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Interview with Brian Usher. HVAC Installer/ Apprentice Electrician
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Brian Usher and the host of the podcast have known each other for over 10 years through the Big Brother Big Sister organization. Brian started as an HVAC installer but has now switched to becoming an apprentice electrician. He is working towards getting his O2 license, which requires 4,000 hours of work. The host believes that becoming a licensed electrician is a great career move and that Brian's value will increase significantly once he obtains his license. Brian is open to exploring different areas within the trades industry and wants to be knowledgeable in all aspects. The host suggests that owning his own business in the future could be a lucrative option. However, Brian is unsure if he wants to take on the responsibilities that come with running a business and prefers to have a stable job that allows him to spend time with his family. The host advises Brian to be open to the changes that come with age and to embrace the opportunities that may arise in his career. Hey, thanks again for listening to another episode of the Callback Crew Podcast. I have Brian Usher here with me. Little context on Brian, Brian and I met probably 10 plus years ago through the Big Brother Big Sister organization. Brian came to me as like an 11 or 12 year old and I was somebody who was looking to keep myself busy, influence people in a positive light and Brian fell into my lap. Brian was a wonderful kid, hands down one of the best kids I've ever known so I'm happy to introduce him. Welcome Brian. Hey. Tell me a little bit about yourself buddy. Yeah, so when I'm 23 now, like you said we met probably close to 10 years ago now. I was in probably 7th grade, 8th grade, graduated high school 5, 6 years ago, engaged now in a house, have a cat, have a pet, that's cool. What's the cat's name? Ava B. She's about 17 pounds of just chonk. 17 pound cat? Yeah. What? Is that even a cat or is that a small dog? We got her at the pound 2 years ago and we walked in in Auburn and she was the first pen there and we walked in and she immediately rolled on her back and my fiance was like this is it, we're done, take her home and we tried to get her in the boxes, those like cardboard boxes that they give you and she wouldn't fit so they gave us this giant crate that they use for like feral cats and said hey if you're ever just back in town just drop it off please. Drop it off for us. And yeah we've had her now for 2 years and she's the stupidest cat as well as the smartest cat I've ever seen. It's like kids. Yeah. Last year she had us calling hospitals and we called like 20 hospitals before we got someone to bring her in because she was tripping over, couldn't keep her balance and she was just stupid and didn't drink her water. So she got thirsty and this happened? So I paid $600 for an IV bag. For them to tell you the dog doesn't have enough water. Yeah. And the cat. That's it. It was so dumb. Welcome to just owning a dog or a cat, right? Yeah. Like I mean the dumbest thing is like it's going to cost you a thousand bucks. Yeah. Just the way it is. But I'll tell you, you love that cat though, right? Oh yeah. Say your fiance's first name at least. Angelique. Angelique. Hi Angelique. I hope you're going to listen to this considering Brian was on. She probably was. She couldn't care less about trains. But come on. You're her fiance. She should listen in support of you, right? She hears me talk enough. Okay. Well I won't doubt her there. So you probably do talk enough when you're at home. Yeah. For sure. So what I want to go into is, so as everybody's kind of already understood over this podcast, so if you've heard the first four, we are an HVAC and home services podcast. We are dedicated to mostly heating, ventilation, air conditioning, electrical, new construction, retrofit, and anything that is done to a home once it's being built or being built. So Brian here today, he obviously my little brother. I mean he's my little brother no matter what. He might have gone through the big brother, big sister, but I've adopted him into my own little world. He's got his own life, so I haven't seen him in a couple of years to be honest with you. I went to Arizona and came back. But Brian's been doing amazing things. He went to another company after I left. He's been booming ever since. We've spoken several times and I'm really proud of where he's gone so far. He was an HVAC installer, so he was doing heating, ventilation, air conditioning installations up until not too long ago. He has converted over to an apprentice electrician if I'm not mistaken. Am I correct? Yeah. Okay. He is looking for his journeyman card. Am I correct? Not my journeyman, my O2. O2. Okay. So he's looking for his O2 license. So he is working with a company trying to build up his hours. How many do you need again Brian? 4,000 for the O2. 4,000 hours? Yeah. What is the math on that? We've got to look into this. Hold on, hold on. I've got to look and see what the math is on this ridiculous math. That's just shy of two full years. Two full years of work. That means that you have to work for like 40 hours a week for two full years, right? Yeah. You said 4,000 hours? Yeah. Divided by a 40 hour work week, which is usually... That takes 100 straight days. So that means that he has to work 100. Wow, that's amazing. Holy moly. Am I doing this math right? Yeah. So it's 4,000 hours. Divided by 40. So it would take you 100 full weeks. Yeah. 100 full weeks. Full time. Full weeks. Full time. Right. So that means it's about two years. How many weeks are in a year? 52. 52. So literally, if you worked every single day, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, you could be an electrician O2 license in about, he said, two years. Right. Which I get paid while I'm doing it, whereas if I were to go to school for two years, I'd have to pay them to do it and find a job on my own. So it's kind of the same, except better. No, it's not the same. It's way better because you're being paid for your apprenticeship. Right. You're being paid, it's like an internship that you're getting paid for. Yeah. So hands down, I will tell you, great decision, Brian. I think that we need more trades people. Yeah, sure. And if you're looking to make money and be successful and own your own business here in the next 10 years, you're on the right track. You get your license. I'm sure your employer doesn't want to hear this, but the way it is, is you're going to get your license. I mean, and then your value is going to go through the roof. Right. So, I mean, whether that company keeps you or not is going to be dependent on whether or not you become the master electrician or willing to work for 40 hours a week at whatever the wages are for electricians, which aren't bad at all. So no complaints. They're better than HVAC installers, I'm sure. They can be. They can. Well, once you get to the point where you're doing electrical by yourself, you know your loads, you can do a whole panel swap by yourself, ground, you can do a meter base, you can do a drop, you can do all that by yourself. Then your value has gone through the roof, right? Yeah. So what are your plans after getting your license? I mean, are you going to just stay a nine to five electrician? I don't know. I've done, in my short time as an adult, I've done what feels like a lot of things. I started in new construction, did that for a few years. And then I moved over to retrofit, which felt like a different world. And I switched companies and the company I'm at now does plumbing, HVAC, electrical, sewer, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to learn and grow there, which is why I was able to make the switch. So really, I don't know. I want to be that guy who can do everything. I want to be 58 and I want my kids to call me and say, hey, I don't know how to do this. Can you come over? And I just want to know how. I'll get the card, do my time, probably do that for at least a couple years. And then I might look at trying to combine the two. Demand for HVAC techs who have their cards are huge, because that allows people to save on hiring out people to do disk connects and hookups and this and that, because you can do that while you're there. Honestly, part of the HVAC field is there's three or four different aspects of HVAC that people don't realize. The state of Washington, again, I've told you several times in this podcast, everybody, that we are in the Seattle-Tacoma area. So we're in the Pacific Northwest where permits are an absolute must. So we have to pull permits. If we don't, we have L&I, we have all these industries that are coming after us to make sure that we follow these rules. If you live in Arizona, you probably don't even know what a permit is. So the thing about his value is if as an HVAC owner, I would be more inclined to look for somebody who knew both. Well, the problem with it is that once you have the skill set, you're probably not doing both, brother. You know what I mean? You're probably going to say, I'm going to dedicate myself to this craft or I'm going to dedicate myself to this craft. And I don't see you doing both in the future because you can do both, but you better own your own company. Yeah. So if you have your HVAC license, you've got your 608 EPA license, you have your O2 journey on the license, you're a gold. I mean, you're literally a fricking nugget of gold. Right. I mean, you might as well just, you know, I mean, so why would you not want to go on your own and do your own thing at that point? The assurities maybe? Yeah. The insurance, the fact that you don't want to deal with the BS. I get it. I'll have kids. I'll have a wife. Right. When you're starting out with your own business, you have to put more time in than you ever did when you worked for someone. And I put the time, I've worked on jobs till 2 a.m. Right. I've worked 70 hour weeks. Yep. Being a new business owner, you have to do more. You have to go do the sales calls, do the service calls, do the installs. You are the only one and it takes up more time. I don't think I want to give that time to something that won't last past me. I don't think I have what I need to have a business that lasts past me. I don't want to. And to me it's just not worth it. But you never know where you're going to end up, dude. No. I mean, honestly, you're 23, right? Yeah. You're 23. I'm 37 years old going on 30 this year. Did I think I'd be where I am today? Nope. Nope. Nope. Not at all. And when I was 23, I darn sure didn't know I was going to be at 37, 38. So those will change. You'll enjoy the changes that come with growing older, having a family. And those things might apply. Like, for example, my dad, you know my dad, he's been working for Costco for 37 years. I mean, he doesn't want to do anything else. It's just easy to continue to collect a paycheck. And I totally understand, but I think you're going to get a knowledge base that's going to be beyond you. And I think that you're going to be, you know, 30 years old going, man, I'm searching for a little bit more. Like, I'm looking for a little bit more. Like, you never know. So keep your options open, man. I mean, I never thought I would leave the company that you and I first started at, right? Right. Right. Like, I mean, we're not going to name names, but I never thought, like, I thought I was going to grow old with that company. You had, so I had, so it's actually really funny to look at this like this, and it's actually coming to me now. So what I had with the Kay brothers, we'll just leave it at that, you have with the company you're at. Right. I swore to God I was never going to leave. I thought I was never going to leave that company. And then everything literally flipped on me in like a week. You know, I went from normal everyday operations to we're now flipping everything on its head. The owner is going to give the company to the son. The son's going to come in and make all these changes. And you never know. So I'll say right now, the company you know today, as good as it is, and I know who you work for, so it's not like I'm talking shit. I'm being honest. It's a good company. Yeah. But they may not be the company that you thought they were in five years. Right. So always keep your options open. Always keep your, you know, keep your knowledge base up. Classes, learning, education, those are things, you know, keeping up with the times. Those are huge. So I have to ask a question. Why did you go into Electrify? Last time I talked to you, you were looking to go into sales. So I have thought about it for a long time. And because I get bored very easy. I did install for years. I've kind of done the roles of HVAC. I did install for four years. I went out, I ran service calls. I went out, I ran sales calls. I was a manager. I was in charge of the department. And I got bored. And I had to renew my electrical trainee card because our admin got a fine. And he was pushing me to get all of the installers to get their cards so they are allowed to work on things like thermostats, line set, stuff that you wouldn't think you need a card for, but you need one. And so I couldn't go to them and ask them to get their cards to take 48 hours of classes to get these cards if I weren't. So I went, I took these classes. A couple of them were way over my head, like transformer installations and stuff. But I took a lot of really good ones. And ones that really piqued my interest more than anything has in a long time. The biggest issue I had with new construction was everything just became robotic. You did the same thing every day. Literally every day. And I was getting to that point. I would do things with my headphones in. I didn't think. And it just became a go to work, get paid, go home. And I don't want to work that way. And electrical to me is just so big. It's so vast that you can learn as much as you want to and there will still be more to learn. Absolutely. And just in these short months that I've really dived in, it's worked my mind more than it's worked in years. Electrical. I'll give it to you. And I've told you this before we started. I know nothing about electrical. I literally know nothing. I know what the MCA, the MOCP, and the LRA are. So MCA being minimum circuit capacity. The MOCP being maximum over current protection amps. And the LRA being the locked rotor protection amps. So those are the most things that heat pumps and air conditioners are mostly applied by, right? LRA, the locked rotor amps, it isn't very important. That's what the motor will pull when the rotor is locked. Motors have two main parts. They have a rotor and they have a stator. And with electromagnetism, they will move. And if that rotor cannot move, it's going to pull more and more and more and more until it does. Until it actually starts? Yeah. And if it's locked, it will pull what the nameplate says. So whatever the locked rotor amps are, it will pull? Yeah. So it's not something that it should ever get to. And chances are, if it does, it's going to blow a fuse, blow a breaker immediately after. So that's like a fail-safe? Yeah. Yeah, it's more so there just to help people troubleshoot and know what's going on. If you read 100 amps on a 30-amp compressor, you know it's locked and you're going to blow a fuse. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So the biggest thing that electricians are asking for, because again, I'm an HVAC professional, not an electrician, is they're always asking for those three ratings. Okay. And then inspectors are always like, you know, your MOCP is 50, your MCA is 34.4. So if you have a 35, 40, 45 in there, you're good to go. Am I right? Yeah. And this is something I've just learned recently because it's a very sticky thing. So you have your minimum circuit ampacity, say that's 18 amps. That is what the system will pull at normal operating load. So if you look on that nameplate, it will say refrigerant compressor 14.1 RLA, running load amps. And then you'll see the outdoor fan 0.6 FLA, full load amps. Those get put into a calculation, which is for systems with one or more motors, you take the largest motor at 125% and then add all other loads. So it's the 14.1 times 125% plus the other loads, which equals out to your 18 amps. And those RLA's and FLA's are the maximum of what that system will pull in normal operation. So typically the system will run around 75% of those. So if it's 14.1, normal operation is going to be 10. And so that gives you your circuit ampacity, which allows you to gauge your wire based on that. That makes sense. Yeah. Your max fuse and your max breaker, which is also called your MOSCP, your maximum over current protection. That is the maximum allowable amperage that that unit is allowed to pull when starting. That makes sense. So there's more calculations with that, but you're allowed up to 225% of your largest load plus your other loads. So that's how you get such a big difference. With heat pumps and air conditioners, you're allowed to do a very weird thing. Typically your wire size has to match your breaker size. So if you have a 30 amp breaker, you're supposed to run 10. In this case, if you have a 30 amp breaker, cool. That's what that calls for. But your minimum circuit ampacity is 18, right? So you're allowed to run number 14 THN or number 12 ROMEX, which a lot of people will say, no, don't do that. They'll say don't do that, but yet they'll still do it. No. That's it too. If you go to an inspector with that, chances are he's going to tell you no. So you're telling me if you install a 30 amp breaker with 12 gauge wire, even though it's rated 30 to 40, 25 to 40, I could be wrong. You're the electrician. They're going to fill that? Yeah. In the NEC, there is a table in 310.16. Basically what that is is a table that has amperages and then what wire size and temperature columns and what type. So different types of wires are allowed to work at different temperatures. THN and some other stuff like that are allowed to operate at 75 degrees C, whereas stuff like NM cable, which is more commonly called ROMEX, that has to operate at 60. Seriously? I'm looking it up as you're speaking. Yeah. So those will tell you what size wire you have to run for that circuit. In the motor section of the codebook, there is an exception. I want to say it's 440 something G, where it's air conditioners. That they can go based on the nameplate and that they don't have to follow the rules set forth in 310.14, 15, 16. All of those tables that say for this circuit, you have to have this gauge of wire. Yeah, because I'm looking at, as you said that I looked up online, 310-16 allowable ampacities of insulated conductors. Right. So it looks like... So 240.4 G is what allows air conditioners to operate outside of it. So why would ACs be able to, but heat pumps are not? ACs, heat pumps... Oh, so they're both. Yeah, it's labeled as any refrigerant. Okay, so I was going to say that would be goofy if you just did ACs and not heat pumps. So I'm looking at now, like I'm looking at your 90 degrees Celsius or up to 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Right. So yeah, you're... So the 90 degree column, you are not allowed to use that in our cases because breakers and the heat pumps and air conditioners, they all have a UL lifting of their connection at 75 degrees. So even if you use wire that's rated for 90, you can't go past 75. Yeah, so it's got 60 degrees, 75, 90. Yeah. It goes into aluminum, which who gives a shit about aluminum? So you're going to like... Yeah, so I mean like, but the differences aren't huge though. I mean, like I see like a 10 gauge wire can hold at 60 degrees Celsius, 30, but if you're at 75, it's 35. If it's where... Right. Supposedly 90 degrees Celsius, it's at 40. It really comes up more so in, say you go out and you sell a job and these guys have two paths. They can go up in the attic and run across and down, or they can run through conduit outside. True. Each path has different types of wires you're allowed to use. Right. MC cable versus Romax versus... Yeah. What's exterior? Just conduit? So it's conduit with like THHN, THW. So just braided wires? Yeah. So which you can get them in solid as well, but they're mostly on jacketed conductors. So you're getting the raw wire. Yeah. You're not getting it inside some kind of like conductor that like holds in the electricity. So you're basically you're going to just Romax like with a little bit of plastic on the outside. Which Romax is THHN, but you aren't allowed to use it as THHN because the installation on the wires of Romax don't specify it. Right. They don't say it's THHN usable at 75 degrees, whereas normal THHN on the installation, it says THHN number 10 usable at 75 degrees. So how do you... So I guess to dig into something a little deeper I wasn't expecting to go into, this is going in like Celsius versus Fahrenheit, right? Like what in God's name is 167 degrees Fahrenheit or 75 degrees Celsius? So that's the temperature of the wire. So like how hot the wire might get? Yeah, that's how hot that wire can get before the installation starts to melt or degrade. So it's kind of like aluminum wire. Like I don't know if you remember back in the day when we worked for Kay Brothers, they were totally against aluminum wire. They wouldn't touch anything aluminum. If it was aluminum, it had to be switched over to copper. And I'm guessing that's why? Yeah, copper is a much sturdier wire. Right. The compounds of it and the way the molecules bond are way different. It allows current to flow better. Well, hands down. And then aluminum over time softens. And gets really hot. Connections will start to loosen and fail. I remember that. I used to remember the electrician we used to have back then, they would not go in from aluminum to copper. They wouldn't go from aluminum into aluminum. They would go JBOX, aluminum to copper, and then into the unit. Right, which the UL lifting of... Requires that, right? Of like furnaces, heat pumps, air conditioners, air handlers and stuff, it requires... Even in the... It requires that copper is used to make the connection. Because it will bring in corrosive, blah, blah. No, it'll just overheat, from what I understand. It'll cause fires, possibly. No, it'll cause the term metals to oxidize. That makes sense. Degrade, like you aren't supposed to use un-similar metals. Like a battery, like you see the corrosion in a battery from a thermostat, you look and you see the calcium, that's what's gonna happen? It'll do something similar, yeah. That's good to know. I mean, I don't know a whole lot. I mean, I know enough to do heating and air conditioning, but I damn sure can tell you how to wire a whole house. There's no way. The big thing for you is, if there is a disconnect there, and that's pretty big, right? Either you charge them to pull a new one, or you use that. How do you know? And that's exactly what we're trying to get to. And that is, if the wire size is the correct size, it can be more. It can be larger than what it should be, but it can't be less. We can change breakers, we can change fuses, we can't change wire without a substantial cost. So before we take a quick break for a bathroom here, I'm gonna have to ask. So hold on. So you're telling me that, so if I have a 30 amp circuit, so let's say I have an old, actually let's go with a 50. I have an old 50 amp breaker, 5 ton system. I'm switching them out to a new Bosch variable speed. The 5 ton calls for 40. Right. Okay. You're telling me I can't just fuse down at the disconnect? You can. Okay. I can. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And that's only for motors. So typically fuses are not allowed to be a way of over current protection on two 40 volt systems because if one goes, it will only break one leg. But with motors, you're allowed to. Okay. So, yeah. So, all right, we're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna be right back. We shouldn't even notice a difference. So we'll be right back. All right, guys, we're back after bathroom break. So we were talking about electrical. We'll get back into a little bit of the electrical and then we're gonna dive into some other things that Brian has to offer. So anything else, Brian, that like a new HVAC sales project manager, comfort consultant, there's so many verbs that we, verbal verbiages we can use for this. What can you tell them that they need to look out for as, you know, sales advisor? There's so much there that- Break it down. Make it simple. Make it as simple as possible. To look into. Really, what it boils down to is you need to rely on your team and rely on the people who are going to do the job you sell. And don't just, don't rely on the person who does the job the best. If you bring a job to your top guy, he's gonna tell you he can change that furnace out in two hours. So you sell that job for two hours, cool. It goes to someone else and they can do it in five. You have to have an understanding of what you and your whole team can do and have faith in those people. You may feel like you are out there on your own, but you're not. You have people that you can call, that you can ask, you can FaceTime. I have FaceTimed sales guys numerous times. Half of them came out to, hey, if you're going to sell this job, bid it for two days. But you usually do it in one day. I might, he can't, and you aren't saying this, this, this, and this. If you want to get paid your full commission, bid things in a way that won't price you out, but will keep you where you need to be in case things go wrong. So being a sales professional, I have to ask, because this is all I've ever done. I've only done management, sales. I've never done install. I've been there several times. I've been there when it happens, but I'll be honest with you. I'll rebut that a little bit in the sense that, okay, so if I'm bidding two days, but I know that two of the three crews that I have on staff can do it in one day, why should I bid it out for two days? Why should I possibly lose a job because I'm thinking about the worst case scenario? Right. That's between you and your boss. You guys will work it out to where, hey, if this guy takes more time, this guy who's been a lead for six months versus this guy who's been a lead for five years, if the pay's different for that, cool. But you can't account for who does your jobs. There's a saying, you are as strong as your weakest link. That's true. Your weakest link is the guy who just became a lead. He gets that job. He knows he has a second job tomorrow, so he's going to work until 10, 11 o'clock, and it's just going to snowball. Job after job after job will go bad, and you'll get more callbacks. It just won't work for that guy, whereas it will work for the two. It's hard. Take pictures. Take notes. Review jobs. Don't just rely on yourself, but rely on your team. I'm going to tap off that, being more in the management position, more in the ownership position. I'm going to rebuff that just a little bit, and I'm going to say, you are only as strong as your weakest link, but we can't bid jobs on the weakest link. That person's not going to be here very long. That person's probably either going to be, they're going to figure it out, or they're going to be gone. I'll be honest. If I bid a job that does a furnace swap, I expect you to do it four hours. If it's a like-for-likes furnace swap, you've got four hours. Any more than four hours, guess what? I'm coming to the installer. I'm going to the installer and say, why did you take longer? Was there something he missed? Was there things that you added on that you didn't tell me about? Did you have to install base scan? Did you have to install plenum? F100 filter? Did you have to install new venting? Was the B venting not adequate? Was it not double wall? I guess I get where the job costing thing might come in, but I also have to look at it. I appreciate everything you're saying, Brian. Everything you're saying is spot on. I'm not rebutting you. I'm just coming at it from a management perspective, and then also a sales perspective, too, because I did sales for ten years before I ever even got into management. The reality is, when I go out there, I'm selling the job from the homeowner, but I'm also selling it for the owner of the company. I'm selling it to make sure that the installers have jobs to do every day. I'm selling it to make sure that the installers have jobs to do every day, that they stay with the company. There's multiple facets to an install that you have to look at. I do agree with you that, yeah, you probably should look out for your worst case scenario, but homeowners are going to listen to this. They're going to go, why would I pay for two days when you can do it in one? Well, the problem is that some people aren't as good as others. You have mechanics that can fix your car in four hours. They take weeks, months. You never really know. The problem is you have to be consistent. My thing is, my installers where I'm at, they have, for an 80 to 80 swap, they have four hours. They go over four hours, I'm calling and asking why. There better be a darn good excuse on why they're going over four hours. A full day install on AC, no furnace swap, just straight AC, heat pump system. That's a day. You've got eight to ten hours. Figure it out. Finish it. I don't care. Unless the sales or the comfort console did something grossly negligent, that's on you. We're bidding on a certain scale. Kay Brothers, who I was talking about, they used to do a job for every ... Say you had a furnace and you had an AC. It was a day for each one. Reality is we can't do that anymore. On certain installs, yeah, you can manage that because you're going to budget for it. If I go to a house and it's in the crawl space, and the crawl space barely meets the dimensions of the furnace coming out and the one going in, that's a two-day install. They're going to spend more time hooked up on their back. I'm giving them two days. I'm going to charge the customer two days. The customer should know ahead of time they're being charged for two full days. If you're doing an AC install in a garage and the AC is on the side of the garage, 20 feet away, there's no reason for that to go to two days, no matter how incompetent your installer is, period. Yeah, go ahead. With that, two days versus one day, is it two days of nine to five, or is it would you count as one day even if they worked until eight o'clock? Or would you count as 1.2 days? My budget is 1.5 for an AC install. My installers will not leave the job until it's done. Mine will be at their eight, but they won't leave until seven when they're done. They're not picking up the next. Where you lose money in this game is by packing your shit up at the end of the day and have to re-unpack your shit the next day. Oh dude, you'd be shocked. I hired two guys three months ago from a different company. They worked at the same place. They get a full day for a gas furnace. Two of them? Maybe they'll slip in a second one and they get two full days for anything with refrigeration. See, that's where they wouldn't last long with me. The company that does that, they're one of the biggest ones here. No, I know who you're talking about. I'm always wanting to know who you're talking about. It's weird. I've never and this could just be because I've come from new construction where it's go, go, go, but I've never imagined giving someone that much time to do a job. To be as big as they are and do that, it's hard to imagine how they got there. You sell a job for a set time. If you are on the phone with someone and they say, hey, I can do this job in two hours. You're still going to sell it for four. Interesting. Even being the big companies around, they've margined everything out. They're probably charging. If you're like a certain company in Tacoma who they charge double what the normal person charges. I guess you have it built in. I'm not really sure who. I'll ask you off the air. I'm wrong twice. We'll figure that one out off the air. I guessed twice. You never really know what their margins are, what their costs are. Are they paying those guys dirt? You don't know. They were paying them more than what we were offering. That's the thing. Some of these companies who have been around for years and years and years. There's one company in the area that's been around since 2019. It starts with green. They charge double the price of everybody else. Where are you going to go? It doesn't matter if I have work or not. I'm going to get paid 40 hours a week and make $50 an hour. Shit, I'll take that every single day. You never know. I do agree with you. I grew up on one day per day. I've been spoiled. In the last 10 years, I've had some of the best installers I've ever met. The one I have now, I'll give you a shout. He's Ukrainian. This dude is solid as rocks. This guy right here can get stuff done in a day that most people take two days. He doesn't skip anything. This guy goes through a process every single time. It's the same exact install. Yet, he's still able to do it faster than most because he's figured out a way of doing the installs to make it more progressive. Like you said, you're only as good as your weakest link. The weakest link sometimes is the one day harness install guy who takes eight hours to install an 80-80. I'm in sales management and I've actually had a guy who called out sick one day and we had no heat and I had to actually go install the furnace. I'm a goofball who's in sales who's actually installed an 80% furnace because it was not that hard. It took me six hours. I've never done a furnace before but I did it. It worked. It fired off. The venting was good. Everything was gold. I got lucky. I don't know what happened. I did it. It was about a year ago. We were eight inches of snow on the ground up in northeast Tacoma. My guy called in. He was like, we've got to get these guys heat. I'm on my way. I'll be there. He showed up at two o'clock. I was already halfway done. He was like, I'm here to help you. Figure out the venting and hook up the gas and fire it off. I'm out of here. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to be able to figure out how to install a furnace but it definitely doesn't to do air conditioning refrigeration, it definitely does install it takes somebody who knows what the hell they're doing. While we're on the topic and this is one of the most controversial things I've talked about is do you change your mindset on every job? 100%. We're not in Arizona. There's guys here who don't. There's reasons why you wouldn't. I'll be dead honest with you. When I was in Arizona for a year I didn't change a single mindset. Not one. Not one single mindset for an entire year. R22, R410 didn't matter. 3 ton to 3 ton did not matter. I'll tell you honestly, in reality it probably doesn't make as big of a difference as it would make it out to seem but it is a valid reason to swap it out if it's easy. Here in Washington, we don't have stecco houses. We don't have ACs on the roof. We have attics. We have attics and crawler garages to where we're pretty accessible to where we need to go. There's no reason for us not to where with Arizona, it was a stecco house that you don't cut into stecco. You're asking for problems. You would just flush it. Make sure you nitrogen purged it down to a certain micron and then you just installed a new one. That was pretty normal. Here in Washington, we've kind of become a what's the word for it? Prima donnas? Oh yeah. I've seen I have a buddy who moved to Ohio and Jeff? Yeah. I hope you hear this, Jeff. I love you, buddy. I liked you a lot. You're a good dude. I hope you're doing well. He's engaged. I love that guy. He was a great guy. Love that guy. Hands down, hopefully you tell him about this. I love you, Jeff. I love you. He gets a full day on furnaces to go there take the furnace out, put it in go back to their shop have everything cut out and built and then they're done for. Go back, but over there just the way of work and how it's done you would never see that here. You would see lines that's hung on a wall just from point A to point B. Here you go 10 feet to your last straight down. It's all covered. It all looks nice. They don't care about that. It just looks like garbage. They are the same people who post online like that takes you five hours. I can do that in two. No line hide. I can, but it looks like crap. No line hide. Your line still looks like shit. You're zig-zagging down the wall. You might as well be a do-it-yourself guy. You don't have codes. You don't have licenses. Washington State and Oregon are the strictest as far as codes as far as licensing whereas the rest of the U.S. doesn't have that as much. They're not as tight. Arizona when I was there I was working for a company. I wasn't actually. I was working for somebody. I go, what about permits? It was me and five other sales people who had been there for five years each. They all just literally stopped and looked at me with this death gaze. What kind of voodoo are you speaking on us here? The sales manager was Enrique or something. He's like, don't you ever say those words ever again. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, don't ever say the word permit ever again in my life. I was like, no problem bro. The whole time I was in Arizona the HVAC guys moved the electrical. Say a customer wanted their heat pump AC moved down the wall 20 feet. Here we have to have an electrician. There's got to be a permit. Everything's got to be legit. The HVAC guy would be like, oh, I'm good. I'm just going to run extra wiring, extra 20 feet, put a J box here. We're good to go. There was no permit. Literally I could have installed anything I wanted in the house. It didn't matter. Last year I got caught by an LNI guy. It was like five o'clock. I was doing my second furnace for his day. This guy drives home. He was on his way home. It just so happens his next door neighbor is an LNI inspector. He pulled over and he walked in and he goes, hey, where's your electrician at? I've always heard stories of, oh, just tell him he went out for lunch. I did. He was just here. He went to go run an emergency service call. He'll be back. He could see the bullshit on my face. He goes on the website. He looks up our license. He looks up our admin who he has to have his phone on there. He calls them. They have an hour long conversation. We didn't get fine, but we had to have an electrician come back and hook up. Pow, which is so dumb. You have a black, white, and a grim. That's it. I get to work the next day. Me and our admin, we're best friends. He's like a 48 year old guy. He's great. He chews my ass like half an hour. Don't you lie to them. Just tell the truth. You made it worse. Blah, blah, blah. I thought I was a helping man. Washington State is so strict about those things. I'll be honest. I think most of it's just because they want you to pay for the permits. They want you to pay for the licensing and the taxes. The best way to do that is to enforce the law. I'm not going to say nothing bad about them, bro. Just because this is a podcast for everybody. I'm just going to say that Washington State, you suck. You seriously suck. I'm going to tell you, you suck. You suck all the way around. Your rules, your regulations are bullshit. I'm just going to go ahead and say that. I'm not saving here. I'll be honest. You're way over the top. Especially Seattle. Come on, dude. Refrigeration permit when nobody else needs a refrigeration permit? Seattle requires you to have your own special Seattle license. Seattle license. Refrigeration. You guys are a joke for a city in the first place. You're literally a laughingstock of Washington State. Yet you think that it's okay to just go ahead and tax your homeowners three times the normal amount for the state. I'll give it to them. Seattle, you guys have it. You guys are the biggest joke in the entire state of Washington when it comes to HVAC. Hate me or not, it's not me. It's your elected officials. You keep doing it. I don't give a flying rat about politics anymore. I just tell you right now, they're stopping you from doing upgrades to your home because they want more money. Their permit is like $600. $600? Okay, the average permit in Washington is $105. In Seattle, if your line sets are bigger than three-eighths, three-quarters, you have to leave it on pressure for 24 hours or whatever. You're costing yourself not only the permit cost, but you're costing because we have to come back and do the work, which means that we have to charge you for us to come back the second day, even though you shouldn't have had to come back the second day. Joe Blow will go out there and do it without permits, without this. Hands down. It doesn't benefit you. It doesn't benefit us. It doesn't benefit the customers. It just gives people a way to work around it and makes things work. I'm always going to advocate on this podcast that you do permits. You do what you legally have to do. You legally have to do them. As a contractor, as a homeowner, you're supposed to do these permits, but if you skip them and you don't do them, don't worry. Your life's not over. I think if you spend $20K, $15K, and you don't... Spend the extra $500 to do it. No, don't give it a wrong there yet. I get you on that. Get it and make sure it's done right. Make sure it's done right. Because this is called the callback, right? It's the callback. We don't want you to have a callback. We don't want you to have a callback, but I guarantee you a Seattle City inspector is not making sure you're not going to get a callback. That's pretty much a for sure thing. They're almost useless. They are useless. I had a job that they made the customer... He was renovating the house and we had to disconnect his heat pump and then re-hook it up and the inspector came in and they just changed everything. His old furnace... There was something with it so we had to come back and install a power venter. So it was a water heater. It was a furnace. Power vents are only water heaters usually. Anytime there is a vertical vent it's more vertical than it is horizontal. So we had to install that and then the inspector came back and he goes well this specific one isn't listed in the manual of that specific furnace so it won't work. You have to upgrade the furnace and the water heater to a high efficiency. He cost the homeowner by the time everything was done an extra $5,000 on the furnace an extra $10,000 on the water heater. It was insane. So you had to go to a direct vent water heater which is double the cost of a normal water heater. And then probably the venting had to be redone. I'm surprised you didn't just go to a heat pump water heater. It went from a standard natural draft 80% water heater to a tankless. We ended up going out this six times. See that's why people charge more in Seattle because your codes are absolutely ridiculous. You guys keep electing people who are just screwing you over over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And yet you still move into the city. So you're okay to pay for it. Right? It's hard to say that you're not okay with that when you know when you move into a city who has as many restrictions as they do and you're not okay with it. It's a hard pill to swallow. But when we come to you and it's $2,000, $3,000 more to do work in the city of Seattle than it is in Pierce County. It's because of who you have elected. Who you brought in to be your city reps. Who's making decisions for you. I mean in Pierce County anything south of 405 none of these restrictions are applicable. You have no refrigeration permit. You have no refrigeration permit over 3.25 by 3.8. Can you tell me as an HVAC installer what in God's name would make them want to do refrigeration permits for over 3.25 because there's nothing that's combustible. It's mostly to verify that there are no leaks. But what does it matter though? It's weird because I install the same in Seattle as I do in Kent. The EPA is weird. In certain commercial aspects. Commercial though. But like in commercial aspects a certain system is allowed to leak refrigerant up to 50% per year before it's required to be repaired or replaced. It's stupid. And we have to pressure test these systems for a full year in order to verify no leaks when bigger systems 15 tons, 20 tons, 100 tons are leaking gallons per year. I mean you're talking about the whole system leaking which most people would be like dude my system doesn't work anymore because it leaks so much. It's so dumb to see Seattle do what they do but the one place that I will point out is Seattle. You guys have it rough. It's expensive to live there. It's expensive to do HVAC. It's expensive to do everything. Just understand that you live in a city that is very expensive to do work in. It is very expensive. For the contractor I mean we have to cover our ass. I mean we have to make sure that we're doing what's right because if we get caught by the city of Seattle by doing something wrong you know that's a fine that it's not worth doing business anymore in Seattle. That being said, we're going to wrap up in that talk buddy. Tell me some brands that you specialize in and which ones you like. I started out with American Standard. They were good. Pandemic hit. They fired a lot of people and after that their quality didn't quite come back. Since then we've moved more so towards Coleman. Coleman and Dyken and Bosch. Coleman do some really cool things. Their HMH stuff, their Ceylon stuff, their communicating stuff. It's pretty cool. I agree. Pretty simple to put into. I just did the HMH7 on Friday. It was actually York because I couldn't get Coleman for some reason. Same thing. Johnson Controls. Right. I love the HMH7. It's a great unit. The only problem is no coil only matchups. I don't know if you know that. There isn't. HR I guess? Nope. I feel like I pulled some. I pulled them a long time ago. They're stopped and they're inactive so you can't for the rebates. I think you have to change the TXV. You have to get a specific coil but the HMH will match to a specific TXV not a coil. They just changed that. I just got off the phone with the York rep. There used to be a Coleman CM7CE model coil that you could match it up to but they just changed it because of the new CR2 it just didn't do. There is no matched coils anymore. You have to do a furnace or an air handler to be able to qualify for any rebates. Be careful with that in the future. Interesting. It sucks because I actually spent an hour and you know I've been doing this forever. I like the back of my hand. AHRI gave me nothing. I was doing CM coils, CE I was doing them all. I was doing Aspen I was trying to look for Aspen coils. Back when the pandemic hit we had a big problem with stock. They were basically flooding the market with whatever coil you could fit on this unit and they'll sell it to you. That's with the new CR2 HSPF2 unfortunately that's just not the case. There is actually no CR ratings or HSPF ratings for coil only's right now for the HMH7 which sucks. I'm a big fan of that. I love that side discharge unit. They just came out with the air conditioner version. Why would you sell it cheaper? For who? If you have a high efficiency furnace which I don't think with new construction you're even allowed to put in standard efficiency furnaces anymore. If you have a newer home I'm on the side of I prefer gas. I don't think if I have a high efficiency furnace I would buy a heat pump but just for the cost to purchase it wouldn't outweigh the savings of a heat pump versus a high efficient furnace for the life then. Let's take a quick look. Let's do a cost analysis. Actually this is a great little topic. I'm going to log into my account here. I'm going to look up what the difference in cost would be because I'm curious. It's actually a good topic. Let's see what we got here. I'm logging into my account. Sorry for the time. Let's see what happens here. I want to see the difference between the cost. It's not popping up. My internet's not popping up. I don't know what's going on here. I want to see what the difference is between the heat pump and the AC. I'm kind of curious about that real fast. It can't be worth it. I just don't see it being worth it. We live in a state where heat is our 99% need. The thing I don't like about the HMH though is that when the reversing valve fails, it fails to cooling. Depending on where heat pumps are built, they will energize the reversing valve either to heat or cool. The HMHs are one of the ones that will energize it for heating. If your heat pump goes out and the system calms down. But not even that. If your heat pump goes out and your heat pump calls for heat, you will go into cool mode. Whereas with American standards, if their reversing valve fails, it will reverse the heat. HMH what? The AC I think is the HMC. HMC7? I think so. But it's not close to the same unit. For me it's not popping up. HMC7 or HMC7? I think it's HMC. HMC? Let's see. There we go. So let's see. 5 ton. So I did a 5 ton comparison. I want it to be the chomp. The cost is $3,000. Why don't you say that? For the air conditioner. Alright. So let's see what the Let's see what the and I did 5 ton. Just to be same. So I did 5 ton just to be The difference is $100. It's a company that you work for on how they manage their costs. So for example, me I charge all my cost in labor. My labor category is way high. I'll just use an example. My labor category is $5,000 to $8,000 for a single day install. For one day. But I don't charge anything on the equipment. I charge because I made all my money on the labor. So for me as a contractor, this here would mean zero to me. Because it would be literally a $100 difference. I wonder why they did that. Is it just that skin? No, because honestly as contractors being part of my management and ownership, I see the dollars and I see the cents. It really depends on how you load your category. So you can either load your labor category or you can load your parts category. Your category on parts is going to be a 55% markup. So .65 divisor or .45 divisor. But why would Coleman themselves do it if their cost is relatively the same? That's the thing. That's weird. It is weird. Companies that you and I work for, they're looking for this is your 1 tier, your 2 tier, your 3 tier, your 4 tier, your 5 tier. Your AC tiers are down here. But your heat pump tiers are up here. Because then you're like, this is a tier 5 heat pump. This is the best of the best of the best. So you're going to charge more for the heat pump. So you're going to say, I'm going to do a .45 divisor, which gives you a 65% markup versus a heat pump, I'm going to do a .55, which gives me a 55% markup. So you're looking at it like that as a homeowner and a business owner. What is more value to me? Like a car, I'm sure certain car models are probably really close to the same price. But they have to distinguish the price by what? By add-ons. Right. So okay, well you get a cool-ass screen on your dash, you get a Tesla-sized screen, so we're going to charge you $5,000 more because it's got everything built in. And so it's all about how the owner of the company and whoever is doing the marketing and doing the management decides on how they want to price structure everything. So like me, like I said, my markup is in labor. So for a one-to-one swap-out, like say you're doing an 80-for-80, my cost is $3,000, for the labor. Now the furnace may only cost $880, and the permit may cost $200, and then incidentals, so we're up to $5,000. I don't give a flying rat's ass whether or not I'm installing a 95 or a 96 variable. That really doesn't matter to me. I really don't care. It's the same install. It's literally the same install. So that's how we look at it, and we charge people based on that. If you learn something from that, great. If you don't, you can go back and tell Jason or whatever you want, however you want to say it, but we charge based on, I know my daily labor costs this much. Does it really matter whether or not I do a 96% variable speed versus a 95%? Does it really matter? No. Your install was the same, right? Yeah. Does it really matter what the speed was? No. Thank you for being honest about that. So it doesn't really matter to me, but the companies will mark them up based on what they feel is more expensive. So like K Brothers, their single stage 95 would be, I'm just using examples here, let's just say four grand, but then their 96 would be six. Why? The install was exactly the same, and the cost between the furnaces were what, 500 bucks? Yeah. So why? Why are we charging the customer more? And that's kind of where I'm coming from. The install labor is the same. Don't get me wrong, you need to make money off of better products. Don't get me wrong in saying that 95 should not be more than 96. You should have a gap there, but it shouldn't be 2,000. It should be like 750. Right. Because you're probably going to have a new thermostat. Probably their old ass Honeywell T4 is not going to work. They're going to need a T6. So you've got to install a new thermostat. Do you include thermostats with... Every job. Every single job. I don't do a job unless they absolutely berate me and tell me that they can't do anything else without their god damn nest. Do you give the... So do you give them out then? Do you have to cost towards the job? Yeah. So like my thermostat, so like I pay for a T6 thermostat, I mean should I pay 250? I charge them 310, so I'm only charging $60 more, but that's just for registering the warranty and making sure that... But my labor category took up all the profit. So what if they wanted a T10? Then I'll swap that out. That's going to cost more. Do you charge for the better thermostat than the one you just top in? Yes, but I'm not charging 50% markup on it though. Let's just use an example. Say I buy the Ecobee for $250, which is what is coming from John's Home. I'll sell it for $350. That's $100 for me to hook it up and for me to warranty it. But I'm not... In most companies, which is not abnormal, like I've been to more than enough companies, they'll charge $600 for that thermostat because they're trying to make a profit on top of it too. My profit was already made on the labor. I don't need the profit off the thermostat. I just need to cover the cost for the labor and for the small, for the 20 minutes that they're going to do to install it, and then the warranty that's going to take place afterwards. So if I install that and they call me, I have $70 built in to come back and fix that thermostat. If it's not a thermostat problem, I'm going to charge them a service fee. So I'm going to win either way. I'm just... How much am I going to win by? So my big thing has been like I've been through so many costs. I went to a ring conference about a year and a half ago, and if you're using your markups by a percentage based system, you're probably doing it wrong. You need to look at your... How much does it cost for you to pull that truck out of the yard? Sure, yeah. For me to pull, for example, if you were my employee, Brian, and you had to leave the yard, for you to even show up to the job, for you to even show up to the job, to my office, is going to cost me about $100, $150. Let's just say that you're there for an hour, I have to insure you, I have to pay for your L&I, I have to pay for everything. Let's just say we're $150, $200. Before you even leave my shop, you go to the store, so you drive to the house, that takes you another hour, so I have to pay you and your helper wages, I have to pay the insurance on the vehicle, I have to make sure L&I is paid, I have to make sure that my insurances are up to date, my bonding is up to date, and that I'm doing everything legally, I'm pulling all the permits. By the time I actually hit the house, I'm probably closer to $500. Give or take. I mean, $100 here, there, you know. Would you charge that per crew? So like, with the L&I and the insurance, everything's included. Chances are it's one big thing. You split that between people, so if your insurance policy is $1000, and you have 10 guys. $100 to each person. Each guy. And that's how much they have to make me, so I have to make profit off that. So that's $200. So I need to make roughly $100 off labor per day for them to be able to work. So if they leave the yard and it's $100, we'll go back to $100, it's $200 to me. And that $200 is going to add up every hour they're gone. Okay, well, I don't care whether they're installing an AC, a heat pump, a furnace, mini split, I could give a fly on rats, but what they're installing, I really don't care. What I care about is how many hours did you spend on that job? Because does it cost more to do refrigeration? Sure it does, but I've already built that in. Does it cost more to do... to crawl under a crawl space? No, no, no it doesn't. It just means that I factored 8 hours. So if they're in there for 8 hours, I don't give a fly on rats whether they're underneath a house, and don't get me wrong, this is where you're going to hate me. This is where you're going to hate me. As an installer, that's your job, dude. Your job is to crawl on an attic in a crawl space, whether or not it's for 8 hours a day or for 5 hours a day, it doesn't matter. But I do know my calculated cost. My calculated cost is this much per day. So there's no wrong way to really do pricing as long as you come out to an even level pricing. You know what I mean? Yeah, and as long as all parties feel they have gotten their part fairly, it's not that big a deal. If the customer is happy with what they pay, if the owner is happy with what they get back, if the sales guy is happy with his commission, and the installers are happy with their pay, then something's doing something right. So there's no wrong way to make a right. There's really not. So like what I'm saying, the owner of your company is probably doing whatever he feels right for his company. And I don't know him, I'd love to meet him. Actually, I'd love to meet him. He's my age, right? Maybe a little older. How old is he? I don't know. He's not gray though. Dude, I'm gray. You have a kid. He doesn't. What do you say? He's what, 35, 40? Probably 40. I know his name is Jason, so we share the same name. So I'd love to meet the guy. I'd actually love to meet him. I have no interest in meeting the guy other than like, I actually would like to have him on the podcast. I think he'd be good to have on, like talk to him. I have nothing against the guy. I actually think he's doing a great thing. He's honestly one of the better contractors around here. Jason, I know you don't, we haven't said names, but if you do hear this, I would love to have you on, man. I have no bias. I don't really care. It doesn't matter to me. There's enough work for everybody. There's not just work for me. There's enough work for all of us. We're hitting on, you won't believe this dude, but we're hitting on an hour and 20. So let's go ahead and do the last couple quick things I'd like to say. So the topic question of the day, this is something I do on every podcast so far. Explain to me the funniest, craziest, weirdest HVAC story you have yet. I don't care if it's like horror, like somebody hitting on you, like some chick showing you her tits. I don't care. Just tell me what is the craziest thing you've ever, ever, ever, ever been into. Like no names, no addresses. Just tell me about your craziest. There's definitely one that stands out and for the people who live in Tacoma, you know that this isn't a off-brand thing. It's a town, we love it. We were replacing a furnace in Tacoma and all of our work was in the basement and it would, you would walk in the house, walk about to the center of the house, turn right and you'd walk down this staircase and the house was built in the 40s so you walk down this staircase and you're basically walking down a ladder but to your right was this kitchen dining room with a blank clear sheet that something you would see in like Dexter. I like that show. It's a great show. We were up and down. We'd go up, get parts, come back down, do our thing and I was all done and I come back up, I'm looking for the person to get signatures, collect payment, just close up and I peek behind the curtain and I kid you not they are a cooking mess. Oh shit. And I pulled this curtain back and I just got punched in the face with just this smell. Of ammonia. And I've never seen someone cook mess. I don't know if that's what they were doing. No, they were doing that for sure. If you thought they were doing it. Sure. But I did not get out of that house fast enough. It knocked me on my ass. So what happened? Did you get up and leave or what happened? I just left. You just got the left. Yeah. And I put it in our notes that we will call to collect payment and that's that. So you literally got done with the install and then you realized they were cooking mess the whole time. Yeah. And so I left because I was like shit dude my prints are everywhere. Well fuck yeah. And like two months goes by and that house caught on fire. Would you replace furnace? Yeah. Did the furnace cause it? No. I never felt better. My prints are gone. They're gone. I have no part of this now. What part of Taktown was this in? Don't obviously give an address. East side. East side? Yeah. Like Portland I have? Portland, Sheridan. Oh shit. Around there yeah. Like the super ghetto. So meth house was your basic experience. The meth house. Yeah. I have to admit I haven't been in a full blown cooking meth house yet so I don't know. I got to do my craziest funniest because I've done it for the last ones. So I've already done number one which number one was the tin foil lady which I'll explain to Brian after we're done here. Probably the wildest. Number two was a tough one. I explained that in the last one. So let's go with number three. Number three had to be. I was in Tacoma 56 and like Portland I have. So I get there and there's a pit bull out front on the chain. And I'm like okay well this can't be good. So I go up there and the pit bulls damn near gonna bite me. But a guy shows up to the door and we'll leave out everything else. He shows up to the door and he says you with so and so. I'm like yes sir. He's like alright well you go ahead and come on in. I'm like alright cool cool. So I'm used to it cause I'm from Tacoma so I get the whole entire like ghetto lingo I guess you could say. I don't know. I'm like alright cool man let's go and sit down and chop it up you know what I mean. And he says now we're gonna do a five zone Mitsubishi mini split in this house. Five zones. The house is about 1400 square feet and let's just say that not one single room in the house was level. Not one of them. So the house was the whole entire house was starting to you know slanter on certain parts. So we come to a quote price of like $25,000 dollars. Which was normal for what we were doing. I mean we were doing a lot of work. This guy really needed work in his house. And he's like hey you go ahead and sit down on the couch right there. I'll be back in like 10 minutes. I'm like ok cool cool. So he comes back out and he's got a stack full of $25,000 in cash. No they weren't $100 bills. No they weren't $50 bills. No they weren't even $20 bills. They were $10 bills in $25,000 increment. So I spent there in a house that was about to fall down and the guy had told me he had just been released from prison. And I kind of asked nonchalantly what did you do? He's like I killed somebody. I'm like oh great wonderful. So across his neck it said blood. So being in Tacoma he was a part of the Bloods. I don't know if you know about the Bloods and the Crips but he was definitely a Blood. And he was an OG. He was not like some dude who was new off the street. He had just gotten out of prison. He was a straight OG. He was like I ain't here for no reason other than just to make money. So I literally sat in his house for probably an hour and a half counting $25,000 in cash on counting machines and probably that was used for coke and heroin or whatever. So I actually told the guys I gotta leave. I gotta go home. I wanna be right back. So I went home and I grabbed my 9mm and I put it in my pocket. And I said if I'm gonna get $25,000 in cash and I'm gonna get robbed outside, I'm gonna leave going down with a blaze of glory. So anyway, so I get to the house. He has his whole $25,000 counted out in stacks. I'm talking like stacks I've never seen before. 6 to 8 inches thick. 10s and maybe a couple 20s. And he's like, yeah dude, are you good? Are we good? And literally I walk outside and there's like 4 or 5 guys out there. I'm like, so you good? I'm like, I don't know. Am I good or not? I don't know. You guys are kind of the ones that are dictating what I'm doing here or not. They're like, oh the boss said you're good. So you're good. I'm like, so you're telling me the whole time I've been sitting out here, you've been sitting outside here to rob my ass whether or not he says that I'm good or not? They're like, yep. And I literally had 4 or 5 dudes waiting outside in the car who if I wouldn't have been cool and been okay with the person who I had just left and he had not given the okay, I was not going home that night. Period. There was no way I was going home. So some dude who's a blood OG you ain't gonna listen to this, I guarantee you ain't gonna listen to this, but thank you for saving my ass. That was 10 years ago. I don't know if I would have made it out there alive. Literally these dudes were ready to rob my ass the second I walked out of the car. There's number 3. That's a tough one. It was a hard one. But still the foil still takes it. Anyways, Brian say hi and goodbye to everybody. Hello and just for those in Tacoma, there's a lot to love about Tacoma. It's not all bad. I grew up here. We love it. It's hardcore. Don't wear your silk panties when you're coming to the show. Say hi to your family, friends and everything so we can say goodbye. Hello mom, hello Angelique. Gotta give a big shout out to those people who helped me succeed so far in life. You can say their names man. James, James, James Turcotte, James Stafford, Oh, James Stafford, I love you too buddy. Avi Nino, Avi, I haven't seen you in a long time Avi. A lot of those guys paved my way and I wouldn't be where I am now. Want to give a shout out to Jason? Yeah, shout out to Jason. He brought me in and I wasn't ready for a lot of stuff and he saw what I could do and I rose from apprentice to lead to service manager to electrical apprentice all through him and he helped me grow so shout out him too. Yeah Jason, much love dude. You are doing good business man. I appreciate what you're doing. Keep it up with good work. Keep offering good quality products and bringing people on like Brian and there's never a day I'm going to hate man. So hopefully I can get you on a podcast and hopefully someday you can come on and sit here and tech chat with me and have a good conversation and that's the whole goal right? So we're trying to promote this whole entire industry not as a single company like you haven't heard a single company mentioned. I guarantee you haven't heard a company mentioned and that's because I want everybody to feel equal. I don't want anybody regardless of who you work for or what you do to feel different. So Jason, if you get this please come on man. I'd love to have you on. It was a blast to have Brian on. So anyways man, he loves you. You've done him well. I'm not going to argue with that. Alright Brian, you good? Yeah, I'm good. Alright, we're going to end this and have a good one. Take care. You too. Peace.
