Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to boiler wild. name is Eric Johnson. And on this podcast, I talk about boiler industry topics, as well as personal development. Both of them go hand in hand. Our work life is the same as our home life. And the two of them affect each other. Wild is an acronym. It stands for work hard, invest in yourself, lead others and develop yourself into a person of excellence. This is episode 50 of the boiler wild podcast five zero. have made it 50 episodes. We have done.
double what I have done, along with my guests, double the amount of episodes that...
the one percenters normally do. if you're unaware, only one percent of podcasts ever make it to 21 episodes. So we are at 50. I know 50 is a little bit more than double, but I like a nice even number to celebrate five zero and I have no plans of stopping. I still enjoy this podcast. Sometimes it's a drag, but
I see the download numbers and I appreciate people listening. I get a note every now and then. If you do have questions, send me a note on LinkedIn. You can just DM me or you can email me eric.johnson at boilearn.com. Both of those work. I appreciate any and all feedback. If you haven't already, please rate this podcast five stars on your podcast app. I...
have a couple five stars, I believe nine to 10 on each app, Spotify and Apple. They are all five stars. Please rate it five stars. If you don't like something or if you think I said something incorrectly, please reach out. I am always open to criticism and change. I always want to learn. I don't know everything. Far from knowing everything and you may have something to teach me. So yes.
Just because I host a podcast doesn't mean I know everything and I am learning just like you all are.
So on this podcast episode, I want to talk about trying as optional failure as required. And this comes from just my thinking and talking to people and seeing things and seeing people write comments online and all this stuff. And there seems to be the sentiment and I don't know if it's true or not, if I'm the only one seeing it, but there seems to be this sentiment that you can
work in the skilled trades and not try and it just be a nine to five you just go home and if you learn you learn if you don't learn you don't learn and your entire career is in the hands of your employer and you should only learn what your employer tells you to learn or pays you to learn and this is a very toxic mindset ⁓ for a couple reasons
One, you are now justifying your self-worth and what you do with your career based on what your employer wants you to do. So say if you are in HVAC and you're interested in boilers and you don't learn anything about boilers and you don't go home and maybe look at some YouTube videos or read a manual or do something, you're probably gonna be stuck in HVAC and never move up and you're...
might say to your boss, hey I want to go work on some boilers and they'll be like well what do know about boilers? And you're like well I don't know I just think they're cool. Okay that's not really enough for them to say all right yeah we're gonna spend a couple thousand dollars on you to send you to a remote training class off-site. You have to show some initiative and try. The second reason is your entire worth as a blue
collar person, as a trades person, as a trades professional, which is, and this goes beyond just the trades, is what problems do you solve? And when you do not solve problems and you push problems onto other people and the buck does not stop with you, you will not be as valuable to your employer as the employee.
that can go out and the manager knows that they're gonna get the job done. And this is very critical when it comes time to asking for a raise and asking for a little bit more vacation and this and that. And your boss, your manager will know exactly what kind of employee you are. And if you are somebody that goes above and beyond and gets the job done and makes your life easier.
They're gonna wanna keep you, they're gonna wanna negotiate with you, and they're gonna wanna give you a raise. Sometimes they can't give you a raise. Companies do not have endless money. Like there is a part of doing business, your employer does want to pay you $100 an hour. They wanna pay you, they wanna pay everybody a million dollars a year. But the math doesn't pencil out. They would all go out of business and you would not have a job.
So the math has to pencil out at a certain rate, but if you are out solving problems and you do not cost the company consistent money by having callbacks or changing out parts that don't need to be changed, not billing for them and having inventory issues, showing up late, getting customer complaints, all this stuff, your manager is going to want to keep you and you are going to be more valuable. Also, when you do...
Or if you do want to get off the tools or you want to go do something else that is in the boiler field such as a project manager or somebody like that, service manager, even in the parts department, you will be valuable because you have field experience and you will understand what somebody is talking about when they say, hey, I need a pump, a feed water pump for my boiler. This is what's going on and all this stuff.
and you'll understand what that is and you'll also understand the industry lingo. If you've never done it and you've never worked on the tools and you're just like, well, I just want to be an engineer or I am just an engineer. I have a mechanical engineering degree. Why would I ever want to go out and get my hands dirty? Get it, get out of your office, go out in the field, walk the job, get your hands dirty, shake hands with the customer and understand.
that not all problems can be solved behind a computer. anyways, applying yourself and actually trying and bettering your career is something that seems to be lost on most people these days. I don't want to label all young people. Once again, I am a millennial. I am the young person. Although quickly there are becoming a whole generation below me that are younger.
and this whole young people don't want to work, that is false. They just don't want to work for you. And they also do not want to work for slave wages
or terrible job requirements or have no benefits or medical, all this stuff. There is a give and take and what flew 10 years ago, 15 years ago is not gonna what's gonna fly today. And the world is different 10, even five years ago, but it's way different from 10 to 20 years ago and how you approach and hire people and train people and retain people.
especially in the boiler industry needs to be different and you need to be evolving because you are not competing with your competitor that is down the street. You're competing with every other, every other industry in that giant Amazon warehouse that is paying people $23 an hour to just show up and work. And you are telling them, Hey, you're new. We're only going to pay you $17 an hour. Oh, and by the way, you need to drive to these job sites with your own car.
and by the way, you need to your own tools. ⁓ and you don't get medical till you're 90 days in. And ⁓ you're not.
You can't get a 401k for the first year. Oh, and you need to buy your work uniforms. Oh, and you need to buy this and buy that. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, I'm paying $17 an hour and I'm essentially paying to have a job when I can go work for this other place in an air conditioned warehouse that's $23 an hour. Why would I want to do this?
So that is what you're competing against. And yes, the boiler industry has a better career at 10 years down the road than that $23 an hour job, but most people can't look at 10 years down the road. They're looking at next month to pay their bills and pay the rent and food and all that. So it's very, very difficult to motivate somebody if they cannot pay their bills. But.
If you are the somebody who is new, younger, you have to try, you have to go out there and apply yourself. You have to feel like you are giving more than your employer is giving you. And that is what is, what is required to learn in every career. Think of, I always like to relate to sports. Think of sports, think of like somebody in the NFL or somebody maybe in the NBA.
They've been playing basketball or football since they were, what, eight, 10, middle school, something like that, at least high school. And that's been their, essentially their entire life. Somebody in sports, they play almost their entire childhood and just for the hope and the dream to get drafted. So then they play all through college and college, well, know, depends on what you play, but.
Right now, one to two years of college, depending on how good you are. But then, ⁓ open to the draft. And at this time, let's just say the person's 20, 21. So they have now put in over 12 years of playing time and experience and learning. And when they get to the pros, they still basically know nothing. They have just qualified themselves. They are the top of their class, top, top premium talent. And when you get to the pros,
They're like, all right, great. You actually have to apply yourself now and you were skilled now, but now everybody with your skill level, you are playing against them and you're probably not gonna, you're gonna find that you're probably not the best. So now you gotta go watch tape. You gotta sit down and read the playbook and understand plays and practice the fundamentals and do all this stuff. And it can be a lot and think about.
Think about baseball season, 168 games. Think about how draining it is to be in the middle of summer in July and be playing games that are seemingly meaningless. You're on a four game stretch on the road and you're like, seventh inning, we're losing. What's it matter? Like just mail it in, get up to the batter's box, just swing a couple of times, I'll strike out, whatever. I'm sick of this.
Let's just get these games over with and you know, get back home and then then I'll try later and a pro sports person. Yes, they can do that sometimes, but if you are a rookie and you don't try every game and you don't perform, you're quickly going to find that you're not going to be a rookie anymore and you're going to be unemployed because the team is going to let you go and you're not going to make it. So you are the top, top talent and you have to apply yourself and.
Then you say, Eric, I would apply myself if I was earning $20 million a year or $5 million a year. And I would say, yes, that is great. But however, they have spent 12 plus years basically for free applying themselves to a sport in the hopes that they make $5 million a year. And the average person in the NFL plays three seasons and then is out and they only make a couple million. A lot of people don't even.
make more than five million. A lot of people make league minimum, get on the practice squad, do all this stuff. And that, they just spent 12 years to play three. Maybe they made $2 million. They keep half of it with taxes, the agencies, all this stuff. And now they gotta go apply themselves at a different career. Now the physical traits don't really come over, but the...
The mental traits definitely do and they have to go out and apply themselves and work at a different career and this is why a lot of people, if you are not super high talent, ⁓ want you to finish college because they know that you're not going be in the pros very long and having a degree will be worth more than playing a couple of seasons in pros and then being gone. But they apply themselves no matter what and
You'll say, well, I would apply myself if I get $3 million a year. Well, that $3 million a year person has a locker next to somebody who's earning $40 million a year. And that $3 million all of a sudden seems like nothing. And then in the heat of the summer or two day practice or whatever, you're like, man, this sucks. Why would I want to try and do all this stuff when my locker mate is getting $40 million a year? Why would I want to do that? And it all becomes perspective.
And yes, the skilled trades are probably underpaid for what they are and the work we do, but it is all perspective and you should not allow an employer to determine your worth and you need to try. And this is not, you need to spend a hundred percent of your life making yourself better and doing this and doing that and working for free and doing all that. No, this is doing what you're asked to do. If you want to learn something new, you apply yourself.
You go home, you spend 20 minutes, you spend 30 minutes reading a book or something. You listen to a podcast in the morning instead of on your way to work instead of music. You listen to a podcast coming home. You may read a book once a month. When's the last time you read a book? Most people don't read a book after high school. A lot of people take pride in not reading a book after high school. Reading is required in order to succeed in the skilled trades. Open up a manual. Have you ever cracked open a manual? I...
was shocked when I started crack open manuals and how much information was in there. And I was like, I thought all this was just unspoken tribal knowledge and it's actually in the manual. So if you have never opened a manual, you would be shocked at what the information is in there. And you are no better than somebody who never opens the manual. So you might as well open it, but you have to try. But a lot of people, they're afraid of trying and they want to know every single option and
Well, I just need to memorize everything here and memorize how to do this and memorize how to do that and memorize this spoiler, memorize that boiler. Well, I haven't seen this burning before, so I can't work on it. Somebody else needs to show me how to do it. And I needed to see this and I need to see that. You are afraid of failing. You are afraid of messing up and.
There has to be some part of you that says, it's okay to not know and it's okay to fail, but I'm gonna figure it out. And if you make honest mistakes, your employer will forgive you. It's the part of learning. Your customers will actually forgive you as well. And it's just how it is. You cannot be perfect. And if you expect yourself to be perfect when you're starting out,
or even if you're 10 years in with experience and if you expect yourself to be perfect and don't have any room for mistakes and you have to show me how to do something before I can do it because I don't want to mess anything up. There is a way to go about things and a way to go about procedures and fixing things in a way that is educated as in, I open up the manual, I feel comfortable on this, I talk to this person, but at a certain point in time.
There's nothing else your employer can do and you're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail. You're going to say, hey, I think this is bad and it's not going to be bad. And then 20 minutes later, you can be like, wait, I just proved that it's not bad. And, but you have resilience and you move on beyond the failures and the short-term failures and you don't let those pull you down. And I see a lot of younger people or newer people in the trades who work a year or two and they feel like
They know nothing. Congratulations. I feel like I know nothing and I'm 10 years into this and I went to college for HVAC engineering and all I do is boilers and I read boilers and manuals. I feel like I know nothing. You are one to two years into the trade. You will feel like you know nothing. The college sports star who goes to the NFL, they will feel like they know nothing. They were the best talent on their team and now they're the most average talent on their team.
They will feel like they know nothing. Sitting in the film room, going in the weight room, that is normal. It is normal to fail. It is normal to feel like you don't know what you're doing. That is part of life and the internet and social media has made it seem like everybody is perfect and you need to be perfect from day one. And if you make a, if you have failure or if you have setbacks or if you feel unsure that you're doing something wrong with your life and you need to be doing something different, that is not correct.
Social media and the internet really only took off probably 2016. So we are very, very, very new into this as a social experiment as far as humans and workplace and social media. And a lot of people I see entering the trades, they will post, will, I've seen it, I've had people talk to me. They will say, hey, I've a year into this. I only have a little bit of training.
My employer doesn't train me. feel like I know nothing. I make all these mistakes. People yell at me. People do this. Yes, there is something like you shouldn't get yelled at, but at a certain point in time, sometimes you need to be yelled at because somebody may care and you may be doing something where you could be killing yourself and getting you to stop and yelling at you is the only way to stop you and then have a counseling session after. There are times for that.
But if you're just constantly being yelled at, that's an employer issue, management issue. But that will happen. You have to sometimes have a little bit of thicker skin in the skilled trades. However, it's not isolated skilled trades. It happens in every single environment. The world is rough. Get a hard hat. It'll be all right. But you have to overcome problems and you will fail. But you have to try.
There is no way you will ever grow in your career if you don't try. And if you say, well, I'm not sure about boilers, I'm not sure about the skilled trades, I'm just not passionate about it, I don't feel like doing it. Well, go do something else, but you need to try at it. Sitting on the sidelines or having your foot in the bucket in one bucket and having your foot in another bucket and just kind of just pedaling along, barely doing nothing for 10 years and not applying yourself and not trying is not an option.
you will be 10 years down the line and you will start regretting why you are not getting raises, why you can't move up in your career, why your employer doesn't value you, why AI is replacing you, who knows what's happening in 10 years. You have to try. If boilers, if HVAC, if refrigeration, whatever is not for you, if the trades are not for you, go do something else. And you're like, well, I can't, I wanna be an influencer. I wanna do this, I wanna do that.
Spend an hour a day doing that. know, everybody, you know, constantly talk about it online, but all these people will say, ⁓ like, work your day job and then do your dream at night. Start posting online. Post, post for 30 days on LinkedIn and about like what you learned. well, I, I've only been in the trades for two years. I don't know anything. How can I post and teach people? You know, something more than the kid down the street.
who's just finishing high school, you probably know something that I don't know. You know something and your experiences, just because you don't have 30 years experience doesn't mean your experiences are invalid. Your experiences are valid and if you've only been in the trades two years, you have two years of valid experience that you can share with people and if you post about it for 30 days, I guarantee you will open yourself up to different opportunities.
If you're like I am only in the trades because I fell into it and I want to go do this great Go do that life is short, but if you are in the trades, and you are working you need to apply yourself and just saying well my employer is is the one that has to push me and I'm just here to exist while you are quickly going to be unhappy and your employer You're not fooling anybody your employer is going to be unhappy as well with you
and they're probably only keeping you around because they just need warm bodies. Unfortunately, that is what the trades mostly are these days is because if you can show up to work and pass a drug test, they will keep you. But unfortunately that probably will not continue. The world is rapidly changing and you want to develop yourself with skills and now is the time to develop. You need to try, you need to apply yourself, but.
It's optional, you don't have to, but not trying and living 10 years and not actually developing a career for yourself is probably not gonna work out well for you. I don't recommend it, but what do I know? I'm not saying I know everything, but I'm just gonna say that the people who do the bare minimum get the bare minimum out of life and I am all about going 100%. And whatever you do, it is fine to say, I hate boilers, this is an intermittent.
intermediate time of my life and I really want to go do that and this is what I'm working for. Great. Let your employer know hey don't send me to any training classes I'm just here for this in a couple years I'm gonna be gone short term. They'll appreciate that they're not spending ten grand a year trying to train you and all this stuff and then if you have a change of heart they can always start dumping more money into you but you have to try at whatever you're doing and some jobs will suck some days will suck.
There are plenty of times when I was driving home when I was a service technician with the sound off, no music, no podcast, no nothing, maybe the windows down, just contemplating what is even life? Because I just had mental days where I was solving problems all day and you're just like, what is even life? And then you park in your driveway and you just sit in your truck for an hour, just contemplating life. I've had those days, I've had plenty of those days, that is normal.
And that is part of trying, is part of caring. And there's also failure. I've had plenty of failures where you go out, you try to fix a service call or you do a training class and somebody doesn't get something and then managers are upset and you don't communicate something correctly or somebody misunderstood something. That is also part of life. Failures are required and they are going to happen. But don't let the fear of failure stop you from actually trying. Trying.
Trying is optional, but in order to succeed, in order to do something and to actually develop a career for yourself where you actually have some talents, trying is the only way you can actually do something in the boiler field. requires boilers, HVAC, skilled trades. It requires a lot of knowledge and you can't just sit behind a desk as a customer service representative and just.
send emails and just kind of push things around and push food around on your plate. Not saying that customer service representatives aren't valuable and don't have skills and knowledge, but the amount of knowledge that a senior boiler service technician or a project manager or a service manager and the leadership skills that people have, you have to develop those. You have to try to develop those. No amount of pushing from your employer is going to help you develop those if you're just like, ⁓ I don't really care.
to develop, just here to collect a paycheck. and by the way, I deserve a raise. That won't get you anywhere. So, to conclude this, I hope this isn't a rant. This is just what I've been thinking lately, but I see a lot of younger, newer people discouraged getting into the trades, and also a lot of people, talk to lot of employers who they see potential in people, but they don't apply themselves and...
At end of day, your employer can't do anything for you if you don't try. And if they give you opportunities and you don't take them, sometimes they stop giving you opportunities. And you may learn five years down the road and look back and say, man, those were opportunities that I should have taken. Great, that's part of failure. You can always pivot. Just because you're 25 or 30 and don't have your life figured out, that you're not making top dollar, that you don't have 10 years experience, that you've already had three careers.
That is 100 % fine. Try it what you're in right now. Know that you're going to fail in your everyday life and your career. You're going to make mistakes. There's no amount of advice that you can read on the internet. There's no amount of advice that you can post and hear from other people and call people. And what do you do this? What do you do that? If you listen from advice from other people, some people, if they've been in your shoes, they can offer you tips.
But at end of the day, are 100 % responsible for your own life and your life circumstances and what you want to do in life is 100 % up to you. And there is nobody else that can tell you, except maybe a spouse, what you need to do in life and what your responsibilities are. I see it all the time and I talk to people, well, I'm doing this, but I don't know if I should be doing this. And well, I really like that or I want to go do this, but I can't.
Go do it, make a decision, but don't sit on the sidelines. Don't put your feet in two different buckets and just say, well, I'm stuck. I can't do anything because you're not applying yourself. You're not trying and you're sitting on the sidelines. You're sitting on the bench and you're not out in the game actually applying and trying yourself because I'm telling you right now, the world is changing and employers...
on all spectrums, white collar, blue collar, anywhere in the employer field. The world is desperate for people who care and apply themselves and have skills to solve problems. The world of America and what we've built today, the clean water, the infrastructure, all that only exists because people have applied themselves and have came together and formed teams and have formed companies and keep it running.
If you become part of the group that has no skills and doesn't apply themselves and this AI thing gets out of hand, don't be surprised when no company wants to keep you around because you didn't apply yourself 10 years, 15 years later. I'm not saying that AI is going to replace everybody. I don't want it to replace everybody. I just think that's a, just there's no end to.
this AI replacement and it's probably not going to pan out. And nobody really knows how it's going to pan out, but I can tell you this, if you have no skills and they can figure out how to make your job replaced by AI, your employer is probably going to replace you with AI. And then you'll say, well, the blue collar trades aren't getting replaced by AI. Well, this whole AI thing and automation and we we've come pretty far in three years.
So in the next 20 years, 20 years from now, you're saying that you're still gonna be able to have the same job and not change and technology is just gonna be the same. I don't think anybody today can imagine the world in 20 years from now and how different it is. And I'm not saying we're headed in a good direction. I would love to say an outlaw AI, but it is how it is. And unfortunately the tech overlords and...
all these data centers and everything, they are hell bent on pushing AI and saying, we're going to solve all these problems and replace the bottom of the workforce and all this stuff. I'm starting to see it employers, I mean, it's already here, but employers are using tools. And I just called a company the other day and I got an AI receptionist and it was able to
direct me instead of like the push one, push two, push three, push four for whoever departments says, hey, how can I help you today? And I just said whatever I was calling about, it sounds like you need this. Let me get you in touch with this person. Ring, ring, ring. That person picks up the phone. It's like, well, that's just an AI call thing. that's not that the receptionist may be doing something else, not that the job was replaced, but.
Now that's one last task that the receptionist or the call dispatcher person has to do. So why do we feel like in 20 years that a lot of what we're doing now isn't gonna be replaced? And that's just something to think about. Now is the time the world is changing. Think of this right now, 2025 is kind of like 1999, 2000.
before the internet, the internet was around, but people really didn't know how to use it. That's kind of how this whole AI thing is. Don't listen to the people online that say, this is exactly what it's gonna be, or you can just replace half your workforce with this tool. We're not there yet, but don't be surprised when we get there in 20 years. And I'm not saying that's good, but I can't control the world. I can only control the variables we're at. And I know that...
if you build yourself up with skills and if you have problem solving skills, you're going to be better than the person who does not have problem solving skills. So I plead with you, try at whatever you need to do, whatever you want to do, try. Apply yourself in a career and if you feel like the career is not for you, after four to five years, you can always pivot. There is no wrong answer. The only wrong answer is sitting on the sideline and doing nothing.
But just know that failure is required. You're going to go through failure. You're going to go through relationship issues. You may have some health issues. That's just part of life. And that's why you need to build a strong community and have people support around you and hopefully be a part of a great company that supports you as well with great people as humans are not meant to live alone and we need to have community. So thank you for listening to episode 50.
Boiler Wild podcast. appreciate every single person that listens to this podcast. I have some more guests lined up as we head into this Christmas, New Year's season where everybody's putting off work till January 15th. But it's a fun time of year, especially in the boiler industry and especially in this winter now that we are getting cold and snow in most of the northern states.
or lot of times in the past years it's been rainy and 40 degrees. But yes, thank you. If you haven't already, please rate this podcast five stars. If you have feedback on this episode or any other episode or you want to be a guest, you can DM me on LinkedIn or email me eric.johnson at boilearn.com. I appreciate you all and stay wild.
