Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to Boiler Wild. My name is Eric Johnson. On this podcast, talk about boiler industry topics as well as personal development. Wild is part of the name of the Boiler Boiler Wild podcast. Wild stands for work hard, invest in yourself, lead others, and develop yourself into a person of excellence. The people who listen to Boiler Wild are the people who are working hard, they're leading others, they are investing in themselves, and they are
Eric Johnson (00:30)
developing themselves into people of excellence. That is what I hope for you, for all the listeners, and that is the whole goal of this podcast. Why would I do a podcast about boilers and steam and heat and all those boring things to most of the world? Well, I actually love and if you are listening, I hope you do too. But the world is bigger than boilers and heat. And sometimes you just have to play along with
Eric Johnson (00:58)
the heat and learn how to work in the rest of the world. And not everybody loves boilers and heat, but if you're listening to this, it's okay that you don't love it. It may be part of your job. But being more knowledgeable is never a bad thing. Knowledge is power, especially in today's world where seemingly knowledge is everywhere and yet
Eric Johnson (01:25)
Every single day I think we as a society in America, at least where I live, are getting dumber and dumber, and we seem to be regressing. But that is a rant for another day. Today I want to talk about why boilers, why I like this career path, why it may be for you. If you are listening to this, hopefully you're
Eric Johnson (01:52)
somewhere in the boiler industry and by boiler industry, you know, I I've had some people say, Well, I don't work with boilers, I work with steam, steam production, or I work on the gas side. And I just I don't know how to summarize the boiler industry. You know, that's the name of the podcast, Boiler Wild. It's kind of like the automotive industry. You can say, I I work in automotive, but you can be an upholsterer, you can be an engine builder, you can be
Eric Johnson (02:20)
You know, making the rubber for the tires, doing whatever. But at the end of the day, it's for automotive, for a car or a car application, for a transportation application, for the boiler industry. Whenever I say I do boiler training, that is the actual boiler units plus all the connected system. When I think of a boiler, I think of the system.
Eric Johnson (02:47)
And not just the boiler, while you can just have boiler specific training and you would typically get that from a manufacturer. When I think of a boiler, I think of the entire system. Because if the entire system is not working together and there's an open end or broken part, the rest of the system will be affected and you will see signs of that. So in in order to understand a boiler system, you have to understand
Eric Johnson (03:15)
the entirety of the system and all the pieces and how they work together. If you just say, hey, I'm in the steam industry, now you you leave out the hydronics part of the boilers. The boiler purist will tell you that a boiler that doesn't make steam isn't a boiler. It is a hot water heater. And you know, there's all the people online that are like, that's cute. I have a hot water heater too in my house. Ha ha ha. Yeah, whatever.
Eric Johnson (03:44)
Those are still boilers. They heat water, but they don't make it into steam. So if you say I do steam training or I'm part of the steam industry, leave all that out. Low temperature boiler applications, so condensing boilers, that is a huge part of the American market. And that is what a lot of new buildings have. The steam side for heating is definitely diminishing. I don't know by how much.
Eric Johnson (04:13)
But it's definitely going down. Very rarely do I see outside of residential, but even residential new construction probably is not putting in steam. They're gonna be putting in hydronic. they'll be putting in steam boiler for a retrofit for heat. But if you're building a new house and you're having a boiler put in your house, ninety plus percent of the time it's probably gonna be condensing hot water boiler and
Eric Johnson (04:42)
That is what I would use if I was building house because it allows so many more options for control and you can kind of vary the temperature here and there and everything. Steam, while it's great for heat, there is nothing better than steam heat. It is finicky. It's hard to control while a good steam system will work well.
Eric Johnson (05:08)
Just the amount of knowledge required to install a steam heating system correctly and to buy all the radiators and to keep that going correctly, do the do the constant blowdown and maintenance of the steam boiler for a house. It's just it's not something that a new homeowner would choose.
Eric Johnson (05:35)
if you have the cost of the steam system already spent in in your house because your house was built in nineteen thirty and you're just replacing the boiler, it steam heat still makes sense. You'll probably be very uncomfortable if you were to take out your boiler and just install a furnace because the steam heat will heat your house much better
Eric Johnson (06:05)
Than a forced air furnace. But, anyways, going back to the boiler side. So, boilers do contain hydronics. So, I do include that. And you'll see boilers going into schools, even in Florida where I live, they will put condensing boilers in schools, and you'll use hot water, also mixed with chilled water. You'll have hot.
Eric Johnson (06:33)
water lines you'll have chillers and you can have chilled water lines on some systems. It depends on what they're doing. But you can heat a building with 100 degree water, 110 degree water, and get all that condensing energy savings that you see advertised, but very rarely people use because they don't condense and pull the latent heat.
Eric Johnson (07:00)
And recover that latent heat. They just sent it up the stack 'cause they have too high of return water temperatures. So hopefully you know about that. If not, I did an episode on it. I don't know what the number was, but that was condensing boilers, latent heat and why ninety seven percent boilers are a lie, because
Eric Johnson (07:24)
They're not actually 97% efficient. They're 97% efficient at 80 degree return water temperature. If you didn't already know that, just scroll back. But that is a common misconception. So if you are buying a boiler and you want 160 degree return temps, you will be wasting your money if you are buying a condensing boiler because you will not be condensing. Anyways, why boilers? Why HVAC?
Eric Johnson (07:53)
So a little bit about me. I'm terrible talking about me. Very little people know about me. Not that I'm anybody to know about. And that's my thing. Like I don't my life is not interesting. I haven't done anything remarkable where people would care. So it's like, why would I talk about me? But I got a degree in HVAC engineering at Fair State University, Big Rapids, Michigan. Go Bulldogs. Shout out to that program.
Eric Johnson (08:21)
Four year degree, bachelor's degree, that program, great program, and the teachers really cared. All the teachers were ex industry people. there's plenty of professors that have never actually worked in the area that they teach. That was not the case with the Fair State HVAC program.
Eric Johnson (08:48)
All the professors had been in the HVAC industry and had knowledge of it and some of them consulted on the side for HVAC contractors or whoever. And they were able to talk from their experiences, which is huge when you are trying to learn about HVAC. So I didn't really know much about HVAC. And that gave me a whole range. It was very a th thin depth. And I'll say thin because or shallow.
Eric Johnson (09:18)
I'll say shallow, very shallow depth, because it's only four years and I'm young and in college. You can only learn so much and you can only get so much experience. So while I learned how to basically design an entire HVAC system and do equipment selection, size pumps, size piping, size ductwork, size fans, do all that stuff, troubleshooting, electrical troubleshooting, electrical theory, boilers, everything. While I learned all that.
Eric Johnson (09:47)
It was very surface level in terms of HVAC industry knowledge. However, that gave me a very wide scope of awareness of what the industry is. And I saw a lot of my classmates getting different jobs here and there. I you know, I did controls. So we did building controls and building automation and programming and logic and all that fun stuff. So that was a couple classes. And
Eric Johnson (10:17)
I saw I had lots of classmates go work for the large OEM controls contractors, or they would go work as design engineers, And I ended up being a service tech after and couple friends still that are service techs as well. And being a service tech has benefits, has lots of drawbacks, but that degree in HVAC
Eric Johnson (10:45)
engineering technology really allowed me to excel as a service technician because I was aware of a lot of things that I would have not been aware about and having an understanding of generally how a building works and how the equipment is all going to function together. So if you only know about hydronic boilers and you have no idea what an air handler is gonna or what a pump is
Eric Johnson (11:14)
or how you know we're modulating flow or modulating air or duct work or why ductwork changes sizes. You are gonna struggle to wrap your mind around a mechanical room or issues that may be showing up in the boiler. They're not actually the boiler's fault and really a controls contractor issue or something else. However, that education, great.
Eric Johnson (11:42)
But for most people, they're not gonna go to college to get a HVAC specific degree. It's a very limited degree as far as I think there's only two colleges in the nation that have a bachelor's degree for HVAC engineering technology. But that's not not the whole point. So basically I was a service technician for seven years right out of college, and I
Eric Johnson (12:11)
I'm single, I'm young, I basically could work as much as I wanted. And I could excel as as much as I wanted, move up the ladder. And this is once again, this is just my experiences and I would love to hear your experiences. DM me on LinkedIn or email me, Eric dot johnson at boilerin dot com. Love to hear how you got into boilers or your career. Whatever you're doing now if you're listening. And
Eric Johnson (12:39)
What I liked is I had some friends not in HVAC, not in the trades at all. And they were, you know, working a fifty thousand dollar, fifty-five thousand dollar job. And some of were on salary and they were working, had some accounting people and CPAs. You know, they'll during tax season, they'll work eighty to a hundred hours, but they're on salary, so they're not getting paid anymore.
Eric Johnson (13:08)
Which is weird. a lot of those firms just taking advantage of people and but you're not you know, you don't move up in the company unless you put in all those hours, which is you know, they talk about toxic culture in the trades, talk about toxic culture and large accounting firms where the only way to move up is to basically sell your soul for five plus years and do whatever they tell you no matter what. Anyways.
Eric Johnson (13:38)
you as a service technician can basically earn what you want. I know the union has a structure. You can also get pay over scale for the union. But if you can fix more problems, theoretically the company will pay you more money. And I know that's not always the case, but in theory, if not, you can go find another job, get a raise, But you
Eric Johnson (14:03)
You can sign up for overtime and outside of pay.
Eric Johnson (14:10)
You are learning a skill for a
Eric Johnson (14:15)
area of expertise that is in my opinion always gonna be around. There boilers, steam, boiling water, heating water is essential to American life in twenty twenty six. I don't see that changing to the point where
Eric Johnson (14:37)
The industry will go away, will it evolve? Yes, but it is largely the same as when it was fifty years ago. Yes, the controls change and all the little stuff changes, but at the end of the day, no matter how fancy we get, we're still just boiling water. Even when we go to nuclear, we're just boiling water in a very fancy way. And sending that out to do stuff like spin turbines and make electricity.
Eric Johnson (15:07)
this career field, this expertise has a lot of branches. You can start as a service technician, you can start as a stationary engineer, an operator, a mechanic, apprentice, what whatever you want to call yourself. You can also start on the engineering side if you want, being a mechanical engineer in the office. So I would highly recommend if you're starting your career and you're a mechanical engineer and you just sit in an office all day.
Eric Johnson (15:34)
You are not gonna know what you're doing. You're gonna know what you're doing in theory if you're drawing out drawings on like Revit or AutoCAD, but you gotta get in the field, you gotta do job walks. If you're not doing job walks, you're not gonna learn. You can always get away from job walks after you have that field experience. However, there's nothing that replaces a job walk going out and looking at a design that you drew.
Eric Johnson (16:02)
and seeing why it's not working or troubleshooting, like you gotta get on the job. Service technician, stationary engineer, you're on the job all the time. Even if you're in sales, you gotta get in the mechanical room, you gotta get on the job. You can't just sell boilers, sell mechanical systems, sell PM programs behind the desk. That's not how it works. You're you're gonna have no idea what you're even selling in that case. And the only people that know what they're selling in that case
Eric Johnson (16:32)
Are the ones who have been on the job and have that hands-on experience and it's not something you can fake. If somebody calls you, you gotta be able to speak the lingo and speak the terminology, and it doesn't take long. You could do three years in the field or a more a different job that is more field intensive. Three to five years can easily get you that experience to know the lingo and everything, but it is just like any other skill or hobby.
Eric Johnson (17:00)
There are people that can buy their way into owning a boat. Like if you have millions and millions of dollars and you just buy a boat and buy all amazing fishing gear and everything, you still don't know how to fish. You still don't know how to captain a boat. Now you got a forty foot fishing boat and the person who goes out every day on their dinghy that's six foot aluminum dinghy and they're they've been fishing for the last fifteen years of their life, they're gonna know way more and they're gonna be way comfortable around
Eric Johnson (17:30)
fishing, knowing where to go, knowing where to look, and that skill is not something that money can buy. Same thing with knowledge in the boiler industry. That is why I am constantly telling people, get your knowledge up, learn, because the knowledge is you. N nobody can take away that knowledge. Nobody can take away that learning. And even if the corporate overlords come after you somehow and they lay you off
Eric Johnson (17:58)
You are the one that has that knowledge and you can go out and solve problems. And when you have an industry that can't be offshore and has to remain stateside in America for the most part, not the manufacturing side of it, but the actual boiler side. I know a lot of boiler parts and everything do not come from America, which is fine. A lot of them actually come from Europe. But
Eric Johnson (18:28)
There's still a lot of foreign manufacturing going on. However, we're assembling all those parts in America and we are using them in America for American manufacturing, American energy, and heating buildings. At the core of it, heating buildings is the basic use of boilers. Everybody needs heat in the north, and most people need some types of medical and electricity, which all all uses steam and
Eric Johnson (18:58)
at some point for the most part. Anyways, going back to it. So you're learning a essential skill that you can branch out. If you start as a service technician and you don't like that life, you can go be an operator. But it allows you avenues if of the boiler industry to branch out and there's so many ways to go. And you can go you can go into sales, project manager, parts, whatever you want.
Eric Johnson (19:28)
But once you have the knowledge, the industry is there. And yes, it may not be the most high paying and the most amazing cool industry, but I would take something that is has a lot of opportunity for the hard workers versus an industry that may be super sexy and popular, but is more of a global industry and the corporate global overlords are more in control of it and they can just
Eric Johnson (19:58)
offshore you or deem you not essential or lay you off like twenty thousand people at a time for you know a fortune one hundred corporation. I have never heard of a boiler operator or a stationary engineer, service technician, salesperson. Yes, you can get laid off.
Eric Johnson (20:23)
you're not gonna get laid off twenty thousand people at a time because I don't think anybody in the boiler industry works at that scale at one single company. But even if you get laid off, you have that skill that allows you to go apply somewhere else. And if you can actually really solve problems instead of just existing, real recognizes real and other companies will realize that and they you and you will get hired. Like I can call a decent amount of companies right now and I could
Eric Johnson (20:52)
get a job because I have a skill and an ability that is in demand and that in demand ability cannot be offshore. And that is why I like the boiler industry. However, I will also go to bats and I will say that HVAC in general is great. And I know there's a lot of talk about the trades. You gotta get into the trades.
Eric Johnson (21:18)
I would highly recommend you specialize and that's why I like boilers, because the boiler industry is really a subset of HVAC in a way. And I know it's not really, but some parts of the boiler industry is HVAC.
Eric Johnson (21:34)
But if you're just like, I just do HVAC and I'm kinda know about a little bit of everything and not really a lot of nothing, and you're just I just fix everything. Well, will an employer hire you? Maybe. But it if you say, Hey, I'm I know chillers in and out up to this amount of tonnage, I've worked on this brand, this brand, this brand, I can talk in depth about this.
Eric Johnson (22:01)
Yeah, started up air handlers. I started up VRF systems for this, this, this, this. I I understand this control scheme. Hey, I'm a building controls person, and I've programmed this many buildings. I've d I understand sequence operation. I've commissioned these buildings. I commissioned this project. I led this project. Like there's there's skills and ability, and you you learn a
Eric Johnson (22:26)
specialization even within like people think building controls well there's subsets of building controls and what you're gonna learn and know about versus I just do building controls if you have a building controls project call me can you get by with that yes but it helps to specialize and be good within your
Eric Johnson (22:49)
specialization. If you just say I'm a welder and I just can randomly weld and I can do MIG and TIG, but I'm not really good at either one. And I can kind of do stick and I'm 3G certified, but I haven't done a ton of experience. But I just have a little bit of everything experience versus I'm really good TIG welder and I can I've been taking stainless
Eric Johnson (23:18)
pipe every single day for the last year and that that's what I'm really good at. Like that would be a subsection. And you know, the the whole trades thing not trying to make this a rant, but the whole trades thing, that's fine. But then manufacturing facilities are like, hey, we're hiring experienced welders at twenty three dollars an hour and you're just it's mostly probably MIG welding and you're just welding some general fabrication parts together.
Eric Johnson (23:48)
Okay, well, McDonald's and Amazon are also hiring at twenty three dollars an hour. So why would somebody who has a welding certificate or an associates of in welding and is trying to be a welder it why would they want to get paid twenty three dollars an hour?
Eric Johnson (24:06)
The biggest pothole that you're gonna come across is so you have this opportunity, you have this specialty, you're in the boiler industry. If you're listening to this podcast, Steam Hydronics, you're in HVAC bo building controls, you can always branch out. If you don't like boilers, start looking at building controls. You know, maybe you're getting a little bit older and you wanna slow down a little bit. Hey, you can go to building controls and now that you've understand boiler systems and hydronics.
Eric Johnson (24:35)
You can pick up a little bit of the air side, but you understand the water side really well. Understand sequence operations. And if you understand a computer and s a little bit of programming logic, you can do building controls. And it's a little bit easier on the body, a little bit more mentally exhausting, but there's there's so many avenues. However, but the number one pothole that you need to avoid is lifestyle creep. And this is the big biggest thing with young people I see.
Eric Johnson (25:04)
And I have been lucky to stay out of this, but it is so, so tempting, and I understand why people fall into this pothole repeatedly. And once again, I am preaching to myself, but I am trying to help people avoid the potholes of life. But you will do what you want to do. And if you're older and you've hit these potholes and gotten out of them yourself, you'll be naughty along to yourself. But if you
Eric Johnson (25:33)
Get into the boiler industry and you start being a service technician or a stationary engineer, operator, whoever, you get three to five years, all of a sudden you're making eighty thousand dollars, which one is poverty in twenty twenty six. I don't care where you live, eighty thousand dollars is poverty. And I understand that's a very average wage in America, but if we are talking holistically versus the wages in two thousand, people
Eric Johnson (26:01)
Anybody making under a hundred grand is living in poverty, but that's that's a whole globalization financial crisis. But so it is harder than ever to get started. Harder than ever. Things are more expensive, rent is more expensive, cars are more expensive, everything is so expensive. And if you start making a little bit of money and then you go, man, I really want a new truck. I deserve a new truck. I've been
Eric Johnson (26:31)
working all these hours, I've been getting all this overtime, I'm gonna go get a truck and you go get a truck payment, eight hundred dollars a month. I can afford it. I'm making all this money. Yeah, I can do that. And then your rent is fifteen hundred dollars a month. And then you are going out to eat and you're getting door dash and you're doing all this stuff. All of a sudden you're spending all the money that you are making.
Eric Johnson (26:58)
And you're like, well, I'm young. I don't really need to save. I've never really had a crisis. And you don't really know what you don't know. And even if you're older, this applies to anybody at any age. And so then you get start getting all these payments and you may get a four wheeler. it's only two hundred and twenty dollars a month. I can afford that. It's you know, I really need a four wheeler and I really need that new AR. And all of a sudden your lifestyle creep goes up.
Eric Johnson (27:28)
And yeah, you're making eighty thousand dollars now, but you're spending eighty thousand dollars or you're spending more than eighty thousand dollars and you're going into debt. You're you have credit cards and you have a five thousand dollar balance on your credit card. well, I'm just doing the monthly, I'll pay it off. I have I have that money in my bank account. I could pay it off if I wanted to, but you know, I'm trying to outsmart the financial system. Okay. Try to outsmart the billionaires.
Eric Johnson (27:57)
Good luck with that. The whole system is basically raked against you. However, don't fall into lifestyle creep. You have to stay out of that pothole. That will chain you if you are working tons overtime. If you have a lot of opportunity early on in your in your career, any time in your career, if you're getting started in the trades, if you're in the boiler industry, whatever you're doing, any job, lifestyle creep.
Eric Johnson (28:25)
will chain you down and keep you at zero and one emergency away you will learn that it is better to have a little bit of money in the bank and have that savings and that's why
Eric Johnson (28:42)
budgeting is great and amazing and there's so many companies out there that should be helping educate their employees on saving for retirement, what all the benefits are and everything. But your paycheck, if you're getting eighty grand, that doesn't mean you're spending eighty grand. I can afford it. No. You will
Eric Johnson (29:10)
Be chaining yourself to your job. And now all of a sudden the economy slows down a little bit or your company slows down a little bit and that overtime is no longer available anymore. Well, now that truck payment starts getting a little sketchy, and that four-wheeler payment starts getting a little sketchy. And now that eight hundred dollar truck payment plus two hundred and twenty dollar four-wheeler payment, that's thousand twenty bucks on top of your rent, which is fifteen hundred dollars.
Eric Johnson (29:40)
All of sudden you're doing the math and you're like, wait, I I gotta go get a second job or I'm asking my employer that, hey, I need to go work more overtime to afford my lifestyle. And you essentially give yourself golden handcuffs and y you'll say, Well, I just need to get paid more. I need to raise. If only I made a hundred thousand dollars, then I can live comfortably and then I can save for retirement. Well, the problem is lifestyle creep. And this may seem
Eric Johnson (30:07)
Crazy to you, but there are people out there that are making three hundred thousand dollars a year that spend over three hundred thousand dollars a year and at the end of the year they have less than a thousand dollars in their bank account. However, if you looked at they have two brand new cars in the driveway, they may have a third car, they have a decent house, they have a boat, they go on vacations, they do all this stuff, and it looks like they're just balling out, but
Eric Johnson (30:37)
One little hiccup and they don't have money and all of a sudden they're posting a GoFund link online. Stay out of the golden handcuffs, please. The the financial literacy, get yourself educated. But that is the the the trap with the trades is younger people start bringing in money that they think is big money that you know.
Eric Johnson (31:04)
you start getting two thousand dollar paychecks and you're twenty years old, twenty two years old and you're just, two thousand dollars, I'm rich. I'm gonna go live it up. I'm gonna go get all this stuff and that lifestyle creep is what kills you. But you you end up chaining yourself down because now you can't afford to move jobs because you can't afford to have a week or two off of
Eric Johnson (31:32)
No pay or if you get fired from your job all of a sudden you immediately have to go find a new job and well, I gotta go get a job. I don't care what it is, I have to get a job right away. And say you can't get a job where you were you know, in the industry you were working, and you just go get a job somewhere else. And you're just trying to stay above water however
Eric Johnson (31:56)
No matter what you do, if you just keep tying more weights to your ankle with debt and credit cards and payments, all of a sudden it'll it'll pull you under. And when you're under, it is very hard to get out. And that is the trap I'm seeing with trades. So, what is the whole point of this? Tons of opportunity in the trades, tons of opportunity in the boiler world. If get yourself educated, if you are younger
Eric Johnson (32:25)
It is not the sexiest industry. I I still struggle to tell people what I do because they just have no idea. The average American has no idea how their world exists. I don't think people even realize that the magic of a flushing toilet and clean drinking water coming out of a faucet on demand, how magical that is compared to human history.
Eric Johnson (32:52)
Like that is not normal, one in the rest of the world, but two for human history. That is a very, very new thing. But in America, it's just become expected. And when people people open up a faucet and they just expect clean water to come out. And when it doesn't, they're all up in arms. They have no idea the infrastructure behind it. When the power goes out, people are like, why is the power out? these greedy companies, doing this, doing that.
Eric Johnson (33:20)
They have no idea the amount of people and the amount of infrastructure, the amount of systems that in that are in place just for them to be able to plug their phone into the wall and have their phone charging or have their T V on. And that's not their fault. That's mostly the fault of those industries, the fault of you know, a lot of the education and people moving away from those industries. However, we we gotta do better.
Eric Johnson (33:50)
But boiler industry, tons of opportunity to grow, tons of opportunity to learn. And I like it because you can kind of write your own paycheck. It is very similar to sports. If you are able to solve problems better than the person next to you, you're gonna get in the game. And the good thing though is the the game is infinite. And instead of
Eric Johnson (34:20)
six pu people being limited on the field, a company can put out twenty people on the field if they want or fifty people. It doesn't matter. So if you have fifty people that work for ya, all of them can play if they're all know what they're doing and they're all great. However, if you are better than most people and you show up on time, you strive to get better, you take advantage of training classes, you learn, you do all this stuff, you can advocate for
Eric Johnson (34:49)
a raise beyond what your peers could get or in what's normal because you are now solving bigger problems. So you can advocate for it and essentially grow your income level to the point where you are now not scraping bottom. However, the trap with that the pothole is that you need to be financially wise and this does not mean you're living on rice and beans.
Eric Johnson (35:17)
For twenty years. This just means we are living within our spending, under our spending, and we we make more than we spend and we actually plan for the future. We plan to buy that house. We you know, whatever you want to do with your hopes and dreams, if you want to get married, have kids, it's probably wise to put a little money away. It's like sixty or seventy percent of Americans.
Eric Johnson (35:44)
don't have a thousand dollars in the bank account. So most people are just living paycheck to paycheck, which I understand from the global financial nonsense crisis. However, that is a terrible way to live. And lifestyle creep, no matter how much you make, will chain you down and those golden handcuffs will be
Eric Johnson (36:10)
Infinite tight handcuffs, and you will be able not to quit your job or take some time off if you don't.
Eric Johnson (36:19)
Allow yourself to live below your means and spend your money wisely, invest it wisely. So it's always invest your time wisely in learning and education for yourself. Knowledge is power. But once you get that money for yourself, you got to be able to use it wisely and to spend it wisely. And that's the people like when I started Boylearn, I was only able to start Boylearn because I lived below my means and I
Eric Johnson (36:49)
saved money. I'm still driving a car that I bought in college. So I bought it over ten years ago. It's a 2011 car. And that's crazy to most people. But it I mean it's only got 130,000 miles on it. But yeah. Do I want a truck? Absolutely. Do I want a sweet house? Absolutely. Do I want a boat? Absolutely. Do I want more
Eric Johnson (37:19)
Toys? Absolutely. But it's living below the financial means of what you can make so that you allow yourself to have opportunity and maybe go on a vacation that is a little bit nicer than most people would. But it you know it's if you drill holes in your bank account and you load up the subscriptions and the fast food and all that, it is you can't fill a bucket no matter how
Eric Johnson (37:48)
much you pour into the bucket, if it's got a hundred holes in the bottom of it, it's all leaking out. But to you, the bucket will always seem empty and you're there's no amount of working and time that can make you fill that bucket fast enough if you can't start plugging those holes. that's what I have. That's the whole boiling and training and everything everything in my life to this point it has been allowed because
Eric Johnson (38:15)
I was taught financial literacy and but I also worked super hard as a service technician, took on all the overtime basically that I was offered, solved problems and was able to get some raises that got me above the you know, fifty five thousand dollars a year that most of my friends were earning and they were wondering, How do you buy a house?
Eric Johnson (38:42)
And how do you do this? And aren't you working all the time? You work too much. Yet they're the ones that are driving a brand new car and going on vacations to foreign countries and doing all this stuff. Yet they're telling me they're w they're making fifty five thousand dollars a year and but it's just the payments, just the payments. But then I tell Hey, I'm gonna start a company, I'm gonna do this and do that. I can never afford that. How do you how do you do that? Aren't you're not gonna have a paycheck. Well, yeah, that's why you have savings. That's why
Eric Johnson (39:12)
I've given myself oxygen. Cash is oxygen and it allows you to branch out and have a little bit more opportunity. So trades are great, boiler industry is great, education is great for all everything, HVAC in general, building controls, welding, wherever you want to do, whatever industry you're in, if you have kids that are getting to college age or end of high school and they don't know what to do, there are so many opportunities out there.
Eric Johnson (39:41)
But the boiler industry has tons of opportunity. It is very a niche industry that is hidden. And so if you become good at what you w you do, you don't have a lot of competition and you can kinda write your own paycheck. I will say kinda. I won't go into the rest of that, but it is better than being beholden to some giant solace corporation and you can't move up because
Eric Johnson (40:08)
the people above you are still in their position and you only get promoted when somebody leaves. Or they just keep putting more work onto you and you never get a promotion, yet the shareholders are profiting every quarter at record rates. hopefully this this was valuable to you. If it wasn't, please let me know. I want some hate mail, but please send some hate mail.
Eric Johnson (40:36)
Or some positive hate mail, wherever you want, DM me on LinkedIn, email me, Eric.johnson at boilerin.com if you got this far. I want to thank you for listening. I appreciate everybody that listens. This is a small ish er podcast, but just due to the boiler industry is a small ish place. It's not, you know, I don't have, you know, c some culture icon.
Eric Johnson (41:02)
Never gonna get rich and famous off talking about boilers. However, I appreciate every single listener. The the trend is always going up every single month for the listeners and the downloads and everything, which I appreciate every single one. And I hope you are all out there killing it, making money, getting better, getting educated, and staying wild.
