Better Seen than Viewed w/ Jim Bergmann

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You know, he may be ugly and he may be pale. He may have a 12 inch vertical leap and run

the 40 in 37 seconds. But he has more kids than you, your host Brian Orr.

Welcome to The Thunderdome. This is the HVAC school podcast. I'm Brian. This is the podcast

that helps you remember some things you might have forgotten along the way as well as

checks in with good friends. In this case, that good friend is Jim Bergman. Jim has had

a heck of a couple years, but it was super good to have him at the symposium. We had a great

conversation about measure quick, some of the things that have changed his fight with

cancer and how he has overcome it and also just how nice it is to be seen rather than

viewed, which is what Jim kept saying every time people said it was nice to see him.

And it was really good to see him. Anyway, and that's from me. Let's talk to Jim.

It's been a while. Probably three years, maybe two or three years. The thing is you look

just as horrible as ever. It took me a long time to get back to this level of madness.

Yeah, it's been a lot of work. It's been a real climb. So yeah, I think last year we all

had you in our prayers at the symposium. So I think it would be good to do a heat least

here or whatever update you care to share about what the last couple of years have been

for you. It was pretty interesting. It was like the first year I found out I had cancer and then

chemotherapy, regular treatments cleared out and then all of a sudden about October. I think

the next year it was back again. And it was back aggressive. I would switch to it like an

aggressive B cell cancer, which was like a blood cancer, not Hodgkins, but Hickenham and Phoma.

So then I went through another round of chemo that wiped my immune system out completely

and they did an immune system transplant. So how does that work? They put you like in a dialysis

machine. They put your blood cells in a centrifuge. They spin them around. They strip out the T cells.

Then they take your T cells out genetically modifies them to a lab in Maryland genetically

modify them. Then you go through three days of chemo three days in a row and they completely wipe

out your immune system like to a baby like you're exposed to nothing. And then put your new immune

system back in, which is genetically programmed now to attack the cancer cells. And so instead of

my chemo wears off, your body continues to make these T cells that are genetically modified.

And it continues to kill the cancer. Right now I've been six months, eight months out. Now I'm

going to have a nine month checkup. But right now they said if you make it past six months,

then you're probably going to be in lifetime remission. So I'm past that point. That's just all

recovered now. And now we're just trying to put our nose to the grindstone and crank on things

again and get things going. It's been interesting. But you get a chance to reflect on things.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not where I need to be. But wouldn't change the thing. I love what I do.

And I like what we're doing the industry. Like we're doing it very quick. I don't know. I just

wouldn't change the thing. So that's a good news is I'm not like all of a sudden going to go into

origami or, yeah, underwater basket weaving. Yeah. So we're like that. Yeah. Like I have a new

calling now. So this industry has been on my heart and souls already been in for so long. So

you said you wouldn't change a thing. But when I asked you, you did say that you give cancer one

star one star. I would not recommend not recommend. Yeah. I tried it twice. I thought maybe

better the second time around. It's like a really bad girlfriend. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And

she's ugly. She's in bags and nags and nags. Yeah. And then she poisons you. Yeah, it was not

fun. It was I had what's called neurotoxicity. So I got to apologize to Doug Kral because I don't

know if I called him or he called me, but I think I was talking to him at some weird time in the

morning. Just when we're in a shirt today. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you're at this neurotoxicity,

you don't know who you are. What day it is. What's going on? Because your body's fighting the

infection so hard. It's like dimmering from the infection. It was pretty intense, but it was

all controlled. I live close to Cleveland Clinic. So they were able to do everything there. But

it was like I said, not something I'd recommend trying to avoid it. If you can avoid it. But

it's one of those cancers. They don't even know what causes it. It just wanted so many people

get it and they now treat it. Hopefully it's not bacon. That causes it because then you'd be in trouble.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, that bacon has been a cure. Bacon and grossed in coffee. Those are my two

hobbies now. So still dabble in bourbon a little bit. But I really like coffee now. It's been an

interesting process. Yeah. I like the cook. So you're particularly just a nerd about anything you

do to some degree. Oh, yeah. Pretty much. If you're going to do it, you really got to do it

right. Or you can't dab on things like it. Go bigger, go home and you were home. So you had to

go big at home. Yeah. That's pretty much. Yep. All right. So tell us about Mesherquick. Because I've

been, I think the kids in the West Coast would say super stoked about some of the shifts and adjustments

that you guys have made over the last couple of years. It's interesting that we were at a paper use

model for a long time. And I have a lot of tenacity. I mean, I never admit when I'm wrong. And I will

keep trying to try and edit till I get it proved right. And so there are so many people like Jim,

your model sucks. Jim, your model sucks. And I was always trying to explain why our model didn't

suck. Right. You know, operational costs versus overhead costs. You shouldn't love this model

because there's so much noting like the model. So we ended up having to change and really

Ben Reed and then Eric Preston, Eric Preston came in with us. He was one of the owners of

True Tech Tools, Bill Watermout and Eric came over and he's like your model sucks. So our team

decided we changed. We changed last February and it's been the best thing we've ever done. I mean,

it really accelerated growth. It was what people wanted. We had probably 90 plus retention of

people that are in from February. I mean, people are coming on and staying on. And now our whole

goal of measure quick this year is time to value. So we made a whole new version of measure quick

that is sort of a hybrid between the guided workflows and the regular workflows. But it gets you

to the vitals report faster, to the service report faster like to the end result quicker.

And then we did a lot of, you know, we have Ben Reed on who's probably the biggest AI nerd in

industry. Yeah, I would agree with that. And we really were looking at between him and Bobby,

one of our head programmers who are looking at all the different A models. And what we really

figured out was AI is not going to replace technicians anytime soon. It does a lot of things really

well. And a lot of things very, very importantly. So we looked at in measure quick, where we

who we use that would enhance the technicians experience with measure quick, but not provide them

with another rabbit hole to go down. So the big thing we did was identification the labels. It's

really good at taking a photo of a label and then looking at the data, parsing it off and putting it

into the right place for the profile. And then one thing we have that like if you think about AI in

general, I mean, so many of the AM models are right now subjective. It's like based off of Reddit,

based off of YouTube, based off of whatever content that I can get online, especially if it's

trained on HVAC school, which a lot of them do. I mean, you never know what you're going to pick up

from that site. Right. You will. You never know. It could be stuff that luckily we corrected a lot

of that early on, but it's a lot better than it could have been. But a lot of subjective data,

AI is like really agreeable. It'll tell you, you know, tell you what you want to hear. It's

very sycophantic, right? Yeah. And so it tells me I'm the most handsome boy there is. It's kind of

like my mother. It's like, you know, I pick up a gallon of milk. She thinks I'm the strongest boy

in America, you know. Yeah. And so what we looked at was that was a big problem. But what we have that

nobody else has in the industry is measurement data in target zones. And so when we can feed a model

something that what we figured out was it's really good at making a summary of what we see in

measure quick. Yeah. So not doing the diagnostics, not helping us figure out what's wrong. We already

do a great job of that in the software. And we use a lot of first principle modeling in measure

quick and a lot of non-dimensional mathematics and measure quick. So like what we're talking about

there is like when you look at a train a carrier or a Linux system, if they all have low air flow,

they're all going to have similar characteristics, right? It doesn't matter. It's not brand specific.

So I don't need to know what that exact suction pressure is. Now if you're to give AI a window air

conditioner, it could probably do an awesome job on it because there's no field variability.

There's in the mindset the length is exactly the same. The charge is always exactly the same.

This is how troubleshooting charge for carrier and squirrel and everything else came out because

they had this fixed system and they go, okay, let's remove some charge. What happens? Let's

ask them charge. What happens? Let's lower the air flow. What happens? But what they didn't have was

like a hundred foot line set and a 50 foot line set, a 350 CFM, a ton, 450 CFM, a ton. They didn't

have the three ton unit paired up with a four ton air handler, right? It's like that's where you

need a non-dimensional modeling so you can actually say, okay, we're going to take a very generic

model. We're going to put it into measure quick. Basically, is this system operating as expected?

And then we're going to benchmark it and fine tune that model down. So going forward, we know how

it, you know, if it's changed in operation. Yeah. And benchmarking is something that we're still just

not. We're big measure quick users now, I call us. And we're still not using that the way that

should be used. Like there's a huge opportunity. Oh, huge time savings. I mean, I was talking to a

company. We have a company with about a thousand contractors or thousand technicians in it overall.

And a large company out of Arizona. And I was talking to some of the guys. I'm like, you realize

that if you build this knowledge asset next year when you come back out, measure quick is literally

deploying nine probes. You're not taking photos of labels. You're not profiling a system. You're not

doing anything, but pulling down that current system and comparing its operation this year to last

year. And if you do it right, you're not even putting pressure probes on the machine. We're doing

a whole thing non-abasively. So you're not freezing your fingers. You're not bending refrigerant.

It's just a huge opportunity that and it way, way underutilized. So our goal this year is to

really get people using the software the way it's engineered, but also improving the software

to make it easier to use. Because sadly, I built it for myself. I built it the way my brain works.

Right. And my brain doesn't work the way everybody else's brain works. Thank heavens. Yeah.

You know, that's what we had to do. But it's been the changes we're pushing them out now.

What we did also is we have a switch. So if you like legacy mode of measure quick,

you're able to have legacy. You want to try the new mode. You'll be able to just flip a switch

and measure quick plus. You'll be able to use the new mode and swap between them. So the last

thing I wanted to do is like put a new verse out there and everybody opened their apple and

then go, what the heck is this? You know, move their cheese. The whole industry has a meltdown. So

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including their power tubing tools at navaglobal.com one thing I wanted to just mention because it's

popping in my head and I like to say things that pop in my head is like in my mind there's like

three different layers of assessment of a piece of equipment there's profiling which is basically

model serial does that have to be your piston what's the airflow targets is trying to hit that

that's like the basic that you have to do and if you're not doing that then you're not going to

get a good result then there is benchmarking which is basically saying okay here's what it was when

I either first installed this equipment or the first time I ever touched it here's what the

measurements were and so now I'm benchmarking this is normal but then the logical extension of

that which I think is where we need to get as an industry is commissioning and retro commissioning

right it's like the first time you go to a piece of equipment you shouldn't just be saying this is

what it is you should be saying how do we get it to as close to the intended design most from a

manufacturer standpoint and from what was the designer thinking and then of course in this market

usually they weren't they just held the picture of the house up and said it's needs a five ton

or at least let's normal like in your market we really concern with dehumidification right we want

to get obviously like you could buy a unit with a five ton drive on it and you may not need a five

ton drive you may need three tons or two tons and and it default was set up on high speed so yeah

you're correct it is about optimization it's not just about when you say benchmark it's not about

the measurements it's about the engineering of the equipment so what we're talking about now there's

a couple measurements like subcoolings gonna pretty much stay the same but what we're trying to capture

is actually design temperature difference so how much colder is the evaporator than the return air

right that's gonna be predicated on the selection of the evaporator coil and the airflow that you select

yeah and then how much hotter is your condenser in your outdoor air that's gonna be all based upon

on the design of the condenser and so good men I've worked on one of their systems the other day

there's a ton and a half system they don't have a ton and a half condenser they take their two-ton

condenser their two-ton coil put a ton and a half compressor in it and then they take their two-ton

air handler and they pair it up with basically a blower that'll do a ton and a half air for 600 TFM

so you end up with this little elephant in a room there's actually two of them I was surprised

you can fit that one don't say one don't say one of them is like Lonnie should be very upset

so the big elephant in the room was that the number one reason for callbacks was technicians weren't

fully deploying probes so they weren't doing a spire or a turn air probe they weren't measuring

they were measuring subcooling but not super heat biggest ones they weren't measuring static pressure

and almost assuredly those jobs will result in a callback because whatever measurement they

didn't make is the one that they missed that was actually a real problem it should have diagnosed

or found the other elephant in the room was that technicians were clearing out faults that measure

quick finds without fixing the fault that we identified yeah so the low air flow the charge problem

with and I can't tell whether the customer turned down the repair or the technician just cleared out

the fault I don't know that because I wasn't on the call but we do know that the fault was cleared

because like a measure quick I can't tell whether you have a dirty condenser or non-condensables

or I can't tell whether it's like I can't tell that you requires a visual assessment

a part of the assessment so what we're trying to do is that the next step if you're going to use

the software properly is to every single job nine probes on air conditioning nine probes every job

every single time especially the first time you're there you want to get the liquid line suction

line temperature you want to get the high pressure the low pressure when to get an outdoor air temperature

everybody skips the out it's like the manufacturers designed these probe kits without

like in a vacuum without understanding what technicians actually need to measure in a field

if you're going to figure out what your head pressure target is you need to have an outdoor

air temperature so you need to add that sacramidory for outdoor air we need return air

web-alvin drive-all we need supplier web-alvin drive-all those are used for capacity calculations

but the return air in particular is used for calculating target superheat on a fixed

surface metering device and it's used for calculating the target the target evaporator

coil temperature on our system and then obviously we also use the web-all calculation to

calculate target temperature split and then we use cyclometers to measure the total external

static pressure so we're making sure that the fan doesn't fail and a lot of the ECM fans what

they've done that's incredible is they don't correct air flow problems but they overcome them

right but what happens is we end up with premature failure of the ECM motor because it's

overramping and it ends up failing early and that's it. You said ECM motor. ECM, well what? You said

motor motor just now. The ECM motor fails and that's a huge expense to the homeowner. Yeah and

the power consumption that's the thing that people don't realize is like because people say well

well they don't fail like they used to I don't remember when they first came out they would just

overclock and throw the blower wheels all apart and they put speed limiters on them. They put

limiters on them but thinking that people don't realize is that they're drawing more energy their

entire life and there is greater current moving through the windings it's hotter and so that motor

is not going to last as long as it would if it was under a lower static condition. Yeah and there's

cool thing called centrifugal force which is trying to put the rotor into the stator every time.

Right and then that happens quite a bit. I mean those motors they're very very good but they're not

Oprah. I mean there's nothing that's Oprah's technicians figure out a way to make things

fail sometimes. I mean we're it's amazing some of the stuff that we see in the industry I mean when

you get out there and you actually see at first when you look at I think Florida, Texas,

Las Vegas and Arizona all have one thing in common and it's that they had this giant construction

boon they hired a whole bunch of low skilled labor to put these systems in new construction homes

and I also think they had a ban on six on flex duct that it had to all be six inches that you

couldn't put any of the water on. Yeah and a hundred foot long six inch 10 foot long six and

and then you couldn't cut it. If you had a short run you just had to put it around. Yeah we put

around and connected. But it dropped out. Yeah so it was like you go up in these addicts and this

is where his hand I'm thinking why are these companies selling whole systems? It's because people

need whole systems. I mean they literally need to look at everything because none of it was put

in right to begin with and so some of the markets are definitely more positioned for replacement

than they are repair because you might get a little more longevity out of it but these systems

actually require pretty heavy modification to actually make them work the way that they're designed

to work. Yeah and so the big opportunity with measure quick is deploy all your probes every single

time and then clearing faults is not fixing faults. Actually take those problems with a hole in

there and we have people that are so empathetic and you can't put yourself in somebody else's wallet

fixing that indoor air quality problem may be huge to them. You walk inside a house and you

realize that they're burning candles or have glades on its sticks or like they're trying to overcome

like houses shouldn't stink. That's for the most part. Is that something you tell your clients?

Yeah yeah your house shouldn't stink ma'am. You shouldn't be running blade freshener sticks in

here to make it smell better. I mean there's something else wrong. A house shouldn't really not

have any smell to it and the system shouldn't be noisy. You shouldn't have to turn off your TV

when the air conditioning system comes on. I mean it's like these are real problems that you

can fix and they're important to people. I mean it's a big part of our won't be. When you have 10

kids you always have to turn the TV up and the house always stinks and I don't think HEC is going

to overcome that but that's kind of a me problem. Yeah yeah well yeah. I can't pull out of a driveway

so that's a whole nother topic. Anyway and I'm not good at transitioning out of my bad jokes.

You know I need to work on that and I have to work on that. But Jason you can give me pointers

later. You're exactly right though it's like putting duct tape over the check engine light in your

car. That's when you're clearing a fault measure quickly. Look I fixed it. But again that's a cost

of having a tool that's actually effective is that sometimes you do need to clear a fault because

you need to decide like you said is it non-condensables? Is it a dirty condenser? And there's a good

amount of those sorts of things. Well and we don't know if it's not only not condensables but I mean

you get a system of 20 years old you're going to get a certain amount of foil following that you

just can't clean out again. I mean that stuff gets a little older and I didn't know that I was

a sleepwalker until I just I don't know what it is you know. Well when they run it out at 15 inches

up versus ground level it's pretty good indication. Well never mind. We're going to leave that

where it is. This is the family show Jim. Stop it. Couraging bad behavior.

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wet rag dash heat shield. Anything coming down the pike with measure quick that you're especially

excited about or is it really just conquering down business development that kind of stuff?

We're just going to really step on the gas this year and help the biggest thing are industries

out across roads. There's this whole opportunity to move people into technology. There's the old

guard retiring, the new guards looking for ways to improve the way the business structure works.

And if you think about the number one app like we have people go out and they put a CRM in the

business. They add a CRM and they start to actually measure things. They understand how their

business actually operates and they put systems in place. The one system that we don't have in

place is a system that is what your technician does when they arrive at the job. What measurements

do they make, what probes do they deploy out of the interact with the customer out of the interact

with measure quick. It's like we have a system that if they just took a little bit of time and

implemented that system into the field. The amount of consistency that they could get in the

amount of fallbacks that they could reduce the amount of conversions that they could make.

The amount of revenue they could increase for ticket could be very substantial because they start

to measure in their business how their field techs interact with their customers and interact

with the equipment. That's probably the most important thing a business can do right now is

especially if you're in the PE world. We have all these PE's buying businesses and

throwing money at them is not fixing them. The value that they need to bring in and a lot of them

have brought in is things like service tighten or house call pro or CRM. They've looked at the system

and go, you guys are using very antiquated, very old systems. If we just come in and we just put

these systems in place where you can start to measure your business understand it, you're going to

get improvement. That's an incremental improvement but what it really comes down to is if people start

to understand what it costs like a lot of technicians don't understand what it costs to get out to

that job. What it costs the marketing, advertising, truck rolls, insurance, overhead costs like

the service technician and the installer are the only people that are bringing revenue into the

company. Everybody else is overhead. You need to optimize that workforce that's out there to

whether you're a repair shop or you're a white shirt shop, whatever you want to call them, a sales

shop. Here's the thing. I don't have a problem with sales companies as long as what they're selling

the install rate. But if you can install it right eventually you end up in this perpetual loop where

you're fixing everything that you put in for the last year and you're at a standstill. I've

seen it happen. I've seen it happen multiple times where shops have gone in and they had to tear out

the last hundred systems that they put in because they were so horribly installed that they couldn't

get away from the callbacks and they couldn't sell anymore. So there is no pre-lunch in this. If

you're going to be a sales company that's fine but you better do a darn good job of installing that

stuff. If you're going to be a repair shop you better do a darn good job of getting it fixed

because you can only make the revenue once after that it becomes expense to the company. It's a

callback usually. Well besides the fact that like the central promise that we make to our clients is

that we're going to do the thing that we told them we were going to do and we're going to do it

right the first time. I don't think anybody has ever complained about spending $16,000 on a system

that actually does what it says is going to do. They're comfortable to utility bills go down.

When it doesn't work that people get upset about the amount of money that they spent and then

they start to reflect on it, lament on it, whatever you get frustrated with it. That's the thing

that like you know that I can't stand private equity. I can't stand this whole thing that's going

on and doesn't mean I don't like the people. It's just I don't like the force that it's putting on

our industry. There's no value at that's the problem. That's exactly it. They're just consolidating

stuff. It's like if our industry is broken. I mean it is horribly broken. If PE firms came in and

they said you know what? We know how to fix this and they actually consolidated and fixed it.

It'd be great. Look at what they've done to veterinary clinics. Now it costs you $1,000 to take

your dog in to get a neutered or whatever it's like. This is ridiculous. There's no value at all they

did was consolidate, take all these companies. Now you call within 50 miles and one PE firm loans

every company within 50 miles of you and what have they done? All they've done is raise the prices

with no improvement for the technicians, no improvement for the homeowners, no improvement for

anybody. It's just higher prices. And that's not sustainable. So the idea that like I always push

back against the idea that air conditioning or home services should be cheap. That is the only

silver lining is that to some degree it's driven the prices up and hopefully drug some of the

practitioners along who now can actually make a living at it. But it's still if you're a small shop

you can't be afraid to charge what you're supposed to charge. Matt Bruner and I always talk about

this and proud of him. He started out right out of the gate charging what he should charge

and delivering on what he said he was going to deliver on. That doesn't mean perfection but it means

that like you're taking that stuff seriously. My problem with P is exactly what you said. You're

charging more but you're not providing more value. In many cases you're providing less value.

We're seeing a few really good PE firms that are really starting to put systems in and do some

things that've been surprisingly. We're working with Jackson Combert Systems and Chad Simpson and both

those are owned by C-Leb and Anderson's out doing them and they're doing a lot of training.

They're implementing systems they're using tools like Medicare Quick because they see

the value in it. So it's not every PE firm that's out there but there's a lot of them for sure

and I'd say the majority of them are not bringing it. I mean I don't know if you saw that LinkedIn

map the other day of all the companies that are under the PE gamble. It's almost mine bought. I

mean like and so I'm not going to bully punches. It's a great company but they're held by Goldman Sachs

and this is the problem with PE. It's not that right this second it doesn't look beautiful for

everyone. It's Goldman Frickin Sachs. Do you think they really care about our industry?

Do you think they really care about our industry? Do you think they really and the answers

no they don't. They're in it for money. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with capitalism but

is that really what we want? And I think the answer we got off totally off on a weird subject here

but the answer is deploy your probes do your process as well as a shop that does care about the

clients. If you were to hand them back gauges and pay type thermal couples in time to go analyze

a system they would feel like they're a runner on naked because you get so used to having all that

data and all those calculations and all those things done for you that you can't function without them.

It becomes a extension of you as a technician where now you have a lot higher confidence level

that you're doing things right. That's why I don't think we see much attrition is because once people

actually start to understand it and use it as a tool they grow as technicians and I think that was

ultimately what we wanted to do is get younger technicians more productive faster earlier in their

careers and help season technicians just be more productive period. And that's one thing you've

always done really well. I mean we've talked about this for years. Is it's fine to serve up a score

to a client like green bread a number but for tax they still need to know what it means. Here's

these numbers but here's what they mean. Here's the real problem and that's where you're not

dumbing it down. You're just helping them come to correct conclusions because this is the thing

that everybody quotes from you now. I think from years ago is you don't have 20 years experience.

You have one year experience 20 times over. And that's what I think a lot of people did in the past

and they called it oh yeah I know it the hard way. I've known it in my analog case. Yeah but you're

doing it wrong the hard way. So what measurequick does is it helps reinforce the basic understanding

of what's actually really going on behind this quick. And it's a visualization of data.

I think the other thing is is I remember when I was younger in the field like you know I'm over here

calculating super heat and all this other stuff's going on and I'm completely missing it. You've

got to make a decision leave tonight or live and die this way. It's great song and I think about

it on every service call. And I don't like that song too. I mean if you don't like Tracy Chapman

there's something wrong with you. Let's be real honest. But there's something wrong with you and

you like Tracy. That's true. That is true. It can produce false positives. Yeah it can yeah it's

a good point. It's a good point. We're done here. It's good talking to you Jim prayers are still

with you but I'm glad to hear that you've made it through the other side and actually that could

be a bad thing when I say make it through the other side. Yeah I always say better to be seen the

viewed. So yeah good point. Yeah good point more play. All right thanks Jim. Appreciate you man.

All right. Always big thanks to Jim and all of his friendship over the years all of his mentorship

what he's meant to not only HVAC school but the entire HVAC industry starting with his work

over at I Manifold. Actually he was starting before that as an instructor and a contractor.

But then really ramping it up with the measure quick and what he's done over there. Great software

check it out if you do not use measure quick. They have done a lot of changes to their model

and I am a huge fan and we use the kilos now at scale. We use the kilos and we pay for it too.

I don't even get it for free because it's that good. But mostly it's good to see Jim and not view him.

Walking home last night I passed a slice of apple pie an ice cream sundae and then a lemon cheesecake.

I thought to myself dang these streets are really deserted.

Thanks for listening we'll talk to you next time on the HVAC school podcast.

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