EP261 From Journeyman to Trainer: What Actually Works and Why With Don Gillis (February 2026)

Hello and welcome back to the Building HVAC Science Podcast.

It's our goal to create more knowledge while HVAC and Building Performance professionals

by helping the two worlds better understand each other.

Not just in theory, not just the tools, but how buildings and HVAC systems actually work

together in real world.

Now, a lot of this comes from communication, understanding things, and we have a great

guest lined up, and this podcast you are just about ready to hear.

I'll give you the quotes from the episode first, listen first, talk last, integrity costs

something.

You gotta be willing to pay it, and if I'm gonna fail, I'm gonna go down fighting.

This episode, Eric and I had the pleasure of speaking with Don Gillis, a longtime industry

pro, with a career spanning roles as its dollar and service tech, service manager outside

sales corporate training, and now building a technical training department within a smaller

non-profit organization.

Don shares the real story behind the resume, high-volume service management, stress and

health toll of living in two phones by your ears, mode, and the hard decision to finally

step away, even when loyalty and integrity made it feel almost impossible.

This big theme in our conversation is the power of soft skills, especially listening.

Don talks about how learning to listen changed everything, common customers, stronger trust,

better long-term relationships, and even better outcomes inside a distributor sales role,

where he turned around a struggling territory by just showing up as himself.

He digs into what genuine actually looks like in the field, and why people can smell a

script or a hidden agenda and how trust can become so strong to customer insist on their

technician.

We have another theme in this episode about discomfort.

Don repeatedly stepped into roles where he felt over his head, then compensated by obsessively

preparing, reading, practicing, recording himself, learning from people with deeper experience.

And this episode closes up with a simple message that ties it all together.

Integrity and passion cost something, but they are also the multipliers that make careers

durable and meaningful.

Let's head into this episode where Eric and I get to speak with Don Gillis, from

Journey Men to Trainer, what actually works and why.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to the Building HVAC Science Podcast.

Eric Kaiser here.

The great and wonderful Mr. Bill spawned way over there.

I and our special guest today, Mr. Don Gillis.

Don?

How are you today?

I am doing great.

I'm doing very, very well.

It's just good to see both your faces on the screen.

I mean, there's two friendly faces that automatically make me happy.

So thanks for the invite.

Don, thanks for agreeing to come on the podcast and it's just been a personal goal of mine

to find the deepest voice in the industry.

And maybe we've done that with this episode.

Okay.

Thanks Bill.

There's one bucket filled.

Shack.

I think you may have succeeded in that one, for sure.

So when we reach out to guests, prospective guest people, we say, hey, what's a good

topic line?

What's a good sentence?

And Don gave us a really good one here.

From Journey Men to Trainer, what works, what doesn't, and why.

And that's a proximate 30 year career in this industry.

And we want to learn more about that in which you can impart to our listeners.

Yeah.

So what I've learned from the Journey Men aspect, like everyone else, I started out as an

install, our service tech, I went to a service manager for about eight and a half years.

The biggest thing at the stop, the pause with the service manager was, I learned to listen

very well.

You know, air conditioning is when it goes out, even in Ohio or Indiana, 90 degrees is hot.

So people are brutal.

I learned a lot about the human mind or the human person, if you will.

They can go without eat all night.

They'll call you up at night and say, hey, the furnace isn't working.

And can you get us on the list for tomorrow?

Do you want us to come out tonight?

No, no, no, we got a fireplace.

We opened up the oven.

Whatever they do.

But when the air conditions out, people get crazy, right?

So I learned a lot about human nature.

And for the first six months, I was going in and I'm very stressed out because prior to

that, being a contractor and being on job sites with plumbers, electricians and being

a tough guy and thick skin and all that stuff, you don't always choose your battles.

So with the customer, I learned to choose my battles and I was self-taught that.

I realized that getting on a bar stool and drinking a few beers and drinking your worries

away, it wasn't working for me.

So I became a really good listener, which I should have had from the very get-go to be

honest with you.

But I learned to listen to people talk and absorb what they're saying and then politely

tell them, because sometimes a lot of times when you listen to people like that, even you

guys, you're wrong.

You actually not seen it correctly.

I'm pretty good at that now because of that position.

So is everybody in half years?

We were very, very high volume.

If we weren't number one or number two, Bryant, dealer in the state of Indiana, we were

right up there.

We had to sell a lot of boxes, literally send my trailers, one to parking lot with equipment

filled all the time.

And they would allow us.

It was our trailer.

We just downed a place to put it.

So anyways, after eight and a half years of that hustle and bustle, we didn't have a,

what I want to say, a project manager.

So I kind of wore two hats.

I wasn't just a service manager.

I ran calls.

I managed the service department and actually built it up, to be honest with you.

There wasn't much there when I came in.

He was basically a new construction company, really.

So it took me a while.

I really liked the owner.

He was a very nice guy, very good with business, great with a pencil.

He was very good at accounting, but he didn't have those soft skills, if you will.

So that's where I came into the place and that's quite hired me.

But after a while of that, as much as I loved him and a very loyal person and several

raises that were setting me up pretty good, I realized I was killing myself.

I got to be about 400 pounds.

I'm not exaggerating at all.

I had a chin from here down to my chest, way bigger than anyone that knows me now before

Emerson.

I know it's a true story.

I think I broke two or three office chairs in like a two year time, just because I couldn't

buy anything strong enough to hold me up.

So as my wife will tell you the story is, and I said this to somebody one time, and I wasn't

trying to be funny, but it's the truth.

And somebody started laughing.

It goes, that's funny.

But it took me literally three years to get my two weeks notice, because every time it

would come up, I would have an early May, basically, like in the 90s, something freakishly

happened.

You know how it works.

And come home and patty go, I thought you were going to give me a patty, I can't leave

him now.

It's 95 degrees out, and it's only May, or it's the beginning of June.

I just always felt bad about that.

So I finally was able to do it.

I got a job offer.

Like I said, we bought a lot of boxes, so we got a lot of incentive trips.

And the owner was all nice about giving me at least one, maybe two, at least one a year.

So by traveling with all the different distributors, because we had good capital, I made friends

along the way.

None of this was planned.

So I started to put my dealers out, and one gentleman who was very high up in one wholesaler,

he said, well, if you're going to leave anyways, I'm going to hire you.

And I'll reach out to the owner and talk to him and make sure we're still going to be

on good terms too.

So we got that ironed out.

I went and did that for almost three years, and actually, I hated it at the beginning.

In fact, one day, particularly, I turned around about three different times, and it was

going to go home the first two months.

And the fourth time I turned around, I almost made it home all the way.

And I stopped.

My phone started ringing.

Because then, if you've ever been in a high-volume position, which I know you both have,

when you have that, I'm not exaggerating.

When you have a phone up to both ears and people are yelling at you and stuff like that,

when that goes away, you'd think you'd be happy and you are.

But it's like an instant void.

Like nobody needs me.

Almost an addiction to the engagement.

Exactly.

So that happened, and I felt like this isn't me.

But then, all of a sudden, the phone rang, and what I found was, is I didn't need to teach

anybody how to fix things or what I did.

It really was, I learned about building relationships up, and by accident.

And you all probably know more about this, forgot more about this than I knew.

But what I learned was, is inventory, price, and how fast can you get it to me, basically.

Those were the three things I understood.

And by the contractors, this was a very bad account they handed me to.

It was in the red.

They didn't work it very well.

They solved the cuts and burns on my hands and knew my story.

And I didn't come in there like I'm all that in the bag of chips.

I listened to them.

But I think there was a trust bond build up from the contractor.

I would just get into offices that they told me flat out.

You're one of the few people we let just cold call.

Because I wasn't pushy, and I would listen to him, and I would say, hey, that works.

But if it was me, I'd install this.

Kind of like I did with homeowners.

I didn't necessarily sell them the $5,000 thing.

I believed in or I had it my own house.

I didn't try to oversell.

I wasn't a very good salesman.

Going back a little bit, when you say you built the service department,

what did you draw on for ideas, for process, for method to build the service department?

Where'd that come from?

Great question.

I have to give credit to the owner.

He literally sent me to all kinds of training classes.

A lot of the places you know, I won't name drop, but a lot of the places.

And some of those places were actually soft skills.

They were like role-playing a thing, and I was very uncomfortable doing it.

It just wasn't me.

Keep in mind, I'm just out of the field.

So in fact, I turned the job down, Bill.

I turned it down.

He would offer me a dollar more than what I was making.

And I remember it to this day, because it broke.

And keep in mind, he doesn't have me right now.

We're just acquaintances.

I did some sub-work for him.

And he says, and I says, I don't know.

For a dollar more an hour, John, I just don't know if I can do the job.

And I doubted myself.

And he immediately come back.

And I owe him this, my whole career, really.

I owe him this.

He snapped over the next hell in my van as I'm driving down the road.

And he says, I'm not talking about $18 an hour.

I'm talking about a position and management never looking back.

And he was right.

Because as we all do, every step we make, we say, I don't know if I can do that or not.

Same thing for me when I went to Emerson.

I don't know if I can do that or not.

And then you surprise yourself by meeting that challenge and going forward.

And when I got there, Bill, it was literally the on-call box was a big,

I don't know what you want to call it, a tupperware, but a big plastic thing with parts.

And the parts amounted to a rusty old transformer.

And I think there was a motor in there that looked like it was used.

So I just started building that up.

Keep in mind, this was almost all new construction.

After a year, he didn't want nothing to do with service at all.

So I thought, man, you left a lot of money on the table there.

That's where the money's at, the replacements, everything, you know.

Anyways, that's what I did to build it up.

And the idea of the service agreement was funny, real quick.

I started this every time I went to a customer and I thought they liked me.

I had a clipboard, very generic with a piece of paper.

And I wrote down Mrs. Wilson.

I think they're potential.

And one day he walked in, I've got, it's very crude.

My office is like a breezeway.

It's nothing fancy.

And it's very crude in this clipboard set, but there wouldn't be right.

And he goes, what's that?

Because the list kept getting longer.

I go, those are potential service agreements contracts.

And he goes, oh, okay.

And I knew he thought I was full of crap, but they turned out to be that way.

So I started an email list.

I started blastouts.

I was self-taught.

I did all this on my own.

I didn't have anybody really to teach me this.

So everybody, I just made acquaintances.

Then I started doing different things.

Like, you're going to laugh at me.

But I started building this service agreement.

So when we got up to about 100 and 200 and whatever,

I started getting more, a little bit better at it.

And I would send out, I was really big into customer service.

In soft skills, I kind of grew up with.

And I started sending up coffee cups in the winter time with chocolate kisses

and them with each service deck.

And as I grew it, we grew.

More people started being added on.

Because again, this was a one-man show when I started.

I don't know if I could fail really, be honest,

because it was a blank canvas.

So anything up was moved forward.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Would you say those soft skills, those listening skills

was a big game changer in your career?

Absolutely.

In fact, I don't know if you've ever heard me say it this,

but I know I've told my son three times.

If not more, but I've told this to every young person

that's ever come up to me after a training class

or anywhere in a lobby or anything like that.

Hey, Mr. Gillis, are you done?

What would you do at my age?

I'm 20, 30, I wouldn't be what you are,

but would be the best advice.

And I always say, listen first, talk last.

And I know that's cliche, but it's a truth.

And I learned it by accident, really did.

And once you understand what the person's saying

and don't respond real quick,

which you can tell by me talking right now

I'm kind of a fast hawker.

So I was cutting people off and didn't even know I was doing it

because I wasn't really listening.

I was quick to respond and not even really absorbing

what they were saying.

Yeah, that's a thing we often try to do.

And I wanted to call that out because it's something that I see

a lot of times.

I think it's overlooked in the trades

is the personal relationship that we can get with our customers

and gaining that skill somehow.

We all want to be very technical

and we want to talk to people technical.

How would you respond to it?

It's got to be genuine.

What happens if it's not genuine?

Have you ever run into someone who just doesn't have that thing?

Yes.

Again, not so much my technical skills,

but my soft skills is really what got me where I'm at today,

even on the service side.

Because quite honestly, I'm not Eric Kaiser.

I'm not Bill Spahn.

If I went on a service call,

we did a lot of geothermal set that job I was telling you about.

It wasn't unusual for us.

It didn't sell three or four,

30 or 40 geothermals a year.

We were very high volume.

We were one of the few around the whole area.

So we would drive hours to put these things in.

And there wasn't very many experts.

So I had to learn by accident failing basically.

Those soft skills and bringing that genuine thought

and that genuine response to people,

I think is a really important piece.

It got to be you.

I think that's what I was trying to say.

And some people just don't have it

and maybe aren't interested in developing it.

Yeah.

No, and you refresh my memory here.

So for example, John,

the owner sent me to a class one time.

And it was a really well-known distributor in Indianapolis

and they put on great training all the time.

They still do.

And I went there and again,

it was out of my element.

It was more of a selling,

technician type course, if you will.

It was salesman driven,

but at that time,

you could sell more stuff.

And still today,

probably with this tool bag,

then you can't have briefcase.

So I went there and some of it I bought into it,

but when they got into things like,

cards of how to respond to it,

no offense.

They went out there.

It wasn't for me.

And I'm very transparent when I came back.

I said, what do you think?

I said, I love 90% of it.

And at the very end,

he kind of lost me.

He said, this, this is.

And I said, he goes,

he looked at me.

He goes, you're right.

He goes, we're a very conservative area.

That's not really what we do.

So getting to your point, Bill,

is people could read me.

I don't know why.

I think it's like anything else to do up to somebody.

I think, honestly,

if you want to know the truth of it,

and this is life in general,

you can sense good people.

And you can sense people with hidden agendas.

I can see it.

If it takes me a day,

maybe two days,

I pick up on that stuff pretty quick.

And most people do.

If you're coming in,

I didn't have to learn to,

well, I'm working on a furnace in the garage,

say, oh, you fish,

are you do this?

That was just me talking.

I was doing what professionals teach people to do

that I just comes natural for me.

So I love dogs.

That wasn't made up.

That's really who I was.

It went from, I'll put you really like this.

So work in the city, right?

It went from, hey,

somebody has to be at the house when you come to

the keys underneath the door mat,

or here's the code of the garage.

And that happened a lot.

In fact, when we started hiring more people,

and I didn't show up,

Mrs. Wilson or Mrs.

Wilson would call later.

I'm not making this up.

It happened a lot.

Done.

When we signed the service agreement,

I thought you were the one going to be coming out.

That was a big deal.

Because you know how attached,

Eric, both of you know how attached

to get to technicians.

Yeah.

That's not made up.

That's not made up.

Yeah, that can be a big thing.

As companies expand,

and one person cannot be everywhere all at once.

And there are certain people.

I think every company I've worked for

has had certain people

that wanted certain technicians.

And they requested that technician.

And there would be certain accounts

that certain technicians

wouldn't get sent on.

Because they did not get along

or that homeowner did not like them,

the business owner didn't like them,

whatever it was.

That's the reality of service work.

Isn't not everybody is going to get along

with every person.

And were the companies there to provide a service?

Want to develop another theme here.

And this situation happened to me

at the high performance hangout at the HR Expo.

There are a lot of people.

There are a lot of contractors.

There are a lot of technicians.

Two young men came up.

And I think the name of the company was Polar.

They were both 18 years old

and it started their own company.

And they asked me on the spot

as I'm leaving.

Like the place is shutting down.

They're shutting off the lights.

And they said,

someone told me we should talk to you.

What do you think is the one thing

we need to know?

And I'm like, oh my gosh.

And I'm going to reflect it back

on what you said earlier.

But I said,

it's about integrity.

And it was actually something that Rachel,

Eric's wife had mentioned,

in our travels in the days before,

integrity costs something.

And you have to be willing to pay the price

when you stand up for something

and go back to your dedication to the job

where you said it took you three years

to give two weeks notice.

That was integrity that did cost you perhaps.

For sure.

Well, I took a huge pay cut.

I won't drop a numbers,

but it was huge going to an outside salesman

for where he had me.

Because I don't want to say I was an overachiever,

but I work my butt off.

I'd go to the shop on July 4th

and be out there with weed killer

in the parking lot shooting weeds only

because I knew even if we had two people on call,

I was still going to be needed.

So I had a 45-minute drive,

well, I even wait.

My wife and I ran a lot of service calls together in summer

when people either wouldn't answer their phone

and they were on call.

And you always knew which ones were going to do that, right?

On the count of you,

about the, oh, my son call,

oh, stay close to the phone.

What about the experience for your wife?

We had some good times there, though.

We'd always get a good lunch in,

and it was always spending time.

It wasn't like it was bad time.

It was always a good time.

You might have come with you.

No, not at all.

I mean, we actually enjoy each other's company

and still do.

I interrupted you in your descriptions

or the arc of your career.

If one of you can inject back into there,

what came next?

Yeah, then the outside sales did.

And as I mentioned earlier,

it was that taught me about relationships

without a doubt, the best relationships.

And I learned that in the contractor side,

the service manager, the customer service side.

But this taught me more about,

because people, when they hear salesmen,

a lot of people get really,

no, I'm just looking.

I'm just browsing.

I don't need.

And especially cold call.

Boy, in this count that I took over was terrible.

It was way in the red.

In fact, some of the other salesguys

were good luck.

But the lady was retiring,

and she just kind of let it go.

I went in there,

and I started going in places.

It was brutal.

It was brutal at first.

But I just kept plugging away.

I would drop flyers off.

I would drop donuts off.

I would do that.

And as I was mentioned before,

is I had turned around three times.

I'm not exaggerating.

Three times I turned around.

Some of it was like a 15-minute, 10-minute.

And I realized,

oh, shoot, I can't quit my job.

I don't have a job lined up.

The fourth time I was almost all the way home.

And I mean, I drove 45 minutes back to home

before I stopped.

And I don't know if we want to get into this.

But my vision was,

I visualized my wife,

and my youngest son,

who was still living at the house.

He was still in high school.

I explained to them why I quit my job.

And dad didn't have anything lined up.

That just wasn't me.

So anyways, I turned around.

And as I mentioned,

I got a call.

And I got a call.

And people started to buy for me.

And again, it goes back to that trust thing.

They saw the scars and the burns on my hands.

And I wasn't just a guy walking in with cacky pants

with a briefcase saying,

you should buy this.

Or these are all these or everything.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Everybody has their style.

My style, again,

Bill and Eric,

go back to what you talked about.

The integrity,

the reading people,

and trusting people.

I had more than one person,

maybe five, maybe six.

Tell me that I was the only one

they ever left in their office,

ever, to call call.

And they didn't tell me that right away.

It was over time.

And I know that was true

because some of the sales guys

that followed behind me,

I ended up teaching them later on

at their distributors.

And they said,

so you're a Don Gillis.

Man, you left some big shoes to fill.

And they told me that everybody told them,

man, I really liked Don.

But it wasn't fake.

It was me.

It was who I was.

I had no hidden agenda.

Then I got a call from a friend at Emerson.

And I lived about 45 minutes from Sydney Ohio.

I'm right on the state line

of Ohio and Indiana.

45 minutes to Fort Wayne.

45 minutes to Dave.

Two hours to Indianapolis.

So I got a call.

And again,

I went back to that.

I don't know if I can do this or not.

He said,

here's a situation.

I thought, oh, man,

Jesus, it sounds exciting.

It would be really changing.

But I was always funny about taking on jobs

if I didn't feel like you could do it.

And I think we all are.

You're afraid to jump.

But he said a couple things.

He said, first of all,

the biggest hurdle is going to be,

you're going to be traveling

36 to 40 weeks a year,

by air,

which was all new to me.

Prior to that,

I probably flew 10 times my whole life.

So that was a big one.

And again,

from the salesperson job,

now I had built up a good career with sales

because that commission started rolling in.

At first, I took a pay cut

from being a contractor to salesman.

Now, the commission's coming in

because I'm being honest.

I'm selling stuff by accident,

not by being a good salesman.

I'm selling stuff by being myself,

by saying,

and trust.

So now,

they're going to offer me a job

that's less than that.

And I thought about and thought about and thought about it.

And I took it.

And they interviewed me.

They liked me.

They went on.

And I got there,

and I thought,

oh, shoot.

I'm in over my head.

Way in over my head.

And just by coincidence,

my wife's best friend

lost her husband at that time.

And I told Patty,

and she wasn't from the area.

She was from Arizona.

And so the only family

that was the in-laws,

basically,

friends at work.

And Patty and her were co-workers.

And I said,

Patty, I go,

you ought to really spend,

I just told her this prior

to taking the job at Emerson.

You should probably

be close to Lucy for the next year or so.

And I'll not totally understand.

And she did.

And then Emerson came along,

and it worked out good,

because for literally,

and I'm not exaggerating here,

for the first year,

maybe two.

All I ever did was

listen to the two podcasts.

I read application

engineering,

I read a lot.

I read all the time.

And I would practice

my presentation.

I would videotape myself.

And the first year at Emerson,

I actually bought a tripod

in the office here.

And videotape myself

to try to critique

the way I was even

moving my body.

Like, I was, I nervous,

was I saying,

I'm a lot.

Did I misspeak?

Those kind of things.

Plus, I was blessed with,

guys that were,

not exaggerating again,

15, 20 years older than me.

So there was a wealth of knowledge.

It's a lot of RSES knowledge

from the days past.

So they helped me.

But if it wouldn't have been for me

taking my work

outside those normal hours.

I mean, even on the plane,

I'd be listening to the things

I recorded on myself.

Of others,

I would be doing anything I could to,

I never did not have my computer

out or my earbuds in.

And any training I could get,

I would go to.

And I just,

according to them,

I accelerated way beyond expectations.

Because they would have you follow

somebody for six months

before they ever turned you loose.

And I was on the road

with them within four weeks.

Not because I was great,

just because there was a void there.

And for some reason,

they changed all the other instructions

that this is on her up.

Usually you watch somebody

for six months

and then you go right into it.

They asked me if I would go.

I said, yeah.

There were partners.

I didn't go on my home.

There was always two people in the room.

So you could say, hey,

critique things.

I didn't just go out on my own.

But pretty quick,

I was teaching the Supermarkt class

within three months.

And as you probably know

or may not know within six months,

they asked me if I would be willing

to go up to learn CO2 up in Canada

from Andre Patinott.

And it wasn't really a ask.

It was a tell.

Because I was the least senior person.

So I always jokingly say,

I drew the short straw.

But it helped me a lot.

Because it was so complicated

and so complex and so far

from anything I'd ever done.

But again,

I threw myself back into understanding

just the basic fundamentals

and they just started building off that.

And I just kept researching research

and like you guys do,

and you got to learn on the off time hours.

You don't just learn during that time.

And as I always told my son earlier,

you don't coach during the game.

You coach in the evenings.

But when you're probably nights hits

or Saturdays and football or Sunday,

you got to be ready to play.

That's not time to be coached.

You got to prepare yourself.

And that's really how it is.

So that's where I was at with that with Emerson.

And then not that I thought I was anything.

I don't consider myself an influencer.

But I'm a big LinkedIn guy.

I never had Facebook until my kids started to have

their first grandchild.

And that was about six years ago.

So I got on Facebook.

But LinkedIn was my Facebook.

I was posting back as a service manager.

We have springed two nubs for $69.

And I might get two likes.

And the homeowner started following me.

I wasn't unusual for the homeowner stuff on.

In fact, when I left there,

they would always message me or some of them would

and say, hey, I just want to, you know,

I know Joe died her husband.

And I know how you and Joe used to have

long conversations by our geothermal and the basement.

And it was a lot of that.

As I left, man, Don, that place has changed.

It's gone.

Not that they went bad or anything.

But these were these people's opinion.

So that's how I started on the LinkedIn.

So I could have been flipping hamburgs

and I would have been posting something about it.

That's just my nature.

It's like, I want to do well wherever I'm at.

I want to promote wherever I'm at.

I want to do business.

It's not really about me personally.

It's about the business as a whole.

How do I make the business better?

So I started taking a bunch of pictures,

marketing like that.

And man, they bought it and they said,

would you mind that COVID hit?

I did some YouTube videos in my office

because we weren't flying.

I think I started out with the number one reason

for compressors.

It lasted about 30 seconds.

And Brian Orr was one of them that reached out.

I hope this isn't the end of this.

And I didn't even know what I was doing.

My whole face is filled up in the screen.

I'm like, hey, Don, you'll listen to my aunt.

Here, it's Sydney, a couple of plants.

So anyways, they got traction.

And the marketing team liked it.

And we started doing professional stuff.

More polished lighting and that's kind of things.

And videos and what have you.

Well, this A2L thing came out and Chuck all good.

Eric Bill, you guys all know him.

We're all friends.

We all are that same circle, right?

Chuck approached me at an event and said,

hey, we're kind of wanting to do what you're doing at Copeland.

But we don't have anybody to do.

And we don't really have a training department.

If you know anybody, wink, wink, let us know.

Kind of thing.

I shouldn't have thrown that wink wink in there.

Chuck might hear this.

But that's kind of way it went down.

Anyways, about two months later,

a friend of mine ran and maybe used to work for him and said,

hey, that's a good job.

You should go back and revisit that.

And I said, well, if it's such a good job,

why aren't you there anymore?

He said, I don't like my manager.

And I said, oh, okay.

So I trusted this guy.

Eric knows him real well too.

And Bill, you probably know him too.

But he's from Indianapolis.

So then I reached out to Chuck through the LinkedIn.

And I said, hey, I might be interested where we at.

And he goes, well, it's still open.

So anyways, I went there.

Again, in my mind, being a positive thinker,

I can't fail because it's a blank canvas.

There's nothing here.

So anything I do or build up is good.

Before that, they were all over the place.

The marketing people, the sales guys, all great people.

But everybody was speaking from a different page in the him book.

So I went in and started putting modules together.

Like, here's a two hour class.

Here's a four hour class.

Kind of a grab and go, which I was self thought again.

And I just mimicked what I saw us doing at Copeland

that I learned how to do.

My curriculum manager, Copeland, didn't have any idea

what a compressor even did when I first met him.

But by this and him, his artwork, making animation go,

it was beautiful.

It was great chemistry.

Like it is here now, by the way.

So then I went and took that position.

You guys all know about the big pub of bubble on A2Ls,

I really was lucky because I was already teaching A2Ls

the last year and a half and CO2 in R290.

We had one class called PIP for the future.

It was brand new at the end of my career there.

And we were getting a lot of traction with it.

A lot of traction with it.

More on the CO2 side than the A2Ls because it was further away.

But the supermarkets were all going a CO2.

And R290 was popular in the smaller capacities

with smaller compresses and whatever.

So it was really well adopted.

So I think Chuck might have knew that.

So I already had a little advancement on that.

So when I went to A2Ls, I wasn't completely ignorant to it.

So I started building it up.

And next thing I know, it went from OEMs.

I was going to call with every OEM that you can name.

Briefing them on the A2Ls.

Along with some marketing people too.

Don't get me wrong.

But I was a technical guy.

And then it went to the distributors.

And then it went to the contractors.

And it snowballed.

And I'm not exaggerating the first year.

The first two years, I in person now.

Not webinars.

And I did a lot of them.

And a lot of podcasts too, like you guys do.

Just in person, I taught over 6,000 people in two years.

And one of them was 6,400 and the other one was like 62.

And as time went on and everybody and their brothers started talking about it,

it slowed down a little bit.

But then I started getting invites to the big events.

They somehow saw me as the template of A2Ls or whatever.

But again, it was like anything else.

Repetition, repetition, repetition.

Well, maybe they saw the two Ls in your last name.

Yeah.

Look at him.

Who is that A2L guy?

That guy with the deep voice.

Yeah, that fat guy with the deep voice.

Yeah, there you go.

So I went there and as time started going out, I started traveling less.

It wasn't that I wanted to travel, but I was hungry to learn more.

So I approached people inside the company.

I said, I'm just, even though I told them, or I asked them at the beginning for they hired me,

I said, look, I'm not going to be able to just talk about our patrons.

You've got to let me add components.

I want to talk about the whole system.

And they were like, oh, yeah, for sure.

So that was something new to them.

Even the salespeople.

I would do internal training to the salespeople and marketing people.

That had been salespeople for 20 years and didn't really know

how the whole process even worked really.

They didn't know what you and I know.

But it just wasn't enough.

After leaving Copeland again, like that service manager with two phones up to years,

Copeland had a lot of products.

I was over here.

I was talking about VFDs.

I was talking about CO2s.

I was talking about compressors.

I was talking about fundamentals.

I was everywhere.

Now I have a smaller plate again.

The plate's just not full enough for me.

So I got a bunch of job offers.

And I'll leave it at that.

And I chose Hardy.

Because I saw opportunity to go in a direction I had never gone for.

Some of those job offers were actually jobs that are already done.

That we already mentioned in this conversation.

And I almost went there, but because it was the comfort zone.

So I saw the Hardy thing as being more of a challenge.

Because there's politics part of it.

It's a small organization.

It's a nonprofit, something completely new to me.

It's less than 40 employees, as opposed to a big global company like Commores and Copeland.

So I went there and again, I walk in and there's nobody on staff that's technical.

There's nobody.

There's just people that marketing people.

Good people.

And they're very knowledgeable.

But they were going online kind of a researching stuff.

And again, their training was more soft skilled related.

So I added this, what I've built up since I've been here.

And it's just got released recently as the counter sales specialist, my first.

And then it'll be the tech support people.

And then it'll be branch managers.

But that's more on the sales side.

We have a person for that.

But now there's an ask from the distributors.

It's kind of come full circle to work up training technically for contractors.

And the distributor actually sell the class.

Kind of like we did in the past that I'm very familiar with.

So I'm really excited because I'm working around with people not quite half my age, but pretty young.

And they've got all these degrees and marketing and graphic design and stuff.

So they can literally look at a video of mine and make me an animated character with my voice.

And it's just blows my mind.

It's just a lot of talent that I don't have.

So we're learning from each other right now.

That's what I've learned along the way to get here.

I guess the best way to define all this from the original question would be as each level you go, you take something from that.

It's kind of like a recipe, if you will.

You learn this along the way.

You learn this along the way.

You learn this one.

As I spoke earlier, soft skills, relationships, listen before you speak.

And then just how to carry yourself.

And as you do everything over and over and over and you grow yourself, it becomes repetitive.

And you just become pretty good.

You look over your shoulder and go, wow, 10 years ago, I was doing this.

And now I'm here.

And you don't know how you got there.

That's a great reflection.

When do you find yourself, because it sounds like you've reflected in a number of points,

is it during these points of transition or were you considering transition that you're reflecting like you are today?

No.

The biggest turning point for me was on the reflection was that, because I don't know about you, but you get caught up in the moment.

And you just really don't have time for outside noise.

I didn't want to be a, and I hate to even use the word, an influence or anything like that.

That wasn't what I set out to do.

But about two years ago, I'm approximating it.

I was having dinner with somebody in some city, in some state.

And I can't even tell you who the friend was.

It was a one-on-one dinner.

I do remember that.

We started talking and him, like we're doing today, asked me about, so how did you get in the industry?

And as I'm eating, I'm just blabbing.

So I went from A to Z pretty dang quick, like from zero to 105, pretty dang quick.

Didn't we let that dinner get cool, right?

No, no, I'm still chewing, Bill.

You're going to slow the big guy down.

So I'm woofing my food down and all of a sudden, he stops and he says, that's a great story.

And I looked at him and I thought, because I never thought about it.

I really didn't.

I thought we all got it.

We all had pay our dues somewhere along the way.

And he said, I go, what do you mean?

Because that's a great story how you were laid off union steel worker,

and they closed the doors and jobs were not anywhere to be found.

And you answered a small ad from a Linux dealership just down the road.

And you started putting yourself to school at night because you thought you could make a career,

but not at eight bucks an hour.

So every one of those levels, I got a truck to drive home.

I became a lead.

All those little steps groomed me up to where I'm at today.

But that's what made me look behind the past.

Then I realized, that is a kind of good thing.

And he said, I should share this.

Whoever it was, and then thank God, I don't know if you're out there, let me know who it was.

Because then he goes, you should share that in class, especially when the younger contractors are in the room.

Not that I did every time because I'm not scripted.

In fact, I did it probably maybe one every 10 classes if I even did it.

Because as this conversation is going, I just go.

But like we all do, we don't really have a direction really.

I've never read notes before in a classroom.

I still don't.

But when I thought about it, I would talk about that because he was right.

It would touch people and like, oh, if they were on the bubble that two month period or three month period, like this sucks.

I could go work for so and so for five more an hour in that condition space inside the factory.

With better benefits, it would tell them that the sky's a limit kind of thing.

And as you said, this is all behind me.

Literally behind you is a graphic that says HVAC technician career path.

What is that about?

So that was given to me by our good friend, Warren Lubsin years ago.

And I stuck it up.

It was actually on one other wall.

I moved it around several times.

But it's as both of you do.

And now you've got the grit campaign going with the K-Los and Ony and Brian and Ty.

That's where my heart really is more than anything.

I don't know if I told you or not, but both of my sons know how to do HVAC.

One got his master's license after driving and jumping and trucking me to 15.

He went from journeyman to Nate runs his own business in Port Wayne.

One of them got his master's degree in clinical psychology.

But Dylan has a backup plan.

Not that it will ever happen.

But he knows how to use the saws all.

He knows how to put duck work in.

He knows how to praise.

That's always been fun for me.

Watching people grow and watch the high.

There's nothing better feeling than back in the day as a service manager driving through apartment complex

and having a maintenance guy with a old motor walking up to your truck smiling, waving you down

and you stop and you go, you're the one that taught me how to put this motor in a year ago.

Because most people that went technicians, they didn't want to bother with making this guy's where I was at.

Just stay back.

You don't understand it blah, blah.

Not me.

Not that we didn't need the money.

But we had bigger fish to fry at 90 degrees during the day.

So by teaching them, I was able to expand them.

It's just like YouTube that is something else.

But I'll never forget that.

It's just, those are one of those times you just don't forget.

Another time I was in Emerson, I was in Chicago and in the true story and I wasn't there very long.

And I wasn't deep into the CO2 or any of the really in-depth complex things yet.

And I know you both can relate with this.

But I had a gentleman and you always introduced yourself.

And it was a smaller class than a 25 or whatever.

And I was working with a partner.

And I had the job of doing the fundamentals first class.

And I went into PT charts not making this up.

And I remember when we went around the room, how many years you've been in the industry?

He had said 20 something years and I own my own company.

Front row.

Not making that up.

As we left for our first break, he walked over to me and he was hesitant.

And he kept pausing and I kept going, he's going to have a question.

He's going to have a question but took him forever to get up there.

And why he wanted everybody out of the room.

And he brought that PT chart with me.

And he tapped it on my chest, true story.

And his eyes were like watered.

It was very touching.

Well, I didn't forget about it.

He tapped me because you're the first one that's ever explained a PT chart where I understood it.

And that really hit me hard.

As weird as that sounds, but there's folks out there like that.

It's unfortunate pride gets in the way sometimes and what have you.

But as an instructor or a teacher, it motivated me a lot.

Even though it was very small, very small part of it.

So the poster is like both of you.

We have passions in what we do and we want to blow that horn to get more people in the industry.

I love teaching and I love giving back.

As I'm listening to you here, Don, I've pulled a couple of things out that I hear as I guess a theme as you've progressed through this.

And one of them is being uncomfortable at almost every step.

Like you said, hey, I'm jumping into this new thing.

I don't know how to do this.

It sounded like you were hugely uncomfortable.

What was that like and what kind of I guess mental thought process did you use to really overcome that and take those next steps?

I think if I quickly think about it and stop, I think what always went through my mind is failure.

Once your face was something, you have to choices.

You can back down or you can hit it head on.

And I've always been a head on guy.

If I'm going to fail, I'm going to go down fighting.

So whatever I put into it is what I'm going to get out of it.

And my wife will tell you, I'm sure you're both the same way with your wives.

I work in the evenings.

Especially when I first started getting into Emerson.

I mean, I read and read Application Engine Bullets.

I was blue in the face.

People were blown away how much I picked up on right away.

You have to do that work.

So it was fear of failure.

Really.

Jumping into it was fearful.

But when you got there and realized, oh my god, what did I get myself into?

Then fear really sets in.

You don't want to let people down.

You don't want to let people that hired you that thought you could do the job be wrong.

It wasn't about being bareist or I'm just not a person to go in somewhere and be dead weight.

And I've told people that employers in the past, I didn't come here to be dead weight.

If I fail, you won't have to show me the door.

I'll show myself the door because that's not my nature.

That's a great way to kind of a thought to close on about the integrity.

You've hit upon it several times in this conversation.

As we finish up here, what would be the closing thoughts for listeners?

I think passion drives a lot of what we do.

And if you're passionate about anything, whether you're flipping hamburgers at Wendy's

or mowing the lawn or whatever it is, that really paves the way of how far you would go.

How passionate are you about that?

Are you just doing this to pick up a check and put food on the table?

Or do you really, really love what you do?

And are you sincere about it?

Are you genuine?

You have to be happy in what you're doing.

You have to believe in it.

And I think that would probably be the biggest takeaway for me as passion, passion, passion, passion.

And in the honest, be original.

Just be very transparent about your feelings, no hidden agendas.

Because as we talked about earlier, Bill and Eric, people were going to read that.

I know I can.

I know you can.

You can tell if somebody's really, when they say, I don't know, that's interesting.

Share that with me.

You can tell that's an honest person.

They really don't know.

But if they start talking before you end, it's like it.

It's been a great conversation.

I learned some things about you.

I didn't know.

I appreciate you even more because of that, Don.

Thank you.

That means a lot to me come from you.

Bill, I mean that sincerely.

You're a good name.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming on, Don.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Eric.

I appreciate the invite.

Thanks again for spending a little bit of time with us in the Building HVAC Science Podcast.

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