Clifton Beck: ESCO

This week I sit down with Clifton Beck, Director of Digital Media for ESCO Institute and host of the Did You Know? ESCO's HVAC Podcast. Together we dive into the “meat and potatoes” of the HVAC industry—covering real challenges, the importance of managing expectations, and how building trust shapes stronger contractor–customer relationships. Clifton shares insights from his work in digital media, his perspective on training and education, and the solutions ESCO is bringing to the table for the future of the trade. 

Transcript

Welcome to the Parts Truth, the podcast where the nuts and bolts of the home service world come together. I am your host, Scott Pierson, and each week we dive into the real stories, the trends, the truths behind the trades, from the shifting tides of the economy and supply chain challenges to what homeowners need to know before making big investments in their homes. Whether you're in the industry or you're just trying to make smarter choices for your home, we're here to break it all down. No fluff, just facts. So grab your coffee, tighten your tool belt and let's get into it. All right, welcome back. I am thrilled today because I am joined by none other than Clifton Beck, the director of digital media for ESCO Institute and the host of Did you Know the ESCO HVAC podcast. Welcome, Clifton.

Thank you so much, glad to be here. How are you doing?

today. Fantastic, also glad to be here. I think I'm excited today to talk about some real meat and potatoes conversations that we've been having around the industry. So let's jump into it. Big bullet question for you. All right, you've got a big contention of HVAC technicians that will soon retire. They've earned it. They have all the tribal knowledge, though You've got, I think, upwards of 40% that are due to retire in the next five years. That's a big change. Give me your insights and perspective, because you guys are touching a lot of the points of the industry that really understand education and supply chain and information. What are your thoughts on? How do we prepare for that what's coming?

Yeah, you're exactly right, there's more coming than most people realize. I'm fortunate enough to be with ESCO, but I was also a technician and a contractor for decades, so I got to see firsthand the way that education was starting to take a shift and the way that we learned how to work in this trade was starting to evolve. And a lot of it really does go back to to you. Remember when we used to have shop classes and trades classes in high schools?

oh yeah, like the. The irony of it, though, is we were building like things that you can't build anymore, like an ashtray, yeah yeah, well, so you and I were the last generation that actually witnessed that.

So gen I were the last generation that actually witnessed that. So Gen X was the last generation that experienced most of the shop classes and trades classes. I actually took an electrical class as a freshman in high school for four-year degrees, and that was really the thing in the 90s and early 2000s. So a lot of those programs went to the wayside and we're starting to get back there. The last decade we've been starting to reintroduce our youth, especially at the high school level, as to trades like actually doing things with your hands and fixing things and understanding the mechanics of the world around us but unfortunately we've got at least an entire generation that missed that.

So when we look at Generation Y, which is our millennials, they weren't introduced to that, and so we actually have a shortage of technicians very much in that range, and so as we start retiring out the boomers and the older Gen Xers, we don't have enough technicians replacing it because they weren't exposed to the trades, and so we're like 30 to 40,000 technicians a year shortage right now, based on numbers coming back from the United Associates.

So when we look at what's happening as these 40% of our industry retires over this next five years.

We don't have that 40% to replace them, let alone get ahead right With the, with the growth of the industry and with the growth of population. We just don't have it, and so we're having to look at new ways. We're having to look at opportunities of recruiting and training much differently than we have in the past, and a lot of the earlier recruiting methods that we were accustomed to have changed, because generations have changed. Technology has made a shift in the way that not only do we perceive things, but the way that we learn, and we have to adapt to that, and sometimes that's difficult. I know myself I've had to relearn my own delivery methods of content, and it's a challenge that I hadn't thought about until I was introduced to it. And so I think as an entire industry, whether we are in education, at the secondary or post-secondary, or even just a contractor that is trying to train the technicians we all have a responsibility to elevate the level of education as well as the recruitment for the trades in general but especially HVAC refrigeration.

That's interesting. So when you think about different ways of training, you know maybe a 55-year-old technician versus a 25-year-old technician what do you see as the distinct differences there? Because that's got to be like something contractors need to become conscious of. If you're running a business and you've got that big generational gap, you know the learning and training has always been an issue, but now it's going to become like a culture shift.

Yeah, 100% is, and it wasn't until I started diving into this that I finally learned where that separation is. So where it comes down to is the way that education changed its construction across the entire country in the 1990s. We went through a shift in the way we organize content and we deliver content in schools. We went from a linear educational platform, so up until Gen Xers, us high schoolers in the early 1990s. Up until that point, we've learned in a linear learning path. If we picked up a book and so I actually did a whole study on this where I analyzed mathematic books from algebra books from the 1930s all the way up until current and you can see when it changed. See when it changed, like when you and I picked up a book, we were taught that you started at the page one and you went in chapters and you learned a little bit and you built on top of the things that you previously learned and then, by the time you got to the end of the book, you understood what the topic of the book was. Right, that's a linear educational path. By the 1990s, we actually changed the entire architecture of the way that we deliver content in schools, elementary as well as high school. What we did is we went to a modular development platform so that as we put that curriculum together, we reorganized the curriculum and we put it into modules so that you didn't necessarily have to start on page one. You could actually pick up different chapters along the way and still complete the entire curriculum by the end of that period. And so when we got to COVID that was one of the reasons that education went online and was actually very successful online is because we'd already built a modular training curriculum. Successful online is because we'd already built a modular training curriculum. So when we look at what digital training is, it's modular. Like if you're in class, say you're in class and you get sick. When you and I, when we get sick, we had homework that we had to make up and we had to do it at the same time as what was in front of us when we got back to school, like we had to double or triple our load to make sure that we got it all done, because that was sequential, like you couldn't get to that next stage until you completed the previous one. It's not that way anymore and I didn't realize that, and everyone that I've introduced this to like what are you talking about? Are you crazy?

I was presenting this as a class at an ACCA conference in Indianapolis about a year ago and when I got done with the class, about a fourth of the class stayed around and they're like we want to learn more. And I was fortunate that one of the contractors stayed around. He's like hey, my educational trainer wants to talk to you about this. He was a high school teacher and he's been telling me about this, but I didn't know what the heck he was talking about, and I think you just explained it, and so we had this whole conversation. He's like yes, as an educator, I seen this transition.

I remember when the curriculum changed, but no one ever really talks about the fact that it changed and especially, you know, those of us that have been out of school we never see it. So I brought her up to my kids, right? So I've got a couple Gen Zers, like the last one, youngest one is a senior in high school, and so about a year or so ago I sat down with them. I was like, okay, I got, I got a concept I want to introduce to you and see what you think about it, and so I said, okay, so I want you to tell me how you think about this.

So when I was going to school, I learned a subject and I started at page one and I completed chapter one and I took an assessment. And then I couldn't start chapter two until I completed my chapter one assessment. And then I went through chapter two and then I couldn't go to chapter three until I completed my chapter two assessment. By the time I got to the end of it, I completed my entire book and I kid you, not Scott both of them looked at me and said that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

And I went what are you talking about?

They're like why would you want to do it that way? What if I already know this chapter? Or what if I'm really interested in another piece of this book and I want to go do that first so that the beginning of it will make more sense to me? I'm like what are you talking about? And they're like that's how we learn. Like if we got all of our curriculum at the beginning of the class and we want to go do these chapters and get all the assessments done ahead of time, we can go do that anytime we want. I'm like come on. You're kidding, right? No, I'm like what classes? Every class. I'm like are you telling me that you don't learn in a linear style, that you can just take pieces of your courses at the pace that you want? They're like yeah, like okay. Maybe that really did happen, which means in that generational transition, the way that I learned is not the same way that students are learning today and, unfortunately, it's not the same way that they've been learning for the last 25 years.

Yeah, I mean I know from my own personal experience, like, let's just say, the other day. Yeah, I mean I know from my own personal experience, like, let's just say, the other day my truck had an AC problem. I don't work on my truck very often, I'm inclined enough to do it, but I still need a reference point. So naturally I do like every other middle-aged man, I go to YouTube and I'm like, all right, here's what I need to know. And that gives me the information I need to know now and then. But I guarantee if I don't do it again for another six years I'm going to need to go and reference that same lookup process and remind myself. Then I learned a little bit when I was younger, but I still need that reminder as a piece of information or learning right here and right now. How do you think that concept applies to what you're saying and really the practicality of diagnosing HVAC? Yeah, absolutely.

It becomes modular, it becomes short, right, it becomes. I need to understand this thing and I've probably got a few things right here. Right, think about like a sequence of operation. Hopefully we learn the complete sequence of operation, but if I'm troubles troubleshooting, I'm probably going to get to a point and go okay, it's not working. Here in the sequence of operation, do I, do I really need to go back and and refresh on every single sequence, every single step in that sequence, or do I really need to know the one I'm on and probably the one before and the one after, just to write the checkup on myself?

yep, that's what we're at.

So if you're talking to a contractor or even an oem, you know what's the the foresight that they need to to see and maybe adapt access to information. Yeah, you know, I think if we look upstream at the OEM, do we have all the right information in the field to start that research process, to build out training modules, like you're saying? I think in some cases I can give you lots of good examples where yes is the answer, yeah. I think there's also quite a few examples of no, they aren't even thinking about it today, which is dangerous. And really, when we look at the contractor who's running that business, who's employing those technicians, who's having to make this shift happen, to stay successful, to take care of consumers, what are your thoughts on what they need to be prepared to consider? And are there places they can access tools and resources and information to make that shift easier? Because running a business and managing a training platform as a contractor has got to be a daunting exercise, if not now, definitely when we're talking to in the next five years.

Yeah, We've actually been working with a lot of contractors, which traditionally that was not our audience for education. Most of it was high schools and two-year programs and four-year programs. Most of it was high schools and, you know, two-year programs and four-year programs, and so we've had a lot of contractors reaching out, and that's exactly what they're looking for is, you know, what do I need to have for resources for my technicians? I don't have the manpower, I don't have the overhead to put all of them in. You know, six-week per year training, It'd be nice, but it's just not feasible. What can I do? I said well, it's actually, it's really simple. You got two different training paths you need to look at.

As a contractor, you have a entry level training so that you have, you know, a whole sequence of things that need to be completed in a period of time. You know it's going to be things like your EPA 608, it's going to be things like low GWP training, some of these things that take a little bit more time. But what do you do for the technicians that are already in the field, right, the ones that are looking for that continuing education or those tidbits? Well, then it comes down to you take the things that you're having the most return calls on. It's easy to find right. It's easy to go through a database, especially with you know, with ROI tracking that we have in today's software, we can see what those calls are, what products, and then start looking at short modular training on the things that they're not getting, the things that they need to know, and then getting them those resources. So they've got you know quality training firsthand.

I always prefer to have firsthand training from the manufacturers. They're the ones that work with this stuff the most. They see it every day. They're the ones that's going to give you the most up-to-date training and a lot of them are starting to produce really cool short videos, short training, educational content. I just went through a whole training series with LG on one of their ductless systems and they had like three minute videos right Leveling the unit, checking the fan motor, checking communications all in little two and three minute short videos that are more product specific and we're going to have to start focusing on those product specific short trainings and ways that we gather that, Cause there's tons of great content out there in the internet, but are you getting them, the right content, and does it apply to the products that you are selling and expecting your technicians to understand.

Well, not only the products you're selling and expecting them to understand. You know, that's the new stuff, that's the easier stuff to access, the training videos from the likes of groups like LG, which, by the way, they do a great job. If we're talking about the ones that are thinking about it, they're definitely thinking about it. I would say that the challenge that I'm seeing, at least from a parts and repair standpoint on our side, is nobody's got content or videos or modules out there for the stuff that's 20 years old. Oh true.

Yeah.

And that's usually where the younger technician gets stumped, because they've been trained on the newer technology, newer equipment. And then they go and find a 23-year-old American Standard heat pump sitting there and they're like, oh, this thing still exists. So it's really bridging that gap, which I'm sure I mean it'll obviously solve itself over time, right, and the field will be diminished of all those older pieces of equipment, but that's still a 10-year roadmap, from lack of content to a good catalog, from oems to to satisfy that. So I'm interested to to understand from your perspective, where does a contractor point a technician then? Is it youtube, right? Is there a good source on youtube that that tells us where you know to go and and think about, uh, diagnostics, um, or do they just, you know, push heavy to replace the unit?

I mean, you know which is worse for the consumer yeah, that is really the dilemma.

Because we have so many good content creators, you know there's no centralized source for that. I've talked to a couple different associations, like betterhvacorg. They were really working on gathering different content from different aspects of the industry different social media influencers, different training organizations and trying to plug them in, but it really wasn't very successful and I don't know that there is there's no place, really, that is a singular source for that yet. But you're on the right track. Like, how do we do that? You know, how do we organize this content and get it to where it's easily accessible, especially for some of these older pieces of equipment, cause a lot of the content is out there, it's just not been, it's not been used properly, right? It takes like OEM content you're talking about. There is books upon books of OEM content and the OEMs will gladly get the content to you and they prefer that you read it from page one to page 3,400 and understand every piece in between. But you and I know that that's not reality.

So I see AI tools starting to be used more often to be able to find tidbits of information, at least from the manual side. Now, when we start getting into the educational videos. That's the next stage. And how do you sort that? I've actually been experimenting a lot with my own digital management platform. I've been uploading like all of my long form videos and then it can gather, it can like, search for keywords and snip it out. Little pieces of video for that. But we're going to have to find better solutions than what we have right now because of the shortage of technicians, because when this 40% of our industry retires in the next five years, that's going to be a major gap in accessibility for technicians that know how to work on this stuff. They're going to be retiring right, they're not going to be in the industry, which means all of that tribal knowledge that they have found along the way, those things that may not be in those installation manuals at all. If we don't start getting that stuff recorded and organized and make it easily accessible, it's going to disappear.

Well, and then a math problem from an economic standpoint comes into play. Right, if, if technicians can't get it done quickly because there's one, a lack of bodies, but two, a lack of knowledge, so you got multiple trips to the same repair, um, you know, that's inefficient, that inefficiency eventually plays into the math to the consumer. Right, you know it costs more to run a business because you can't access the information or get to the repair quick enough, so it drives supply and demand, you know, off the radar. And now all of a sudden we've got, you know, consumers having to pay, you know, $2,000 just to change a capacitor, and they were complaining when it was $400. Oh yeah.

Yeah, you're right. It is one of the challenges that we're going to have to face, and that sounds like a good challenge to take on right there.

Yeah, I would say call to the audience. If you're good with AI today and can build a bot that can catalog great YouTube repair videos and create a channel, you probably have a good future. Or create a platform, like what Esco's doing, that does create a cataloged searchable function to identify modules of training like that.

Yeah yeah, we've been snipping out some of those. It's a you know it'd take a team to go through it. I bet that archive has got 45,000 assets in it right now. It's a lot off.

So we've actually we'd built some short videos called the work bench series where we do typically under five minute troubleshooting diagnostics of a lot of these traditional parts right, single stage gas valves, hot surface igniters, you know, ignition control modules, capacitors, just all these. You know the fundamental parts and you know there are a few years, a few years, two or three years old, something like that. And I keep, I keep being intrigued with the amount of views that pop up on those, because people are just looking to understand those fundamental things. Right, how do I troubleshoot this? You know well if I'm working on a piece of equipment and how do I properly diagnose this. And then step two, like how do I get my parts quickly to get this thing fixed? And so that speed of repair is really what we're going to be hunting for as we start putting these solutions together.

Yeah, I mean, my thesis has always been the two points of inefficiency that we can solve for today are procurement of parts right. How do I identify the part I need, the availability, the price, and get it quickly. And then, how can I affect dispatching as a result? Right, if I can get parts faster and spend time, less time shopping, can I do more jobs in a week than I would have otherwise? Because, ultimately, if you can put, you know a fleet of 10 guys. If all of them can achieve one more job per week, you know 10 more jobs you know at an average rate of $200, $300, you know profitability. That adds up pretty quickly for a small business. You know that's efficiency we need to find, not just to smooth out the economics from a pricing standpoint downstream, but at the same time really just considering how do you aggregate the business into one platform. So it's a consistent experience in that community. That's definitely something worth looking at.

All right, I know we only have a few minutes left, but I wanted to ask one more thing. When we're looking at some of these consolidations going on in the industry, you've got a good amount of bankers coming to the space to aggregate contracting groups. What is your thought, or what are you seeing as it relates to train to diagnostics and create good mechanics in the field from a service and repair standpoint, versus ah, to hell with the repair, let's just go sell new boxes. What's the appetite that you're seeing the most?

It is interesting. So you know, from a first perspective, you would think that you know they were really there for the total sales and that was going to be, you know, based on product sales and box sales. But I'm actually seeing, in some of those, just the opposite. I'm seeing them coming to our industry, looking at it with a different pair of goggles right, or looking at it from the outside, realizing that there are a lot of tools and solutions that could make our industry more efficient and more successful. And so I'm seeing a big investment in education, which is very intriguing to me. So, as a lot of these private investment companies are starting to bundle up some of the corporations, they're also bundling in a lot of training resources and we've seen a significant growth in that. You know, looking at training because they're trying to make the business more successful, and you think about that from any private equity investment, anytime that they're looking at a company, they're looking at it for an investment, right, they're looking to make it more successful. They're taking something that is already good and hopefully introducing practices that can make it more successful, and so what we're seeing is they're introducing a lot more technology that is making the technician more successful and for me, I see that as a win for our industry.

You know, they're really promoting using diagnostic software. We've seen companies like Service Titan just explode in the last few years because the software is allowing that interaction with a customer to be more successful. It's more digitized, it's faster access. So when we start implementing you know implementing faster software, faster troubleshooting, faster parts allocation you're right, it solves the shortage that we have and this massive shortage that we're going to see. So, as an industry, if we're not willing to look at software solutions to make us more efficient, we're going to lose out on opportunity. So it's an interesting mix. I see, you know, I hear from you know, a lot of technicians, contractors, that are torn with that struggle, but I've also seen some very successful technicians come out of that because these new mergers and investments are investing so much in education.

That's awesome. Yeah, I think that leads to a follow-up question. Once you aggregate and apply software resources or training resources, at what point does the fact that really for 30 plus years our industry has been poor at organizing data you know when does that create a challenge that's hard to overcome for those groups? Because if I move from region to region to region today, you're bouncing between different distributors, different pricing strategies, different SKUs. From a no-inclature standpoint, everybody's kind of written their own version of it for 30 years and that fragmentation's led to just a really hard-to-organize structure and has its downstream impacts. Right, the waterfall impact of having bad data is oops, a counter guy just diagnosed or identified a part with the wrong part number. A technician took it out to the field, tried to put it in and, oh, that didn't work because it was the wrong part, and now we've got to go back and start over and that creates, you know, trip number two or trip number three. And how do? How do we solve for that?

Yeah, I. I think if we use technology and innovation, you know we're going to be a one-stop shop for the service call, right? We have to get away from relying on our parts counter troubleshooting. We have to get away from some of our OEM on-the-phone diagnostics, right? Remember all of these legacy experienced technicians that are sitting at the parts counter, that are on the phone right now. They're going to be gone in a few years.

So we have to make that service call successful. We have to use tools to make our time management better. We have to use tools to find manuals faster while we're on the job better. We have to locate that potential problem, learn how to troubleshoot that if we're not already comfortable. So we need very short training videos on each individual part. We need to be able to see what the availability of that part actually is and if it's available in a fast enough amount of time. I'm going to get that part ordered while I'm on that job and then I'm going to finish doing the rest of this job. I'm going to service this piece of equipment, right? We look at service as I'm here to repair. They're different. Repair and service are not the same thing. If I can combine those into one job. Man I'm I'm killing it. Now. I have turned this repair into a service and now I've really done a significant deed for our industry. I've saved time for everyone, including myself.

Well, I would add a piece of bonus gravy to that one too. I just made that up, by the way. Availability standpoint you actually could go inside and have that conversation with the homeowner and say, hey look, I know I'm going to have this part in hand by X time, so I'm going to go ahead and put you back on the calendar from a repair standpoint, or I'll get it done today after I service the equipment. But having the ability to manage expectations changes everything, because I think that's one of the things that's really plagued our industry is that from a supply chain standpoint, especially post-COVID, you know the uncertainty of when the part will arrive, either to that distributor to go pick up or to the technician to do the repair. You know that lack of understanding creates that weird nuance with homeowners or building owners saying, oh well, I don't even know. I mean, think of it this way.

When Mrs. Jones says, oh, it's Monday, he's here, I'm so excited he's going to fix the machine, and the technician comes back in and says I don't have the part that I need and our shop will call you when we know when we have the part.

Now Mrs. Jones has to one worry about when she's got to take off work again. Two, there's going to be the back and forth you know, phone tag playing game of the idea that you know she's in a meeting on Zoom and the phone's ringing in the background and she didn't get to answer it. So there's that delay compounding everything. So what used to be, you know, easy to communicate is now hard to communicate and creates days of delay, if not weeks. If you could return that back to the technician being able to say manage expectations on the spot, think of the inefficiency that are solved for there that you know are super simple. Right, hey, it's Monday, let's get you back on the board Wednesday. Great, now I know exactly when I'm coming, so you bet, yeah, increases that uh, that relationship, that trust level, which is what every contractor wants.

Yeah, every contractor wants the goodwill and trust to be built into their brand. Um, and I'm sure, uh, uh, an experience that's managed with expectations is much more, uh, relatable and something they'll brag about as a consumer. Absolutely Well,  I think we got to wrap it up here, but, uh, anything you want to leave the group or the audience with as a final thought.

No, I appreciate what you and Parts Town and Compass are doing for the industry and I look forward to seeing some of the solutions that come to fruition.

Absolutely Well, Clifton, it's been a pleasure. I always enjoy catching up with you. Thanks for coming and we'll catch you on the next round. All right, Thank you, my friend.