Talk With Ryan from Trades Over College!

Attention please Show starts in 10, 7, 6, 5... How about that introduction? This is Ryan with Trades Over College. Thank you so much. You kind of caught my attention. Basically, the name of your channel on Instagram is what caught my attention because I feel like so many... I wish I could reach so many young people that are considering trades or feel like college is the only option. I feel like you're doing a much better job of that than I ever could. Well, thank you so much, Curtis, for having me on today. Oh, you're welcome, man. Well, first, let me start this off by asking you, how did you get into the trades? How did you get interested in it? Did you get in it right out of high school and leading into what are you doing now? Right, so I'm 20 now. I got into it when I was 18, straight out of high school. Basically, my mom knew a guy who worked on our AC at the house that I used to live at. And I was talking to him. I would watch how he works and stuff. And then one day I just asked him if I can ride along with him. on some of the jobs that he that he does and I kind of like fell in love with it right away because HVAC has like a little bit of every trade involved. We do electrical, plumbing, Thank carpentry, you name it, we do it all. So I kind of started researching more into the you so all the trades and I wanted to go the HVAC route so I went to a trade school. much For nine to ten months, I believe. And I was working part-time at a company at the same time. for And then once I graduated, coming. I just started working full-time right away at a different company. And I still work there today. Have you had to do anything with unions or anything like that? So I do not work in a union company. And you may ask why? The reason is, well, I already have my own company while I'm working, but I'm looking to gain a few more years of experience at the company I'm working at. And then I'm fully going to leave that company and just run things on my own. So I figured a union is more of a route that you want to go if you're looking for something Something long term, like for retirement and stuff. But I don't really want to go that route. Well, you just opened a whole other can of questions here. You have your own company already? Right. So basically, I live in Staten Island, New York. I work in New Jersey, right over the bridge, about like 15 to 20 minutes away. So... In New Jersey, you do need an HVAC license, but in New York, where I work, you only need a home improvement license, which I already got. So I do a lot of side jobs in addition to my job with my own company in New York. So I'm kind of juggling in between both. Alright, that's different. That's different from the way it's down here. So you could just need a home improvement license. Well, how do they regulate it then? Is it through the permit process or something? Um, you don't, like, they're not strict about anything, you can pull permits if you want, if, like, the customer requests, or you don't have to, it's not, like, strict, it is recommended to pull permits, like, if you're doing a new installation and stuff with electrical, but, like, just for repairs and stuff, you don't really need anything. I think. So, yeah, everything is just through that home improvement license. You just go in and take a test. It's like 30 questions, get fingerprinted, get a bond insurance, a business, and you're all set. I was about to say something bad about somebody who I know works up there, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to mention names. There's some prominent YouTubers out there that you wonder about. Yeah. Um. Well, I got to say, I wish I had been as motivated as you are when I was your age. Before we went live, I told you when I was your age, I was getting in trouble. I was, let me see, at 20. I was probably still in college, but, you know, trying to party all the time and more interested in girls and whatever I was drinking that night than I was in school. That led me down the wrong path. It's hard to finish school when you got that kind of mindset. So did you finish college? I got two different degrees, but at that time I did not finish. I dropped out. At that time I was in mechanical engineering. And later, years later, when I was in my 30s, got my degree through Ohio University. But you know something, I don't... I don't regret all those years that I was studying in college because I learned a lot of good stuff. I took some really good classes. I started to major in business administration at one time. The business classes and the business law and all that stuff has benefited me. Even if it's just a few things that really benefited me, those few things are important. Like understanding the differences between a corporation and an LLC and an S-Corp and which one you want to file as and maybe the tax advantages of an S-Corp. I feel like I figured out the ideal way to do it. All right, hold on. I formed my company as an LLC, but I file my taxes as an S-Corp. So I've got the benefits of both. I mean, it's just I would recommend anybody who has the advantages, at least in Georgia, we have to do something like that. The LLC limits your liability and the S-Corp. Is tax advantageous? That's what I do. Like I had other businesses before reselling and e-commerce and stuff, reselling sneakers, clothing, you name it. So that's what I would do before. So, at the company you're at, is it mostly residential? Are you doing any commercial? Yeah, we do everything residential, commercial. It's a small company, so they literally have me doing everything from sales to service to installs. Sometimes you do it all. So, how long have you been working basically as a service tech? I'd say like a year and a half. Yeah, I would recommend you do get some more experience, yeah. Because when you do go out on your own, I'm going to tell you, there's nobody to call. The buck stops with you. It's not like you can call up your best friend or your boss or your service manager and say, hey, you are all those people. You know what I mean? And I don't mean that there's no resources there for you to help. You can get service manuals and sometimes there's help that you can call from specific companies. But as far as trying, who's going to figure it out? It's going to have to be you. There's a lot of weird stuff out there. They're all the time coming out with new stuff now. And basically, if you can get the basics of how things work and be competent and be willing to take a step back and read a manual or something, you'll be fine. There was times where I was in a pinch. And then luckily, I have a few buddies that I can call that they help me out with jobs when I need help. So it's good to have people you can kind of rely on at times. All right. I've kind of learned. The way that I grew up in it, basically, it started when I was at one big company and we had like 14 technicians to maybe six, depending on what time of year it was. And the culture there was, you go to the job and you fix it. You don't call me. I'm busy fixing my own problems over here. They would get mad if you called and asked for technical support on something. So it kind of forced me to just sit there with it until I could figure it out. But at the same time, that was before we started working on many inverter things. Yeah. There may have been a few mini splits out there like that, but there weren't many. And now they're everywhere. So needing a little technical support on something that's brand new for everybody is not uncommon. Let me see. State? Somebody was asking what state when you were talking about your licensing. You said New York City? New York City. Now, are those requirements for the city or New York State? The city. It's the five boroughs. That, to me, is completely different. Where I am, the state regulates. Well, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's weird that it's, like, different. I've only been to New York City one time. I was going to try to go to Times Square during ringing in 1990. And it poured rain, so we stayed at home and watched it on TV. I mean, it was terrible. Cold and rainy. None of us were going out in that. Yeah, you didn't miss much, too. I don't get the hype. Well, for us, it's like we just watch it on TV every year. We thought it'd be cool to go one year. So we arranged a whole little vacation all around it. I didn't. It was actually my mother-in-law who arranged it all for us, and it was pouring. That was back in the days of Dick Clark's rockin' New Year's Eve. Do you remember any of that? I'm No, it's like, who is it? starting Anderson Cooper and the other guy on the New Year's Eve show getting drunk on live TV. Things have changed. to speak Yeah, and some of the people who brought me up in the trade, one of the first people that actually took time now. to try and teach me pure old school. He didn't know. He barely knew anything about the refrigeration theory, let's put it that way. He understood how the low voltage worked, and you ever heard people talk about beer can cold? Yeah. This guy, that's how he charged the system. And, for example, if he was working on a furnace, he's had a few of them blow up in his face, so he would turn it off at the thermostat and then take a jumper and, like, jump to white and then keep his hand on the jumper. In case it started to blow up, and when he jumped back, it would shut it off. I'm serious. There he is. That's great. But he was a character. He's probably dead now, but he was a character. That still wasn't, but like. There are still people like that now. I know it. And his brother had actually been the guy who started the business where I started working. And he was working for the new owner. And there is where I started doing duct work. I was a duck helper. It sounds like. Come home covered in mastic, crawling under houses, through questionable stuff, working in attics, being careful not to step through somebody's ceiling, which I did multiple times. And it's hard, hot work. And there's like very little recognition that you're doing a good job or anything. It's just like, go do it again tomorrow. I would take service all day. Oh, yeah. Well, the guy who I was working for noticed that I wasn't doing drugs and getting drunk like some of the other guys, and after like eight or nine months of working on a duct crew, he put me in a service van, and I didn't know anything, nothing. I remember he would send me to a call. Well, first I was doing like PMs, you know what I mean? I remember him sending me to a call and the blower wasn't working and I basically called back in and said hey the blower ain't working and they were like why and I was like I don't know but that's just how that's how they threw me into it it's like throwing me to the wolves just go out there and do it I had no idea. That sounds like how I started they just threw me out. A little bit of prep would have helped but but the owner of that company and that that company Hopkins Heating and Cooling, the owner named Robin, he also took on a little time to show me a few things like how to wire up a PSC motor. I still didn't basically understand the basics of the electricity and all that stuff, but at least I stopped burning up motors. Cheers. And I burned up a bunch of them, I did. Good. Yeah. That guy was so patient with me. I don't know why he didn't fire me. Yeah, that was a crazy one Tube heater. What kind of tube heater? You ain't talking about a tube heat exchanger, are you? There's, I'm not sure what he's talking about. Yeah, and like somebody said here nowadays, you got YouTube to help give you an idea sometimes. In fact, I've been recommended that on my YouTube videos, I'll be more specific about what I'm doing so people can Google it and The result for what they're working on. But most of my videos, I kind of leave it like on when I'm putting them together. I try to make it like a little bit of a mystery, make people want to click on and then tell them what we're working on and go straight to the repair. But I don't want them to know exactly what happened. So I want them to stay in the video till the end. Thank I've been watching some of your videos and I think you're doing great on them. Well, thanks. Honestly, I just started to show other people how to work on HVAC stuff. I ain't got a kid to pass it on to. Yeah. you. And you know something? I don't know about you because you're much bigger on Instagram and TikTok and stuff. I get frequent requests from potential sponsors through emails and whatnot. I get them all the time. I would say six to a dozen a day. And, um, some of them... Are people who want to set up platforms where people pay to get instructional videos from me. And I've never bitten that. But the whole point of the YouTube thing for me was to put it out there and make it easily accessible for everybody. Nobody has to pay for that information. Right. I just... I mean, that's pretty good that you have a lot of people reaching out to you. Honestly, I don't get much sponsors reaching out to me. Do you have any sponsors right now? Just Jobber, but I think maybe because I wasn't consistent with my videos before, I just started becoming more consistent. So if I just stay more consistent, then I'm sure I'll get more. Jobber seems to be one that's reaching out to a lot of people. So it might be a good one to hook into, especially if you can use it and talk about it. Right. Talk about your use with it. I tried to use Jobber one time several years ago, and they didn't support sub-customers, so that lasted like two days. Okay. Who is this? You're going to have to pronounce that for me. Isau? Isau, yes. Garcia. You're welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Do you have any employees in your company? I did it one time, and it didn't work out so well, so I don't anymore. Um, if, and let me warn you, if you're serious about getting out on your own, I'm sorry, I got my iPad right here. And every time I say serious or something like that, it thinks I'm talking to Siri. Sorry, turned that off. Um, if you're serious about starting a business and you think you want to grow it, be cautious. There are a lot of people out there who just want to rip you off for everything you've got. I had people. Taking my jobs, doing them on the side with my equipment, my refrigerant, my parts, my vehicle, and billing them out for themselves. And even my dispatcher got in on it. So you got to be real careful. And one of them I fired, and about a week later he broke into my shop and stole all the valuable stuff he could find, like recovery machines and vacuum pumps. You just got to be careful who you invite into this. business or money-making platform that you're going to be trying to create. It's risky. Wow, that's terrible. It came its own. So the last one I had created a severe problem, and I basically decided, I spoke with my wife, and we said, you know what, we're just going to go back to working by myself because I was making more money working by myself than I did when I had five employees. Wow, that's bad. That's just the honest truth. And I've said this before on this little show here. For me, if I was paying somebody like $20 to $25 an hour, the total cost for that employee, when you talk about workers' comp, adding to your general liability, additional vehicle insurance, the additional vehicle. Gas, even if the vehicle is paid for, the total cost was like $70,000 a year. So, and it's really hard for an employee to make that much money for you. It's, so I have a friend in the business who's got like 15 to 20 employees right now. And he said he didn't start making more money than when he did when he was by himself until he had 10 employees. And finally, it started overcoming the additional overhead that they present. And I just never got to that point. I had too many troubles getting good employees and retaining them. Let's put it that way. So by myself was just a better option. Do you have time getting to all your calls right now? Oh, yeah, especially now. This is our slow season. It's probably already cold up there. But down here, um... This is our in-between season right now, so I don't have any trouble with that. Even when I'm busy, most of my customers understand it might be next day or maybe even two days if it's in the heat of summer. So I just work as I can and push them down the schedule as they start coming in. I see. I was like, I've got to put this up here. Here With that hairstyle, you don't need to comb your hair. Is he talking about you or me? That guy's name's Kurt. You know, my family used to call me Kurt. we In fact, the only people that call me Kurt are my family. go. I think he was talking about you. Thank you. You don't permit, do you? Is that natural? Yeah, it's natural. I just add like a leave-in conditioner. Okay. All kinds of questions. Let me see this one. This one's about mini splits. I saw you have a problem with a multi-head mini split. Do you have a lot of problems? With mini splits, no. I don't have a lot of problems with mini splits because, um... Most of their communication is done through a communication cable which is a dedicated heavy gauge wire. Most of the stuff I have communication problems with are like unitary systems, ducted systems that have either thermostat wire or communication cables, two to four wire communication cables. Those can be hard to track down. That's true. I'm not family, but I still call you Kurt. My people call me Big. And anymore, if somebody calls me Kurt, like if I get a phone call or something, they call me Kurt, that's family. Almost everybody calls me Curtis now. I didn't request that from anybody. It just sort of happened. Well, tell me, do you have people who are trying to partner with you or want to come on board with you when you go off on your own in a couple years? Yeah, I do have one of my friends that I went to high school with. Uh-huh. He's an electrician now and his brother also does HVAC and construction, he basically does everything. He also has his own little, like, he doesn't work for anyone. He just does, like, people subcontract him work and stuff. And then he has his own jobs on the side. But he's not, like, an official business yet. So... We were thinking about all having our own businesses and just, like, helping each other out and stuff like that. I also want to do, like, the home improvement side of things, like construction, not just HVAC. So he's going to teach me all of that. Wow. I did framing for one summer. I know it's hard work. Yeah. Spent a lot of time on roofs and digging trenches for foundations. That's what I remember about that. Hard work. But, yeah, Framing, that was just like a summer job for me. I did learn a lot of things, like how to use a tape measure. You'd be surprised that you can be wrong when you're using a tape measure and how frequently that can happen. And when it does happen, the guys on the job are going to rag you. Oh, man. I can't tell you the names that they used to call me. At least I'm not going to say them out loud. I also have, like, a side gig going on right now. I've been hanging up a lot of Christmas lights. Really? People paying you to do that? People are paying me. A lot of, some people want those like permanent UFI lights and then also just like Christmas lights. Sounds like you're doing whatever you can to try to make it happen, man. Like I said, when I was your age, I was getting in trouble. So my hat's off to you, man. It's good to see somebody who's focused enough to get out there and get it. This is from Victor. I got to meet him in Orlando. What somebody told me when I started my business 15 years ago was pick one thing and be the best at it. That's basically what I've done. I don't do refrigeration. I don't try to do ice machines or anything like that. I'm just HVAC, and I try to be really good at what I do. My goal is to be like a general contractor. I know there's a lot to learn. Thank you, man. What's up? And by the way, you don't need to send me anything. I'm doing great. In fact, y'all don't send me anything. Thank you. But thanks. Pictures, I see it all the time with Christmas. Called, hey you. I'm not talking about hey you. What they called me were things a lot worse. You got to have thick skin to work on any kind of construction crew. You got to, especially if you're a newbie. I'll give you an example. When I first got on a framing crew, they used to tell me, make fun of how I held my hammer. say it. I'm sorry. I can't say it. They would say, well, it's not a certain member of your body. You shouldn't, I can't say it, but those guys, they were brutal. They were brutal, but they broke me in, you know, you just got to go with the flow. But let me see, are you going to go to, I mean, are you thinking about trade school of any kind? I mean, I went to trade school for HVAC. I was talking about like for electrician. You know, here in Georgia, when I applied for my contractor's license, they automatically applied me for an electrician's license. I've never seen the need. I think I could have been happy as an electrician, but I'm glad, like you, I picked HVAC. You've got to know a little bit of everything. Right. You do. And now, do you have other people you use their licenses for, like for electrical employees? No, I'll just sub it out to them if I need something like that. Then they use their own license. Got it. No, there's not. I don't have the drive or necessity to become like a general contractor and let everybody work under my license so you can bill out a little bit more. I'm fine just in HVAC. I thought Riley was going to come. Do you have a dog or a cat? Riley is an 80-pound Weimaraner. He thinks he runs the show around here. Every now and again, I got to let him know who he don't. I tell you, recently, though, he's been giving me trouble. He likes to get up early in the morning, and he wants you to get up with him. And that's rough. It happens at 6 o'clock in the morning or 5.30, and you want that last 30 minutes of sleep, and he ain't going for it. Bless you. Will, we touched on this just a second ago. You are going to AHR. Yes. Is there anything you want to see while you're there, or are you just going to try to see it all? see it all. You can't see it all. It's too much. I'm going to try. Man, I was there for two and a half days, and I probably saw maybe 10% of all the stuff that was there. I mean, it's huge. Yeah. Absolutely huge. And I heard the one in Vegas is probably one of the bigger ones of all of them. But yeah, I'm going to be there on, I don't know if I'm going to last three days of the show. I mean... I'm only going for two days. So you're going to be there Sunday night? Monday and Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday There's somebody else who might be in Las Vegas. Yes. I got an invite to go to the CES show in Las Vegas, which is like in the middle of January. You know what that is? Consumer Electronics Show. I do. You got all kinds of cool stuff. It's just not really in my wheelhouse. Sounds cool. It would be cool, but, you know, I don't want to walk away from the business for two or three days. Within three weeks of HR, so I ain't going. We'll be looking for you, man. Find me and say something to me. If you're at the award show, find me, because last time I was at the award show, I got to say the award show is heavily tilted towards Instagram and maybe the TikTok crowd. There's not many YouTubers there. Yeah, that's for sure. There's not. And I think I talked to all of them when I was there last time, all three of us. And it's a crowd of hundreds. So, so if you, it'd be great if you go into the award show, just stop and say hello to me because I feel like I'm not in my crowd there. And it's hard. It's a little, it's like you find somebody who will talk to you and you just hang around with him for a while. I have no idea what you're doing. What? Yes. I don't know. I'm just going to do that. Obviously, I have channel around. Oh, that's funny. I don't think we're done. Well, he did run away. No. No. Oh. Okay. Riley's a card. He really is. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Some people don't understand what it's like to have Okay. Okay. a dog that really loves you and you love your dog. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's like my child for me. Okay. Okay. I don't have any kids, so my dog's like my boy. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm probably going to wear my Australian hat to make it easier to identify me when I'm at AHR. So look for the hat. You might see me. That'll be cool. I'm thinking about wearing it at the award show, too, with my snakeskin boots. When was it? Was it last year where HVAC Strong wore a kilt, I think? I don't remember that. Or was it the year before? It may have been. I don't remember. I think I would have remembered that. That thing was huge. I mean, and who in HVAC has time to work out like that? I don't. JJ Commercial HVAC. I'm not sure I know who that is. Who is JJ, y'all? And he's calling out Steve from Everything HVACR. Well, guys, I don't want to keep everybody around for too long. I did want to bring you on because you are spreading the message that trades is a viable option for young people instead of going through college. I learned a lot through the college I went through, but probably the most useful information came out of trade school for me, studying HVAC. Thank Honestly, I make great money. I make more money than I would have if I had become a mechanical engineer, and that's what I went in for. So, yeah, the trades are a great way to earn a living. It's satisfying, too. Definitely. you. I'm just trying to keep pushing the message out there to the younger generation. And definitely the trades are the way to go if you're mechanically inclined. And you do not want to sit behind the desk all day. I know it. Looking to the trades. I know. I'm thrilled with how my career has turned out. I kind of fell into it. I didn't plan for this. It happened. And I learned to enjoy it. And then I learned I became good at it. And then I enjoyed it even more. So, you know, it's a great way to make a living. Awesome. Was anyone in your family in the trade? My dad was a mechanical engineer. One granddad was a career Navy, and the other one was like a train engineer. Both of them served in World War II. My uncles, I don't really have anybody in the trades in my family. Yeah, I didn't really have anyone either besides my grandpa. He owned the mechanic shop, but that was about it. But I never really, like, worked with him. I can't think of anybody. My uncle's an accountant. Of course, they're all, some of them are gone and some of them are retired. Thank you. Another uncle was another mechanical engineer and one was a state patrolman. And actually, uncle on the other side of the family was also a mechanical engineer. So I had a bunch of them in the family. It was like that was what everybody expected from me because my dad was one. I tried that, and maybe if I hadn't been partying so much, it may have worked out, but it just didn't work out. How did that come about? Well, my dad was in the Air Force, and I have an uncle, another uncle that was in the Navy, and another uncle that was in the Air Force also during Vietnam. And I've got other family members that were in Vietnam. I've got a cousin right now who's, like, career on National Guard. He's been deployed, like, seven different times. But he's the only one in the family right now that's really actively serving anybody else. My generation didn't really need to serve like other generations. There was no draft. And I'll be honest, it was unfortunate in my high school, people who signed up to go to the military after high school, it was kind of looked down upon for some reason. They really wanted you to go to college and if you went to the military For some reason, that was looked down upon from my high school, and from what I know now about military service and the people who have served, it teaches you to be goal-oriented. It gives you a work ethic. It teaches you to follow instructions. There's overcome obstacles, like they say in Marines, adapt and overcome. It teaches people a lot of great things that a lot of difficult things really do. We'd hire people coming out of the military. So I wish I had valued that more when I got out of high school. For sure. I mean, there's like a lot of pros and cons to everything. Well, guys, I think I'm going to go ahead and sign off. It's been about 45 minutes for today. Ryan, thanks for coming on. You know, you're welcome to come back anytime. For sure. Especially if there's something specific you want to talk about. Definitely. Everybody that came to tune in, thank you for coming. And, um... Y'all keep tuning in and watching the videos. I've already got another one for tomorrow. Thanks for watching, guys.