hey brian here this video slash podcast is with many of the moderators and admins for the hvac school group a lot of really great guys who have helped us make this thing possible for a really long time and we talk about what it takes to run a really good community online and some of the things that we have struggled with and some of the things we've worked on some of the ways we've grown it's a good way to get to know some of these really great people who have made this possible all this time hope you enjoy all right so i'm here with the uh some of the moderators and admins actually i think everybody here is an admin of the hec school group aren't we any only a moderator you are only you're a lonely moderator well i think that actually comes from the fact uh so that's eric kaiser speaking that that uh comes from the fact that early on when i asked you to be a moderator you were like really you you really didn't want to do it like i really had to talk you into it you do you remember that conversation that uh i think so yeah it was like man do i really want because i've moderated like on and admitted on um you know bulletin boards and things like that before and i'm like do i really want to take that on but yeah it hasn't been too bad i guess yeah well that's what we're going to discuss here so let's first just go around um quick quick intro of everybody here and so we'll start with you neil you look like you're ready to introduce yourself here quickly i mean who else is listening because uh who who else is listening because i think everyone here knows me but well yeah but like nobody else is listening live but this is going to be like we're going to we're going to put this out to the masses you know i gotcha i am uh neil compareto and i am a hvac company in central virginia i'm also a admin of the hvac school group for several years now um how many years several i think it's been four five four five you forgot okay you were an admin when i came on and it's been at least four for me so yeah yeah i think neil's been at least five i think i think the group has been around for probably six years or five or six years something like that so well yeah so what's that what's the name of your company neil uh my comfort squad the comfort squad the comfort squad and it's in central virginia not northern virginia did i say northern virginia yeah you said northern virginia so we're getting all kinds of calls from northern virginia wanting us to do all kinds of stuff no you're not that's not that's not true it actually is true but not because of that not because of that yeah not because not because of me nobody listens to this podcast so and then you already heard from eric kaiser go ahead and uh give us your your spiel eric yeah i'm just me i just hang out talk about a lot of stuff no i'm i'm out of indianapolis um i own a little consulting company that is one person me and uh do do some training do some consulting just generally try to help the industry move forward do a little bit of help on several groups on the uh facebook realm it's my my big social media right there is facebook i can't figure out how to tweet or twitter or whatever you call it instagram it's just confusing no gramming um also a master of understatement uh apparently because eric is one of the brightest folks in our industry and i'm constantly trying to to give him more work and he's getting really sick of it so uh and then ty ty brannaman yeah i'm just a student of hvac i love learning stuff i like helping people i'm the newest to admin moderation what do you want to call it i've avoided it forever and then uh and then you just added me in and i'm like uh so i'm still learning from all these great people so about how to do it and how to have that little harder line because i'm a soft team like i'll give them a third or fourth or fifth chance so i'm i'm still learning a lot yeah ty's the baby of the family i think i actually so if i remember how that happened and i have a bad memory so correct me if i'm wrong but i'm pretty sure i asked you if you would do it you didn't respond and then i just made you a moderator i've done that a few times um sometimes it's better to ask uh for forgiveness than permission especially when you plan to rob a bank uh which i've done a few only a few times so it's it's good to have ty ty is a long time educator has a great uh youtube channel and uh is worked with just a lot of different uh a lot of different companies around the country several different brands and just a great great educator very passionate speaker probably one of the most interesting speakers that i've had a chance to listen to i was actually just talking to the guys from hvc excellence and they were like you know they were trying to talk me into into doing a presentation again next year and they're like you know i was like well if you got tie you know then you're good to go so uh anyway and then michael housh yep so i am uh michael housh from uh cincinnati ohio area um third generation hvac owner and i am all over facebook like eric i don't tweet or gram or any of the other social media things but i do facebook yeah and it's just kind of weird you know like facebook is it's uh it's not my favorite uh but it is uh it's there and there's a big audience there there's a lot of people interacting there so i think it's uh it's where we are a lot of people have asked you know when i'm gonna start a reddit or uh you know i guess there's other things i forget what somebody uh what's the one that everybody's doing now um that's kind of like slack you had mentioned it before michael it's called um it's one gamers use platform oh discord discord right somebody asked when i was going to start us discord you know it's like i don't know just another thing to do and so we've i'm just going to stick with this for now so facebook group we've got 30 something thousand 36 000 something like that is it more than that now i don't know almost 42. oh 42 000. okay 42 000 people in the group we really have kind of slowed down in our growth we still get a lot of new folks but i think it ends up a lot of people end up getting kind of moved out because of some of our rules and i want to kind of just start with that which is just generally you know ty you did a really great video about this um but just start by just having a discussion of what what makes this sort of thing worth it like what is the whole point of this in the first place um because a lot of people come to social media for a lot of different reasons obviously and all of them are valid i can't say that one person's reason is better than another but in terms of having a community that's based around a profession um i just want to get some of your feedback on what do you think makes it makes it worth doing and i'll start with you ty just because you're the one who did that recent video that i thought was that was really good well there's so many aspects of that that could take me an hour alone just to go through that what what i love about it is the communication things that um it keeps me relevant a lot of things that are happening questions that people ask i know that these are things that people still want to know and the communication even if there's somebody i disagree with they bring a different viewpoint and it keeps my mind open keeps me up to a broader way of thinking and then you know there's the random questions i'm going and helping somebody and i'll go to resource research and get my sources and realize there's more i need to learn so for me it's great because it keeps me real that keeps me learning and then when you see people that that get help maybe it's the the third or fourth or fifth question and other groups i mean any any social media people can be harsh but uh here i mean it's a lot more inviting there's still going to be people that reply back with things but it's very for the most part very welcoming and i feel like i can share information without somebody attacking me and i think that's that's a great have that safe point be professional and we you know promote people to learn and i i think that's a very special thing i think that uh along like i agree with everything that ty said but some of the uh social media stuff can be like a low pressure area to like practice different things so like you know i'll try out maybe different wording and uh social media posts or something like that um and just kind of see how it works uh is one of the things that i like to use it for um especially like some of the homeowner groups or whatever so i can sort of practice how i present things in a way that i can then take and use with my own customers um and so i think that's one of the things that i enjoy about it and just i mean i've got to meet all you great people that would not have occurred had i not uh joined facebook and i only joined facebook from listening to uh brian's podcast um so or like i had taken a hiatus for a number of years and because of the podcast i joined back up and immediately got into the school group and then like two days later i was an admin or something like it was weird it doesn't take much it doesn't take much no and i know that yeah that's that's cool to hear um yeah for me it was i met so many people um i didn't really have a community uh there was a period of time that i was on uh pro talk um so a lot of people will remember protocol still around um that was sort of there was a heyday of protocol when really that was the place that you would go to communicate with other people in the trade and uh and it was good but it it did uh there was a certain tone to it that wasn't always uh wasn't always positive and i remember one time early on i was probably you know 19 years old and i gave a uh i made a post on sequence of operation for a gas furnace and of course you know i'm a florida boy um i'm only used to 80 you know like i have a very different very different perspective and i went through and answered a question from somebody and i still to this day i don't think i said anything wrong but somebody really didn't like what i said and basically it took me apart some version of listen your son you shouldn't be answering questions if you don't know what the hell you're talking about you know that kind of thing and uh and so that kind of you know and it was fine you know like you can deal with it it's it's okay to have thick skin and to hear that but it isn't a productive way of communicating so i always kind of thought back to that when the time came to create our our own group um of just like all right you know what what we what do we want to create here what is the goal and i think just having the opportunity to meet people and to get different perspectives one of the things i really appreciate is the ability to get perspectives from different regions because when you're in in a particular region like florida in florida it's very florida like there's just some very florida things that go on here that you don't get a perspective for other regions uh and the group is a really great way to do that because there's this constant stream of photos and questions and comments that are around totally different ways of doing things uh and that's been like i don't think i honestly don't think i could effectively do the podcast or the youtube channel if i didn't have the group for that reason because i just would be locked in my way of thinking yeah it's a great feeder for a lot of things on the education side for sure because like you said there's a lot of there's a lot of varied viewpoints on there i love it because i'm able to keep up since i'm not actively in the field on a day-to-day basis i can keep up with a lot of things on there to make sure that stuff that i'm talking about is relevant both from my own experiences and other people's experiences and try to stay up with current trends in the industry current issues that people may need to learn about or know about so and it's a great place to share and answer questions it's i i kind of see facebook and the one reason why i've stuck with it because it's the closest thing to like what you mentioned brian about the old pro talk and some of the other discussion boards that there's still a few of them around but not nearly as many whereas i find like instagram or some of the other things and i guess linkedin is kind of that way because i do i do participate in linkedin too but it's the closest thing that i've found to that because that was where honestly i gained a ton of knowledge in the industry from following people and learning people and a lot of those people that i picked up with on those boards are now on facebook as well and kind of made that transition into it you know how did you get kind of started in uh because i you know you kind of appeared at some point and i've seen you kind of develop from being somebody who is really absorbing a lot of information to being a um a thought leader in your own right um so what does that evolution look like for you yeah i'm trying to remember exactly like what got me started on uh hvac facebook forums i think it was uh like pro talk and i remember i initially i came in kind of um like a jerk honestly where i was like trying to show people that i'm smart or something and just cut people down and and someone like literally said like dude why are you being and i was like i thought about it for a second i was like you know what i'm just i am i'm being being a jerk um so i kind of switched that up and tried to be more helpful and that kind of right around then is when um we met brian um and i didn't even know that i listened to the podcast i didn't know there was a group and joined the group and it's been i don't i can't explain how it's hard to explain how beneficial it's been for me um so i've basically had like two jobs my whole life in hvac and they've both been like very niche right so they they do they're very focused on a certain thing so i have some strengths that are pretty strong and then some big holes and so it's really helpful that you know to be able to observe a lot of other smart people fill those holes um i you know i met my business partner on on your facebook group which so if if it wasn't for that who knows what you know i'd be doing now and uh obviously it's i feel like that group's a little special there's a community of people like like you guys that i can call and ask questions or you know reach out to and uh it's just been really helpful and it's it's feels it's like you feel like you're a part of something um i also joke like what do plumbers and electricians do i don't i don't think they they do like stuff like we do so it's uh it's pretty cool um to be part of uh you know other people where you can uh yeah have like a creative outlet i'll tell you what electricians do they have groups and all they do is argue about very uh things in the national electrical code yeah like what is it about electricians and their code like i like like we don't it's just a weird thing like we don't we talk about code sometimes but it's mostly regional and it's not like it's not like the thing for them i i mean i guess it's what they have i guess when you just you know when you when you bend pipe and pull wire and don't clean up after yourself that's all you've gotta think about it that's all you guys coach yeah and all you got is codes left over at the end of the day anyway um you got to rag on electricians a little bit that's actually how i started in the trades as an electrical apprentice some people don't know that all right so let's talk about um kind of some of our standards because i think there's and and a lot of people don't even agree some of you may not agree with some of my rules and some of my standards and that's and that's totally fine and i've always said that because i think early on people got this sense that i had to have a problem with swearing or something that like it just really upsets me or something it's like no i i grew up in the trades you know like i um i i swear uh from time to time it's not like it's not something that uh i'm either proud of or completely ashamed of it's just a reality of how some people communicate but my reason for banning most of that from the group is just how quickly it can get out of control um so when you eliminate certain types of language from the from the communication then it just helps keep things a little bit more professional which then it's the same reason why we don't do it with clients right i mean if you think about why you don't just swear blue blaze in front of a client or in front of your kids or a lot of places where you don't swear it's because you're you're removing something that can be misinterpreted or it could be misused or misunderstood in some way um and it just keeps things a little bit more uh cut and dry but ultimately it isn't so much and you guys know kind of my general stance on this it isn't so much the word somebody chooses as much as it is what they're doing with that word so we let certain things slide because you're just using it as an explanatory thing but as soon as it crosses over into a into a personal attack um that's where i have a real issue with it so i don't know what what what are you guys thoughts on that um because i've actually been torn on that at times there's been a couple times i just thought you know what forget it i'm just not gonna not gonna be as dogmatic about this but then anytime i do start to let it slide it seems like everything just gets out of control really quick yeah i think it's hard enough to manage it with with these uh rules so without them we are we all know that you know everyone that's been in these hvac forums we all know what it looks like without the rules and it's just not as in a helpful environment so i feel like you know if that's the goal is to create a place where uh you can get you can ask questions get answers minimal bs um then you're going to have to have some guidelines and i think yeah if you allow swearing it's like at what context it just it's very easy to just stop stuff initially um like even with posts that are you know i could see a post that i'm about to like approve i'm like i'm not i don't have time to babysit this post i'm not approving it it's it's okay i think the person may be um have good intentions but i know where this is going so there's there's certain things that you know you just have to have some kind of guide rails and i think you're doing you know the rules you said are doing a pretty good job with that one thing i would say is uh you know just from a standpoint or or maybe to let listeners in to be an admin or a moderator is a big task and job there's a lot that people probably don't see or think that goes on and just kind of as neil is alluding to like i mean some stuff just can snowball out of control really quickly and it's easier to just nip that in the bud like i would i'm like thai where a lot of things i'm like i'll give them another chance or whatever especially at first when i was new to it whereas now i'm just like bam bam you know delete whatever uh and just because i don't have you know i've got other things to do and that's the thing the other thing with all of us uh admins and moderators is you know we all work in the field or you know consulting or whatever we do and so it's not our only thing that we have going on and so um and we're fine with kidding around and joking and we do that ourselves as well but uh you know i i think that sometimes people get butt hurt over things and so don't go messaging me on facebook if you get kicked out or muted or whatever because i don't care don't worry they just message me when you do that it's true i think we just send them all to kneel it's true uh and i will confess i am the worst admin uh of the group at this point because i am both sloppy in terms of the things i approve sometimes uh and i am also i will just straight up ignore people like if somebody sends me those messages because they do i mean i probably get more of them than anybody because of uh being the one who created the group in the first place and i just i just ignore them i don't and it isn't because i don't care about people because i do care about people but the type of person who's going to come after me like well it's not and it's all here's what it always is it's always some version of well how come you didn't how come you didn't ban them because they're the ones who started it's like literally you know i think at this point everybody knows i have 10 kids like it's literally like my you know my four-year-old and my six-year-old getting into an argument well they're the one who started it's like seriously folks like you know what the rules are um you all had to go through these things in order to accept the rules just just abide by the rules or or leave and and it's not because i don't care about you it's not because i don't want you to have a great life but there's tons of other groups that you can go to to screw around and share weird memes and talk about politics and and whatever you want to do right that's the internet is full of those some on facebook some off of facebook have added i'm not judging you go do what you want to do but in this space just make it productive you know we can have a good time too like we can there's room for a little bit of joking around that's that's fine but just make it productive you know at the end you know you want to walk away from a smarter not dumber and a lot of these cases it's just it's just childish and i do yeah i'm at the point where i just ignore it the same way when i get the emails because i get those too i mean i've gotten i've gotten personal threats because of the hvac school group i've gotten like and you guys probably know who the person is from the good old days neil um and uh like i've gotten like oh yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna you know i'm gonna start leaving bad reviews for your company i'm gonna put you on blast and these other groups you know all this kind of stuff it's like it's just not worth it and as soon as you engage it just makes it worse um so that's that's where i'm at with all that but in terms of the in terms of the rules like and because i'm not i'm not about being dogmatic about the rules it's not like oh oh you know you you said ass oh my gosh you know like nah i'm gonna i'm gonna block you from there that's not the point you know it's it's how you're interacting with other people and the ways in which you're using language um usually if people will you know they'll they'll drop an f-bomb and it's not really ill intent i'll usually just delete it i don't even say anything to him i just delete it just like hopefully disappears and they don't even think about it and move on and you know try better next time but it's probably again like i said i'm probably the worst admin because of that because in a lot of cases i don't even send them a message about it it's like they'll figure it out hopefully they can read the rules i mean if they're an hvac they should be able to at least read a hope well it comes down to rtfm right so yeah that's probably the biggest challenge with a group like this is getting people to read and follow the rules and i get it too that people are in multiple groups like they will forget oh crap i'm in this group and now i've gotta follow these rules versus this other group um where i don't have to follow these rules and yeah it's the trade and i can see that from one standpoint and we're talking to other trades people but it's also a practice area kind of like what michael said earlier it's a great area to practice being using your customer voices as somebody once told me you have to you have to have a customer voice and it's a great way to practice that and to to respect other people and things like that that you both learn the respect and you get the respect if you give it it has been my experience i've had the opposite experience i've had people just give us really positive feedback saying hey i love what you're you're doing uh from the podcast the facebook group the videos and uh they just love that they can come in and get it get a good solid answer i have i have tons of you know some of the some of the big ones i'll share with the group but i just get a lot of really positive feedback so uh like i think that's really cool i didn't know all this negative stuff was happening on the other side but i've had nothing but positive feedbacks in my side now i've had something because you're the most positive person right that's why right right you get back what you put out into the universe so you know that's that's what i have upset plenty of people though i had one guy today like nice long thought out like i really i'm horrible spelling anybody seen my messages what they probably think what was he trying to say i've even spelled my own name wrong multiple times but i really thought you know this this reply out i made everything you know you could read it as legible to proper words and grammar which is really difficult for me and then the guy who came back oh man like how dare you attack me you're treating me like a kid i was like oh wait i am sorry i apologize that was not my intent at all and that was without any evil guarantee so i could see how quickly things could turn but i've had really great positive feedback from uh from messages about the group yeah that's always nice and that is it's interesting how we all do that where we focus on the negative um and if for whatever reason the negative accumulates where the positive dissipates um so you can have somebody say something else it's like okay that's nice and then it just you just it's off into the ether whereas the negative just keeps growing and i've had that happen a few few times with the group i mean um in fact i'm kind of coming off a bit of a hiatus here where i've just sort of disappeared for a time and a lot of it just has to do with life and business stuff i mean we all have that where things are just there's a lot um but it does if you let it build up it makes things worse and then you find yourself you know having a persona or personality on social media that doesn't really represent who you are which is kind of my encouragement in general to people who want to interact uh in these spaces if you really have a heart to help people and it's not about your ego it's not about um it's not about seeming a certain way but it's about being authentically you and helping other people then that does come through and people will make mistakes i mean like you said that you know it's easy to accidentally say something in the wrong group an example one time is i was uh i got kind of like harsh with somebody about their way that they were acting in in the group because they were breaking the rules in some way and then i realized it wasn't my group so so i had to uh i had to ecro pretty quick there uh and i've certainly i've certainly misbehaved in other groups at times too just because of you know like disagreements um so i know what it's like to to to misbehave even in those in those spaces but again like the the thing that counteracts all that is also just humility you know if you if you realize that you did overstepper you were uh maybe having a bad day and said something you shouldn't say then the right thing to do is just say yeah i was wrong i should have said that um i'll do better that's uh that's the secret to a lot of things it's also the secret to staying married uh apparently so uh my wife hasn't divorced me yet so i think i'm at least doing all right on that front um so yeah i guess i guess that leads kind of to the next question so in terms of uh being the most helpful so like what are some of the traits and it's okay if you call out some individuals who do a really good job at it but what are some of the traits uh or tips that you would give for being um of the most benefit to others when interacting on social media and specifically the hvac school facebook group i'm gonna say thinking about answers before giving them like really digging into something yeah oftentimes there's a lot of questions that get asked on there and i just flat out don't have time to answer them like if you know if i see something i'll be like okay i gotta think about this a minute give a reasonable answer i see so many um like one word or two word or single sentence answers like it's a piece of junk well okay great how does that help it doesn't really you're not answering the question you're not trying to help out and sometimes i'll see people give really limited amounts of information and a lot of answers are given out oh it has to be this it has to be this and i'm like wow you guys need to slow down back up realize you got to have a lot more information to make a diagnosis and there's a lot of possibilities out there and i think that's one of the challenges of of social media in general is that it's a lot of got to go faster got to see the next thing gotta run to the next thing and it's it's challenging sometimes to sit back and go okay i've got to think about a good answer write down a good answer word out a good answer and not be the shortest answer in the in the group which is what i feel like a lot of the answers are is a competition for who can type least amount of words or answer the fastest too yeah it's it's also uh you know you have to think about your posts like your original post or whatever which often lack information and things as well and so it can sometimes be difficult uh kind of to craft good answers when all the information isn't there so i would say to you know try to add as much detail as you can to your posts and um you know try to be helpful like uh eric's saying i mean some sometimes these these one or two word answers are just not helpful and surely the people giving them understand that or at least that's the way it seems sometimes right and so so uh you you're just kind of muddy in the waters for someone that really wants to learn and or maybe they're on a service call and need like real help right now um and so uh just kind of be respectful to people yeah for sure another thing too is like you never know what kind of a day somebody else on the other end that post is having are they having a bad day or they somebody hounding them they have a customer breathing down their neck about the issue that they're asking about maybe their boss is breathing down their neck and they can't figure it out they're trying to do something whatever um but to people that are posting new things it's really i see a lot of first-time posts that have questions that are very regional um so it's like okay i've got this problem well what area of the country are you in uh because that makes a big difference we alluded to code conversations earlier like uh that happened to a lot of the electricians because they actually have a national electrical code whereas we have no national hvac code it's by city by county by parish by state whatever you want to talk about and it's a huge mishmash of messed up mush that who knows what it is and i it's challenging for me when i see questions like how do i get this license and i'm like okay what are you in i don't even know what what code you're asking about what's code i don't know i don't know what area you're in what code are you on so it it becomes very challenging sometimes to answer those questions for sure i think one of the important things too in answering the question is having a pretty good idea that you're correct you know i try not to answer every single question and if i don't know i'm not not saying every time i answer it it's right but i think i'm right at least i feel pretty strongly about that i just see a lot of answers that is like there's no way that you think you know that um you just trying to answer something and usually there's four words uh so that and i also try to um when answering a question provide a little bit of uh like my sources i guess if possible sometimes and i find it helpful at least for myself to read it more in depth um to kind of you know point someone in the right direction maybe give them the maybe the answer is relatively short but here if you want to dig in a little deeper here you go um i find that helpful so i tried to do that when possible weren't you going to say something earlier ty oh always well no i disagree with neil i i i kind of did the opposite of the short letter my stuff was usually extremely too long and most people don't want to read it anyways but but i do like the sourcing because uh i've just learned that i've been told so many so much false information and i believed it was true because somebody had trusted told it to me i i now research a lot more and i want to know why a lot more now so i'll post a lot of links and and i try to keep them short because i know we don't want to flood with links but i do try to source that the code like where i found this information and you know if you want to learn more about it here's the relevance of it so that's i think that is important because maybe there's not that many people that want to do that but we don't really know in the background how many people are really clicking on that that don't talk that want to know more and so i figured that there's one other person like me that wants to know why and how and where that comes from then you know here's the link learn more about it yeah that's there's also such a wealth of stuff on the uh hvac school website uh that i try to link to whenever i can sometimes i forget or whatever but the search feature works really well and so a lot of questions that people ask there's probably a tech tip about it and so trying to kind of refer people back to that so they're not just taking my word because unlike neil everything i answer is correct but um very true very true and actually so this is what i was gonna uh add to this conversation about about being useful is that like a lot of the best learning that i've done or that i've seen other people do in these in groups of all sorts is and especially our group i like to believe is a really vigorous uh debate uh where there's a lot of like but what about this what about that i've seen this what about this example here's a here's something that seems to say this here's something that seems to say that and uh that's happened a few times and a few times this happened with people like jeremy smith or jim uh bergman or you guys uh and they'll just be this and and this rigorous debate and regardless of how right you were even if you were 98 right you come away from it having two percent more understanding of it because in a lot of cases um you have a working model in your head i think about this a lot the idea of mental models we we build our understanding of the world around us through um approximations you know through uh through mental similes uh like our understanding of the elector of how electricity works is not actually how electricity works it's a it's a mental model that we've developed and i have a pretty good working mental model that allows me to solve a lot of problems but there's a few things that just i struggle with and then recently i think steve rogers shared that video from veritasium uh and it was like whoa okay uh yeah now all of a sudden a lot more stuff makes sense uh that didn't make sense before and i like to think that i pretty solid when it comes to electrical theory but it really shook up a lot of things and that's super exciting to me and i and i think that's a healthy dynamic that can occur in some of these spaces where people are actually excited to learn something that they didn't know or to find out that their mental model was severely flawed in some way um and i think that's a really good litmus test for people who are good contributors to a group versus people who are not people who are happy to find out that they were that they've been wrong for 20 years and now they can be right versus people who are like pissed off about the fact that they've been wrong for 20 years and want to defend that position as hard as they possibly can and while i understand that impulse because there is like a little bit of ego that goes into that like it's far more cool to actually now understand something better uh and i can think of a lot of different a lot of different examples of this that have gone through the years especially between jim and i and some of this has happened on social media and some of it has happened outside of uh of that uh just via phone calls because jim started you know getting in the habit of whenever a tech tip would go out he would just call me immediately after and tell me what was wrong with what i just said uh which is very super cool as well um yeah what do you what are you guys thoughts on that as far as some of those vigorous kind of debates and where the lines should be drawn there yeah i love it um kind of kind of when i post it's usually trying to do that i guess so but like flexstock for instance uh there's some people that just no matter what you're never going to convince them that it should belong on this planet and uh yeah there's a lot of i could think of this one guy in particular um and i i i think i convinced him one day i was like oh my god i've been you know butting hands with you for like months and i convinced him and then something happened and then he's right back to where he was i don't know and he dropped the group yeah maybe he was drinking that one night and feeling especially uh impressionable yeah yeah healthy debates are definitely good right and so um we just need to be respectful about it and hopefully um you know that comes across because i do same sort of stuff as neil right there's certain topics that i'll try to press people's buttons on or whatever as well and it's it's more because like the industry really needs it in my opinion and so um it's worth pressing buttons to try to get people to think differently about certain things but um i mean as long as people are respectful then there's nothing wrong with a difference of opinion and um we should have more of it really i mean it's just you know watch the name calling and things like that because it is hard it can easily uh turn into something like that or pointing fingers or things that just aren't helpful do you have a case study for that michael and who you if you have to bring in who you voted for or accuse somebody else of voting for somebody oh my god if you have to break then it has absolutely no relevance you've lost everything about your debate and all you're doing is just another way of doing an insult and that's just that's the point where i'm like okay we're done personal attacks personal name calling people call people out or they bring in well you probably voted for i'm like that's zero relevance yeah yeah yeah we call that a chat junker or whatever right you know it's like wait it all this stuff just drives me nuts actually but i try not to let it get to me but things political stuff and the blaming china for all the world's problems is like give me a break yeah it's it's just reducing other people down to a meme so that way you can dismiss them uh and i certainly do that uh and anytime i have done that neil calls me out on it so i always appreciate that um but that's a that's an impulse that we can all have and that's just a really really bad impulse um humans are humans they're complicated they deserve respect regardless of how they're acting in this moment uh and that doesn't mean that they don't get kicked out of my group if they're acting uh against the rules but it but it it's that they're still valuable and um and that's something that i think we can all fall into at times and nathan and i are doing a series of podcasts on um logical fallacies and the ad hominem attack is like the logical fallacy of choice uh in today's world which is the unrelated uh personal attack uh where you group people often nowadays it's grouping people into certain groups oh you're probably uh you know you're uh you're a millennial oh you're you're woke you're uh you know just some version of that uh and it's just it got nothing to do with it um and ultimately in these more rigorous debates a lot of times the right answer is to say okay i'm gonna go i'm gonna go back and test this and then i'm gonna come up with some tests to kind of give an example of this and that's how i won my most epic battle with jim burkman uh on the whole uh moisture uh issue was to actually go back and like set up a window unit and set up a humidifier and do before and after testing and all that and that's what ended up kind of like transforming the conversation um because we really weren't we really weren't understanding each other in a lot of cases that's what it is it's not so much that one person is right and one is wrong it's that there's this disconnect in communication um and getting kind of past that is what then allows you to understand something new and that's the goal the goal is to have an applicable understanding of a new concept not just having you know information jingling around in your head but something that is actually going to be useful to you in your profession that's that's the best feedback i can ever get from somebody is that there was something that you did or said or a conversation that was had or a video that was made or a tech tip that actually in some way impacted their professional career and helps them you know enjoy their work more or support their family better in some way that's that's the most rewarding thing that you can that you can do in the trade and you know and groups like this are honestly an opportunity to do that in a very a very real way um without having necessarily having a youtube channel or having a website you get a chance to do that and that is a if you look at it as kind of an honor to be able to do that it kind of helps keep you a little more straight yeah i don't i don't um yeah i 100 agree up with you i've people have reached out to me a few times that out of nowhere i've never even seen him in the group or anything and been like hey i just want to thank you and uh you know that's definitely makes you feel good makes it you know feel worth it put putting some time in but um wasn't sure if it was brought up but um i feel like ego for a lot of people is holding them back um in these groups from learning um i i you know guilty of it i think everyone is to a degree but um yeah i just see a lot of egos that prevent people from progressing i think it's just you know that's their choice uh maybe they're not aware of it but it's real really holding them back um from taking maybe that next step in their knowledge yeah i think of people like um i think of david richardson as a good example of somebody who's like really really bright and brings so much to the industry and has helped so many people and i've learned so much from over the years um a lot of his writing and um i haven't taken nci courses per se but i've you know just followed him for years and just oozes um humility you know like there's not there's nothing that comes he doesn't come across at all uh like i've got all the answers and i'm gonna appreciate you about you know the the way things need to be done and you see that you know bill spone is another example of a guy like that where like i've learned so much about airflow from bill and measurement technologies um you know steve steve rogers another another example and you know steve sometimes can get a little aggressive but but there's not it's not ego he just really wants to learn um he's really excited about the stuff he's talking about there's so many examples of people like that um that i've that i've bumped into and those ultimately are not only the people who make the most growth themselves because that's always kind of what they're pursuing they're always pursuing actually understanding things better themselves but then in turn they end up helping people a lot more because people are so much more receptive to somebody who's a lifelong learner than somebody who thinks that they know it all um and you'll hear people say some version of well you know i don't know everything it's like if you have to say that that's like like don't say that like because that's a that's a given everybody knows you don't know everything because nobody knows everything right so you don't don't even say that just come into it with a posture of wanting to learn and saying this is what i've learned this is how i understand this uh and again like you all have said i certainly struggle with that especially when people try to tell me that other things cause capacitors to fail other than over temperature and over voltage you know then i get a little positional about it but uh but i can learn from that so but all the ants on top of them too right yeah well sure maybe ants you know it's insulator insulator you know well what about the uh um all of us that discharged capacitors with screwdrivers does that hurt okay yeah that can do it and i can do it i i've heard i've heard that can do it but i've never actually experienced one exploding in my hands it is fun how about this one how about this one oh where you have uh oh your capacitor went bad so you're going to lose capacity of your system you need to replace it oh you're compat oh oh you really you've actually heard somebody do that for in text i have a screenshot oh wow any reason to sell a system though let me tell you what they probably also need a a bipolar ionization unit as well after that and it's obviously a bad txv it's a bad three too yeah for sure for sure and that's actually and that's another example so let's talk about that um how about catchphrases slogans and common jokes let's talk about that because i i don't think that's expressly uh forbidden but that gets so old like i don't know that yeah that's hard because at the same time we have rtfm right you know what i mean it's like it is true it is true the txv thing drives me completely insane though i i just scroll past all of that stuff i mean but that joke was old five years ago or six years ago when it started during the the whole compressor um what was it whether yeah the rust inhibitor or whatever yeah the rust inhibitor thing because that's when that joke started like when every txv was failing but it wasn't the txv's fault yeah yeah and you're right so that that is fair um you know you know i had a a temporary kind of conniption fit when uh there was another group that was bringing their slogan into my group um and uh that was that was a little bit of a thing but yeah you're right rtfm and again to me the only reason rtfm is funny is because i replace the actual f word with fantastic and that to me makes it funny because otherwise it has been around forever and of course there is there is some obviously an underlying truth there that we do want to read the fantastic manual but uh anyway you know i i don't know i i guess uh it really isn't that funny of a joke anyway um so i what about without context though is the problem right like so it's these uh catch phrases that no one says anything so so even just posting rtfm without you know some sort of few words explanation or something like that is sort of aggravating as well and so that's just my opinion though yeah and i think that's what tends to happen sometimes for those of us who have done it for a while because i felt myself get burned out um and so you do start to not give enough words because you just don't feel like getting into it i mean i remember when i first started i mean i would write a book every time uh and share links and all that stuff um and now it's like if i do say something i i you know it's like for example you know i i put up a social media post about um how uh you know black jacketed uh ductwork picks up more radiant heat from the roof deck and how that actually results in some cases when you replace it with silver the silver will start sweating when the black duct wasn't that was kind of the point of what i was trying to make because we've seen that happen um and everybody i shouldn't say everybody but the majority of technicians don't understand that that radiant heat can occur even when there's no visible light and i just had people commenting like one guess so i'm gonna make a confession here okay so so somebody posted and said like you need to go back to school you don't understand like that's how he started in with me and uh and so i responded i responded with um maybe before making posts you should actually understand anything about how radiant heat works have a nice life you know like so like maybe yeah so that's not a great way to respond to people and these are the things that neil tells me i need to stop doing um or for a while especially in youtube i don't do this in the group but in youtube um when people because people leave awful comments on youtube um whenever they say really ridiculous things my my kind of stock response is um some version of i'm sorry that i wronged you i'll do better next time or uh or uh thank you for your kind feedback you know something like that uh which i still feel okay about that but um yeah in general tongue and cheek or sarcastic responses probably aren't the aren't the most helpful uh it depends on who they're helpful to because sometimes we have to make them for our own mental health mental health yeah mental health reasons yeah i guess i guess i can see that but back to the positive uh back to the positive side of things um how do you see so i want to kind of just finish off as we wrap this up for people who because again this is podcast um this is going to probably go on youtube too so some people may not be in the group or some people may have been in the group a long time but have maybe stopped contributing what are like some of your final kind of top tips or maybe even kind of feedback to the other admins and moderators about how to really make it a successful experience and actually benefit from it and i will start with michael oh great so um i i mean i don't really know a good answer to that question but uh i think just you know keeping things positive and uh trying to be as helpful as possible at least as admins i think that's how we all made it to be admins and moderators in the group um you know you showed some level of expertise and uh respect even though we all have our own personalities and some of us you know have our own ways of trolling people or each other or whatever but um i mean that's what makes it all fun and we and it should be fun um and there are times for it to be serious um and just you know be respectful of everybody and everyone's time and effort that they're putting in to uh the group that's kind of my two cents there i guess yeah and i'll add to that i think it's also important to know who you're you're talking to you know like because you run into some people who you just know we're very serious like they just don't that they're there for serious and and then you know respect that um but i think there is also room for people who you are friends with and you have a relationship with and you know that it's okay to be a little sarcastic it's okay to jab back and forth a little bit so long as you recognize that the people who are observing that may not always understand that so if it does get where you know it kind of made it maybe crossed a line in someone else's mind just kind of call it out quickly so people know that it's okay with both of you and that you're not actually um you don't want to set a precedent that's that's not uh that's not helpful oh now jordan wants to enter the call so that's a little late a little late jordan um i mean use emojis right use the winky face or whatever right i mean it's like not that hard yeah i don't know yeah winky face good good tip michael's top tip is use winky face that's what we all took away from this uh tai what are your thoughts i think it comes down to two things um do you care to help people i mean if you're gonna answer questions do care to really help the people you're just doing it for your own benefit if you really care to help people then you're on the right track and then um the second thing is be open to learn i mean be open to if you found yourself starting to get defensive or getting nervous then use that as a trigger to be like okay i'm going to put my guard down and i'm going to go and research or learn and talk to the person and i've learned so much that way i know i love talking to jim and he'll ask me a question and i start immediately getting nervous because i know i'm not going to know the answer and i look like an idiot again and then i feel that coming up like okay i don't know the answer jim just just teach me just show me that's what you want and we'll get to that straight to the point and i think that's so important here and if you do that you'll get to help people and you get to make friends you get to learn a lot of stuff i've learned so much in this group alone from little conference some stuff i never even comment on i learn stuff and then the friends i've made friends like you know eric will be like hey ty i think you're being a little bit harsh today or i'll come up to michael be like michael man i'm having a bad day i'm crap about something or something about duckwork and i i call neil like neil hey look i'm send a big ol long text and he's like two answers oh here's the answer and then i feel like an idiot for writing this whole long text but just it all comes from those two things you know where you're helping people you're learning and then next thing you know you're making friends you're making contacts and and everybody wins yeah it is a good really good point like if you ever if you're ever coming in to just try to teach other people and you don't want to learn yourself then just just don't don't like because you you always learn the most through teaching and um and being open to to that like oh wait i said that and maybe that isn't quite exactly right like maybe i have a question about that and then going back and then being willing to come back and say you know what i was wrong this isn't how this works and this is how this actually works here's a resource um i've done that so many times that really that's what hvc school is is just doing that over and over and over again until you get a little bit more right each time what are your thoughts eric yeah i mean i gotta say give give yourself and everybody room to be wrong or room great grace to not know as much as you think you know uh it's it kind of goes back to your mantra on a lot of the podcast right it's room to uh know some things you forgot to know in the first place yeah and that's one thing i've loved about the group is i love to learn and and i see people in here that have so much different knowledge than i do every day and i'm like wow okay i didn't didn't realize that's how that worked because i never dug into it i've never run into it maybe it's one of the neat things about the trade is there's so many different facets and and different um fields of it and you know not every facet fits every person like i think every one of us thinks that the area we work in in the trade is the best you know residential's the best commercials the best install is the best but we've got to realize that there's all these different facets that have to be done and every person has a different thing that they need so realize that that maybe that person is in the place that they need to be in or they want to be in and they might not want to change or if they do want to change and they're open to it i have that discussion but we can't force i don't think we should try to force people to change a lot of times it's like hey here's the information if you want to read it it's yours if not okay that's that's your choice yeah it's always helpful to remember like where you were 10 years ago um and like like some of the stuff i was doing 10 years ago i mean is like so horrible um that i would never even repeat it uh on the air and um and does that mean that i didn't care does that mean i was an idiot uh i mean probably but uh well that's just me yeah i mean like you just you just grow right and so and at the time if somebody if if at the time 10 years ago my version of myself today had come along and tried to dump everything on myself i would have been like who's this idiot you know he thinks he knows everything you know uh he thinks he's king blahdy blah over here uh as uh john israel once dubbed me um and actually i do think i'm king bloppity blonde thank you for the title i appreciate it um but yeah it's it's it's uh it's not fair to do that to people um and to think that they should all be at the same level that you're at today in terms of understanding things because honestly the me of 10 years ago was also much better at certain things than i am now actually the application of the trade in many ways i was better because i was doing it every day so just realizing that and giving people that grace i think is a really great point yeah you guys made some great points i don't really have uh too much to add um but yeah as far as what you get out of the group i feel like if you're you're humble and you try to be helpful it's going to work out i think things will come back around to you but that's kind of i try to take that approach and i feel like i get way more out of the group than i give but i try to give when i can when i feel like i can be helpful um so that's my approach it's kind of it's it sounds like the kid rock approach you know you get what you put in and people get what they deserve i botched that but uh yeah he has lots of lots of good quotes from the great philosopher poet laureate kid rock uh the final thing that i want to mention was um was the one thing that comes up a lot is people sharing stuff in the group and i don't so here's what's great it's great when people share relevant links to a question or something that's coming up from any source it doesn't matter to me where it comes from that's great answering a question hey here's a video here's a podcast here's a tip here's whatever that's great but what you'll notice is i don't share my podcast podcasts i can't say podcasts anymore podcasts tech tips or videos in the group when i release them i don't do that because there's a lot and that would start to take over the group that's what the page is for so i release that stuff on the page i release it in other social channels i don't do it in the group and so what happens sometimes is creators especially newer ones like to put their latest video their latest tech tip their latest podcast in the group and sometimes i will allow it for a season um and the reason i do that sometimes is when people are just getting started and i like them and i want them to kind of build up an audience and that's that's okay and so there's certain cases where i will allow that if i really know somebody if ty wants to post a video in the group i'm going to let him post a video on the group because he's thai right um but eventually if it's like every day he's posting in the group i'm going to be like all right you know okay you know and the point is not i don't think your stuff's valuable the point is the group is not about blasting information the group is about community discussions um and that's a big difference between a group and a page a page is about me saying hey look at my stuff you know a group is about about the people who are in the group presenting their questions and topics and sometimes i'll create a topic or a question um but it's it's not about um posting jobs or talking about your company or you know or given your agenda because that will immediately become way too much that'll become what the group is all about and so that's the reason why i can't do that and so i'm addressing this here just in case you're listening and you wonder about that or maybe you're a creator and you're like why doesn't why didn't brian allow me to post myself on his group you know or and the worst is when people try to try to push their group in in the hvac school group it's like that doesn't even make any sense you know it's like it's not that i have a problem with your group but like that's why would you market one hvac group and another hvc group like just market it using your own channels um so i'm sure i have competitive drives like anyone else and i'm sure sometimes that's the reason why i do things but i i work to battle that because ultimately um there's nobody who does what we do that i'm competing against it's actually about sharing information and in the group i just don't want it to become overly noisy so um that is i just wanted to to put that in there real quick anybody else have anything to add on that or any other topic before we wrap up here anything you want to throw in there at the last second yeah i think um the one thing i want to throw in is that like all of the original posts the original thing you see the original post is all that's all moderated before it hits the group like we see that we delete a lot of stuff before it ever hits that group it's it's crazy how much some people put in there and and there's a lot of stuff that like links to other groups you know like brian just mentioned we're probably not gonna do that share it as shared as the original thing uh because a lot of times other groups they'll get deleted or the link gets redirected something like that a lot of times so or the privacy gets changed on it if it's another facebook group or something like that and suddenly you can't see that anymore i see a lot of things come across that are private well i can't see them well if i can't see them nobody else is going to be able to see them so they don't go into the group yeah that's a really good point that's actually one of the things that make our group i don't know if it's completely unique but but very rare is that we actually do moderate all the posts which makes it a lot more work and it also kind of creates a delay so like you don't want to ask technical questions that like you're waiting at the unit for the answer it's not the right place for that you know probably you know use blue on tech support or something like that if that's what you need a manufacturer tech support or call you know call somebody who's your mentor or whatever but um that's not really what's going to work in the hvac school group and it's for the reason of trying to keep it a little bit cleaner well it also makes it a lot easier to moderate on the back end though too exactly yeah for sure for sure like people said earlier in the discussion you know we we try to keep some things that i don't have time to sit here and watch that today because it's just gonna blow up into a royal boat of stinky smelly right and that's often what happens sometimes because my rule is i'm okay with people asking dumb questions because some people will be like well why'd you let them ask such a such a question but sometimes if it's really bad we won't allow it just because we know that it's like it's not even formulated in a way that anything productive is going to come out of this um so you got to have at least some basic um idea that we can work with here otherwise we just know it's not going to go well another thing that's a really valuable resource that doesn't get used enough i think is the search bar where you can like literally search the group like what boots you want or something it's there um but i use it all the time to just you know instead of posting a question on something i know i've seen before i'll just do the search bar and usually find my answer yeah great point and sometimes you can even kind of like restart a conversation if you go find one and it's like maybe you have another question often you can just you know ask it and it'll kind of restart the restart the conversation if it's something that maybe is in the right theme but you just want to ask a different angle on it all right that is that is it for this discussion thank you so much i wanted every i wanted everybody to kind of get a chance just to see some of the faces behind the behind the group as well there are a lot more um i think jordan got his time zones wrong so he uh tried to join right here at the end uh that's one downside with the with google chat or whatever you call this uh that it doesn't necessarily show the time zone properly so it's confusing you know time zones very confusing stuff but uh yeah we have people from all over the country um who help us do this and it's it's very much uh appreciated that you guys take the time something certainly something you don't have to do but it matters to me and and i definitely definitely do appreciate it so thanks for taking the time to do this as well taking time away from your families and lives to do it it's always so much appreciated thanks for watching our video if you enjoyed it and got something out of it if you wouldn't mind hitting the thumbs up button to like the video subscribe to the channel and click the notifications bell to be notified when new videos come out hvac sch