very broad conversation. We kind of talk it through about the differences between commercial and residential. There we go aka HVAC, Andrew Greaves, talking about commercial versus residential.

Am i okay by the way you think I should adjust anything or am i sounding okay or you sound way better than me, and I'm super grouchy about that, because right now, I'm not in HVAC school HQ, I'm sitting at home and I'm using the microphone that You broke, oh, my god, what a loser! Oh, my god, you're using the nail using an ATR 2100. I'm sorry dude, I'm gon na try to fix it. I just don't know. If I can it literally snapped off it went into the mic yeah.

I give you a microphone and you break it. Yes, and then you have the audacity what to do two things. Two things I want to mention thing. One is, I think, one is you break it and then you go out and you buy a blue Yeti, okay, which is pure heresy.

Then you turn around the right thing, though I did the right thing right was so sure. So then I give you a list of things to buy and then you go out and buy it all. And now you have a bit sure yeah you about the sure Mike and now you have a better setup than me yeah, but not your actual setup that you do live streams from and stuff. What is that you've got? No, yours is better.

That's an elective or sorry 20, which it's a matter of taste, but if I was going out to buy him her phone right now, if I was gon na go, buy a rig from scratch right now I would buy the exact one. You have not the one. I have I just it's tough. Well, I mean anytime, if you think, you're getting close to buying and you want to get some feedback or some advice about it.

You just let me know, okay like if yeah you know what I mean they just. Let me know. I appreciate that I'll check with you next time before I buy gear, yeah yeah big fat Yeti, so you didn't see the porn when I brought it up what the one that is, acted that really awkward video he did and chopped together. That was a bit much yeah.

He did some gesturing, that's not fit for family consumption. No! No! It was the one of the nails in the coffin there on that mic. For me, I said how could I ever appear again with that mic in my face after that video right and then it just makes you think of it every time which is rough yeah. So this is Andrew, akh vacc from YouTube and many others.

That's it really. Is it that's it now, yeah. Okay, that's true yeah! I was gon na mention the other things, but you still got the vehicle layouts group, so that's still a thing that you're doing yeah. It's still thing.

It's it's own thing, though I don't really touch it anymore. It's it's own little happy ecosystem of shelving and highly anal retentive, yes, yeah shelving and hooks boxes. Yeah, that kind of thing ropes, lots of ropes, lots of ropes, yeah buckets a lot of buckets and Rouge big into his bucket of buckets. I'm a bucket man, yeah yep.

I agree. I agree, I'm a bucket man as well. I was actually a stool box guy for a while. I think I might have told you that I rocked a stool box as my primary tool carrying thing, yes, which i think is good for residential, not great for commercial, oh by the way, that's a great segue into what we're gon na talk about today, which is The difference between residential and commercial, especially for those maybe early career, guys who are making the choice of whether or not they want to pursue residential, commercial or maybe even some guys, who are possibly in residential and are considering making the jump to commercial.

That seems to be the way it goes like it's very rare that I hear of a commercial guy making a switch back to residential right. I think that, most of the time when you hear that it's going to be something along the line of their making the jump to residential because they're, making the jump into entrepreneurship - and it's often gon na - be the most realistic way for them to achieve that. Right and that's actually, that was one of the things on my list that we're gon na get to so, let's start here necessity for school. So if you want to get into the more commercial industrial side, and so we're talking about commercial there's a couple different aspects to that as well, there's like the market, refrigeration side, that's Jeremy Smith, who I have on the podcast Ilan who's a big contributor to HVAC School he's on that side, grocery store Federation, big box stuff.

Then you have an industrial refrigeration process, refrigeration, that sort of, if you know, Ulysses Palacios, he works in the big ammonia stuff and then there's just large equipment, so chillers and large rooftop units. That kind of thing, and that's more what you do day in and day out right it is yeah it's just majority of it is for me, is comfort, cooling, comfort, cooling on a large scale, so there's a little bit of process stuff in there, but it's usually Just as a favor to our customers, it's not Ward, usually trying to go seek out. But I had to have my hands in a little bit of process cooling at certain manufacturing plants, which is interesting because there is one segment in residential comfort, cooling and then in commercial and industrial. There's, like all of these sub segments, so like working in market refrigeration, is very different than working in restaurant and convenience, refrigeration, which is very small, stuff regions and more restaurant equipment, and that sort of thing and so a guy who does that world may not really Have barely an idea what they're doing when they go into market refrigeration and then going from that to ammonia in large process? Refrigeration as it just as an example, is a totally other industry.

And then you have the large comfort cooling. So I think we're gon na talk broadly about commercial as if it's all one, but it's important to recognize that even within commercial there's, a lot of different horizontal movement. So I guess I'm gon na ask you to start with, for you personally, what led to you doing the type of work that you do now. Was that an intentional choice, or was it something that you just ended up doing? No, it fell into my lap.

I was doing residential work and a little bit of like commercial at the company. I was at and was finishing up some night classes at the Community College and my instructor his day. Job was well still is he's over all the facilities at one of the universities. Here the state universities, so he deals with a lot of the OEMs and large mechanical contractors all the time - and he kind of pulled me aside and had a little bit of networking to share with me and said there were some opportunities and I seized it.

So there was really nothing more to the story than that. I got a chance from networking through school and it's something I brought up and videos all quite a bit is to take advantage of the networking opportunity in those kind of settings. So an old man. Opportunity comes on knocking at your door.

You grab him by the beard and draw him in near. What do you think? Yes, yes, okay, good good, make sure I'm trying so hard we're recording right now and I'm trying so hard to think of a poem to say back to you and I can't I can't do palms on demand man or haikus, nothing that to me seemed like if I was going to make an HVAC related, I don't know like southern rock song. I think those words as lyrics that I just laid down might make it in there somewhere. Yes, so you got into it mostly just because of the opportunity that made itself available, which seems to be the case with a lot of people.

There's a young guy Chris Caldwell, who I had on the podcast a while back, and I talked with him a lot on Facebook and chat back and forth and he's kind of in that same transition period. Where he's going from the light commercial world to more heavy commercial in, he went to school, you went to school so for the guys who have never been to school or considering going to school or maybe in school. Is it more of a necessity on the commercial side to have that formal education? No, I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but I think it's gon na help. You get the basics down.

A lot of people. Ask me if you do need specialized school to get into commercial versus residential, and what I say is no. The schooling that I've done prior to getting on with an OEM was mostly residential. Most community colleges curriculums are residential based, most private programs.

The nine ten month, year-long programs, you see those are also usually residential based and commercial companies - know that there's no real curriculums in public or private schooling for what they're gon na be taking people on to do so. Essentially, I think when they see that you've taken the time to do a little studying and schooling on your own, then it may help you get a leg up, but I would say, the schooling itself isn't required per se, because it's gon na teach you specific things About commercial work, I think there's a couple different four categories of people who are thinking about this and one would be the person who really can't afford to take time off and go to school, full-time and so they're wanting to maybe get into a career, and maybe That decision is money motivated, I mean for a lot of people, it is, and so they see an opportunity. Okay, I'd like to do commercial, but I don't have the money or maybe the time to stop what I'm doing and do full-time schooling in order to get a commercial job with an OEM or a larger mechanical contractor. So to make that leap, do you think that self-study and that sort of thing is going to give you a leg up in that interview? I guess I'm just wondering what does that interview even like? Do they recruit you and then you end up doing it because they've recruited you or can you walk in and apply at a large mechanical or at an OEM and potentially get that position just through your knowledge? All of the above are possibilities in my situation.

They kind of made it a bigger deal than it needed to be. I had like three interviews, they were in restaurants and it just felt way more formal than it needed to be, but no the school itself is not what got me the job. It was my ability to articulate my understanding of what would be required and the desire to learn because that's what they really want to see. They know that at some point, everybody's gon na be new when they need new people.

You see a lot of times. Five years required and a lot of these internet websites, but the reality is they're just throwing that net out there they're hoping to get that first, it's just not a reality all the time. So don't let that keep you from knocking on the door. What they're? Looking for a lot of times is guys that don't have a lot of experience, a lot of bad habits that they're gon na have to now take the time to unlearn or unteach you, if that's the right way to say it, it's almost easier for them to.

Pluck somebody right out of post-secondary school or out of high school or one or two years of residential and mold them up the way they want them to represent the manufacturer or that mechanical contractor in commercial settings. Okay got it and that's not that different than residential. I think a lot of residential like commercial business owners. I would be in that group feel that way where it's not even a matter of we often will talk about.

You want people before they get bad habits, but it's not so much the bad habits, because even if somebody has the right mindset and they've got bad habits, I mean I had terrible habits five ten years ago, so we all have bad habits, it's more so that They get in a mindset of sloppy work of poor customer service of bad attitude, of just all the crap that goes on in the trade where people are just so negative and cranky all the time. That's the part that is harder to break people of than it is the actual bad habits itself. If it's I'm teaching my guys better habits every single day and we learn it because they're good people, but I think you're right about that that in the residential side at least that's what contractors are looking for. But it's interesting to hear that.

That's the same approach that larger companies are also taking, which i think is a good approach. So let's talk about the type of work and I didn't really realize that you had done much residential. But the fact that you have is nice because it gives maybe a broader sense of the differences there when somebody's going from thinking about doing residential and light commercial to doing larger stuff. What is gon na shock them about that change? What's gon na be jarring about that move? For me, it was realizing because you always hear people say: oh the big stuff, it's still the same refrigeration cycle.

It's still the same four main components: it's just a little bit bigger and I tried to take that mentality with me and yeah. That's true, but at least for me it was a culture shock to see just the vast amount of controls and extra bells and whistles and environmental controls that are thought of and implemented in commercial settings that aren't even an afterthought in presidential situations and a lot of That has to do with laws for commercial structures. A lot of it has to do with the energy savings that a huge facility really has to have in order to cash flow, because it's just astronomical the amount of energy that some of these systems use. It's an overwhelming thing at first, when you're used to pulling a panel open and seeing a contactor in a dual on capacitor, so that won't be the case for everyone.

It was for me that was the hardest thing for me to adjust to yeah. That's the same thing, I don't know if everybody knows this, I talked about it a while back about the market, refrigeration, side of Kalos and how I guess it would be a year and a half ago, or so we really started getting into market refrigeration, and so I was actually in some motor rooms working on stuff that I had never really worked on regularly. I mean there have been times that I had, but generally there's a more experienced person, somebody who knew a little more about it than I did in that space whereas now like I was the guy, the guy who had to know - and it is overwhelming not because You can't understand it, but because when you walk into it you don't that's the difference. It's like saying you walk up to a new piece of equipment.

You never worked on before, but instead of the compressors being inside the condensing unit, they're all lined up in a row in a different room and the evaporators are all a different place and oh by the way, the metering devices are configured in a way. You've never seen before and defrost works a little different than you're used to, and so it's not that you can't figure it all out. It's just that until you've done it a while it is kind of overwhelming to just track everything in your mind. So I can definitely see that and I think for a technician who's going into it.

You do have to have that open mind where you're gon na kind of push into taking the time to understand what all this stuff does. I remember I was looking at a compressor and it would just had this weird loop on it and it ended up being a separate cooling loop and I sent a picture to Jeremy Smith. I'm like what the heck is. This he's like.

Oh, that's not our 22 compressor and that's what's going on, I'm like! Oh okay, so you just see stuff, you don't know what it is and I think a lot of guys would be prone just to get overwhelmed and shut down as opposed to keep pursuing. You know understanding it yeah and the absolute requirement to always be open to learning and aggressively seeking knowledge and expanding your knowledge base. It's to me a lot more crucial in the environment that I work in, especially if you do or are expected to be able to work on a variety of types of heavy commercial equipment. It's just there's so much to you understand and it changes on every environment.

That's the thing too: it's in commercial settings, everything's application based, so you have a lot of custom-built equipment, that's not just in refrigeration. I mean that leads into comfort cooling as well, especially when there's humidity requirements, and things like that like if you look at server rooms or facilities that require dry conditions or humid conditions, I mean there's just an endless amount of possibilities and applications that really require the Technician to really have that mindset of always being willing to ask for help or have the resources or know-how to acquire the knowledge that they're lacking in. So you work with a lot of different people in this space. Obviously, not just people who you work with directly because we don't want to throw any co-workers under the bus, but you interact with a lot of people.

And so do you find that the level of overall knowledge is greater in commercial than it seems to be in residential? That question is a little easier to answer. If I know if the technician is going to be specializing in a certain area or not, if he is, then I put it a lot more akin to the residential technician, who has that kind of a little bit more narrow base of equipment that they're gon na Work on a daily basis, if you're a guy, that's got to be able to work on a chiller one day and then go work on a vrf system. The next of an absorber chiller. The next Vav is one day then you're gon na have to really up your game, intellectually, to be successful long term.

So I find that that's part of the beauty and the curse of doing what I do cuz. I really do love learning, so it is a good fit for me, but man there are days and there are times where I really wish. I could just walk in somewhere and just kind of do the job without having to think too much. Sometimes it gets old.

So it's kind of a back and forth love/hate thing some days I just wish. I worked in a facility on one type of equipment. Well, it's usually on those fresh training days that are kicking your butt. But overall, if you have the mindset that you enjoy being somewhere different every day on a completely different type of equipment every day, doing a completely different objective, it's something I would definitely recommend or encourage people to look into yeah.

So you danced around that question. Like a ballerina Sears, well, not what I'm saying I'm not saying our commercial guys, smarter than residential guys. What I'm saying is is: does it take a more technical mind, a more mechanical mind to be successful in commercial than it does in residential? Or are you saying that it really just depends on the type of commercial you do mostly I'm gon na say yes to that question, just from a purely mechanical or technical standpoint, yeah, probably all right got it because, and so this is the next question. It seems to me this has been my experience, that you don't need as many people skills to do commercial and industrial as you do in residential.

Is that a fair statement? It's a very fair statement and that's another huge kudos that I give to the residential community. That question you asked was purely about the knowledge base required to be excellent at what you're doing and there's just so much variety that you just by default, need to have more room for it. But if we're talking about things beyond pure technical ability or knowledge, then I really kind of levels the playing ground, in my opinion, because there's a lot of things that I don't have to worry about - that residential technicians have to be very good at or have a Much more thorough understanding of but a lot of ways I have it made, and I don't have to do nearly some of those extra tasks that a residential technician does and one of those things would be the customer service part now. Yes, obviously I interact with customers.

Every day, but usually for the most part, I'm walking in there I'm saying hey to the building engineer, he's kind of gon na just point to a it's up on the roof go ahead and then that's it. I'm turned loose. I go and I do my thing I'll shoot him a text or maybe I'll talk to him on the way out. If he's there, maybe he's not even there maybe changes shifts it is what it is.

I go home, there's things like that that I don't have to deal with same thing with invoicing invoicing POS stuff like that, like there are mechanical contractors where technicians may get involved in that. For the most part, it's very compartmentalized. They break up all those steps of the overall transaction of labour money and service, and they split that up to competent people in those areas, whereas you guys have to be able to do all of that, and do it well it dude by yourself. Would you consider yourself to be an extrovert or an introvert introvert with extrovert tendencies? I guess I guess it's kind of hard for me to say I'm an introvert if I do stuff on YouTube, but I'm much more willing to put a youtube video up than I am to go.

Do something in person. I'm the same way - and I think maybe it's being like mission oriented like if I'm doing something, if I'm in the middle of something I cannot stand. Someone stopping me and asking me a question, especially if it's a random off-the-wall question, which is terrible for a business owner because everytime I walk through the office. Somebody wants to talk about something and it's like a joke around the office like I walk fast on purpose.

In hopes that people won't stop me and try to talk to me, and I think there are some people who they're the opposite, where they look for opportunities to have conversations and interact with people and all that, and I can imagine if you were really an extrovert Where you really needed, that sort of like interaction and your work, going to a building and just doing your thing all day and alone might be hard for some people sure and it also segues into the sales part of it, with the sales being an integral part. Oftentimes in a residential business model for their technicians to be making sure they're looking for that opportunity to upsell or to offer services that the customer didn't know they needed that kind of thing. We have sales guys like we have dedicated sales engineers that do most of that now sure they always want us to be keeping an eye open for what we call pull-through, which is opportunity. So if I'm in a mechanical room to work brush tubes on a chiller - and I see a three-way valve leaking across the way yeah, I'm gon na bring it up, but that's about it.

I'm gon na bring it up, I'm not going to do hard selling or anything. I don't have scripts or anything like that. I may shoot a note to the office and a sales guy will follow up with that. What I'm saying it's probably not gospel in this world, there's gon na be commercial guys.

Listening to this, who may say hey, I have to do that. That may be true. I'm just kind of talking from my experiences all right. Let's talk some specifics so hours.

Obviously, it's gon na vary, but are your hours fairly stable? Is it more common for ours to be more stable and commercial than residential? In your experience they say that I don't know I still work a lot of nutty hours, but again, that's because I have customers like hospitals and certain manufacturing facilities that they don't wait either. So there are those late days, certainly, but not the way. I tend to hear from residential employees on some of the Facebook groups talking about if there's an 80 90 hour work week, that's gon na be because I wanted it. I'm not gon na be forced to work that necessarily there's enough people there's enough manpower in some of these larger firms and larger companies that it's not something that if I need more stability, I can take it.

What does on-call look like? Is there any on collar? Is it literally just your shift, so you just work your shift? No! No. We have on-call. So it's a week at a time. I got about 12 guys in my shop, so yeah about four times a year five times a year depending okay.

So when you're on call it's just to you, yes, okay, and so it's you work your regular hours and then you get paged in it's something page to listen to me. It's 1997. Your pager goes off and yeah every Tuesday. When we change the on-call, we go.

The office that we transfer and sign out the beeper and then it's mine for the week and then it calls come over on the fax machine on the mobile sorting machine. That is how it was week at a time, and it's for me it's Tuesday Tuesday. Is that pretty standard as far as you're aware that that's how it works, not the Tuesday part, but the seven-day part. Yes, that's pretty standard.

I know that most people, my area, that I know that I talked to they do about a week at a time. Now it's pretty much the same thing in residential. We just have to do it a lot more. I guess it depends on the size of shop, but generally with residential.

There just seems to be a lot of it sure it depends on how you structure, all that, I guess but and see. The other thing, too, is like I could see what the on-call were say. You have an area, that's a whole city. That's a lot more potential after-hours cause.

When we're talking a house by house basis versus us, we may have three dozen customers. I totally made that number up, but when you're talking about facilities and stuff, like that, being your main customers, first of all a lot of times, they have redundancies and, on the other hand, too a lot of times. They don't even know something's wrong until the next day, if it's at night, unless it's those hospitals but for the most part, things can wait. There's gon na be other equipment that can cover the load or they're.

Just not gon na want to pay the overtime, so they'll wait until the next morning. There's nobody gon na, be there anyway nobody's living there. All right! I'm gon na! Take a second here and talk to you about my friends from air Oasis, air, Oasis makers of the bipolar and Nano whole home air purifiers that connect up to an AC unit very easily typical AC unit. Do you have a split system or even a packaged unit, and you can make the bipolar Nano work in those applications and there are different technologies.

We've talked about them several different podcasts, they are effective, they are well built, they are safe and, as always, you want to know more about the products that you install before you start installing them there's no one solution to every problem, but these are good solutions and A lot of cases, especially when there is too many particles, VOCs bacterial growth things like that, instead of a home, you can use these products to help reduce that again, I suggest that you go back and listen to the previous episodes about the bipolar and the Nano On the podcast, so you can understand more about them, but what I want to say today is that a lot of people will ask me: where can i buy this product? Where can i buy air Oasis? Because there are a lot of other products out there? That are similar in nature and so technicians tend to or contractors tend to just buy. What's on the shelf at the supply house, but here's what you do so you go to the supply house and you ask for air Oasis by name and many times they may not stock air Oasis and then you say: can you get it? Can you get me a price? Sometimes the person at the counter may not understand that any supply house can get a price on pretty much any product, and so you may need to talk to your account manager. So most contractors will have an Account Manager with that supply house talk to them and see if they can get you a price on air Oasis, because that's how this works a lot of the really good products and talk about refrigeration technologies. Talk about air Oasis, I've talked previously about AM rad products that they may not have on the shelves.

Sometimes you have to actually kind of push a little bit at your supply house to get them to get you a price and then in turn, if you can show good success with the product, then they'll bring it in and put it on the shelves, because a Wholesaler a supply house they just put on the shelf, whatever they think is going to sell. They don't necessarily have domain knowledge that you have about what the best products are, and so a big part of what we do here at HVAC school is talk about applications and then also best practices and products that help support those best practices. But if the supply houses don't have the best stuff on the shelves, then sometimes you may have to push a little bit until you get the prices that you're looking for and then hopefully you'll start to increase the sales of some of these really good, especially the American-Made products that do the job for your customers, so that's it just wanted to mention that you can find out more about air oasis they're going to air oasis calm, and that is the bipolar and the nano product have a look at that here. We go back to Andrew, so let's talk about the weirdest difference.

Is growth potential so like what does it look like in a commercial shop or working for an OEM to move up like what is that track? I'm trying to think of the differences between commercial and residential, because obviously most commercial and residential shops will have technicians and then usually there's at least a service manager or somebody with a title like that and then kind of a lateral move. Maybe the sales. But there's a couple intermediate steps. I guess so I guess to the question: is Union non-union shop om? Is it a facility that kind of thing because there's also working commercial, doesn't mean you automatically work for a private mechanical contractor? So you may work at a university as an HVAC technician.

You can work in a factory as an HVAC technician or the OEMs. So yes, technician mechanic. Whatever you call it. There could be a foreman position if you're Union - that's usually the name given service manager.

You can move on into training if you're at the OEMs there's usually trainer positions across the board in different areas, whether rooftop chillers vr, v, vr, F, you're, gon na have people that are dedicated to those areas and those are opportunities that a technician could ultimately make The jump to yeah, that's probably the direction that I would have gone if I didn't have my own business. In fact, I've even thought like if, for some reason, something were to happen with Kalos, which I mean heaven forbid, but I think that's probably what I would do, because even starting a business is just absolute hell. It just is like I can't imagine doing it again, but it's the kind of hell that you just have to decide. Brace.

I guess the question is like in the residential side of things, you're kind of top-end technicians, that's what they end up doing is if they're entrepreneurial and they want to do their own thing, then they end up often starting their own businesses, whereas in the commercial mechanical Side, that's a pretty hard thing to do. It's pretty hard to be a top commercial mechanical tech and decide to start your own mechanical contracting business. Oh yeah! I don't even know how you would do that as a just a regular guy. Like me, being a technician.

I don't know how I would even consider that unless I came from big money or I had a partner, I guess somehow that had a lot of money. I don't even know how you'd even start that ball rolling. That's why I said in the beginning. I almost feel like, if you do hear guys going from commercial to residential.

That's probably why that was the way they could realistically get into business, and I guess in some ways, maybe that is if you wanted to eventually have a big commercial shop, then maybe you start in residential, maybe like commercial and then work your way up to the Larger stuff, as you build up your business structure, yeah yeah you'd have to wait. So you can scale that yeah, it's actually pretty rare to do that, because they are so different. What for a company to go from small residential, like commercial and then make that jump into the bigger stuff? There's a lot of companies that try it obviously! But that's what I wasn't to say. You get a lot of guys out there in town that you see trying to do it and they usually can't hold on to basic service contracts, because they're not ready for the demand.

I guess, on top of the residential business they've already established well, because the business models are so different in residential. You hear constantly about flat rate pricing and all this stuff will it does not work, can't do a large-screen doesn't work, I don't care and then people will say. Oh no, it absolutely does work. I'm like bullcrap.

I mean when you're dealing with it. It would be like me going to Walmart and saying: hey Walmart, here's my flat rate price to install my expansion valve on your case and they're gon na laugh me out of the building. That's not how it works you fit into their process is not the other way around. In most cases, yeah a lot of times, they're gon na tell you what the not-to-exceed limit is the nte when you walk on site and you need to call and justify any overages before you can even continue your work and also just it's more so negotiation than Anything else it's not like they're calling you like, hey, what's your price for a contactor, how much a pound of freon cost! It's not like that and they're really big side, it's more of a high-level negotiation where you develop a contract and then you work out all those details and that's just how it works.

The more process-oriented right, which is nice. Actually, I mean there's a lot of things to like about it, but there's also a lot of things to hate about it. I mean I don't know if I've told this story yet on the podcast. I don't know if I want to tell this story anyway, we had some issues with a very large company.

Some things happened that weren't our fault, but they felt like. Maybe it was, and so when that happens, when you have a very big contract like that, sometimes you basically have no choice but to just eat it begin. So you accept the fact that you make more money and some things, but then also when you have these giant customers who have very well-paid lawyers and they kind of set the rules. You're sort of embracing that and somebody slips and falls in the building.

When you're doing something - and you were involved, then you're gon na get roped into that lawsuit and that kind of stuff happens all the time in commercials, so yeah as a technician. You have to worry about that, but as a business owner, those are all significant consideration. So damn it does make it hard to make that jump. Absolutely that's a whole other element to that to what you're saying on the business side of it, that I probably can't even give you as good of input, but that's all in addition to the technician part.

You were talking about before. It really is different across the board on the multiple fronts. When we make this list, when you do the pros and cons, there's a lot of pros on the commercial side like when I'm writing it down for a technician. There's a lot of pros, but if you are the kind of person who knows that you want to have your own business and you want to do air conditioning as your business, then maybe commercial isn't as advantageous on that side of it, because you're not gon na Learn a lot of the skills that are required to do a residential business, we're working in residential you're gon na learn more of those skills, more of the soft skills, the money conversation side, all that stuff, that's really super necessary on the residential side, I'm just trying To think what advice I would give to somebody, I think that probably is where I would fall.

If you're wanting to start your own business in the next ten years, then maybe consider residential, then I would 100 % agree with that sentiment, because I would follow that up by saying if you do feel like what you want to do. What makes you happy is fixing things I would say absolutely. I would look at commercial and bigger as a great Avenue for you, because of that you have all the resources in the world usually with those, especially if you get on with the OEMs there's more training than you can ever take. But it's there.

You have access to all that and if you're wanting to fix things and you're content with that without longing for something like you said more entrepreneurial, then I think it's a fantastic route which brings up this kind of like fire in your belly conversation, which is why, Like when I think about how much I would enjoy working on big equipment, because I really would enjoy doing the type of stuff you do, I love machines and how they work and all that stuff. But there's this fire in me that I think I would go nuts with in about six months working within a big corporation, where you do have less say again. This is my opinion. So tell me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like you would have less self determination like where you have less say and what it is that you do day in and day out.

Is there some truth to that or what do you think? Okay, there's a lot of truth to it and I got ta be careful, I guess, but that's something, I'm kind of learning about it. Now, having been where I'm at right now for about three years, you try to put all your passion into being the best. You can be doing things the right way, learning the best way to get the job done correctly, the first time, and so that it will last a long time, and sometimes at the end of the day, that doesn't jive with what your employer's priorities are. In that moment that can be really difficult to stomach and it can be difficult to tolerate when you put everything into being that person and then there are gon na be days where you're your number and that's just the reality, and that's not something that they did Wrong when you're going into a company of those some of the sizes of these companies, I mean that's how they got that big, so yeah, it's a reality and at the end of the day, it's not my name on the side of the van.

So I got ta shut the hell up and just do my job and do what they say to do at the end of the day and that's sometimes the hardest thing to go home at the end of the day very frustrating when I saw something that could Have been done, a lot better should have been done, a lot better and there's really at the end of the day, nothing I could do about it. I think you and I both care about the work itself and there are a lot of people who don't like. I would say the majority of people don't and that doesn't make them bad. It just means they don't care about the work itself, they're doing what they have to do to make ends meet, and that includes most of your customers and commercial as well.

A lot of them are middle managers, their facilities, engineers, and they really, at the end of the day, don't care that much you're not usually dealing directly with decision makers, and I worked at a very big shop before I started my own company. So I had good relationships with the ownership and leadership of the company, but even then there would be things that were said that I knew was just not right. It was not correct as far as I understood in my young brain, and so I would try to speak up and whenever I did, I got slapped in place because that's just not what you do in a big company, that's just not how it works and for Me it wasn't that they were wrong and I was right or I was better than them - it's just with the way that I care about the work itself. I could only stomach that for so long in the commercial arena, because you tend to deal with larger customers by the nature of it, and so you tend to often also fall into larger companies.

There's more of that corporate people who, at the end of the day, just go home and drink their beer and or whatever watch your TV and that's fine, they're, not thinking about their job anymore. Whereas for me, I've never stopped from the moment that I started doing HVAC I've never had a day where I wasn't obsessing about something related to my job. I mean it's just constant, it's not because I'm married to my job. I think this is something that'll get.

Some guys push back. Ok, your job is and everything you don't need identify as your job. I totally get that I grew that's great to have hobbies it's great to have whatever, but when you're more of that obsessive type of personality, where you just care about the things you do, that's just how it works. When I see you doing that with your videos, you, like you, just get into something and you just care about everything about it, and that makes it hard.

Sometimes I think, when you get into the more corporate environments it does in the corporate environments and then another thing too I'll point out a lot of times on paper, those corporations or those large companies. They want it done the right way and they have those infrastructures. In place to train their guys, cream-of-the-crop best safety standards, safety, training, technical training, equipment, training, a lot of times, it comes down to people issues and what I'm finding is that a lot of times? It's your middle management that can be an issue sometimes with getting into those situations I mentioned before, and I think a lot of times is because they have their own ambitions. So when you have a company, some of these are fortune 500 companies to the big four.

The big manufacturers, I question, sometimes what the service manager level up to a few steps higher what's in their head, is that their goal there, because I doubt it. I think a lot of them are wanting to climb that ladder and that's why they're at a company like that in the first place, whereas the technicians are there at those companies because they are under the impression they're gon na get the best quality everything tools, training, Work opportunities, access to the biggest and most advanced equipment. There is so, I think, there's sometimes a clash or a difference in motives and goals with people within the same organization. I don't think that's.

The goal of the other side is what I'm getting at. I think they're right looking to start at that level, make as much as they can or for their give the optics of their branch, doing amazing things so that they can climb up a couple other rungs. Well, there's a lot of truth. In that I mean there's a lot of practicality in that it, when you get to that level, where you have like, maybe two or more layers below you before you get to rank and file, it becomes all about metrics, because what else can it be about? You can't go into a meeting and say well, Bob said this, and Tom said this and then Andrew was complaining because he needs more rope on his truck and more buckets like it's, not that conversations that they have.

They look at numbers and numbers. You can game by doing things and maybe not wrong, but maybe you say to a technician: hey. This needs to be done today. Knowing that getting it done today means that you may not do everything exactly yes percent correct, that's the sort of stuff that happens, and I talk about like a lot of flat rate companies in residential.

I think a lot of listeners will relate to this they'll. Give a certain amount of time to do something and hey you: can do a compressor in two hours, but you're, not gon na. Do a very good standing nitrogen test, you're, not gon na pull a very good vacuum on it. You're not gon na.

Do an acid vertical on it: you're gon na slap, the compressor in you may not be using your recovery machine, maybe you're using a pocket recovery, but hey you've got the recovery mission on the truck right and so there's that stuff. That goes on all the time. In our tray and yeah there's you can slap a compression in two hours, no problem. If that's, how you do it, but if you give somebody three hours to do it or four hours to do it and sometimes to do it right, it may take five or six.

What are they gon na do well, they're gon na make sure they get it done under that time, and the dispatcher is calling them two hours in saying. Are you done yet? We have six more calls on schedule and got ta get it done. So there's a version of this in residential, I'm not saying that it's just in commercial, but I think in commercial you're exactly right. It's not top level leadership because top level leadership have no idea.

They want everything perfect. They want to make all the money in the world and they want kumbaya hearts and flowers best quality everything. It's the middle managers are the ones who know what has to be sacrificed in order to hit those numbers and they're the ones making that decision, because that, ultimately, that's what it takes to get out of that position and a lot of organizations. Oh yeah and a lot of those companies at least the most top tiers when we're talking about company size and stuff, a lot of times, they're publicly traded, they're accountable to shareholders at the end of the day, there's going to be things that happen in that sense, That spill all the way down to the technician level.

Now we were talking about a few minutes ago. I was sitting there telling you these things in my head. I'm thinking, actually nothing, I'm saying, is really unique to commercial, because I see, just as many residential technicians complained online about some of those same issues like you said where they're pushed to do things that are maybe not ethical, maybe when it comes to upselling, when it's Not necessary or just things along that vein, so I think these frustrations don't discriminate towards one or the other, but the difference is you need to look at yourself when you're, starting in the trade, accept and acknowledge that's gon na be a reality, no matter where you Go if it's something that you think long-term you'll be able to stomach for the sake of the actual job, then I would look at the heavier stuff. If you want to be really good mechanic and you want to get lots of great training and you will.

But you will have to deal with that stuff, your whole life. If you go residential, you may still deal with it too, but you have that out. When you put some years in, maybe five ten years go on your own, do it the right way? Do it? The way you always imagined it needed to be done, and nobody can tell you anything different, so I think that's just something to weigh, because you're gon na have to deal with that everywhere. The difference is: where are you gon na be able to do something about it, and some people are cut out for what I do now, cuz, I'm still kind of in-between stage where I don't know ten years from now.

What way I'm gon na go, but there are guys that are and there's nothing wrong with them, either they're perfectly content to go to punch in punch out and do things the way the company wants and the trade-off is worth it it offsets it then that's cool! That's just something that you need to determine: there's no perfect answer to where you fit in this umbrella. Well, that's just add if you are the kind of person who can have that inner peace with just like hey, ultimately, it's not my decision. I'm gon na do the best job I can at every job and I like working on these machines and I can bring up the next generation and encourage them and good practices. Then I think commercial is excellent, but if you have that thing in you, that's like you got that little bit of rebel in residential, even if you're, not the boss, you are gon na, tend to have a little bit more influence.

It's just the nature of it. Most residential shops are smaller, especially if they're ones that care about the technical side. I mean there's a lot of big companies that are popping up now that are really just sales companies and for guys, like me, there's no way I could ever do that again. So if you may be suited for that and that's not necessarily a bad model, I tend to struggle with it, though, for reasons that I've mentioned on many occasions, but there's a lot of good small residential companies that care about doing things the right way and as A lead technician, a senior technician.

You can have a lot of influence on how those companies run. If one of my texts comes to me and says, hey here's a better way of doing something. Well, if it is a better way, then that's gon na be our company policy tomorrow, then there are a lot of companies like me, I'm sure so, there's a little bit more of that. If you are the type of person who wants to have an influence on the organization that you're in that's, maybe a little bit easier to do in residential, it's not to say I'm sure you could probably find a smaller commercial shop, because it's not all just like.

As an example, there's commercial, where they do more on the project side and when you do more on the project side we haven't talked about that. Well, then, that's a whole different ball of wax and some of those companies can tend to be. I don't want to say smaller, but it's a totally different type of business, there's more travel, but there's also a lot of pretty cool things. You get to do doing that as well.

So there's a lot of amazing things. You get to do see an experience and then there's also a whole other dimension of stress and anxiety that you don't get in service and they don't experience a lot of what we experienced in service yeah. When you said in the beginning, there's you're gon na kind of lump everything together you're, starting now to pull out some of these other elements and yeah. The list is endless.

I jut it down a list before we started in case it came up, but there's dozens of specialized areas, segments subgenres - if that's the word, if the actual just the technical aspects of it is what excites you and nothing regarding entrepreneurship, then this is the way to Go in my opinion, because there's just so much out there that's cutting edge and so much variety. You can never know it all. So if that excites you it's a way, I'd say to go. A lot of things that are just now becoming exciting in residential has been around for decades.

So one of the biggest things you see out right now in the social media sphere and HVAC world is inverters or sometimes some of the duct free stuff. The vrf and stuff. Like I mean vrf is decades and decades old, 30 or 40 years old inverter technology variable speed drives. That's been driving high horsepower motors for 20 30 years.