Discover the Best Hvac Invoice Example for Public Relations

Hvac invoice example for Public Relations

welcome in to the second webinar of our fall semester I'm Danny Rubin I'm the founder of Reuben we are an educational company based in Virginia and we provide online resources to help students with their business communication with their professionalism and one way we do that is by talking with Professionals in different fields about the job they do and The Importance of Being a good communicator in that job and we're thankful to have Rick Velasco a veteran of the HVAC industry and we he's based in Virginia and we'll bring him into the conversation in just a few minutes so Rick thank you for being here really really appreciate it I know the students are going to get a lot from all the years you spent in the industry and all the wisdom you picked up along the way you can send some back to these students as they think about this career and before we dive into the conversation I want to make an offer to the teachers because we have lots of resources beyond the webinar today and one of those is truly an extension of our webinar series it's an online career exploration Library called Aspire and I want to make an offer to the teachers today that if you would like access to a library of career exploration videos drawn from these webinars but curated so it's more accessible to you I want to make that offer to you and give you a chance to request it in the webinar room so what you're seeing here is our resource called Aspire if anybody in the chat us as Aspire let us know some of you maybe at schools that have Aspire it's a big library of jobs conversations with people in various Pathways you can see on the left business management Health Science Hospitality entertainment Law Public Safety manufacturing trades marketing stem and education and if you go into any of these categories you'll see all the people we've spoken to and Rick's conversation will go here shortly and you'll be able to dive in and learn about any of these people and what we've done is curated the longer conversation and given you clips of like the highlights from the conversation so these are like one to two minute Clips we've organized clips for you with discussion questions and certificates and Labor Statistics and lots and lots of things to make it easy to plug into your curriculum uh in the chat can you please tell me what is everybody's learning management system does everybody use canvas School schy Google Classroom teams tell me in the chat what do you use schooly canvas canvas canvas Google Classroom so this resource there's over 70 jobs in 300 videos and they live in your learning management system whatever you're want bright space too as one example we have all the jobs in a giant canvas module and all you have to do is click on a job like a dentist load it in a new tab and the page opens automatically inside of your canvas no signing in we eliminate passwords for students so we are a big broad library of videos and we would love for you to use Aspire for a classroom this year at no cost no cost for classroom use we want you to experience it share it with your team if you would like to have a Spire all you need to I'm going to give you a link right now to a calendar tool and I need you to book a short meeting with a member of our team and we will provide aspire to you that's it there's no catch we want to make sure that school systems are aware that Aspire is available so this link I just gave you in the chat if you're interested in Aspire please go there right now find time on your schedule meet with us we'll provide it to you hundreds of videos one to two minutes long curated easy all based on the people that we talk to in these webinars a sports agent an ER nurse a welder HVAC AI software people everybody so please take advantage of this opportunity I'll mention it again at the end okay with that let's get down to business and I'll bring in Rick to talk with us about his career Rick let's start by telling how you got into the industry and like just think back on those early days and then some of the highlights of the work you did over the years just kind of a kind of quickly take us through your career and then we'll start getting into some questions so take us back to the beginning you know how did you find your way into the job well at the beginning I was uh took small engine repair in VCH and my father was running uh three complexes of for drun and fall so after school I would go to his shop and I would work on window air conditioning units uh for hours and hours at a time um they they had them stacked all along this room the ones that were bad um I learned from that and my father on how to change the motors in them and and I found that I like doing that work more than I like doing Small Engines so I went ahead and did that for a year while I was in school then I went to Bush Gardens and they hired me as a refrigeration Tech in Bush Gardens I learned a lot more I was the ice machine King for several years fixing thousands of ice machines all over the park and I ran into a man named George wellan who was twice my age and very experienced and he started teaching me how to work on the air conditioning systems also um after a couple of years there in Bush Gardens I decided I need to change and I went to Oldman University there I was hired as a AC technician and I also went to school at night um during that period of time I had accumulated the six years I needed um to take my Master's in hpac and frederation I went ahead and did that and in 1984 I got my Master's in H phc INF FRG duration and my masters in gas pipe fitting from there I uh went on to go in business myself as a contractor and I went to uh several small commercial jobs mostly residential jobs which is where you usually start in this field you usually start learning on on hbac in the residential market and you start learning a lot of times in installa um eventually I picked up a chain account Arby R spe for which I kept for like 22 years wow and I was doing all their frederation hbac work at all their stores including about 50 uh rest independent restaurants got started and that's how I uh accumulated accounts uh my reputation was good and I got a bigger and bigger um and I did that for for five six years before I went to work for a company called professional eating cooling there I went there as a lead tech I made assistant manager I made manager and then I made vice president during that time that Professional Heating and Cooling I uh went ahead and got my Master's electrical license also and uh I been doing it for 45 years and I'm retired well it's it's an amazing career and there's so much I want to talk about inside of that just for the students Bush Gardens is an amusement park and I'm sure many of you know about Arby's right raise your hand if you know Arby's we have the meats right make sure we all understand he was doing you know HVAC and doing work for Arby's uh restaurants for many years as we get into this conversation um I want to ask everybody now go to the Q&A along the bottom of zoom and I want you to put your questions when you write your question put your name and your school so we can give you credit for your question so start ask thinking of your questions for Rick and put them in the Q&A okay Rick there's you've had you've done so many different things in your career you've done the work you've been in management and you kept trying to upskill yourself and gain new credentials and license is thinking back on those early days when you were learning um what was that process like was it did you learn out in the field as much as you learned in the classroom was it kind of like 5050 how do you think about those early days of of learning the trade well uh when I started um the only one that knew anything about window air conditioning it was my dad um so I basically uh started and was doing Hands-On from the very beginning okay well that that's what I think it takes and I'm sure we have students in here now who are learning Hands-On maybe inside the classroom um and do you think that sort of each job kind of prepared you for the next one you didn't always know where you were gonna go but you kept building your skills absolutely I always uh hustled and I always tried to get better in my field tell me about like I always remembered you working on uh with Ares that's very present in my mind like tell me about like an average day working with Arby's or Burger King the different chains that you work like what would a day look like when you wake up and you go to work what what what were help the students picture what the day was um well in the beginning uh you went to a shop every Monday morning and you turn in your paperwork you uh you then get calls that they would give you and after each call you would call in and they would give you the next available call uh but they also would um they would categorize it in ways that they knew you were really good at this so they would try to keep you on that um like ice machines for example and I walk coolers and walk-in freezers um but as I went along they gave me bigger jobs working on centrifugals um and building AC units and so forth um nowadays what the way they do it they give you uh they give you you just use your phone and all you they have a program all your calls come in you che check in the time that you're leaving to go to your next call you check out when you finish that call you write up a ticket and have them sign your phone and that's the way they're doing it nowadays okay um we're starting to get some questions in and I want to read some of these off to you um ma Williams at fville North Carolina how would you say the industry changed over the years because you know you spent a long time in it so from the start till the end for you what what were the biggest Chang that you noticed well everything when it went electronic uh change um for example everything besides your workplace the equipment that was being put out on rooftops and so forth um and I did all commercial work just case you know uh the equipment they started putting boards little computers and every piece of equipment 10 tons in enough um so that changed from your mechanical part that you first learned how to do which worked off pressure switches and so forth so now everything has more sensors and a computer board and so the industry has changed tremendously um for Energy Efficiency and so one thing about this job is you never stop learning it is not a job that you learn at one time and then you know it is always something new coming out every year including the differences in refrigerants refrigerants have changed so much since I started it was basically only three refrigerants used now there's about 10 refrigerants you can use students this is great information tell me in the chat students or teachers he said that there used to be three refrigerants commonly used today there are how many how many what number did he just use tell me that in the chat now there's how many let me check the chat very good Jimmy says 10 that is incorrect Brady although Brady did tell me previously that he loves Arby's so we'll give him that but he the number is 10 okay at least at least at least at least it could be it probably is more you know even even now um okay so a question and I uh Rick maybe you have a thought on this because I've seen another company in our area and others use this slogan always on time or you don't pay a dime you know that that Mantra of like yeah late you we do it for free um did you ever run into that type of like you know your boss is saying to you are you saying to your people like if we're late we're paying this is free to the customer what what is that whole approach about with that has nothing to do with the commercial field okay commercial does not do that it's a residential field that does it and what they do which is kind of sneaky is they can't get anybody to that job one time they will send a uh junior technician or a helper out to get there and start on it until the technician gets there oh so it's okay so you'll never really get it free they're gonna find a way to get somebody there to just absolutely okay so there's your answer this is how they do it it's a way to get you to use them but you're never going to get their work for free um okay and where's the other question we had a question please try to keep your questions in the Q&A not in the chat but I do see one in the chat my students this is Mrs Morris Harden Academy Harden Montana my students are interested in knowing what would be the next step after high school graduation to start a career in HVAC so if they're coming out of high school and they want to go into the field what would you recommend they do what would be their first move the first move if they didn't take uh any kind of Road Tech classes or anything the first thing they should do even before looking for a job is enroll in either uh any kind of Community College that that teaches HVAC because that puts your foot in the door with most companies they see that you're trying and you're trying to learn and you're enrolled in a nighttime class they will more likely hire you than somebody off the street uh and you will probably be a doar or a helper won't be great pay but it'll be better than average pay and that's where you uh that's where you kind of uh cut your teeth you you get in there and you start there and what the good benefit about it is you're going to school and you can ask some of your fellow employees questions about things you don't understand so kind of gives you a double education well and that that gets to my next question which is like when you were training people what do you want to see from them that would say to you like they're going to be a great employee they know how to hustle uh what do you look for in in like a junior Tech I I look for somebody who listens and understands and does what you say rather than what they feel like it should be done tell me give me an example of that where like they'd say no no no this is what I want to do and you're like I'm telling you this is how we do the work does any particular example come to mind within the the work itself well aligning belts correctly on blowers some guys will just go out put another motor in it belts won't be aligned right Motors burned up again in a year and a year and a half them out um so that's the simple thing the other things are a lot more complicated um from putting pressure switches on a semi-aromatic compressor uh which some people jump off the valves because it's easy and there's a port there for your gauges so they put a t but that's not the correct way because if you close that valve and that compressor is running instead of the pressure switch turning that compressor off immediately that pressure switch is not getting any pressure because you turn off that valve and you literally can blow the compressor up in pieces I want to ask spe specifically for the classes watching that are HVAC classes the teachers in the chat can you tell me it because we're getting into like nitty-gritty work and good tips is this helpful to you to hear him tell you best practice after 45 years in the field I'd love to know if the students really understand what he's talking about and again this will be on YouTube so you can watch it later if you want to you know catch some of this advice a second time but let us know teachers who are specifically focused on HVAC what you think Rick I want to talk also about the you know what you said in your initial introduction is that you developed a great reputation and you worked with certain customers for a very long time so I want to talk about how you maintained that relationship right because half of it is doing the work and the the other half is like working with the people who hired you so what was your approach with like you know answering the phone being on time all of those things that you think helped you maintain these relationships um well I had a boss that did this he got on the phone with a customer and he would start talking and bsing and trying to uh nazzle and so forth the customer I was never like that I was always very direct and didn't try to suck up or anything and my professionalism they liked and they like the fact that I was knowledgeable so when I talked to customers they felt good talking to me uh with my boss back when they really didn't because they knew you know he was going to just tell them whatever they wanted to hear did you hear that students don't don't try to tell people what they want to hear just give them the straight information be professional be on the level because Rick you said you worked with Arby for 22 years yeah did I catch that number you don't work with one customer that long without a lot of trust are there other things that you did over the years that you think helped create trust like you always made sure you checked the job twice before you left or what else were you doing to create trust well when I had employees working for me I would still go out I I wouldn't sit in the office I was not one to sit in the office I would still go out check check behind them check with my customers and make sure they were satisfied and happy and uh like I said I wouldn't give them the the BS I would be straightforward about everything and that that developed a great relationship with me and all the managers of these different places and so forth uh did you ever have to like write up reports after the work was completed you know giving them something written down or like was writing ever involved in your day-to-day absolutely tell me about that side and how you had to be careful with what you what you wrote well so if I had a technician and he wrote a ticket and he said change blower motor period I wouldn't accept that I'd make him rewrite it that he changed the blower motor because he found that this or that whatever the problem was was causing the motor to go bad or the age of the unit which is very easy to see on the on the actual tag of the unit um I would make them go into more a little more detail than just short-sided especially when you're charging these people's $6 to $800 or more you you're not going to just put a change of bow motor why why do you think it's important that the customer has more information even if they don't fully understand it why do you think giving them more detail is important I think because uh then they they uh know that you are uh involved and know what is going on um uh if if you don't put a long description of what you did they feel like man they're paying all this money for change blower motor that is great advice and I always want to tell the students no matter what the job the writing and the communication is really critical you know you're saying you have to sort of overc communicate the work you did to justify what they're paying you obious and you want them to know every single thing you did U it makes them feel better about oh well I understand why it cost that much absolutely so it's taking that extra time and students I hope you're hearing that not just for HVAC but any industry is learning that the details make the difference um Michael uh Michael said he appreciates hearing from an expert in the field besides the teacher uh Brady Brook says my students have trouble learning how important detailed invoices are you have any comments Rick on on when you send invoices maybe it's the same thing just saying like you know we did this and this and this and this so they go oh okay now I understand what this bill is all about yeah details are important uh if you if you're just going to tell them one little oneline sentence and that's it and build them they're going to have questions so most likely you're probably going to hear some feedback from them but if you write down a nice little story on what took place how it happened how you fixed it it it makes them feel this is a good invoice this is uh what we should pay and I don't have any problem with it I think this is such important advice because again you know for many years you were sort of in charge of your own business right so you you had to make sure that you weren't just doing great technical work but you were like maintaining a great relationship you had to do both things at the same time for your livelihood you know so you had to be thinking with both sides of your brain all the time right because like you're working on the unit on the roof and then the manager comes over and asks you a question you got to switch back into like client relationship mode and then go back to the technical work right you're kind of like having to do it both in your brain yeah at the same time yes I mean that that says a lot so it's not just for students who think they're just going to be working on air conditioners refrigerators and never talking to anybody would you say you'll be talking to people all the time absolutely it is a public relations type of job uh where you have to talk and explain things in layman terms rather than uh explain it to them in a way they're not going to understand yeah yeah I think that's important for students to hear okay we have a question from uh Pete Davis it's a very uh specific question okay I don't know let's see if you know the answer to this with he says with the EPA phasing out r410a refrigerant will the new r454b be as effective or more problematic no uh it'll be it'll be as effective uh the things that change are your pressure readings might change a little bit just like when you use 507 instead of R22 or or any other any any refrigerant especially Blends usually will change your pressures from what you're used to seeing so you have to be aware of that and I tell you there's a lot little bit of MTH involved in uh being a technician yeah let's get into that a little bit what's the what kind of math were you doing oh you're constantly reading uh pressures and temperatures and converting temperatures to pressure and converting pressures to temperature um there's subtractions depending on the ambient air around you there's uh several things to consider mathematically uh when working on a unit that's great and by the way I want to point out to the students what I just did he said at the end of a sentence you know there's a lot of math to consider so I did what's called a follow-up question and I said tell me more about the math that's involved in the job so I heard something interesting I was curious and I asked a question to learn more and that's a question that the point I want to ask Rick because when you're talking to let's say you have a junior Tech and you're teaching them or they're you know they're like brand new to the industry and they're learning and you say something that they may not understand would you want them to like ask you to tell them a little bit more or would you want them to just stand there with their mouth open and not and not say anything no no I want their input I want to know what they think um and believe it or not every once in a while someone will come up with an idea that you never even thought about so it's always good to keep your ears open yep and and and sort of lean in and say tell me more about that instead of just standing there against the wall that that's what you would want to see from like a young employee that they're like listening and they're thinking and they're curious absolutely right um we have another question uh an industry question from Jimmy sandal have you ever vented refrigerant you know what that means I'm on I'm on this uh I can't say that I don't even know what that meant if what I just asked it's illegal let me just say that oh like okay I understand now no he has not um Michael Hassel then said the new refrigerant replacing 410A is just as effective but it is highly flammable they are recommending Pro press fittings on all applications yep yeah they uh I'm going tell you with them going to propane refrigerants and flammable refrigerants you cannot put any kind of valve on it uh and leave it on it so in other words you might have to open up a system and put uh two tap valves on it for pressures after you release the refrigerant or the propane um first thing you have to do is piercing valve on it and take out what's in it the second thing you have to do is you have to put your own leads on the end of your um tubes so you can solder on fittings you can fix the system and then you have to crimp shut behind the fittings the copper and braze it of course it can't be leaking because it'll squir out fire but you have to braze it if you crimped it shut and it's a sealed system anything that has flammable refrigerant in it has to be a sealed system I hope that was a helpful answer uh Michael to your comment he sort of built on top of your comment um I I love when we really get inside the business you know whatever career we're talking about I know that's appreciated by the students who are here to really learn that field um and perhaps today we've shown some students who weren't even thinking about this field that maybe it's something that they want to look into and that's also a big a big part of it hbac refrigeration Fields one of the best trades you can get into why why would you say that there's a follow-up question why would you say that uh because you're always learning your mind is never going to go uh where it's repetitive the same thing every job you go on is different uh different types of problems and so you're always thinking it keeps your brain active um instead of in Lull to me Plumbing you kind of do everything within two years of it and then it's just repetitive with Refrigeration in h hbac it's totally different it's something new all the time great great Point um couple final questions we have a from shamon did I pronounce that right chamon High School in Wisconsin Kelly Patterson looking back on your career you have like a kind of a a crazy situation you were involved in or like a memory that stands out or a big job or something that always like that was a wild uh client or something like that I had several big jobs uh that always stand in the back of my mind I put all Refrigeration in Harbor Park baseball field Harbor Park is a minor league baseball stadium a 12,000 seed baseball stadium okay wow that's a big job yeah I did the oby Hospital putting 13 Walkin cools and freezers in there including the morg I did the Outer Banks Hospital which I did the entire kitchen the hood system the gas piping and the fedration systems those of you students who know the the TV show Outer Banks he's talking about the outer Banks of North Carolina go ahead Rick and uh I just learned and did I work on Cascade systems which is something you'd have to be a senior Tech to work on but it's a system with different compresses that bring temperatures down to 60 below zero and so forth um that was at the blood bank um I guess just those those are probably the main jobs did in construction but I was more of a Service Company than a construction company um a lot of I did almost 70% of the Chick-fil-A on this side of Richmond I'll put the walk-in cools and freezers in oh anybody here like Chick-fil-A hands up for Chick-fil-A um okay one one last question from me and then we'll start to uh wrap up and I want to offer this Aspire Platform One More Time Rick we have students here who are considering the the field what would be their first step could they even approach an HVAC company as a student and say can I Shadow can I just come in and observe like what would you say would be appropriate for them to to do well that's not going to happen most likely uh reason is because of insurance okay um the best thing to do is is what I said earlier is get yourself in a school try to do it at nighttime then let the HVAC compy iies that you're putting your resumés in which I'm sure you can help them fill out um let them know that you are presently in school for hbac and see if you can get put on as a helper or a installer and that's where you start getting uh into going further in the career you just need to get your foot in the door uh of any and usually the larger hbac companies are the ones that have Apprentice programs the small guys don't usually because they don't have time or or anything to do anything but to continue to work all the time while the larger companies um have a lot more flexibility on do on training people thank you uh Shelby I did I did see I I almost missed it I because it wasn't in the Q&A but one more question from Shelby Reynolds would propane based refrigerant be deadly in a house fire would it cause more Devastation that's the question uh absolutely it would but there are all kinds of um precautions from that happening if a house caught fire and you had propane the amount of propane that you're using in a refrigeration system is is not even the amount of one of those little tanks that you use for for lighting a grill it's it's uh not enough to be a bomb or anything like that okay uh thank you so as we wrap up I want to offer once more to the teachers here if you would like a library of short clips from people across every pathway you could think of it's called a Spire every job has Clips discussion questions certificates lab statistics accessibility functions readal out functions over 70 jobs across all of these Pathways it lives in canvas Google Classroom schooly teams bright space whatever you're using and if you would like this resource you just have to reach out to our team we'll give you free access to Aspire for your class this Academic Year you just have to go to the link in the chat that I'm going to give you once more and request a short meeting with the Ruben team we'll meet with you give you access to Aspire let you share it with your students and give you hundreds of videos in your learning management system across every pathway and job you could think of we would love to spread that resource around it's newish for us and we want to make the CTE Community especially aware so feel free to take that offer in the chat I want to thank Rick for his awesome advice the advice his experience the technical information the professional skills you covered it all and um I hope the students appreciate hearing from someone who's really truly been in the industry and knows inside and out what it's all about so thank you Rick for your time today I want to thank all the teachers and students for their participation thank you Andrea for your sign language and just a look ahead um October 8th I believe or early October our next webinar we're talking to a drone pilot who's interested in learning about that hands off for drone pilot this guy we're talking to his name is Jimmy Alero he does Drone footage for Netflix and Nat Geo so he's really cool he's doing shows that you've seen Storage Wars one of the shows he's done uh Drone footage for and movies on Netflix he's going to talk about his business and how he runs his operation and how he manages drones as a company and that's coming up in early October later in October a dental assistant so we got a lot of cool conversations coming up I appreciate all of you being here today and uh we will see you again in October thank you again for being here thank you Rick you're welcome