54. Building an Australian Boiler Service Company with Jeff Watts

January 08, 2026

Jeff Watts shares his extensive experience in the boiler industry in Australia, discussing his journey from a technician to a business owner. He highlights the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, including shipping costs and project management. The discussion also covers the licensing and training processes for technicians in Australia, the current state of the boiler market, and the importance of employee wellness and training. Jeff emphasizes the need for basic training in the industry and the qualities that make a reliable service technician. In this conversation, Jeff Watts and Eric Johnson discuss the intricacies of hiring in the boiler industry, emphasizing the importance of presentation and first impressions. They delve into the challenges of unbillable work and the balance between employee needs and business viability. Mental health in the workplace is highlighted, along with personal struggles faced by business owners. The role of family support is discussed, as well as the value of in-person relationships in a digital age. The conversation concludes with insights into the boiler industry's impact and the importance of understanding its significance in everyday life.

Episode Transcript

Jeff Watts (00:00)
So when I used to go to the expo, the ASHRAE Expo, it was like 33 hours of flying time.

Eric Johnson (00:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's...

Jeff Watts (00:11)
Yeah,

so that doesn't include your stopovers and you're getting to the airport early and that sort of stuff, you know, so.

Eric Johnson (00:18)
That's rough I never think about that. That they have that in America. Although they have one in Mexico. But I don't think they have one in Europe. Although Europe has their own kind of things. And then Australia. I don't know. What's...

Jeff Watts (00:40)
Yeah, there's a big

one in Europe, there's one in Germany one year and the next year they do it in Italy, ⁓ which is the same as the expo over there in America, you know.

Eric Johnson (00:50)
Yeah, so.

what's your story? I don't even know where to begin because I don't know anything about you. I don't know anything about Australia or the boiler market or what you're doing now. It's kind of different and unique. do you have high school-ish? Is there a high school in Australia?

Jeff Watts (00:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, so you run a high school, so I did it up to year 10. And then I left in year 10 and carried on from there. And then normally go to year 12, which gives you an education or a mark to go to university, you know.

Eric Johnson (01:27)
All right, and.

What'd you do after that?

Jeff Watts (01:30)
I guess from my, my, my point of view, I'm a truck driver now. We've been the boiler game for about 30 years and, ⁓ trying to find podcasts, listen to, and I found, found yourself and, ⁓ listen to the podcasts. Every one of them I've got to so far, think about 49 now. ⁓ there's so much relevance there that I've experienced or just go, yeah, this guy's writing and training and that sort of stuff. You know, it's,

fitness thing and mental game. It's really cool what you're doing. And I just wanted to my story forward, as opposed to what I've done over the years and my experience as a technician to an office man to starting my own business and working my way through, you know, to, and the last of it, had to put my business administration about two years back. So the highs and lows of the boiler game as such, you know.

Eric Johnson (02:25)
Yeah, well that's great to hear that you resonate with it. Sometimes I feel like I'm on an island. You know, I'm still pretty relatively unknown and like I have listeners to the podcast, but...

Jeff Watts (02:26)
Thanks.

Eric Johnson (02:41)
I only get a couple messages here there like, great podcast or, I like this episode, but I haven't gotten any like in-depth feedback of people who listen. And I'm always like, am I like the only one saying this? I can't be the only one saying this. Cause I, when I talk to people, I can basically tell them where they, we haven't, we can basically finish each other's sentences of like our experiences and across the United States.

Jeff Watts (02:55)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (03:08)
Every company has problems, but they're all basically the same. And I assume it's the same around the world. mean, humans are humans. The problems are gonna be pretty much the same. Just the culture and laws differ a little bit.

Jeff Watts (03:25)
Yeah, 100%. And, you know, we work with ASME or ASME code over here a little bit. ⁓ I found Hurst Boilers over there in Georgia. We've worked with those guys for a number of years, importing their product into Australia, which is a great product note as well. But I guess, like for me, when I first started in the boiler game, little did I know, I was about 10 years old in primary school. ⁓

A buddy of mine at the school there, his dad was a stoker on a steam engine for a vintage steam train facility, you know. And we were, as kids, up the front there throwing the coal there in the boiler to get that thing going. Until I knew then that the boiler game was going to be my industry for the next 30 years when I got older, you know. So it's pretty cool.

You know, then starting on the boiler game, I was working on a race car. So I'm heavily into a sprint car racing and that sort of stuff. I do track racing. I was working for a guy, big crew for him. And I was lost my job at an auto parts shop. And I said to this guy, can I use as a reference to give me a job somewhere? And I wanted to be a mechanic. So yeah, all good. He ran me back and said, look, I've got to put a boiler in here to dairy as a big 300 horsepower.

⁓ Cleaver Brooks boiler it was. You want to and do two or three days work, give me a hand just to get this boiler ready to go in and then all good. So ever since then I've been in the boiler game. So three days work and 30 years later I was still doing boilers. And I pulled that boiler out about six years ago and put a Hurst boiler in the end replacement. So pretty cool. So yeah.

Eric Johnson (05:14)
What is

the cost to ship a boiler across the world? I guess, do they just put it in a container?

Jeff Watts (05:20)
Well, yeah, so prior to

COVID, it was pretty good. So we were shipping a 500 horsepower Hurst boiler from Georgia to Western Australia. That cost us about 40,000 Australian, so about 30,000 US to ship it across. We want a big contract to supply a 1500 horsepower.

FireTube, which is a four pass Hurst boiler. We had a quote from the supplier prior to COVID, which was about $60,000 to ship that over. At the end of that, ended COVID, got to ship it, and they quoted us $149,000 to ship that across to Australia. So that job there is what pretty much brought me undone with my business. We had a

big job that we signed up prior to COVID. It was about 1.6 million to supply a boiler only. We got that job prior to COVID. During COVID, we all the design and layout and design approval, all the drawings and nozzle loads and know, heaps of stuff designed for integrating to their system on site there. Then we went to order all the parts for it and we're like,

this job's going to cost us 3.2 million. And we an invoice value of 1.6. So the cost of labour and all the materials through that COVID period just went through the roof and went back to the client to get some more money and they sort of said no. So I'm fortunate to throw the keys in. So 14 years of my own business down the drain and overnight pretty much. Very upsetting and very hard to do.

All part of the fun and learning along the way, you know.

Eric Johnson (07:07)
Yes, so you... when did you start your company?

Jeff Watts (07:14)
So I was technician for about, I started in the boiler game in 92, I'm going to say, as a technician. And then worked my way up to a service coordinator. Now the service coordinator job, I'm telling you now, is the hardest job in the industry. When you're scheduling guys, they've all got different attitudes and problems and life, things happening, they've got babies or things in their life, getting home loans, sort of stuff. It's really hard to schedule.

two guys that can't work together, you gotta use another guy and that sort of stuff. But I worked through that up to a service manager role for another company. And I was there for about two or three years. We had a big year there and we made about a million dollars profit for the business. And they come to me and give me a one and a half percent pay rise after that deal. And I went, you can't be serious. I'm gonna do my own thing.

So went back and spoke to my wife and we're gonna do our own thing. And then I was actually racing a car at a track called on the Asheville in Bathurst. And it's where we all race over there. And I hit the wall there and I had to pay for the damages. I'm at the going down the straightaway there after I crashed his car, I look at the bonnet and saying, do you want to do this? You need to have your own business. You can't afford to do these damages on wages, you know?

I came back and I went to see my boss and said, look, I'm going to have my notice here. I'm going to do my own boiler game. And that day there, they marched me out the door because I told them what I was going to do. And I'm competitor to them. that day, I got marched out the door. So at that time, we just had a newborn, our first child, and our daughter. And the government gave us, we had a child back in those days, a five grand bonus.

So that's where I started the company with, with five grand. Went and bought a little ute or a truck as you call it. And then put my insurance in place. then just so I'd been in industry a long time, I had good rapport with customers around the place. I had a lot of clientele that would chase me up. there was one client, two clients. And then over the years, we built up to a really big company. So that's how it's logged. I was drinking water and eating stale sandwiches and

That sort of stuff there is trying to ends meet for probably 12 months until we got going properly. But yeah, it was pretty cool. And in the end there, we had nearly 35 employees at one point. You're trying to find 100 grand a week for wages. It's big deal. And obviously training's part of that, you know.

Eric Johnson (09:58)
What year was that when you quit and started?

Jeff Watts (10:03)
That

was 2009. Yeah.

Eric Johnson (10:07)
All right, and.

before then you service technician to service coordinator, shout out to all the service coordinators too. Difficult job, just as you said. how did you, so you said you were 10, how did you learn boilers and troubleshooting? Did you have any formal schooling, job training? What was that process like?

Jeff Watts (10:15)
Yeah.

That so basically, I mean, I grew up in a country town. So I was hands on building bikes and pulling lawnmowers apart and repairing engines and that sort of stuff as a kid, you know, my background when I first started was more fitting type of background. And then you sort of lean into now you start a boiler up and don't start you got to figure out why start running, you know, so you, you start the process of

elimination and then we got some training on electrical stuff and got electrical license as a restricted sparky so we can fault find and change out like the light components. And then I got a gas ticket did a three week gas course and you get a gas ticket and then yeah, you're back in those days. This is back in the 90s pretty much it was a lot easier to get electrical and gas licenses and stuff.

As nowadays, it's a lot more complicated, which is a good thing, I think, to get that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's more trial and error and just applying myself to the task of fixing breakdowns or faults and teaching yourself pretty much on the way. there's been some training on the way as well in business coaching and that sort of stuff as you get bit older and carry on.

Yeah, the boiler stuff was teach yourself pretty much back in those days.

Eric Johnson (12:00)
What is the process to get license? Does everybody that work on boilers or pressure vessels need a license from the Australian government or like a province?

Jeff Watts (12:00)
Right.

Yeah,

for your province pretty much for the state you're in. You can ask for interstate recognition, you can go into state with some work if you have a license to work over there as well. So you can ask for recognition and get signed off and approved to work in a different state or province there. But the process at the moment to get a gas ticket, you need to have an electrical ticket first to get in Australia, they call it type B class license.

which allows you to work on basically your industrial commercial units as such. If you have an A grade license, that's pretty much your household stuff. Little instantaneous hot water systems, sort of 50 kilowatts sort of stuff, know, small stuff. But yeah, you need to have a B grade. Gas ticket in Australia, but to get that first, you need to have an electrical license.

⁓ be restricted or ⁓ full electrician whatever you want to have as such. And then with your ⁓ Siemens stuff, like the LMV stuff, you need to do the LMV course with Siemens and to be an approved ⁓ person to get the passports and start to work on the Siemens stuff in Australia as well.

Eric Johnson (13:33)
What is it just, you need to prove so many hours of experience and then take a test to get the license?

Jeff Watts (13:41)
Yeah, so yeah,

basically electrical licenses, there's a practical stuff and then there's an assessment as well. And with your type B gas ticket, it's basically a three week course. go and do so it's two weeks away. And of course, and you have a break for about two or three weeks, and then you have another week, and then you get your ticket and then you apply to your

what do you call it, your local government authority and they give you a gas ticket. Now, I don't believe in that. There's so many guys that have come out of there who are a plumber, no offense to plumbers, but they want to be type B gas fitters. And they come out with this ticket and go, I'm a type B gas man now, let me at it. And they've got no experience whatsoever. And they're working with, know, thousand horsepower boilers. They've got no idea. So I don't believe in the process at the moment, but.

Unfortunately, that's what we got. So we used to buddy our guys up with more experienced guys to give them some more experience and exposure. That cost a lot of money for the company. know, a guy following another guy around for two or three months. But, you know, if you don't invest in training, you're not going to go ahead. So it is what it is. Now we have two guys on call. We have a guy who was new. He would take the call.

He'd have a buddy, but he'd give me a call to and go to the site with him for a call out. So, you know, I was paying two guys to be on call and two guys to attend a call out during the night. And the next day you have a call out, you're missing two guys on the road, you know, but if you don't train, you don't go ahead. So it is what it is.

We're just doing best in our guys and hope for the best, you know.

Eric Johnson (15:31)
Is there union, non-union labor in Australia?

Jeff Watts (15:35)
Not really, there was unions here.

A lot of the construction sites we go to is union, we call it. They're a union site, but you don't need to be a member to go on site. You just got to abide by their rules, pretty much. And to me, unions are good, but they're bad as well. They cost a lot of money, a lot of nuisance stuff for nothing, in my opinion. But they do some good stuff as well. But, you know, they're...

It costs a company a lot of money for their rubbish they're going about. You know, you're going to have a TA to carry a toolbox to for a guy and this sort of stuff. know, just gets ridiculous. It just adds a cost to the job that you don't need. It's not necessarily so.

Eric Johnson (16:18)
What is the boiler market like in Australia? it process? I don't know how cold it gets in Australia for heating. Is it all process?

Jeff Watts (16:18)
and happy to be here you.

Yeah,

so we have the same as America. ⁓ We have some cold areas. I don't know how to convert it to Fahrenheit, we get zero degrees here below zero in Celsius here in places. So our HVAC season we call it starts around April and we'll go through to like September for heating your buildings and that sort of stuff all across Australia.

There's some states like Tasmania, they're pretty much cold all year pretty much, so they got a bit longer HVAC season. But that's when you start getting all your calls for a boiler that's been sitting there for six months doing nothing and all of sudden it needs to go and don't go. you're rushing down to get them going, you know. ⁓ But there is lot of steam around as well, lot of industrial kilns and burners for process for...

making dynamite for the mines. Now you've got your dairies, you've got hospitals, we've got abattoirs or know meat workplaces. Saw mills, lumber mills, the same thing you got in America we got here you know so there's lot of steam, lot of thermal oil, a lot of hot water heaters around the place you know.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same.

Eric Johnson (17:48)
I know mining, mining is a

big thing in Australia. Do boilers, is there any role in the mining process?

Jeff Watts (17:59)
There is, especially in like the copper or the gold mining places, they use elution heaters in the gold places to strip the gold. And then there's, you got your lot of kilns that they've done the product for kiln to burn off certain stuff and get a different product at the end of that, which then goes off the process. There's steam process in different mining as in your lithium plants.

a lot of lithium over here, which can ship to China. That's part of their process. Lot of it is pressures setup around the 160 psi sort of pressure. There is high pressure stuff, but most of it's all sort of the 160, psi sort of boiler range in the steam plant over here.

Eric Johnson (18:44)
are there any boiler manufacturers in Australia for industrial boilers? Because you said you were shipping Hurst. So I would assume that it would be way cheaper if somebody built it in Australia.

Jeff Watts (18:51)
Yeah.

Unfortunately not there is one company that builds some boilers in Queensland everybody else ships their stuff in from Indonesia or Philippines China Vietnam Everyone's getting their stuff built there, which is I don't want to rag on them but we all know their quality of their steel and their their processes and their welding qualifications are not the best I wanted to do something different so

A lot of them like a popular boiler in Australia is a vertical fire tube, vertical boiler like a Fulton 20J or 50J sort of thing. They're a down firing type boiler with the burners on top, firing down into the furnace there. And the other guys, they bring in same thing, but they get a package burner on top and they're built in Queensland or they're built in Vietnam or wherever else. But I wanted to get something that was fired from the side.

So I found the 4BT range with Hurst, which is a four pass boiler. And I just don't like the down tube ones where when that burner turns off, heat rises. So all your flame scanners and all your electrical works inside the package burner there, when that burner turns off, they get hot and burnt and interior, And the work on top of the boiler there working away,

hot airs trying to lift the burner up and it's just not economical or safe in my opinion. So we found the Hurst guys and got on well with those guys there. we had a point of difference. We had easier working access to the burner as a selling point for us because it was safer to work on the ground than up in the air. We had four pass design where everybody else is the three pass. So we're getting more bang for buck out of your fuel going to the burner.

And same with their fire tube boilers, you we're buying fire tube boilers out of there and they were a full pass with a stackmaster economiser. And we had one client here a big meatworks, they had a 800 horsepower Cleaver Brooks and a 600 horsepower John Thompson water tube boiler there. We pulled the Cleaver Brooks boiler out. We put the 1000 horsepower Hurst boiler in there.

We could run the whole plant on one boiler and we saved them 30 grand a month in gas. they were pretty stoked with that. They'd been economizing and else. And technology to improve the LMV systems and that sort of stuff was big help. yeah, was pretty cool to put that in there. You sell it to somebody and then it works. It's a good thing, you know?

Eric Johnson (21:34)
Would you use a lot of the Siemens LMV systems?

Jeff Watts (21:38)
Yeah, quite popular here in Australia. Yeah, everyone's starting to use a bit more. So in Australia, it's predominantly Siemens. A little bit of what's the other one called?

Eric Johnson (21:49)
Fireye Autoflame

Jeff Watts (21:51)
No, not Autoflame not Fireye Can't think of it. It's a Italian One. Um, but yeah, just logic control.

Eric Johnson (21:56)
I don't know anything about

Italian burner systems.

I assume you're just importing burners from either Europe or America as well.

Jeff Watts (22:09)
I'm not from America, I'm only from Europe so Weishaupt is quite popular. Yeah, Riello, Nu-Way Burners, I was importing some burners from Italy called SBR. They were quite popular in the end there. didn't have any Autoflame that sort of stuff over here, was ⁓ mainly Weishaupt. But I mean, the Cleaver Brooks boilers they were quite popular in Australia and a lot of those

CB boilers they had their own integral burner they had a cup sort of burner on them. So they're a really good burner right they're very efficient very good. By their age they still can't beat them really.

Eric Johnson (22:46)
Are you ordering gasket kits from America for a Cleaver boiler?

Jeff Watts (22:51)
No, I get them all made in Australia. Yeah. Some parts you've got to get from them like your Nozzles or your, they've got an agent here in Australia. So you've got to buy through the agent here in Australia. So you can't buy from Cleaver Books direct.

Eric Johnson (22:54)
Okay.

in America there are some boiler manufacturers that have operations in China that will build pressure vessels and then ship them over and finish the boiler here. Do you get pure Chinese boilers getting shipped into Australia that are like, I don't know, Shanghai boiler or something like that?

Jeff Watts (23:19)
Yep.

Yep, we get stuff from China, but to get it into Australia, you need to have design approval. So when you go when you install the boiler and you are commissioned at all, you've got to put a submission into the local authorities. And to do that, you need to have a bit of paper saying this boiler has been checked and verified by or designed verified by an engineer. So you need to go to an Australian design engineer and get approval at all the welding.

all the material certs design, hydro testing, manufacturing processes all to an Australian standard or a relevant standard, whether it be ASME or something like that, ASME, I know what you guys call it. they'll sign off on it, and then you can submit that paperwork to the government authority and they approve the installation and such. But yeah, a lot of guys get their boilers

or Vietnam or Asia and get them off here in Australia, build their own control panels and put their own burner on it and badger it, they want to badger that and send it out. there's a place here in Perth, a little Chinese food manufacturing place and they're replacing a 20 horsepower steam boiler there every two years.

So it's just crazy. We go and tell them, because it's cheap. I'll be go and offer them a Hurst boiler, it's now like hundred grand for an install. And they're like, too much. We'll get a boiler for 20 grand and get this guy installer, and everything else for 30. You're like, can't compete. So it's not a customer you want to have, I suppose.

Eric Johnson (25:02)
What is the emissions requirements like? Do you have NOx requirements?

Jeff Watts (25:08)
There's no NOx requirements in Australia at present, no. I they're heading that way, but ⁓ we certainly sell it as that way. We go and sell the NOx and everything else. We're following Europe, we're following America, and this is a low NOx burner and all sort of stuff, but there's no actual requirements at this point to have NOx on your boilers or such.

Eric Johnson (25:30)
Is natural gas plentiful or is there

a lot of remote areas with like fuel oil or propane?

Jeff Watts (25:38)
So natural gas is, so all the, what do call it, the built up areas, all the cities in Australia, they've got natural gas running in your house, in the street, up the front, or your building, you've got gas in the street, which is part from the gas fields up north. So there's plenty of natural gas. And if you go out to the remote areas, a lot of the guys will be on propane out there, but a lot of the mine sites now are going to

Liquefied natural gas they've got a plant on site there that they're bringing LNG converted to natural gas on site and they've done that so because the LPG price or the propane prices It's almost bigger than diesel. So I don't ⁓ know what he called diesel. There's that number one fuel number two fuel To yeah, there is a yeah, it's a number two fuel

Eric Johnson (26:26)
Number two, Kerosene is number one.

Jeff Watts (26:32)
And there is some places very limited but there is a few places that store about bunker fuel the heavy oil in that quite cheap, but that's It's not refined very well and very hit and miss, you know, you get a truckload of Fuel come in and it's all different to the last load is gonna retune the burner again and then four or five hours out of Perth so it's a trip down there and recommission

Eric Johnson (26:55)
When you were hiring service technicians, how did you find and train them? Are you just asking, hey, do you have these licenses? Well, if you don't have any boiler manufacturers, how do you, there's no factory training

Jeff Watts (27:11)
No it's hard like it's yeah we we pretty much run an ad full time and you get some people come through they just moved from New Zealand or England or South Africa or wherever else who've got boiler experience they've got boiler experience they're pretty much get the job they're very far and few between like in the state where i'm in western Australia there's probably about 30

Eric Johnson (27:12)
Is it all just?

Jeff Watts (27:39)
I'd say 30 guys that are fully qualified to work on boilers. So a lot of those are retired now. They're very hard to get. I found the easiest ones to get, or the better ones to get was a industrial electrician. Cause they were at, that was still a bit wow when they went to the first boiler. Cause I don't know about in America, but a lot of the boilers here, there's no wiring diagram in there. You got to start from the input down and.

work your way through to find your fault. it's a bit of a different process to being on a mine site, changing a motor out changing a pump out with three or four

I found Sparky or the Christian was the best ones to get and obviously there's some guys that aren't going to make it and they're going to be on their way. But yeah, the sparkies

and then you put them through a gas course. It was about $12,000 for a gas course plus their wages to go and do it for three weeks and accommodation and everything else. So you had to invest in these guys and have to hang around. That's a big risk, but if you don't train, you don't get any better. So you can take that risk. We've had a lot of guys that got their licenses and took off, their own thing or left another company. The thing that amazed me was

The guys come in and just completed the gas course, got their ticket. Oh, I need to pay raise now, you know. I'm a gas fitter now. And you're like, I've just paid 20 grand, dude, in training and everything else. You want a pay raise straight away? You don't appriciate I've done for you is already. It's strange old thing. And then they get other companies here, they got a gas ticket. So they go and poach them and offer them $5 an hour more. And then off they go. Catch 22.

Eric Johnson (29:17)
Yeah, it's a delicate balance between the best companies are the ones that create their own workforce and train them up. But if your competitor relies on you to train people and then just offers them more money than really what they're worth and just poaches them, it's it is a

business practice that the people will jump and yeah, you can put in some like clawback stuff and if we train you and you gotta work two years and all that stuff, never, in my experience, it never really, it can get messy because if you pay 10 grand and then somebody leaves,

Jeff Watts (30:00)
It means nothing really

Eric Johnson (30:10)
What do you do? Sue them for 10 grand? it...

Jeff Watts (30:13)
Yeah, and it cost you 20 when you get it back.

on with that. It's, it's, you know, I was flat out when I was running the company. You're flat out and you haven't got time to, oh yeah, all right, here's one of these, sign it off, move on, next page, let's go. You know, let's put it behind us and move on and try and improve on it, I suppose. But you got guys that hang around and do the right thing. And we used to do stuff for our customers, for our clients as well. But even the guys.

Christmas time we would get them all a big Christmas ham and take it home. And then we'd a big party at the workshop at end of the year and we'd have jumping castle there or an animal farm come in and they bring their wife and their kids in or their grandkids in and they'd have a great time for the afternoon celebrating Christmas in the workshop. The kids used to love that and they used to be always asking their grandpa or their dad, when are we going to your work again? And at the big party and...

They looked forward to it, know, and everyone looked forward to their Christmas ham at the of the year. So I think we looked after our guys pretty well, you know, it sort of hurt sometimes. was one year there, we, I gave all the guys $1,000 cash as a bonus. And so a lot of guys said thank you and everything else. And there was one guy that said $1,000, is that it? And I'm like, dude, there's

35 staff here, I just forked out 35 grand today in cash. I'm gonna pay tax on that because of the business account. So in essence, cost me around 50 grand to do that. But all I see is just a thousand dollars, you know what mean? So that hurt me a lot when that guy took that to me because I want to give him more, but 35 grand is a lot of money that I forked out that day.

the highs and lows of the boiler game. and then, you know, that clients, we used to give our client, our big clients a Christmas ham and they'll look forward to every year. They would, ⁓ be like, hope you would come at my wife's been asking me if you come around here with a Christmas ham for us this year and all that sort of stuff. So I still get messages now, even last month, last month, December is like guys making contact with me and just seeing how I'm going.

They missed seeing me for Christmas hand this year again, you know, that was pretty cool. but yeah, it's hard thing and you get different workers, you know, you know, I heard you speaking earlier now you do your rucking with your weights and you walking and exercise that sort of stuff, you the amount of guys I see that have a Red Bull for breakfast and a big energy drink for breakfast and a bacon and egg sandwich, whatever else.

Like man, what are you doing? I need this to get going. Like, mate, If you get out of bed at five in the morning, go for a run, have a good breakfast, you will feel 100 % better. But then I can't see that. They're stuck in this main drain of have a Red Bull or a Monster and they get going for the day. And lunchtime, I'm doing the same thing. It's like, man, you're just destroying your body. You're not going anywhere. Exercise is the biggest thing, mentally and physically, to get to going, you know.

Eric Johnson (33:17)
eating clean, exercise, energy drinks, gas station food. That is in the blue collar workforce. If you go to a gas station at 6 a.m., you'll see all the guys running in for gas station food and stuff. Safety, I assume, is still probably a big thing in Australia. And everything's safety, safety, safety.

Nobody ever wants to talk about, well, if you're 100 pounds overweight, are you more likely to trip on an uneven surface or down the stairs or lose your balance? And that is a big thing, but it's a delicate thing. in the United States, an employer can't be like, oh, you need to lose weight.

like the lawyers would be all over that they can encourage it and but it's also how how how as an employer can I educate people or make it so that they eat healthier and try to adjust the schedule or stuff because a lot of people assume that people know but

Some people have never been in a home. They grew up without a home cooked meal. And it was just eat whatever you can get. And when you're an adult, you don't just like wake up one day and like, I need to cook my own food and yeah, be responsible. there are plenty of people who are in their 20s or 30s who...

Jeff Watts (34:46)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (35:05)
don't know how to cook and don't know really how to care for themselves and you will have better employees if you teach them how to do that and also you know the other side of it is teaching people how to manage their money and if you have healthy employees who manage their money I can guarantee they're gonna make better employees but that's outside of the normal you come to work

You do stuff, I pay you, handshake. That employment has traditionally been, but the employers that are gonna succeed in the future and are succeeding now are the ones that care for the employee beyond the you show up, you work, I pay you agreement. And.

Jeff Watts (35:56)
Yeah, 100%.

Eric Johnson (35:59)
It's hard for smaller companies. Everybody looks at large corporations, Google, and they're like, they have catering in the office. They have baristas in the office. They have all this stuff. It's like, yeah, well, when you pull in billions of dollars, you can have all that. But ⁓ my revenue is only $15 million. I'm making 10 % on that. How am I supposed to do all this extra stuff?

Jeff Watts (36:22)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (36:27)
and try to compete and I don't know, there's not any real good answer beyond you have to try. Like there's no formula that, if you just do this, everybody's gonna be happy. there's.

Jeff Watts (36:42)
None.

Eric Johnson (36:45)
as you said with the thousand bucks, if you gave 5,000, somebody would be, ⁓ only five? Man, if you can afford five, why not seven? And there's always gonna be that kind of employee where no matter what you do, it's never enough. You could pay for a gym membership, you could give them gift cards to grocery stores, you could give them Christmas bonuses, you could send them to training.

and they would still find a way of, you're not doing enough for me.

Jeff Watts (37:16)
Yeah, 100%. We used to do boot camp, we used to get a personal trainer to come to work in the morning at 6am, sorry, 5.30 in the morning. And I was doing as well and he would run us through training drill, whether it be boxing that day or be weights or running. He would give us a good flogging for three days a week in the morning. And that was open to all my employees to come and do. We come in the morning, we had a shower there and so we have an hour or 45 minutes of...

Bootcamp training as such and then you would have a shower afterwards and off to your day work, you know. A lot of guys embraced it and loved it, enjoyed it. A lot of guys didn't turn up. A lot of guys started, give it up, come back a little bit, but it was just too hard or it's easy to go get a Red Bull or, you know, going on that way, you know. And then we also had a compulsory thing there once where we bought in a company where they

do a skeleton, ⁓ what do they call it? You go on a machine and it tells you how much water you got in your body, how much physical fat you got, what your BMI is. Give you basically a print out of your body. And I didn't get the results, the results went right to the guys. But it's just a bit of a wake up call to go, my name's Jeff, said, Jeff, you are 185 high, you're this many pounds, your BMI should be this, your BMI is actually here.

got this much physical fat, you got this much muscle, and it goes through your whole process of your body of where you're at. And you go, wow, I've got this much water on my body or this much physical fat. What I'm do about this? And it says you're going to have a heart attack or you're to have this or that. It's a real wake up call for anybody to do that test. And I did that for all my employees there one morning for toolbox. it was, some good feedback from that. It's something that people never do.

themselves but we paid for it and did it all and you know the guys had some good feedback and a lot of guys started doing the boot camp after that you know to get themselves healthy and eating better and that sort of stuff but you know as you know these days you get Uber Eats and you get whatever you want delivered to your door and lifting a finger you're sitting on your couch and you can order whatever you want burgers or hot dogs or fries or whatever else comes to your door you know without lifting a finger and that's just the mentality of where we are today

Eric Johnson (39:38)
Yeah, convenience and it's also very easy to tell yourself, well, I'm working all these hours. I get home, I'm tired. I deserve this. Like I can never cook a meal or eat healthy or wake up at five in the morning and exercise. I don't have time for that. And your, what you tell yourself is going to be what your life is.

Jeff Watts (39:39)
Thank

Yeah.

Eric Johnson (40:03)
And if you tell yourself that, then yes, you will never have the ability to eat healthy and you will probably develop health problems. And that's how it is. You just have to one day decide that you're going to change your life, which is very difficult.

Jeff Watts (40:17)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (40:25)
but it's making one small decision better at a time. So maybe you skip the gas station in the morning and you pack a lunch and eat breakfast. I know a lot of people are like, I don't really eat breakfast. Well, you you're going out to fix a boiler or do something, some physical activity and...

You need, your body needs fuel and you just slept. And even if you eat something light, you need some carbs and some protein to get your body going. the nutrition education is so big and I find it odd because a lot of times I get down in the dumps of

I'm always like, man, boilers are not that hard. Like why can't people just learn it? Like I did it, other people did it. What is so difficult about it? But then I remind myself, I always try to look at other industries. One, not everybody is like me and has the same priorities. Everybody's life is different, but two,

the fitness industry, are millions and millions of people who their entire job is to help other people lose weight, get healthier meal plans, all this stuff. And you would think that people know that in 2026, but they don't. You can't assume people know that, but it's not rocket science of...

move more, eat less calories and you're going to lose weight and be healthier. But

there's billions of dollars in the industry, fitness industry, to help people do that. So why should boilers be any different? could, you know, a lot of people ask for complicated courses. I'm like, can build an entire company off of just saying the basics over and over and over again because...

There's never going to be a time where everybody knows the basics. And you know, if you look at, there's another guy I listened to, but he was talking about Dave Ramsey. I don't know if you know who Dave Ramsey is.

Jeff Watts (42:48)
No,

I don't

Eric Johnson (42:48)
He's a big financial guy and has been for like 30 years of basically he helps people get out of debt and he basically just says spend less money and he's been doing that for 30 years and has built a billion dollar company doing it. But at the end of the day it's spend less money than you make. How hard could it be yet?

Jeff Watts (43:12)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (43:13)
He has a daily radio show and has all these employees and has this stuff and has been repeating it for 30 years. So why should that be any different with boilers? We just need to repeat the basics and yell them from the rooftops over and over and over again. And I constantly remind myself that that the basics aren't basic with new people. And there's always going to be.

new people because new people come into the industry. There's always people aging out. There's people aging in to the workforce. There's never going to be a time when everybody is trained and everybody understands the basics and you build up. And I think it like, especially the people who have been in the industry for 30 some years, it's easy to get insulated.

and to think about like why can't people just learn this? Like I've learned the basics 30 years ago, why can't we move beyond the basics? But there are, every single day there are people back, hey we need to learn the basics, we need to learn the basics. And there's never, not gonna be that. Which is a great reminder to somebody who sometimes I get frustrated.

Jeff Watts (44:23)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (44:33)
But then I go talk to people and get out my own mind and really realize of how basic training most people need and teaching anything more complicated and spending tons of time on complicated stuff is mostly a waste of time until the basics are more widely understood.

and you get a good path for people to learn the basics, which right now in America, it's mostly on the job training. There's some factory training here and there, but one day, two day, how much can you learn? then most employers stick people on the job and they hope they work out.

Jeff Watts (45:22)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (45:23)
and there's all kinds of problems with that and

It sounds like Australia is the same.

Jeff Watts (45:29)
Yeah, pretty much the same. And

it's hard. even getting the guys to apply themselves to training, you know, there's, guys that go to a training course and they're there to learn and they're, they want to learn whatever the training course is There's other guys that, well, I get a week off, go sit in the classroom and sit in the aircon or the AC for a week and how good is this? You know, and even on a break, going back to the fitness thing there and the mindset of people with their diet and exercising, you have a guy walk into a plant room to look at it.

a low gas fault on a boiler and they'll be in there lethargic and dragging their feet and don't want to be there and sweating and carrying on. The low gas switch keeps tripping so they'll adjust it down a little bit and the fault's fixed now, it's all good, walk away. And then two days later, the same fault appears, you send somebody else out and they go, the regulator's failing, need a new regulator and fix the gas switch.

me as an employer, I've got a bill there for a customer that I can't charge him for for the first guy that went. And then the customers struggle through two days now of low production because of this low gas fault. And my A guy out there, he's found the fault and fixed it. So it's, you know, the guy up on his feet getting in there and wanting to find the fault and fix the fault, rather than just try and get out of there is so hard to find these days.

Eric Johnson (46:54)
What qualities make a service tech or somebody who is reliable? Because I think a lot of people have different definitions of A players, but somebody, I always describe it as if you send them to the job site, you know the job is going to be done correctly. What kind of qualities, human qualities and...

I don't know, even on the job, boiler specific qualities, things that they do that you found in your experience that makes them like that.

Jeff Watts (47:28)
Um, I always refer back, like there's a lot of things there like, presentation is a big thing. And there's a quote from Roger Penske, you know Roger Penske?

Eric Johnson (47:38)
Absolutely.

Jeff Watts (47:39)
Yeah, so he's got a quote there of presentation. You get presentation, right? Everything flows on from there. And you look at that quote that he said, and you think about it and you go, yeah, if your trucks nice and clean and sorted and organized, your uniforms good, you're feeling good about yourself, all your work is nice and clean and tidy and everything else. You're doing a good job and everything just flows from that. So for me, as interviewing

technician, it starts from the time I send them an email or give them a phone call of how they react, how they respond, when they turn up to the interview, what car they're driving, how did they park, you know, I used to have all my cars reversed parked in the the parking lot. So they come in and park on the angle and just leave the car and just jump out or they reverse in. I started looking from the start of these people of their qualities and their, you you're walking, driving into our premises.

you're going, what's the go here? What's the hazards? What's happening? What's the protocol here? And some guys are back in the same everybody else. They come in, they ask and sign in and get themselves well. Other guys wearing flip flops and board shorts and similar looking for a job. know, hey, what are you doing here? You're wasting my time, you know? So the guys come with a tie on and jeans and look on the part. You're going to get a job.

You look at resume and they've got 50 different jobs. You're like, this guy's not a stayer He's floated between different jobs trying to find his way or whatever else, know. the quality in the plant room is somebody that doubts themselves and wants to find the fault. rather than testing, suppose testing your theory, I suppose, the way I look at it. You find a fault and you go, right, say it's a flow switch.

Some guys will say, the flow switch is not making, so you need to buy a new flow switch. So they go down to the hardware or the shop and get a new flow switch, come back, the fault's still here. And they find out it's the filter that's blocked or the pump's not working or something like that, you know. So there's guys that will test the theory of, right, the flow switch is faulty. Is it the flow switch or does something else? They go back down the line, check the filters, check the pump, to get their theory right and...

Eliminate or everything else before they go right. It's the flow switch, you know, it's Hard quality to find these days, but there is guys out there There's some guys also as you know that just haven't got that or It's a hundred degree day and they're like in a boiler room. They don't want to be there. They just Somebody else's problem now. can't fix this off. They go, you know, it's Really hard best use an employer sometimes, you know, you got all these guys on the road

know myself or my sales guys are out selling the company brand and the name, know, come use us. We're the best. We've got guys out there that are that we're using or employing to back that system up or that setting up and some guys don't do that. And it's frustrating. And I'm sure everyone's in the same boat all around the world. You've to have your A guys, got to have your learning guys, know, your guys are just never going to make it. But sometimes you've got to plug holes sometimes, so guys in there to

do stuff that just to service the customer, you know, it's a very unfortunate process sometimes.

Eric Johnson (51:00)
Do you believe in the car inspection during the interview process and what that says about people?

Jeff Watts (51:08)
I haven't walked down to their car and looked in their car, no, but from looking at their car when they're driving in, it's been washed and cleaned and presentation is a good start, but going down looking in their car, I haven't done that.

Eric Johnson (51:09)
Do you know what I'm talking?

There are many employers that will go out and look at the car inside. because service technicians most often have their own vehicle and if somebody trashes their own personal vehicle, they assume that they're gonna also trash their service vehicle. And as you said, the presentation matters.

Jeff Watts (51:40)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (51:45)
And if you roll up to a customer site and I can't stand this is when people use their dash as storage beyond like one to two things and it's like ⁓ just all kind of stuff out there. One, it's a safety hazard if you ever get into a crash, but two, it just looks terrible. And I'm not saying you got to have a perfect cab, but put it on the floor, put it behind your seat.

Jeff Watts (51:53)
Yes.

Eric Johnson (52:10)
and have some sense of organization and when you get gas, throw away some trash and tidy up. But you go out to a service call and as you said, it's very different from both perspectives because a service technician has 270 service calls a year and every single one is

about the same. They roll up, whatever, yeah, yeah, yeah. But on the customer side, if they have a good boiler, they may see somebody twice a year.

those two times, those two days, and those two interactions define how they view your company. And if your service technician is not trained to understand that while every day seems normal to you and you're just getting by and all this other stuff, that customer...

is expecting our brand and our level of service that we're advertising and that we're charging for for you to provide that that day and it could be the Friday before Christmas and the technician has their mind on all their stuff and just wants to get out of there cut and run and

Now you get that unbillable service visit, yet they still want to get paid for it. And it puts the employer in this weird, awkward situation of I need people to employ. And yes, I understand not everybody's perfect, but at the same time, you didn't do your job and you worked alone. So there's like,

There's not a team of other people that like hold you accountable in the moment and you cut out of there and you didn't fix the problem. How am I supposed to pay you for that day and not get paid from the customer?

Jeff Watts (54:16)
Yeah, that's the thing. also you can do a lot of shotgun work too, excuse me, where you are, you always say it's the controller, it's the gas switch and you change out five grand worth of parts and it turns out it's nothing to do with those at all. you got to go back there and try and sell those to the customer or take them off and put them on the shelf or take them back to the supplier. But you you just wasted five grand in parts and labor, change it all out and you can't charge the client for it.

Eric Johnson (54:43)
Yeah, it's, mean, there are some employers out there that are making great money, but as contractors, it's all volume based. But if you are billing a lot of technicians, and this comes from a training thing, and it goes back and forth, but if you're paying a technician $40 an hour and billing at 250,

the untrained person who doesn't understand financials just thinks it is raining cash at the company and that they need to be paid more and the employer is just taking advantage of them. And that's where I think a lot of employers could do a better job of not that you need to open up your entire books, but

Jeff Watts (55:16)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (55:31)
hey, when you get on the road, it costs us $110 an hour just to break even and that's truck costs, insurance costs, all this stuff. So if you go out and screw around for an hour, go burn $100 bill and that's what happens. So every time, every hour that you're unbillable,

Jeff Watts (55:47)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (55:53)
take a hundred dollar bill out of your pocket and burn it and keep that in mind when you you're out and it's hard and requires a lot of training and understanding but once employees start understanding that yes the company could be making a lot of money but most contractors don't have huge margins and everything's pretty tight

Especially when you have terms and even discussing like terms of like, Hey, we went out and did three weeks worth of work for this customer and we put in this boiler. Yeah, we may get some upfront money, but we're now hoping that this customer pays us in 60 days or 30 days and you can, and you can bill them, but there's really no guarantee that they're going to pay. you just put out a hundred grand.

Jeff Watts (56:40)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (56:50)
worth of material and parts and labor and you're just crossing your finger that the customer is going to pay you. You know, if it's, if it's 30 days, ⁓ billing cycle, things get lost in the mail and then it becomes 45 days. But every Friday the employees expect their paycheck. So it's, it's just balanced and it's not that, ⁓ poor employer or poor employee, but it's.

Jeff Watts (57:12)
100%.

Eric Johnson (57:18)
It's mutual understanding of both sides that.

employees make up a company and if there's a net drain of energy from the employees of the company, the company doesn't exist because it doesn't have anything left. But on the opposite side, if the company just drains all the energy out of the employees, then you're not going to be able to develop employees and retain them and have good culture. And that's a very delicate balance to go back and forth with.

Jeff Watts (57:33)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (57:50)
⁓ And that's where company culture and management becomes so important to retain people and and we talked about training people and Then having them leave well if you can get a culture of Where people are trained up and have fun at work and enjoy their co-workers

They are less likely to leave or they'll regret leaving if they do. And it's hard to get there, especially when you're just desperate for work and hiring anybody. And if you don't have standards, and this is easy to say as somebody looking from the outside in, but if you don't have standards for employees and anything goes and.

Jeff Watts (58:16)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (58:32)
It's hard to maintain a culture or even try to get a culture Because if there's no punishment or no sitting down and talking to of, like... Yeah, like this... You cut out...

Jeff Watts (58:43)
⁓ 100%. That's right, call

them too. I sort of grew a business from myself being in charge and running guys and scheduling guys to putting a coordinator in place and then a manager in place and a sales guy. And then I'm on a plane going to America or Italy or overseas and stuff like that or over East. And you're leaving the business in charge with people you trust.

No one's ever gonna run their business the way you wanna run it, but your ideas and your inspiration, your way of thinking, you think they might want to do that, but it's, like you said, it's gotta be a culture that has to be built from the top. And I lost my way a bit there, obviously in the end. I had a buyer for the company who wanted to buy me out. They wanted to add the energy system or business to their business unit. And we were at a...

At a point where we're going into a head of agreement to sell the company and we had a toolbox meeting, which is where have all the guys coming to the shop once a month and we talk about safety issues and faults we had, how we fix faults and different things happening and what the company's doing and everything else. And I stood there with all the guys and I said, man, I can't do this. I can't, I can't sell these guys out there like my family. You know, I can't feel like if I sold the company I'm

I'm just gonna walk away and use them and the guys wouldn't like me for that, you know? So I reneged the deal, I said, no, I can't sell the business. I wanna keep the business, you know? And in hindsight now, I should have sold it then, but you know, I care about the guys as such more than myself and my family, unfortunately. hindsight's a wonderful thing. At the time I said, no, I can't do it because,

I just can't sell the guys, It was a hard thing. But anyways, you live and learn and move on. I think what we're talking about today, and we talk all the time, it's going to be here for a long time. Yeah, just training and everyone's got different problems in their world, know, their, their wife or their, partners left them or wants to leave them or their...

that kids are sick or you know there's so many things you don't know what's going on in people's world and you just go man what's wrong with that guy today he's not himself you know that's normally he's good at this but he's they've got a week or a month there they're just in a different world and you can't ask them what's going on but you can just offer them if you want to talk about stuff but everyone's got different things in their life going on and some days they're good and some days they're just way off the mark you know it's a big challenge

Eric Johnson (1:01:19)
It is very difficult when people are working alone and you don't have like teams that yeah, there's life events. Somebody dies. Somebody's going through a divorce, all that stuff. And the person is not going to be at their best,

people who don't understand contracting and employment, like, oh, you should give them a month paid off or two months paid off. And you can do that if you're a giant company. But if you're a small company, you can want the best for them. But at the end of the day, you can't spend a ton of time and money on them, even if you want to, because

You have to keep the business going and if they start dragging the business down, there's only so much you can do. And now you can say, you you can work with them and, take this week off. And if you need more time, I can pay you at 50 % of your rate and all this stuff. And there's ways around it and have a conversation. But at the end of the day, business is business. And

Jeff Watts (1:02:08)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:02:33)
You can't sink the ship for everybody's problems. And the opposite side of that is as a service technician, you want to replicate being a robot as close as possible. You want to show up to the customer's site, and you want to perform.

perfectly as close as possible to maintain the company image, to maintain your own standards, company standards, and to fix the problem correctly. And if you are thinking about something else and doing all this stuff, you may get hurt. That's when safety incidents happen. And you may take shortcuts and not fix stuff correctly. And

Jeff Watts (1:03:09)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:03:16)
It puts the company and the customer and everybody in a weird and difficult situation because the customer doesn't care that you're going through a divorce. They want their problem fixed and it's, it's there. There's no right answer.

Jeff Watts (1:03:30)
Get in production again, yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:03:35)
And a lot of employers struggle with this because a lot of boiler service companies are smaller companies and the owners care. And it's not this ownership in this big castle in this faraway land where, you know, they're just, oh, we're going to lay off a thousand employees. Like that's not how it is. And the boiler world is very, very small. know every industry says they're very small, but.

Jeff Watts (1:03:54)
You what I

Eric Johnson (1:04:01)
The amount of people that work on commercial industrial boilers is very slim compared to other industries and.

Most owners are doing their best to keep the lights on and deal with customers and non-payment and getting sued and.

Jeff Watts (1:04:19)
percent.

warranty callbacks and all sorts of stuff like that. It's a never ending story. And you say there about helping the guys out, there's some guys that you'll genuinely help out and they genuinely appreciate it and they'll work back extra hours and not charge you for it and make up for it. And there's other guys that will take full advantage of that and more. they just, it wrecks the company. There's different people.

take a bit of rope and give it back and then some just keep taking more and more and more. Unfortunately, in the boiler game, like I said, there's, technicians are very scarce and they got it over the employers. know, I don't know about in America, but in Australia here at the moment, the employer works for the employee pretty much. They're tied to pay these guys to look after them, to make sure they stay and do a good job and everything else, you know.

They know they can get a job down the road with somebody else tomorrow,

Eric Johnson (1:05:24)
What is the difference between BoilerTronics and then BoilerTronics with an X?

Jeff Watts (1:05:29)
So when I when the boiler was our business was sold to new owners, so the administrators sold it to a new company and They the company that bought it to do heat exchangers So with they with the brand change when the well when they bought the business they decided to change it to Boilertronx rather than Boilertronics So it's the same company the guys that bought the company pretty much so Company I had is still running, but they just changed the name the same employees and stuff

yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:05:59)
you mentioned it, but during COVID, you had a big job, costs got inflated for whatever reason, mysterious reason, and essentially you just got stuck between.

cash running out and I don't know if work continued in America. There was more work than ever during COVID. I've never worked so many hours. I was busier than ever during COVID. And I'll tell you what, I don't know if you had the whole essential, non-essential workers thing, but I figured out real quick that all unessential workers are the ones that make up traffic because I could, could zoom around during rush hour and

Jeff Watts (1:06:42)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:06:48)
get everywhere I wanted without any traffic and it was the greatest thing ever. ⁓

Jeff Watts (1:06:53)
Yeah, we were saying that we were flat

out here during the COVID period. The problem we had, wasn't just a one job. One job was a big, big, a big tick, I suppose. But we had a lot of government contracts, a lot of service contracts in place, for like a three or five year deal. And obviously with the labor rates, everything else going up and parts going up, we were still stuck to that contracted price for a lot of our customers for the next three or two or one year.

on that service contract. So we were losing money on those hand over fist. And you could go back, some of them recognise it and they would give you a hand and they would help you out. The government ones would say no, like the hospitals, they said no, you've got a contract, you've got to stick to it. But the big one was the big boiler one there, you you can't just as a director, can't legally just be...

running insolvent for $1.5 million. I couldn't do it. I went back to them and said, look, do an open book and we'll do 5 % markup. I'll show you all my costs. The costs are here. Let's do a deal and they wouldn't be in it. it sucks and it is what it is. Yeah, it was a pretty sad day. I did that. It hurt me for long time. Like I said to you before, I sold the business.

And then I'd stopped. I'd switched off at that point because I was, anything that was going forward from there, I didn't need to worry about, not my problem anymore. You know, in a month's time, I'm going to sell this joint and stuck in my pod. I'll still be there for a period of time, but all those headaches will be all gone. And I'd switched off and I never really recovered mentally back to that point. The day I said no, and then they sort of walked away. I never got myself back in the game again.

running the business, I suppose. let it lapse out of my grasp and just I give up. I couldn't function. I was just looking at my emails, clicking send, receive, looking for next email. Stuff would come through and you just, couldn't deal with it. just, and if there was a breakdown, there was no one to do it. I'll go do that. And you go do a breakdown. You got an excuse to get out of the office and go and do a breakdown. It was, you know,

I didn't believe in mental health until that point. And afterwards, you know, I had some very wealthy people that who are mates of mine. Well, went to see them first about administration process and that sort of stuff. And they wanted to help me out. They wanted to give me the money to trade through it and work on with it. But I just said to the guys, honestly, guys, I'm not mentally fit enough to run this business.

and they said, can get someone to run it for us and everything else. I'm still a firm believer that you need to have boiler knowledge to run a boiler company. You see guys come in who are CEOs or CFO or they've been managing a plumbing company or a HVAC company. You need to go and talk boiler to a client occasionally and, well not occasionally, a lot of the time,

I didn't want to take their money and fail and waste my buddy's money or such. yeah, mental health is big thing, man. I was big, as I said before, and exercising and everything else. And at that point in I couldn't even get myself to go for a run or go for a walk. I was just stuck in this dark, black hole of nowhere land as such. It took me a long time going through the process of going through the administration process and that sort of stuff.

I a really great wife and she's still with me now and my kids. At end of the day, in the morning you wake up, you've still got air in your lungs and away you go. Life goes on. It's really hard thing and the opportunities I had to

We had a big company here in Australia, probably one of the biggest divisions in Australia as far as employee goes and the work. We were servicing 1500 appliances a year in our state, looking after on our books, so it was a big operation. probably, speaking to my accountant and everything else, I probably needed to have a CFO involved in the business. looking at that, it's like a...

Now you've got to pay them 200 grand a year. But I couldn't afford to do that. But in hindsight, you could afford to do it because your business could have grown and got bigger and that sort of stuff, you know. So there's two ways to look at that. You can't afford it, but you sort of have to find a way to afford it. And those guys are professionals and that's what they do, I wanted to buy a new truck. I just went and bought a new truck. There was no...

theory to it or new strategy to it. It's just, oh, I a new truck I'm going to buy. Whether I can afford it or not. Just go and get finance and buy a new truck and off you go. And you go buy some tools for it, analyzers and shelving and visors and electrical tools, ladders and set it up for a guy and away you go. But theres no strategy and planning that. You you're going to fork out 60 grand of money here and what's the payback on that? There was no strategy on that, I suppose.

That's where you get to see if I was involved or someone like that to go through that process. like I say, no, you can't do it. Yes, you can. So there's a bit of learning there on the way through. So what happens in Australia? So I hand the business over to an administrator and the administrators then take charge of the company. So I get moved as a director.

Eric Johnson (1:12:22)
So you did end up selling the company?

Jeff Watts (1:12:37)
They're then responsible for all the costs and invoicing and money coming in. And then they find, they assess the business, see if it's viable to sell to somebody or whether it is close the doors and liquidate it. They had a look at the books, yeah, it's a good business. We'll find a buyer for this. They put it to market. It took them about six months and they found a buyer for the business. And they just take on the employees, the customers, all the trucks and.

trade on as normal under a different identity as such. me no, it all goes to administrators. I had to, ⁓ my wife had to refinance the house to get the house out of my name and her name and we had to give money to the administrators for my half of the share of the business.

Eric Johnson (1:13:10)
Did you get any money from that?

Jeff Watts (1:13:32)
So I'm basically back to square one again and I can't be a director of a company for the three years. I can't drive a vehicle worth any more than $10,000. I can't have any credit cards. can't have anything like that. It's a of dull process, but like I said, still breathing, still got my family and my buddies. My best friends, I was so embarrassed to ring them and tell them what I've done. You feel like a failure.

But they were the first ones there and they just, yeah, no worries, we'll help you through this and give me a hand and lend us some money for shopping or for food or, you know, just little stuff like that. was, you don't know who your real mates are until they, that situation, you know, and you're all embarrassed about it and scared about it, but they didn't care, man. They're still my buddies today. We had a drink with them on, Christmas Eve you know, it's still, and their families are all still together.

bump in the road but still buddies you know it's a really good thing to know just people need to reach out don't be embarrassed about what's going through your life just talk to people you know it's ⁓ there's people there your best buddies or your family or your relatives they don't care if they're your friends they'll help you out

Eric Johnson (1:14:47)
What role did your wife play in support and being a business owner as far as mental health?

Jeff Watts (1:14:58)
she was a big part of that. So my wife, she was not part of the business at all. So she was just a stay at home mom looking after the kids. She got involved in the business there in the end for about the last 12 months. She wanted someone to do. And because the kids are getting older now, so they're at high school and that sort of stuff, you know, but just the support I suppose is

You know, you got to have a, I call them a boiler wife, you know, for years they've been getting phone calls at two in the morning from me. It wakes him up too, you know, or, you know, we would go to on Valentine's day, we go to a restaurant there, I remember, a nice flash restaurant there in town. I spent the whole time outside on the phone to a technician on a breakdown for like an hour and a half. And she's just sitting inside there by herself on Valentine's day, you know. So you got to have.

really good partner in trying what's what you call it. Just their support and willingness to accept that what I've done wasn't intentional. was just the way things are and things happen that way. And the kids as well, we tried to shield the kids as much as we can but eventually they haven't got the flash cars anymore. They haven't got the nice big flash holidays in

five-star hotels and flying business class and this sort of stuff anymore. It's all, we haven't had holiday for two years, put it that way, since we went to administration. So the kids are definitely feeling a bit different, what their lifestyle was way back then. But, you know, it's my parents as well and my family and Lisa's side of the family, my wife's family, they all just support us and no one ragged on us, no one told us you were stupid or what to do this for, what to do that. They just...

Get on like normal and help us out, know, it's been humbling, I suppose you'd call it.

Eric Johnson (1:16:57)
I would, in my experience, and from what I've known, the spouse of the business owner, and in the boiler world, it's normally a female, but you need somebody who is ride or die, and even if the business is going great, no business owner.

goes to sleep at night like, ⁓ I have no problems. Nobody's suing me. All my employees are happy. Everything's gravy. Because if you have everything set up perfectly, the problems that come to you are the biggest problems that nobody else can deal with. So you are essentially always seeing the bad and it can be very depressing. And if your spouse isn't

Jeff Watts (1:17:25)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:17:44)
isn't there as you know if they're there for the lifestyle or the if they're not actually committed it's so I don't know I'm not married but in today's world everybody I don't want to say everybody but it is so common in culture especially in America to be wishy-washy and the second things get hard people bounce

in anything, you know, all my job gets hard, my employer's pushing me. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm quitting. This person's going to go pay two dollars more an hour. They want me to do this. No, I ain't doing that. And people seek comfort and women in general seek comfort and security. And if their husband is going through ups and downs of

business ownership. You gotta have a girl who is right there with you. ⁓ I've talked to a lot of business owners and they always bring up the supportive spouse and how important that is. At the end of the day, it's just you two at night and

everybody else, while you can have friends that are employees, everybody else would jump ship if the business starts going down. So you gotta develop that relationship at home and keep that relationship. And also the opposite side of that is some people get married to the business and neglect their family, neglect the kids. And it's a delicate balance of, I think it's seasons.

Jeff Watts (1:19:08)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:19:27)
Not that I've been through it, it's seasons of, I'm in a season of just balls to the wall working. But once the business is stable and cash flowing, it's all right. Like let's get some structure in place. And cause you'll, you'll drive yourself mad if you just take phone calls 24 seven and you're constantly putting out fires that other people could do for you. And

Jeff Watts (1:19:54)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:19:56)
Yeah, you just gotta build structure. yeah, supportive spouse key to running a business or even anything. Even if you're an employee, they have somebody to come home to and know that you can have your ups and downs with. Yeah.

Jeff Watts (1:20:16)
Yeah,

it's a big, big part of life. Like I said, the guys are getting calls at two in the morning to go to a breakdown. wife's getting the phone call too. She's getting woken up. And you say about neglecting the kids and the family there, I probably did that a lot as well with growing the business, getting on the plane and going to America for a week. And there was a time there where my son broke his leg on the day before I flew out to go to Europe for a business trip.

I'm like, man, do I stay home? Do I go? He no, no, you go. You've got things to do. I'm like, I need to go really because these guys, you just see me, you I can't just pull out now and waste an effort, you know. And my wife would stay home and look after my kid and a full leg cast and wheelchair pretty much. And I just flew off to Europe for a business trip. you know, you're not sightseeing, you're not going around doing stuff you normally do in Europe. You sort of get to the airport.

on the plane to the hotel, to the factory, couple of days, then make some dinner at night time and then back on the plane in two or three days time and you're out of there, you know? And all the time you're thinking about your family the whole time while you're away and when they go to America or you're so far away you can't help them. But like I said, lucky I had a very supportive wife and very capable wife and she wasn't here for the money, she was here for me. So it was very good and I still got them today.

Humbling and a great thing to still have and I lost the business but I still got my wife and my kids so that's the main thing.

Eric Johnson (1:21:52)
Yeah, family, big, big thing. I'm sure Australia is the same, but it's rare to have a cohesive family in America. And even friends, it's rare to have friends that are, know, Kenny Chesney song.

believe it's Kenny Chesney or you find out who your friends are and when everything's going great and you're at the top of the mountain everybody wants to be your friend but when things are when you're in the valley and you call people or text them and they don't reply and yeah it can be very difficult because

Jeff Watts (1:22:19)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:22:43)
you start questioning the whole mental health thing. You start questioning of were we ever friends? Is every relationship just transactional? Is everybody out for their own good and nobody will be inconvenienced? And the greatest thing I've learned is...

Sometimes you just need to show up when it's inconvenient and I was at a men's conference

Jeff Watts (1:23:09)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:23:17)
a year ago or so. And it was, there was a guy speaking and this was like 50 people, 60 people. wasn't this big thing, but it was this guy speaking and forget what he was going through. Family died or something and

He constantly got texts from people that were like, Hey, sorry about whatever. Let me know if I can do anything. And he said all he wanted was somebody to show up for him when he was at his low point. And so many people today will send those texts of, ⁓ thinking about you. Let me know if I can do anything. But sometimes it's not.

Let me know if I people, hey, let me know if I can do anything. Cause somebody at their low, as you said, you don't really want to ask people to do stuff, but somebody who just drives and shows up and sits with you, you don't even have to say anything. Sits with you and is there for you. That goes a long way versus people just, Oh, let me know if I can do anything.

Jeff Watts (1:24:33)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:24:42)
which is very surface level. A lot of people mean well for it, but there's also a lot of people if you do ask them, let me know if I can do anything. Hey, do this. ⁓ well, you know, I can't really do that. because it inconveniences them and.

Jeff Watts (1:25:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, they're watching the ball game tonight, you know.

Eric Johnson (1:25:07)
Yeah, there's a

football game on and I'm not, I'll watch sports here and there, but I've never understood the people who go to a wedding and will have a football game on their phone in the wedding and like, you scheduled your wedding during this big college football game.

And I'm like, okay, like, are you going if you're going to go to the wedding, you should be there in the moment. If you're putting sports, if you're putting sports over being in there in the moment, you should just not even go. And so many people do that all through life. And it's it is hard to figure out.

Jeff Watts (1:25:39)
100%.

Eric Johnson (1:25:55)
who's really there for you and who, especially the more, not that I've experienced this, but the more wealth and fame and status that you get, everybody wants to be your friend.

Jeff Watts (1:26:06)
100 % and I definitely felt that as well, know, we've like I said, I my four buddies or six buddies that hang around with had done for 30 years and there's other ones that have slipped by the wayside because I don't fit in there. I got no money anymore, know, it's strange, strange old. So basically I'm driving a semi or semi as you guys call it. So my wife's got a business.

Eric Johnson (1:26:27)
So what are you doing now?

Jeff Watts (1:26:37)
is her name, so I can't do it in my name and she's bought a truck and everything else and we're off driving road trains and oversized equipment around Western Australia. a lot less stressful, easy work, but it's to me it's I don't want to offend any semi-drivers but it's brain dead work. just get to tend the steering wheel for 10, 12 hours a day and go for a run, you know. To me it's not...

Don't use your brain very much, you know, it's not challenging enough for me, you know, But anyhow, we've got to make some money somehow and that's easiest way for us to do that at the moment and we're surviving. So yeah, this is what it is.

Eric Johnson (1:27:18)
Is it a cab over semi?

Jeff Watts (1:27:21)
Yes. Kenworth.

Eric Johnson (1:27:23)
find that interesting is cab overs in America are very rare they don't make them anymore that I know of but I think in Europe their cab overs due to there's some law for the total length of the truck and trailer

Jeff Watts (1:27:39)
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, same in Australia. But we get both. We get a bonneted truck here or get a cab over in Australia, but it's different requirements for different lengths of combinations you can run. So, yeah.

Yeah, so.

Eric Johnson (1:27:56)
Are you

staying on the west side or do you ever cross over the center?

Jeff Watts (1:28:01)
I've been over the centre, been out through, I took a 4.6 metre wide load. So, I don't know whether it was in feet, I can convert that for you. Probably about 14 feet wide. Tank across from Western Australia, across to Queensland, which is basically from one side to the other. There was 1200 kilometres of dirt. So, don't know how many miles that is. Probably 700 miles of dirt road, of corrugations and...

no road houses out there, it's just total isolation, know, 107 degree heat all day. It's, yeah, it's good to see the country and something different. You still get some calls from old clients or staff members, sort of stuff, at the boiler industry. And I'm still following it on LinkedIn and looking at people's websites, see what they're doing and see who's

selling what Boilers now? And I miss going to the trade shows in America. They were really good to go to, look at technology and the stuff going forward. I never went to the Vegas one. This year's in Vegas, I'd like to go, but I've been to the other ones in Chicago and Orlando. Where's the other one?

Eric Johnson (1:29:18)
⁓ it depends, but Atlanta Orlando right now.

Jeff Watts (1:29:20)
at Atlanta. Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:29:25)
It seems to be Orlando, Chicago, Vegas rotation. They've over the years, they've slimmed down the cities and that's for all the listeners. talking about the AHR Expo that is in Las Vegas at the end of January, about four weeks from this recording. And I would highly recommend people go. It is free. You just have to get yourself there in a hotel. ⁓ but

Jeff Watts (1:29:30)
Yeah, that's it.

Eric Johnson (1:29:55)
Yeah, I am going. If anybody else that is listening hit me up, I'll be there. ⁓ but yeah, it's always a good time and it's great. I like it. expos are kind of, they're obsolete kind of from because of the internet. Everybody, I don't think any manufacturer announces anything in an expo that doesn't make it to the internet first, but

you build four walls in your life of like what is normal. But then you go to this expo and even stuff that's outside of your industry, just general HVAC stuff, you're just exposed to so much that you just broaden your horizons very, very quickly over the course of two to three days where...

Jeff Watts (1:30:36)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:30:43)
searching on the internet it would take like you don't it's one of those things of you don't even know what to search but when you can walk past a thousand booths of a thousand different companies it is even if you that's not your industry it's great to kind of just keep tabs of what's going on and then also the other side of it is the people side of you get to you get to meet people that you send emails to

all year and develop relationships and businesses, relationships and with AI and the internet and everything virtual and all that nonsense. think relationships is still going to be a primary player and key. And I mean, what's your take on that? Do you think the human need for in-person relationships is going to get

People are gonna need more or less when we have the internet, social media, now AI doing all this nonsense.

Jeff Watts (1:31:47)
Yeah, I think for me you need to have that personal touch of face to face meetings. You when I was doing a deal with with Hurst to represent them in Australia, people were saying just do it on the internet, just talk to them online and I want to go meet these guys face to face, see their factories, see how they do their stuff, meet all the stuff there and the Hurst people, the family, man, that's a great company.

Really great company and every year we try to go the expo. They have a brunch where they get all their suppliers, all their reps from around the world and they have an awards ceremony there and they hire out. We hired out a big room there at the stadium there in Chicago, I think it was. And we hired a place in Disneyland one year and they had a big spread of food and awards and people talking. You see guys from Mexico.

China, Australia, New Zealand, South America, all these guys talking about boilers all day. And they get some innovation there on some of their stuff that's coming up, they're like technology and economizers or burner controls or control panels and that sort of stuff. So it's great to talk to them guys, know, I'm friends with guys on Facebook, they talk to guys on Snapchat and Facebook about the social stuff, not even boiler related, know, just relationships you got.

is really cool to have. Like I said, going to those expos, you walk around, there's thousands of booths and two days. You walk past there twice really because you miss everything. You do it twice and you find more stuff you didn't see the day before. Technology in a different industry, and you go, right, how can I apply that to the boiler industry? I was always big about point of difference and being a leader in the industry.

So going to those expos in Europe or America, you come back with contacts and ideas and put them into action in Australia and be a leader in the industry, know, and on the front foot rather than just waiting for somebody else to do it and then follow suit, you know, go and find these guys, talk to guys that got experience with this stuff already. And yeah, that's highly recommended to anybody, or.

service coordinators, anybody in the industry. If you're in the boiler game or HVAC game, plumbing, whatever, just go to these places and have a look around. They are a really good show.

Eric Johnson (1:34:19)
Absolutely. Yes, it's it's worth it. It's also worth it ⁓ Generally companies bring the same people every single year bring somebody bring it bring one of your technicians I know it's gonna cost you money but bring bring somebody new and expose them to different things and bring them along and Show that

Jeff Watts (1:34:34)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:34:46)
You are investing in them and you want them to open up their horizons and think differently and think bigger. yeah, it's, I think it's great.

Jeff Watts (1:34:55)
Yeah, you have some fun there too. You

go and meet guys and you go to dinner and you're drinking beer till 12 in the morning or 2 in the morning sometimes, know, having a good time and just being social rather than talking about boilers all the time. That goes on too. And the last time I was in Vegas, I sent my sales guy and my manager across. I stayed home. I don't know why, but like I said, want be investing in your staff to go and meet people, look at technology, bring back.

ideas and let's build a business case for it and let's go forward you know it's they're really good events to go to so very hard from Australia because the jet lag is ⁓ it's a killer you need to go business class i'll give you the tip that was sleep on the way home on the way there because when you're there during the day it's your night time in Australia and you get to about nine o'clock or nine am in the morning there and you're ready to go to bed

I need to keep walking around this big pavilion. But it's still a good find. I would recommend anybody around the world. And the friends I've got now from around the world, I've got friends in the UK I speak to regularly that we catch up every time we go to UK, to America, and we catch up and have a good time, stay in the same hotel and go to dinner and stuff like that. Really cool. Speaking boiler and speaking normal stuff as well.

Good time.

Eric Johnson (1:36:18)
Absolutely. Well, we're been going a while. Do you have any last thoughts? Anything? Any questions for me or anything else? think.

Jeff Watts (1:36:28)
No, I don't think so. I just really

appreciate what you're doing for the boiler industry, And like you said, you're doing stuff based in America, but you know, we're the same. listen to your podcasts and the guys talking about stuff and boiler issues and everything else. We're all in the same boat, man. We're a sort of a different breed of people, I suppose you call it, in the boiler game. People don't know what we do. People say, what do you do? ⁓

You're a boiler maker, no a boiler technician, I service boilers. What's a boiler? So we go to your home and you've got a little thing there for your hot shower. We have bigger ones than that that do a whole building or a whole facility, you know what I mean? So, and they don't even know it when they go into the office in town that there's a boiler upstairs we work on that keeps them warm at day, in the wintertime, you know, or their cereal they get in the morning or their milk from the dairy, it's all got steam.

or hot water on the way process either make an ash well. You know, it's just so many industries that we cover that people don't even know what we do. Never heard of us, you know, or a boiler or something. So really industry. And that's the thing I would say to guys when I was starting them off as a sparky, like if you can get into this game and you enjoy it, it's very rewarding sometimes. A lot of the times when you can fix a boiler and get it back online again and talk good about yourself. But there's not many guys around. So

If you can be good in the industry, make a name for yourself. You're going to have good employment, good money, but you you need to apply yourself. And there's going to be some times where it's going to suck. You're going to be on call New Year's Eve or on call Christmas day or it's your birthday and you're working in an abattoir somewhere or something. know, there's times where it sucks, but there's times when it's good too. And it's a very unique industry and I'm very lucky to be part of that. I feel it.

Yeah, it's been good to me.

Eric Johnson (1:38:24)
Well said. Yes, the whole, ⁓ the trying to explain boilers to...

general public we've gotten so good as in America and I also assume Australia that people just assume it's like cardboard boxes just show up on their front porch from Amazon and and nobody ever wonders how like who made this cardboard box how is this made and tires just show up at the tire store and

Jeff Watts (1:38:43)
Yeah

Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:38:58)
the general public has gotten very far away from manufacturing and everything just shows up. I remember watching a video, and a dad asked his kids where milk comes from and they said the grocery store. And he's like, he's like, yeah, but who makes milk? Well, the grocery store.

Jeff Watts (1:39:15)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:39:20)
And a lot of people, not to fault the kids, but well, milk comes from cows. But a lot of people, especially younger people, just go to the grocery store and they expect food to be on the shelf, but they never wonder what was the process to get that food there. Like they may look on the label for some fruit and it says like grown in Mexico and you're in the Northeast of the United States.

And it's like, okay, well, if this was grown in Mexico and it's fruit, it's perishable. So it had to be picked at some point and then cleaned, packaged, shipped, and then laid out at the grocery store. And it's now in my hand and I can buy it for $4. So like that is magic in itself. And then

Jeff Watts (1:40:11)
Yeah.

Eric Johnson (1:40:18)
combined with everything else, ⁓ making cereal and all that other stuff. There's a lot of food manufacturing uses tons of boilers, tons of steam, bread uses lots of steam, or ovens, process burners.

Jeff Watts (1:40:34)
Yeah, small goods, you your bacon and your hams and that sort of stuff. So, done with steam you know.

Eric Johnson (1:40:40)
Yes. So, well, I appreciate you coming on the Boiler Wild podcast and I appreciate you sharing the insights from the world down under Australia. I still don't understand how y'all don't fall off the globe because you're upside down the whole time. but yes, appreciate it. Thank you. And, we'll, keep in touch

Jeff Watts (1:41:03)
No worries, man. Thanks for your time and all the best for the new year.

54. Building an Australian Boiler Service Company with Jeff Watts

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