EP: 194 Dan Clapper & Ken Midgett w/ Interplay Learning - Tech-Savvy Training: The Future of HVAC

Our latest episode of HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed has guests Dan Clapper & Ken Midgett from Interplay Learning! They joined us at AHR EXPO 2024  to discuss the transforming world of HVAC training through simulation technology. 

3 Key Takeaways 

1. Invest in Training for Business Growth: A strong emphasis is placed on integrating comprehensive training programs into the core of your business model. Prioritizing education is not just a cost - it's a strategic investment in your company's future.

2. Adopt a Tailored Training Approach: Personalizing the training experience to fit individual technician needs is crucial. Engage employees by showing them how skill enhancement positively impacts their day-to-day life and career trajectory.

3. The Value of Incentivization: Implementing incentives like compensation for training not only fosters accountability but also boosts morale and career development. See remarkable gains in efficiency with a more confident, skilled workforce.

Tune in to learn why businesses that lead with training are set to thrive in the fast-evolving HVAC landscape. Stay ahead by leveling up your skills and ensuring your technicians are the best in the business.

Find Dan:

On The Web: https://www.interplaylearning.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/interplaylearning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/interplaylearning/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danclapper/

Find Ken:

On The Web: https://www.interplaylearning.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/interplaylearning
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/interplaylearning/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenmidgett/

Join Our Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed
Presented By On Purpose Media: https://www.onpurposemedia.ca/
For HVAC Internet Marketing reach out to us at info@onpurposemedia.ca or 888-428-0662


Sponsored By:
Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
Elite Call: https://elitecall.net
Coach2Close: https://coach-2-close.com/

Transcript

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:00

Hey, what's up, everybody. We are live from the AHR 2024 Expo in Chicago and today's episode, we had Dan Clapper and Ken Midgett on from Interplay Learning. Love what they're doing, but they also dropped some knowledge too. Evan, what was your favorite part of that episode?

Evan Hoffman: 0:14

How to get buy in from your people when you are introducing training. Incredibly tough to do at times and it can be so frustrating as a business owner when you're not getting that buy in from them because I know you're doing it because you feel like you can help them, but there's this thing that's stuck in the way and I love that part of the conversation. What about you?

Thaddeus Tondu: 0:32

The overall expectations of training, right? When you set this, these expectations, you create it from the culture, that's going to help out with the buy in part of things. But the other part of what I love is leveraging their technology of what they're doing and when you bring in tech into the workplace to be able to augment training and speak speaking of augment, it's called augmented reality and they use it inside of their training, virtual reality, sorry, not augmented reality. So don't they have the headset?

Evan Hoffman: 1:00

That's virtual reality.

Thaddeus Tondu: 1:02

Oh, what's augmented reality?

Evan Hoffman: 1:03

Pokemon Go.

Thaddeus Tondu: 1:04

Oh, right, there we go. Okay, virtual reality, then, wow, it's been a long, long show, three days of going, so apologies everyone for my faux pas. Virtual reality, because now, you can actually experience the things. In real life without hindering safety. So it was a great episode, but we'd like to hear from you. Leave a note down in the comments on what your favorite part of the episode was and of course, a word from our sponsors because without them, this show wouldn't be possible. Chiirp, Elite Call, and On Purpose Media. So Elite Call, they are a us based call center champion for the home service industries for 20 years, actually they've been outbounding clients, databases, filling dispatch boards, with lucrative service and sales appointments and boosting memberships like no other they don't make calls they actually directly integrate into your CRM, giving you a seamless experience, don't let your competition get ahead, let elite call connect with your customers, and fill your board. You can visit them today at elitecall.net right there.

Evan Hoffman: 1:59

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INTRO: 2:46

Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors, revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.

Thaddeus Tondu: 3:01

Hey, welcome back to another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan, where we have good conversations with good people, any good conversation we're having is worth having drunk, but it's nine in the morning, so we're going to pass on the beers and stick with the Aquafinas, rehydration in us for later. Today we have on Dan and Ken from Interplay Learning, and I'm excited to dive into today's topic and what you guys do around training, bringing in VR into training, but before we get into that, the difficulties on training and how you can get buy in into it, and then we'll talk about some of the fun stuff. After the fact Ken, Dan, welcome.

Ken Midgett: 3:33

Hi. Thanks for having us.

Thaddeus Tondu: 3:35

No worries. Nice to meet you. Who wants to go first with a quick story about how they got into the industry?

Dan Clapper: 3:40

I guess I'll take it. Yeah, I started in the industry as a kid. My dad had his own HVAC employment company. So I was, I don't know, five, six, seven years old, cleaning fittings, threading pipe, crawling around basements. I told him I'm never going to get into the industry. This is terrible, but it grows on you and then from there, I went to college, dropped out, got a job at the wholesaler really did a lot of self study. I really got into training and quickly progressed my career to become a regional for Bosch. Then I was a regional for Daikin. Had then had some national sales roles. So I've met contractors across the country and I, like training's my passion. So that's my quick background.

Thaddeus Tondu: 4:21

And that's Dan, by the way, in case those are wondering later, I mixed it up earlier. So don't do that. Ken how about yourself.

Ken Midgett: 4:26

Yeah, I'm a 46 plus year licensed master plumber. I've been at it a long time. I had two service businesses over 25 years. One was new construction. One was service and repair did plumbing HVAC. I met an opportunity, came out to teach at the secondary level for technical education, and I applied thinking I'm never going to get this job. I don't have a day of college in my life. I don't know anything about teaching and got the job. Super lucky. Took a program that was ready to close to waiting list to get in. Highest, some of the highest completion scores, 100 percent placement for seniors into the industry. It was really rocking and rolling. I did highly successful. I won two national teaching awards and I catapulted me in the spotlight. Went to work in the tech industry for a little bit and then Interplay had this opening and I'd already been a subject matter expert for them. So they knew who I was and CEO reached out to me. We had a conversation and took it on, loved it and my passion is just like Dan's. I just love helping people. Love seeing people be successful people that say they can't make them successful.

Thaddeus Tondu: 5:25

Don't forget the two national awards for teaching too. I can't leave that out I think that's an important part. Cool. So let's transition now into the difficulties in training and we wrote down really five key points to touch on in looking at a plumbing and heating business or really any business for that matter, but specifically plumbing and heating and looking at point number one, what do you guys think is the most difficult part of getting training into the workplace?

Dan Clapper: 5:49

I think the first part is if you think about it, most people expect people to go train on their own time and with a lot of talent or retiring and younger people getting in the industry and they're less skilled, we have to bring that training in house. So I think that's just like step number one as a company, you got to realize that you're not getting a person off the street anymore. You're getting someone fresh or someone new to the industry or maybe they're 40 or 50 years old and want to transition into the trades. You just have to start really making in house training part of your culture.

Ken Midgett: 6:23

I think from an owner's perspective, like looking at training from our purchase is that it's not just a line item on a budget, right? There's a lot of value in doing it correctly for growth in a company reducing callbacks there's so much ROI and there's so much unmeasurable ROI, right? Just culture changes because you're doing things the right way and your employees respect you for that. And they think that you care about them and you're not just a number. There's so much of that has changed and the successful ones that are growing. Those people have those cultures in their company.

Thaddeus Tondu: 6:50

It's almost like a culture of expectation around training.

Evan Hoffman: 6:53

You have to set that expectation, right? Like at the end of the day, one, I think owners need to understand why it's important. Cause it is, it's difficult as an owner to say, I'm going to take my tech out of the field for a day, for an hour, for 10 minutes, whatever it is, when I could be making money on that call and instead put them through more training. It's a difficult decision to make at times, but the reality is the ROI comes back.

Ken Midgett: 7:15

And I think that's another part of it is that business owners are good at being business owners or they become good at being business owners, right? It's a thing that evolves and they aren't necessarily educators and you send some, you send a group of techs to factory training where you got a level one tech, you got a level three tech, you have a level five tech sleeping in the back of the room. The level threes are probably engaged because they understand what that factory, and the level ones are lost. They have no idea what this person is talking about and you do that, Dan and I have a conversation on the ride over here, you do it at the end of the day. They're exhausted. They want to get home. They don't want to go, they don't want to spend another three hours training. So making it accessible to them and let them train when they want to train, just make sure that the accountability measurements are there.

Thaddeus Tondu: 7:54

So you mentioned the level one, level three, level five, what sort of breakdown, and I guess when you plan out your training for your tax, some people, I'm just going to train everybody all at the same time. People, others say, I'm going to plan this out and say, okay, my level ones are going to get this. My level three is going to get this. My level five is going to get this. Where do you see some shortfalls when it comes to planning things into training seminars for your team?

Dan Clapper: 8:16

Yeah, I, part of it is where you were just saying before too, they want to train their techs. They want them to get all this knowledge, but if I got five calls this week that I can make money on, they don't do it. So one of the things we recommend is you have to training on your dispatch software, just like it's a work order. It's that important of your job and we always talk about the long term benefits of training. So if you have a career path for them, a level one, level two, level three, give them a progression of content to go through. It's going to keep them engaged. It's going to what they're going to retain. They're not going to keep jumping job to job. They're like, Oh, I can grow with this company over the next couple of years.

Ken Midgett: 8:54

Exactly. I'll think a lot of people that own businesses by training and they look at it as that they're buying health insurance, but here's this health insurance. Here's this 401k plan that's nice. What does it really, what does it really doing for me? They see the value to the health insurance. I see the value to 401k. Here's this training. Yeah. What do you want me to do? But if you take that training and you say, what are your goals? Why do I want to make a double mortgage payment every quarter? Here's how you can do that. If you finish this training, you'll be able to have this skill, which will earn you this amount of money and you can make that payment. Sound like a plan? Good. Let's start it. Let's get it going. So now you have that buy in from the tech that now they see the vision and they see to Dan's point, they see the overall vision. We were talking this morning that you might train on something now that changes your career three years from now. Because you're adding that skill and building value to your own self.

Evan Hoffman: 9:42

It's that WIFM we were talking about earlier, right? Everyone cares about What's In It For Me. Not necessarily you, the owner, and oh yeah, you just want us to go take more training because you're going to make more money, it's going to help you be more profitable because we have less callbacks. That means nothing to me. I need to know what matters to me as a technician.

Dan Clapper: 9:57

Yeah. It's so true. One of the things we hear a lot too, it's just the confidence build too. Like a lot of these techs, they go into houses, they know what they're doing, but when they have access to training where they can start growing their skills. They don't, it almost becomes addictive. Oh, wow. I went into that job and I figured it out. I didn't have to call my service manager and that's this culture of training you build.

Thaddeus Tondu: 10:18

Here's the other thing that it does are you talking about, we've said it a couple of times in calling the service manager, but what about callbacks, right? The amount of callbacks you have from improper training on things and I'm curious to know if you guys have a statistic around that of. we have a number that we found cause we had this conversation yesterday, but I want to know if you guys have a number for every, let's say hour of training. Do you have an efficiency output on increase of hours or reduction?

Ken Midgett: 10:40

I think we have a number for the reduction for people who have trained. It's pretty, pretty high too. It's like a 47 percent reduction in callbacks due to training.

Evan Hoffman: 10:49

Wow.

Thaddeus Tondu: 10:49

Significant. Significant. The number we came up yesterday was for every hour in training, it equals five hours in efficiency. Is that, I think the number?

Evan Hoffman: 10:56

Yeah, that was, it was a website that I pulled up randomly in the middle of the show. Yeah. But when you think about it, a 40%, 47 percent reduction in callbacks, that's really double the output because now you're actually able to run calls that are making money instead of the ones that you have to go fix that are costing you money.

Ken Midgett: 11:11

Yeah. Not to mention the added wear and tear on the service manager when the callback happens. Ultimately, they're wearing that hat they're wearing that whole hat. They're talking to the customer, they're talking to the tech and that, not just the callbacks, but to Dan's point about the confidence side is that when a tech can go out and just do the call and not have to be babysat, I just move the yellow wire. Now what do you want me to do? Put the red one on. Okay, I just did that. I call you back. I move the red one. Now what do you want me to do? So if they know what they're doing. That service manager can now work on what they're supposed to be, which is the fiscal aspect and that technician stats, right? How much are you selling? What's your efficiency and coaching them instead of training them technically. Not saying there's not a place for the service manager to help them technically, but they're overburdened.

Evan Hoffman: 11:52

Absolutely.

Thaddeus Tondu: 11:53

And you like Billy Stevens talks about the efficiency aspect of things all the time and in doubling your efficiency, but and ROI is also, there's the actual tangible aspect of it, which is the fiscal part, right? There's the intangible stuff that goes into what you're talking about, right? And if, let's just say, random sake, you have a billable hours of 200 an hour, and you're paying your guys 50 an hour random math and you have five guys. That all go through a one hour training, there's going to cost you 250, but if each one gets an efficiency of five hours, what did you just add for extra output to your business? Five grand. And that's just that. But the intangibles are the things that you talked about there. The service manager can focus on other things. The customer is more happier. You're getting better Google reviews. You're getting better culture. You're getting better hires. You're getting people staying longer. That's the intangible ROI that comes into training.

Ken Midgett: 12:44

There's also the whole thing of training before a job, so on the construction side or on the replacement business, right? If you're training a tech, a green tech coming up, all the moving parts to a job, and then you take them on the job, and then with a skilled person they're seeing all those moving parts happen and they already understand what the principles are, what the steps are, it's dramatically changing the efficiency of that job site. So that skilled person is not spending all this time because this green person's coming in knowing what those steps are going to be. So it's much less time, right? When you do it that way.

Dan Clapper: 13:19

We got a term for that. We call it BTJ. So before the job training, instead of OTJ, where most of us, there's a lot of time wasted and to, to Ken's point, a lot of our senior technicians, they're not educators. They might not know the educational process to teach. The refrigeration cycle or something. A lot of techs in our industry just grew up from word of mouth from other people. So to have some sort of training built in your culture where foundational knowledge is, and then let your senior techs give the meat and potatoes of what's important.

Ken Midgett: 13:51

That's so true. Everybody learns a different way. There's all different learning styles, different modalities, and you're asking a tech, a senior tech, to train them, when most likely the way they got trained was getting yelled at, or something thrown at them, because they did something wrong, or embarrassed, right? You can't do that with today's workforce because they'll just go work somewhere else. There's too much competition. They'll go work at, they'll work at Amazon for the same amount of money as a green apprentice, and they won't have all the hassle.

Evan Hoffman: 14:14

I'm curious your blend of and this can go back to when you owned companies, when you worked in companies, the blend of training that you had that was technical versus soft skills versus life skills. I think oftentimes we bring these technicians into the company. They're making more money than they've ever made in their life. They're still broke at the end of the day. Because they don't have those life skills and nobody's ever sat down and taught them how to balance checkbook, how to put money into savings and all of that. What would be your recommendation around a blend of training for the technical versus the soft skills versus life skills?

Ken Midgett: 14:46

That's a really good question yeah.

Dan Clapper: 14:47

You want me to take it?

Ken Midgett: 14:48

Yeah, go ahead.

Dan Clapper: 14:49

Something that's really important to us is assessment. Do you, we talk to service managers all the time. Do you really know Like range of skill sets from, so it could be your, their technical skill sets, their sales, customer service, a lot of different things and take the time to have the conversation with each individual to see where they are and what they want to learn too. So I would start the blend with the individualized assessment. If I were to say, Oh, 30 percent soft skills, 30 percent technical, like then I'm not actually looking at the individual skills of a person. So that's how I'd answer that one. I'm in complete agreement with that, 100 percent spot on. You, it's gotta be individualized. There, you have people that are just overwhelmingly astute, technically. They could just, they could take apart that device right there and put it back together again without even blinking an eye and you have somebody that wouldn't know where a screwdriver is or what, or they'd break it but that's, that person that would break it might be the great conversational person. They may have the soft skills, just it's embedded in their personality. They're extroverts, right? They can talk really well. So I think there's that side of it that you have to just measure and some of it just happens by conversation in a simple ride along. Some of it, you have to go deeper.

Thaddeus Tondu: 15:55

So if you wanted to go deeper on some of those to be able to pull that out for individualized aspects, a lot of people don't know how to do that. They don't know where to even begin because they started a business because they hated their boss and now they're in this position where they've got a big, they've got a business. Now they've got to figure it out. So if they were to go back to that and say, okay, how can I bring some of that into my business? Where would you point them to?

Ken Midgett: 16:17

I think to Dan's point, you got to know your techs you got to build rapport, just like you rapport was built with you. When you were learning, same thing has to happen on your end. You got to be the reward builder now, and you need to prove to them that they are there, not just to make you money, that they actually, they value the business so that they understand that it clicks up here with them. They understand that point. And then I think once you break down that barrier, you're going to find every, the floodgates are going to open. You're going to find out everything. Coaching one on ones let's role play here. I'm the customer. Tell me what I need to know. That's how you find out about a soft skill. 30 seconds, I know if you got it or you don't got it now sell me something you don't know anything about sell me this pen to your point, when I had my business, part of the interview was them just saying happy birthday to me and I would immediately know if they were an extrovert or an introvert. If they could not get it, if they could not muster it up, then I know this guy's gonna need more. He's gonna need more soft skills.

Thaddeus Tondu: 17:08

I like that. I might put that into our interview process.

Ken Midgett: 17:11

Yeah and we could sing it and even if they sounded terrible, if they said they had the guts to sing it, I know that this person's gonna be harder to coach.'cause they're already ingrained in their communication skills. I'd rather have that introvert. cause I can mold that person.

Dan Clapper: 17:23

Yeah. I wanna talk about the technical side too. So one of the things we hear from service managers across the country, we get this resume, they come in the first day, they tell us they have all these skills, put them in a truck, they go out to the job site, they mess it up.

Evan Hoffman: 17:36

You're No, that never happens. What are you talking about?

Dan Clapper: 17:38

You're finding out their skills of the jobs they're messing up on. So one thing we have at Interplay, we do it, we do a skill assessment that takes them through the top technical skills that they would need. Do you understand what a multimeter is? How do you turn the dial? Things like that. I always call assessments. It's not pass or fail. It's just work. We can train.

Evan Hoffman: 17:57

It's the benchmark.

Ken Midgett: 17:58

The benchmark. I love that and that's not just when you're hiring somebody, if you're not doing any training at all, and now you're going to decide to do it because you see the value of it, you got to benchmark the entire staff because you got these guys, you got these texts that you think that they're great and you're going to find out they really don't know low voltage, or they really don't know how to do this, or they don't know how to do that, they don't understand drain cleaning, they don't understand physics, they don't understand all these things that you think they know, you assume that they know because they're not getting callbacks to Billy Stevens's point, there's your efficiency. You take that person that doesn't know that and you ramp them up game changer.

Evan Hoffman: 18:31

Yep. You know what they say when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.

Thaddeus Tondu: 18:34

But I just want to go, the what's in it for me aspect of things, right? In the ride alongs that we, that a person can do, we're just getting to know somebody and we've had some guests on the show where they just, they have a couch in their office, literally just a couch and what people do, they come in and lay on it, and they have a conversation and you got to be okay with that. Go have a coffee, go meet your tech somewhere in the field and say, Hey, I'm going to, let's go have a coffee and don't talk anything about work. When you have the ability to not talk about work and get to know them on an individual level. Also take notes on that or write notes when you get back in your vehicle so you can remember that shit later. So that way, when you have that conversation, you can ask them, Hey, how are the kids? You remember the names, dogs, whatever, right? Now that builds up buy in. It helps them with the buy in. What are some other things that you guys see to be able to get this buy in for the training aspect of things?

Ken Midgett: 19:22

I'll go with one thing, then you can go. I think my advice to any entrepreneur, I don't care what business you're in especially if you're a young entrepreneur, study up and test yourself on emotional intelligence. It's a key thing that will help you communicate with that tech and build rapport and listen and learn how to talk to them. It'll improve your communication skills dramatically. It's a game, that's a game changer.

Thaddeus Tondu: 19:42

Emotional intelligence 2. 0 by Travis Bradberry

Ken Midgett: 19:44

it's a great book yeah and there's a bazillion tests out there. Score yourself and see where you are.

Dan Clapper: 19:49

Yeah, I probably have a hundred reasons how to get techs engaged, but the one, one metric that we have that we track pretty well in our software is if the leaders are doing the training too, if you're a service manager and you're saying, I know everything, but you need this, that creates this weird dynamic. Say, look, I'm learning new stuff too. I'm, I've been doing it for 30 years and I'm learning stuff every day. We're all in this training together. I think that's a spot that a lot of contractors miss.

Thaddeus Tondu: 20:15

Leaving the ego at the door and being okay to say that I don't know, or I'm learning things too, or I'm engaged in this, or I'm learning this because now you're human. Powerful.

Evan Hoffman: 20:25

Mind if I throw in an extra one here?

Thaddeus Tondu: 20:27

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Evan Hoffman: 20:28

Have you read the book Giftology? Heard of it? Fantastic book. Highly recommend it. The idea would be, how can we get their family to be our greatest salesperson? So giving gifts that are going to impact the family, like a mattress, a house cleaner to the employees on your team. So now you're making an impact with them and anytime that they ever complained about work, you're not fucking quitting this job. We have a house cleaner. Now we've got a 5, 000 mattress that we sleep on every night. So we have a better sleep and we feel rested every day. That kind of an impact is huge.

Dan Clapper: 21:00

One thing we've seen too, is how important paid time off is. Yeah. So we've seen people incentivize training by look, if you do eight hours of training, I'll give you 16 hours of PTO time and that, you know what, they're going to train that's more time with their family.

Thaddeus Tondu: 21:15

Yeah, incentivizing it, right? And that's that family aspect and we can build around the family and you can do what Evan's talking about. That goes back to one of the very first parts that you guys brought up is culture. When you create that culture, all this becomes irrelevant, really, because people just want to do it. Because they care about it. We have something in our show called the Random Question Generator. I messaged our team to get a couple of random questions here for you. So you don't actually get to know what the questions are, but we will start with yourself, Ken.

Ken Midgett: 21:42

Here we go.

Thaddeus Tondu: 21:43

All right. Do you want question one, two, or three?

Ken Midgett: 21:46

Whatever.

Thaddeus Tondu: 21:46

All right. If you had to fight a celebrity, who would it be and why would you win?

Ken Midgett: 21:51

I wouldn't win, but I would fight The Rock because I would learn from him.

Evan Hoffman: 21:59

What happens when you touch Dwayne Johnson's butt?

Ken Midgett: 22:01

I wouldn't do that.

Evan Hoffman: 22:02

You've hit

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:03

rock bottom. Alright, do you want question one, two, or three?

Dan Clapper: 22:06

I'll take one.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:07

Take one. What's your favorite dinosaur and why?

Dan Clapper: 22:12

My favorite dinosaur. They're absolutely random,

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:16

that's the best part about it.

Dan Clapper: 22:17

I think T Rex because he's just the boss, man. He makes everything happen in the group. At least that's what they think, I don't know.

Evan Hoffman: 22:26

It says a lot about your personality.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:27

He's got the short little

Dan Clapper: 22:28

arms too short little arms still makes things happen.

Thaddeus Tondu: 22:31

He's almost like the king of the dinosaurs, right? In my opinion. Alright, in terms of getting back here, you guys at Interplay have something phenomenal going on in leveraging training, or technology rather, when it comes to training and I think that's a huge part for today's day and age, especially when we're starting to see what's coming up. Go look at the AHR floor right now in all of the new technology that they're coming out with and you know what? They've already working on things for next year's expo. They're going to be even bigger and better than the technology here. What are you guys doing in terms of some of the unique technological aspects for training?

Dan Clapper: 23:05

No, I'll go first. So what we do is we build simulation training. So picture a like a 3D environment, like a lot of the video games you see out there and we take a piece of equipment and then we build the back ends behind the scenes, all the mechanical and the electrical processes. So if I turn on a switch here, what happens here? So in this simulation, now I can simulate faults. I can simulate procedures. I can create this safe environment in a virtual space and a simulated space that techs can go in and learn a process without getting electrocuted before they go on the job, like a safe place to do it that's the bulk of what we do.

Ken Midgett: 23:46

Yeah, I think one of the things that's different about the way we do it, we have video based training and we have the simulations like Dan talks about. The video based is the What and the why? If I turn the pressure here, what's going to happen there? And so on and so forth, and the simulation side is the how. So that's a whole different element that you're arming the learner with when they go on site, because now they have a whole different room. They have a whole different perspective of what's going to happen when they get there. They see that, they know this cadence of steps. They know about safety. They know that safety is a step. This is something I need to do before I do the next thing. So that's the difference is that they learn the how, and they can learn it as many times as they want. Like I said before, everybody learns a different way. you don't understand that yet, I just showed you it four times, there's none of that happening. It's safe, it's not just safe that you're teaching them safety, and that you're not going to get shocked, it's safe that there's no human harm.

Thaddeus Tondu: 24:42

Right? Look at pilots. I have a friend who's flies the big boys over across the Pacific for Air Canada. And every time he's flown on a new plane, he spends hours upon hours, like weeks, they fly him on. That's all he does is in the flight simulator and they just throw everything at you because you gotta be ready for it, right? Even when you are still flying, you still go back and you still do simulations and they still throw all these things at you, right? Because it's, again, it's that safe space and so you think about what can go wrong in a homeowner's house quite a bit if you mess that up, right? And it gives them that safe space, so I think it's really cool. When you look at some of the age demographic of technicians, and some of them might be resistant to technology, resistant to change, heck, some of them still use yellow pad technology, right? Yeah. How can you get them to have the buy in to adapt into this technology, because you're, some of, part of what you guys do is VR, right? And you're wearing the, I'm assuming the headset, and doing it, some people might balk at that idea.

Ken Midgett: 25:37

Our program will run on a laptop, iPad, so they don't have to wear the headset. So the younger ones, we find they're a little bit more apt because they're gamers. So it's relative to them and they're just innate that when they put that headset on, they know exactly what to, there's no instruction needed and then you have the older one that wants to use a laptop or use an iPad. They're usually there, even though they might use that yellow pad, they understand principles of a desktop or a laptop or an iPad and they can navigate through that simulation the same way. They're just not in the room like you are when you have a headset on.

Dan Clapper: 26:06

And one thing we see that's super effective with getting more senior techs involved in training is we do group trainings, right? So have the senior tech go through the simulation and share his advice with the newer techs. So now you're creating this environment where you're actually letting the senior tech use our software and our graphics to share his knowledge and now I have buy in for my senior techs.

Evan Hoffman: 26:30

I love that.

Ken Midgett: 26:30

Yeah. And so it's a train the trainer, but we're providing the resource to the trainer. So back to that point about journeymen and skilled techs are not educators. We're giving you the tool that's very simplistic to use to be able to train and now you can add all the color to it. Don't do it. Don't do it. When you get here, this is really hot. Don't burn your hand or don't step there or do this or make sure when you lift this up, it's heavy, but all that extra color can get added in by that skilled person that's shared with the younger techs.

Thaddeus Tondu: 26:57

It's empowerment is what it is, right? You're empowering them to be able to help train and then the younger generation can empower them, help them with technology.

Dan Clapper: 27:05

Yeah. Symbiotic, right?

Evan Hoffman: 27:07

But when you've got a team of 10, tags It's really difficult to create that immersive training where everyone can see, everyone can hear when it's a physical piece of equipment in the room that they're trying to explain. Not everyone can see it. So this is allowing you to do that plus, I think of the cost effectiveness of this to be able to bring in all the different pieces of equipment, especially if you're up in Massachusetts or something like that, where every home you go into has four different types of heating devices in the home because they just kept adding onto the home and adding new equipment and it's ridiculous up in the Northeast sometimes. The ability for you to be able to change the equipment on the screen, it's like that and now we don't have to bring all these different pieces of equipment into the office and create a training room that has all of the different potential things that people are going to run into.

Dan Clapper: 27:51

A lot of our, a lot of trade schools are using our software now for that exact reason. I'm a trade school. I can't have 25 pieces of equipment in my area. I only have this small area. We have some here, but we can simulate all of these other ones and the trade schools of them.

Thaddeus Tondu: 28:06

That way you swap out. That's the other part is you don't always have to be working on. You don't always have to be doing the simulations. Now you've done a simulations and you've ran through some pretty egregious stuff that could happen on there and you really test their skills and then they go and they actually can touch and feel the physical unit too after, which is a powerful piece and that goes along with it.

Ken Midgett: 28:24

And that's one of the things I want to point out about simulation software is we can't teach somebody how tight to make a screw. We can't teach somebody the feel of what it is to put two wrenches and pull a wrench, pull a fitting, pull a pipe into a fitting. I can't teach somebody how tight to make a toilet bowl to a floor. That's the part that's still there for the on job side, but we could teach every single thing that leads up to that spot, whether it's simulation or video, we can get both sides of it.

Thaddeus Tondu: 28:47

Pitfalls. What do you think about some of the pitfalls that people might fall into when they're trying to leverage technology in their training and they're doing it the wrong way?

Ken Midgett: 28:54

I think it goes back to how we really started it. That's it if you show them how this is going to affect their lifestyle, you'll get the engagement. If you get engagement and you're using the proper training, it can only go forward. If you talk specifically technical, you mean you have to have decent Wi Fi, let's be real, right? But you should have decent Wi Fi if you have an office anyhow. And most techs are going to have decent Wi Fi in their house. So that's like a no brainer, but it happens like here, the Wi Fi is really bad.

Thaddeus Tondu: 29:20

It's like a giant Faraday cage inside most of the spaces. You find a spot where your phone goes crazy. You're like, Oh, got service.

Evan Hoffman: 29:28

Yes. How much do you recommend that they do on their own time at home? Like you said, versus mandatory in the office and setting aside that dedicated time while they're working?

Dan Clapper: 29:37

Yeah, we're just talking about this morning, right? Like I used to work, be a regional for Bosch and some of these major manufacturers and I do that five o'clock training in the afternoon and the techs are in the back of the room with their arms crossed. They're like, man, I just want to get home to my family. So what I like to say is if they want to train on their own time, like maybe Saturday mornings, they have some free time, let them train, but pay them for it. Give them an hourly wage or something like let them train when they want to train. But. Make sure that they're doing it every week.

Ken Midgett: 30:06

Yeah, incentivizing is another whole side of the training side that you have to take into consideration. Dan and I have authored several articles on incentivizing them. But having something that's on demand, having the structure that, Okay, I'm going to trust you're going to get this done. I'm going to hold you accountable for it. I don't really care if you do it, come in 630 and do it here. You want to do it Saturday afternoon, just as long as it gets done and I'm going to know if it gets done because I'm watching on the backside and I'm also going to watch you in the field. I'm going to be paying attention to the, I'll know right away if you haven't trained. When I have a higher skilled tech that watches you and observes you do a task and you can't do it right. I know that you're not training or you're not training enough. One of the other things about the VR side that's really critical that we do that I think Dan will vouch for is there's the. Learning capacity that goes through on the VR mode, it's in a learner mode, so everything is glowing, the learner knows what to touch, we show a video to navigate the simulation, and then when they take the assessment. That's all off. If you forget to lock something out, if you stick your hand in a panel, if you do anything unsafe, or you do the wrong step, or you set the meter at the wrong, you set your electrometer at the wrong setting, amperage when you're checking voltage as an example, start over. That's a validation that they understand the content, they just have fun and go through the motion, they really get it.

Evan Hoffman: 31:21

Gamifying learning. And that's the thing that I love about it, that we do this in our organization as well. How can we make things fun and interactive?

Thaddeus Tondu: 31:29

And just to go to the piece about making sure that you compensate or have it built in. I got fired from a job. Jury's still out on if I quit or if I got fired, I got back to a new corner. But he was trying to get us to do training and I told him you're not paying me extra time and you're not giving me time at work to be able to do that and I don't want to do it at home. I get, he's we'll stay later. I'm like, okay, then pay me more. That's where he said, no, and that's where it's curious to allow it if I got fired or if I quit on the spot, but it's a big thing to be able to give that to somebody who has the employee mindset, right? If you're a business owner, you just think I'm just going to do what it takes to build around my business. Not everybody has that mindset. It's an employee mindset and putting yourself in their shoes. Which is a powerful piece. I do know that you guys got to go here in a couple of minutes, but we have to, so thank you first off for taking the time to sit and chat with us here today at the HR expo and making some time for it. Worked out perfect just before the expo opened. So you guys get back to your booth. But as we do wrap up, first off, where can somebody find your guys information? Where can they get ahold of you? Should they want to reach out to you?

Ken Midgett: 32:24

LinkedIn.

Dan Clapper: 32:25

Yeah, I think we're both active on LinkedIn. That's the best spot.

Thaddeus Tondu: 32:30

Yeah. Cool and then obviously your guys website is the other one and we'll make sure to put that in the show notes. After we'll find your guys LinkedIn profiles too, to be able to put those in the show notes. But before we do go, we have one final question for each of you. Since Ken, you took the random question this time, we'll go with Dan first on this one. What is one question that you wish people would ask you more, but don't?

Dan Clapper: 32:50

I love to talk about building self confidence in techs. I don't think leaders in our industry. What's the right way to say this? They care about their employees, but do you really care enough to build their self confidence, make them into a better person, grow as a person? I love having those conversations. It's spotty which managers care to that level,

Thaddeus Tondu: 33:10

I would love to ask you that question, but I think that's a whole nother half an episode

Evan Hoffman: 33:15

goes back to the emotional intelligence piece.

Thaddeus Tondu: 33:16

Yeah, exactly and when you know the EQ, that's the short answer, right? Is go look at emotional intelligence and get into that because now when you have that, you can understand the different personalities and the different conversations you need to have and just being aware of other people's emotions and having that empathetic response. Same question.

Ken Midgett: 33:33

Oh, man. I would say instead of a question, can I make it a statement is the one that says, I'm not going to train my techs because they're just going to take the training and leave. I have so much ammo for that one. It's just, okay, then don't train them and just let them make a mess. I'll get the callbacks. Keep them coming. Cause that's, what's going to happen and that goes back to that culture thing. You got to convince that business owner that. That's not the way it works. If you're going to be that one man operation and you're going to be 75 years old turning wrenches and not have anything to sell when you're done, knock yourself out. But if you want to grow, you got to get out of that. You got to stop that thought. The problem when you have that problem isn't about training, you need to look in the mirror. That's the problem.

Evan Hoffman: 34:10

It's the abundance mindset.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:12

It's the saying that I always come to mind when you hear that is, okay, what if I train my people and they leave? Okay, what if you don't train them and they stay?

Evan Hoffman: 34:19

That's a scary one.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:20

That's scary. Yeah. That's scary. Put it, and some people are like it costs money. Yeah, put it in your budget factor it in there and reverse engineer what you need to charge out for your jobs in order to be able to adequately train your team.

Dan Clapper: 34:29

Sure and if you look at our industry and all the P roll ups and these monster companies, guess what? They all have stellar training programs maybe that's a sign that it works.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:38

It's almost like you need to become a training organization first and then plumbing and heating business second.

Dan Clapper: 34:44

That's right. I agree yeah.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:45

Then when you do that, guess what? Everything else becomes a lot easier and just rolls from there.

Evan Hoffman: 34:50

Training and recruiting number one role of the business owner.

Thaddeus Tondu: 34:52

So thank you guys for taking the time. We definitely enjoyed it and until next time. Cheers. Peace.

35:03

Well, that's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.