Full transcript9 chapters · 8,719 words
00:00From executive assistant to training 700 technicians
Danielle Wernert: You have to sprinkle in the ride outs or day in the life in that program, in my opinion, as early as week one, and maybe it’s one day a week, you know, maybe it’s two days a week, whatever that is. But if you wait until the full four, six, eight weeks is done and then drop into the field for the very first time exactly what you just said some people are going to get in they’re gonna be like this is not what the textbook told me.
Danielle Wernert: This is not what the lab looked like. This is not what the textbook told me. This is not what the lab looked like. I don’t want this. So sprinkling that in sooner will help you.
Narrator: Welcome to Profit and Grit with Tyler, where blue collar owners and insiders spill the real story behind their hustle, building businesses that thrive through sweat and smarts. We’ll dig into their journeys from scaling chaos to growing the bottom line, with lessons and grit that pay off big.
Tyler Martin: Here’s your host, the blue collar CFO, Tyler Martin hey welcome back to Profit and Grit, the podcast for home and commercial service business owners who know there’s more to scaling than just working harder. I’m Tyler Martin, and today’s episode hits a nerve for so many in the trades why great techs leave and how to finally stop the revolving door.
Tyler Martin: My guest is Daniel Warnert, the founder of Upskilled Consulting. She’s helped train over 700 technicians and she knows firsthand what makes a tech stay and what makes them walk. We dig into real strategies around technician academies how to spot culture problems before they cost you and why your team probably needs more than a raise to stick around.
Tyler Martin: If you’ve ever hired someone, invested in their training, only to have them disappear in a few months later, this episode is a must listen. Let’s get into it. Hey, danielle, welcome to the Profit and Grit podcast show. How’s it going?
Danielle Wernert: Good. Thank you for having me. I’m excited.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I’m excited to have you here. You are an expert in a topic that’s very close to my heart that I’m really excited to talk about. But before I do that, or before we get too deep into it, I’d love to know what do you do professionally?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I own Upskilled Consulting, so I help companies in the home service industry build their own training analytics and training strategies, specifically at the technician level.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, which is so, as we know, is super critical, and I think it’s going to be a fun topic to dig into. What about on a personal side? You share something, maybe even that a lot of people don’t know about, if possible.
Danielle Wernert: Oh okay, on the personal side, I am obsessed with my kids, as I’m sure most people are, but I am also a kid at heart. Try to go to Disney World at least once a year. So if anybody ever has questions about what’s the perfect Disney trip like, let me know.
Danielle Wernert: We’ll talk about it for hours. I live for vacation and for my kids.
Tyler Martin: How often do you go to Disney World?
Danielle Wernert: We try to go once a year. We try and do a full family trip and then we try and do just a couple’s trip. But Disney is definitely on the agenda every year.
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. Have you gone to Disneyland, or is it always Disney World?
Danielle Wernert: So I have been to Disneyland when I was younger, usually Disney World, but this time we’re trying a Disney cruise, so spicing things up a little bit.
Tyler Martin: Oh wow, I’ve heard about those. I heard they’re a lot of fun.
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I can’t wait. I’m counting down the days.
Tyler Martin: How cool. Okay, so you don’t have what I would consider a typical path. So you started out as an executive assistant and then somehow morphed into this training savant, where you’ve trained like over 700 technicians. Talk to me, how does this happen?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I did. Yeah, I started as an assistant and I had lost my job and there, you know, I decided to take the leap into the trade. So no prior trades experience, other than my dad. My dad was an appliance repair technician and so I saw him in the truck and coming home every day.
Danielle Wernert: But that really wasn’t where I expected my path to go. And so I am a very, very organized person. I love structure, I love detail, and so I knew I could be an assistant to this executive or to this president, and so I started there.
Danielle Wernert: And he came to me and said he wanted to build out a massive training program. And fun fact, a lot of people don’t know had I not gotten that role. I was ready to go back to school to be a kindergarten teacher, so I love learning, and so it was just kind of the perfect two opportunities married together for me.
Danielle Wernert: So jumped in and worked with a handful of people and really took lead on building a training program. And, yeah, I brought in 200 technicians from very green, like out of the industry. I’d never some of them had never read a tape measure before and then that grew to continued ed and just kind of kept, you know these layers of development over time to hit over 700 technicians.
Tyler Martin: That’s crazy. So this brings me back to the day. My next question when I used to have a recruiting and staffing company, I had an HR person. She was phenomenal, super bright, super organized, and so I started working with her. I said, hey, I want you to create a training program.
Tyler Martin: And so she started putting it together, research, talking to the team, but what happened is team members started coming into my office and saying, hey, this person has no experience ever doing any recruiting and they were dismissing her, frankly, really early on. And I’m like, dude, come on, like back off, like she’s one of the sharpest people we have in the office.
Tyler Martin: She’s very aware, she’s in every meeting and you know I went to bat for her because I really believed in her. I’m assuming that could potentially happen to you. I mean one you’re kind of it’s a male dominated industry. You technically weren’t ever out in the field doing the actual work.
Tyler Martin: Did you have that pushback and, if so, how did you deal with it?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I not often, so this was my first jump into the industry. So I am not a technician by trade, so I’ve watched at least a hundred hours on pulling and reset a toilet.
05:42Told a young woman had no place managing in the trades
Danielle Wernert: So I could probably do that at this point. But no, I’m not a technician and so I’m going in kind of blind. But I really had a passion for learning and I really credit a lot of that to my team. I built a really really solid team.
Danielle Wernert: At one point had 80, 85 people reporting to me and it was, yeah, it was a beast, but it was so fun. But I really built a lot of rapport and I will always remember, you know, this one time where I was kind of caught off guard because you hear these oh well, you’re a woman in the industry, like you’re, you know, brush off, kind of thing, and you’re like, well, does that really happen?
Danielle Wernert: And that actually happened to me. And so I had a gentleman who was significantly older than me I’m quite young, was significantly older than me, I’m quite young, and so he was significantly older than me and he was obviously a male in the industry and went talking to other peers that I could not be a qualified manager, I could not be a qualified boss in the trades, because I was a young lady Young ladies don’t have a place in the trades and so it was kind of one of those moments where it was like, wow, this really does actually happen in the world, what is happening?
Danielle Wernert: He did not last very long, but that’s okay.
Tyler Martin: How did you handle that? I mean, sometimes, when that happens, part of it is you just quiet up and walk away kind of mad. And then there’s this other side of you where you can kind of snap back. How did you deal with it?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I am not super confrontational. In the workplace setting Now road rage, I’m learning that one a little bit. But in the workplace setting Now road rage, I’m learning that one a little bit. But in the workplace I’m probably significantly more quiet than I am in real life, and so it was really angering, though, like I had that feeling in my soul and I’m just like how dare you Like I bust my butt every day how dare you have those thoughts or those words.
Danielle Wernert: And so it just kind of took some time to sit back and I followed the channels that I needed to follow. You know, had to get HR involved, obviously, because it had progressed to that level. And you know, just having these conversations with this gentleman and it’s like, okay, I understand that you have these thoughts and really just having a professional conversation and I’m not going to lie, sometimes it feels like you’re talking to a brick wall, because you’re like I know that everything I’m about to say is not going to change your mind and that’s okay, that’s, my responsibility is not to change your mind, my responsibility is to make sure that myself and every female student that comes into your classroom feels safe in their work environment.
Danielle Wernert: And so it was really just kind of the drive to like. I had a few female students and I was like I know that I’m never going to let them feel or hear what I just did. So it’s kind of that almost like big sister, like pull up your blazer and let’s go, kind of protection mode, and so it just.
Danielle Wernert: It was a weird conversation.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Yeah, that’s unfortunate. You had to go through that. It sounds like you handled it really well, and the fact that he was no longer there too long after, I think speaks volumes.
Danielle Wernert: And the fact that he was no longer there too long after, I think, speaks volumes. Yeah, yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to. You know you don’t have to be best friends with everybody you work with, but the reality is that, as women, these are the experiences that sometimes we go through.
Danielle Wernert: And I’m not saying men don’t experience things like that too. I’m sure they do. I’m sure there are different scenarios, but it’s just crazy to think that those scenarios actually do happen.
Tyler Martin: Different scenarios, but it’s just crazy to think that those scenarios actually do happen. So yeah, it is funny. You kind of not funny is not the right word Interesting in that you, a lot of times in our own worlds, we think or at least I think, because it doesn’t happen to me or I’m not involved in it you kind of think, oh, we’re past that in the state of life, that we’re in this state where the world’s at, and then you hear it happens to someone and it’s like wow, it’s like I guess we’re not as progressed as I thought we were.
Danielle Wernert: No, no, there’s always that one.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. Okay, so, in terms of building the academy from scratch, curious, like, what was your process for determining what actually should be taught versus what maybe, like the industry, assumed the training should include?
09:27Building the academy curriculum, including budgeting classes
Tyler Martin: Like, did you have to make any decisions along those lines? Oh for sure.
Danielle Wernert: So the original curriculum. You know, the first time I started building an academy, it was quite long and we were like, okay, what do we want to include? And part of that was we are bringing in usually younger individuals coming in. Maybe they’re fresh out of high school, maybe they’ve had one or two jobs and so they may not have had as much life experience as, you know, their older peers and things like that.
Danielle Wernert: So life skills was a really important topic and we were like, oh, we should incorporate a budgeting class, a healthy cooking class, like all of these things that you don’t learn in high school, that you should learn in life. You know, I think there’s a bad rap that this stuff should be taught in high school.
Danielle Wernert: Well, no, it’s the parents’ responsibility and the reality is it’s also part of the business and you as a company. These are your people and they live life outside of your company and if you can show them that you care about them more than just employees, giving them those resources can make a really big impact.
Danielle Wernert: So we wanted to make sure we included things like that. But that also meant more of a time investment, a longer curriculum, a longer program, and so over time I can tell you out of the you know, seven, eight semesters while I was at this academy it was no semester was like the one before it.
Danielle Wernert: We were always tweaking, we were always cutting, we were adding, you know. So there’s not probably a perfect curriculum. I think the goal should be get them the entry-level solo job, like if your goal is to hire them and put them in a truck by themselves, then your technician academy should get them at the basic level job that they would be running in a truck by themselves.
Danielle Wernert: Don’t worry about all the advanced you know diagnostics and the advanced skills that they need to learn, because if you learn them at the beginning while they’re in their academy, if it’s not a skill that they see for six months to a year, they’ve probably forgotten it by the time they get to that job anyway.
Danielle Wernert: Focus on the fundamentals and get them really, really good at that. Get them comfortable with your community and your culture and then build that on through continued education.
Tyler Martin: So what’s that? Look like Someone comes in. They’re inexperienced. What is the general rule of thumb? How many months is it or time frame before they’re in that truck and they’re actually quote unquote producing revenue?
11:41Six to eight weeks before a tech runs a truck alone
Danielle Wernert: It’s going to vary from company to company. So you’ve got some companies that are like I need them out as fast as physically possible and so to do that you have to cut corners, and so it’s really hard to say like I’m going to get them out in two weeks.
Danielle Wernert: Can it be done? Absolutely. There are companies out there that do it all the time. What did they have to cut to get there? My personal favorite kind of timeline is really like a six to eight week sweet spot. You know we can add that and get them more comfortable and add a few more skills to that.
Danielle Wernert: If we want to make it a little bit longer Four weeks and under if you’re talking like brand new entry level, like academy cohort style training four weeks and under again you’re going to have to start cutting corners.
Tyler Martin: So I guess my question would be though because I had this happen to me you would hire people and I originally said, okay, I’m going to do like a two-month training plan, and what I found is that a lot of people, even if they made it to two months, they weren’t cut out to do the job, and so that was like a big waste of money and waste time, money, resources.
Tyler Martin: So then I decided, okay, well, I’m going to have them do some on-the-job stuff in addition to the training. So maybe, like the first week two weeks was mandatory because they really had to get the basics of what we were all about and then interject a little bit of on-the-job training along with some in-class training.
Tyler Martin: Like, is there some opportunity to do that? Because what do you do if you have someone go through, you know, eight weeks and then you know they just don’t show up or they’re not that good or what? How do you deal with that?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I think there’s a few different ways that you can handle it. You know, one thing that I hear a lot is student contracts, and so it’s not my place to tell you is that the right decision? Is that not the right decision?
Danielle Wernert: That’s your place, with your legal team, to decide that. But I know that is a common way in the industry is hey, commit to X amount of training and then you commit to X amount of months on the job or years on the job, you know.
Danielle Wernert: So that is an option I can tell you from personal experience in a handful of different companies. Tread that carefully, because you can also like if you lock somebody into two years in your company and they have a bad headspace and they’re toxic and they’re stuck now in your company, they’re not going to quit because they don’t want to pay you 20 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is, they’re stuck.
Danielle Wernert: So the only way out is for you to exit them, and so that can cause some unforeseen issues. So I think that’s part of it. As far as like getting them in the field, I learned the hard way that you should never do your entire curriculum and then introduce them to the field.
Danielle Wernert: You have to sprinkle in the ride outs or day in the life in that program, in my opinion, as early as week one, and maybe it’s one day a week, you know. Maybe it’s two days a week, whatever that is. But if you wait until the full four, six, eight weeks is done and then drop into the field for the very first time, exactly what you just said some people are going to get in and they’re going to be like this is not what the textbook told me, this is not what the lab looked like.
Danielle Wernert: I don’t want this. So sprinkling that in sooner will help you. But also, when you do that, like they have to typically ride with somebody, so vet who they’re riding with, because if you get them again with another toxic person, what toxicity is just going to continue to spread downhill.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, as a trainer, are you giving notes or feedback to either the hiring authority or the owner, depending on the organization, in terms of how these students are progressing and whether they’re exhibiting signs of whether they’re a cultural fit or professional fit?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I personally I build dashboards, so I build these analytical dashboards that are just focused on training, and so it could be, you know, whoever wants access. If it’s the company owner, if it’s the manager, the instructor, that’s fine. Not necessarily technician access, I would say, like higher leadership, but you can keep your grade book, you can keep your attendance tracker, you can keep you know, all these different assessments and scores and things.
Danielle Wernert: That way, at any given point like if an owner wants to come in and say, okay, I want to see, like class started two weeks ago, how’s everybody’s grades doing, how’s everybody’s attendance they can have all of that at the click of a button.
Danielle Wernert: So, yeah, I think that’s really, really important to give them that visibility if they want to. But I don’t think they always do, and that’s you know. Maybe their plates are full and they’re busy. So I would say, if you are the instructor, don’t wait for them to ask for that Already, track it in the background and have it ready to go.
Tyler Martin: And one way to do that is through like an analytics dashboard, got it. And then are there like two to three metrics you can come up with that could give indications that you have an effective training program or maybe you don’t have an effective training program.
Danielle Wernert: Yeah that. So as far as like metrics, I one thing that I have built is kind of like a almost like a self-reflection. It’s like a learning needs analysis and so you know I can send you that these PDFs and so they’re just quite literally printing out of these questions of like.
Danielle Wernert: Do I rarely do this in my team? Do I always do this in my team? And somewhere in the middle I will tell people anytime there’s a scale involved. I typically like to do it out of four instead of three or five, because that makes somebody tip the scale in one direction or another.
Danielle Wernert: I hate threes, I hate the middle number. It doesn’t give me any sense of action or direction. But a learning needs analysis can be a really good self-internal reflection of how is the training in my company going. And then, if you’re looking for more like objective metric or numbers and data, skill assessments are really great.
Danielle Wernert: Just quantifying that heating tune-up or that cooling tune-up or quantifying that plumbing system check or whatever those skills are being able to spit out a score and see how they’re doing, is really good. One comparison I like to do for people especially just starting academies or starting big trainings is do an analytics like a side-by-side your technicians coming in through your academy and maybe six months post-graduation, what are all of their metrics?
Danielle Wernert: So track all of your standard KPIs, your memberships, your revenue, all of that good stuff, and compare it to those individuals who also just entered your company but did not go through the academy. Is your academy really giving you a higher ROI on all of these KPIs that are important for your business?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good stuff For, like a smaller company who might not be able to do a full academy. Do you have any tips in terms of what they should be doing? I mean, obviously everybody tries to do the same thing. They try to hire experienced people and that sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.
18:08Career paths and scorecards when you can’t run an academy
Tyler Martin: Sometimes you’re taking another company’s problem and then occasionally you’re actually getting someone good. Do you have any recommendation in terms of what a smaller company that might not be able to dedicate a full academy to?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, most people are not ready for a full academy, so I’m glad that you asked that, because it’s a very large investment. And so most people are like okay, well, that’s all great, but like, I don’t have the time or the capacity to bring on five new technicians at the same time, what do I do?
Danielle Wernert: And so my advice there is make sure that your career path is robust and make sure you’ve got a dedicated training program and a dedicated training calendar. And so I focus a lot on, like, funneling the training to get the right audience at the right time, because if you’re leaving your training to, oh yeah, we train, you know we have a weekly department meeting.
Danielle Wernert: We pick a skill a week, that’s not training, friend, it’s just not. I mean maybe a little exposure, but that’s not training. So, really, like, build the map for them, and that map can start at entry level. And so when it comes time to like, okay, I want to start a training program, one of the biggest questions that you have to decide is is this going to be cohort style, like an academy where I’m going to bring multiple rounds of people and they’re going to learn at the same time, or is this going to be on a rolling basis, like as we hire somebody, I want to have a training program set for them, and maybe I hire another person two weeks later and another person three weeks later, and so those are very different training strategies.
Danielle Wernert: And so for cohort style I would say you know, academy, if it’s a rolling basis, then career pathing.
Tyler Martin: Okay, and when you say career pathing, a lot of times you know typical small business. It’s like more pay, maybe fancier title or whatever. There really is no career path. What would that look like for a small company in terms of just ideas from technician to next steps type thing?
Danielle Wernert: So right now in the industry it’s also called like a technician scorecard. So if you’ve heard that, that’s like the hot new thing, it’s. In my opinion it’s the same thing as a career path. And so what it’s going to be is you’re going to say, okay, I want to list out all of the skills that my senior techs should know, and so like.
Danielle Wernert: In my case, I’ve got a list of just for HVAC install alone, I’ve got 300 skills. Then you’ve got HVAC service, so there’s so many more skills than people think. When they’re like, oh yeah, okay, install a unit, like that’s one skill. No, friend, that’s like 45. But it’s like breaking all these out. So what do they need to know from a technical standpoint at what point in their career?
Danielle Wernert: And then from the KPI standpoint you know I talk a lot about like you can’t have two people with varying levels of experience set to reach the same goal, and so it’s. You can’t have a brand new technician who has held a hammer for the first time yesterday and a technician who has 20 years of experience under their belt having to hit the same KPI.
Danielle Wernert: It’s not fair, it’s not realistic, and so really like breaking those out in a scorecard setting is what I would recommend.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Okay, and then what about, like technology?
21:08What belongs on a training dashboard, from certs to tenure
Tyler Martin: Are there anything that in kind of leaning back towards a small, small company again? Are you seeing anything from a technology standpoint that small businesses could be leveraging as it relates to training or developing their team?
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, I think having a training dashboard and I know I’ve talked about that, I’ve hit that a couple of times, but honestly, you can have that at any level. You could be a five-person team and you can have a training dashboard it’s just, it’s all built out how you design it, and so it’s like if you want to track your team’s certifications I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said when was your last EPA audit?
Danielle Wernert: Oh well, we’ve never done that and we have 45 technicians Well, okay, that’s something we need to do. And so you are never too small to have a training dashboard. That would be my biggest piece. So, whether that’s somebody like me, or you build it in Excel or whatever you do like, find a way to build a training dashboard.
Tyler Martin: Okay, and that’s kind of gold. So I want to dig in a little bit deeper here. You said it yourself like the training dashboard is kind of what you want it to be. Can you kind of help me to understand what are some common?
Tyler Martin: You mentioned EPA audit. What are some common like measurables in that dashboard that a company might have in the HVAC space? Relatively small, maybe 10 technicians, 15 technicians.
Danielle Wernert: For sure, so one. So certification tracking is its own page. I love doing a certification tracker, expiration dates, all of that good stuff. You can also do like, just quite literally, company headcount. That’s a big one. I can’t tell you how many times back in the day I had to be like I had to go to you know whatever CRM we were using and pull up the dispatch board and be like, okay, I have one, two, three, four, how many technicians do I have?
Danielle Wernert: And so it was like we didn’t have one spot that told us the number of team members that we had, by department, by location, if you have different branches. So having a headcount analytics is good and in that you can also start tracking your employee tenure, specifically your technician tenure.
Danielle Wernert: And so if you’re finding that, hey, I’ve hired, you know, 45 employees this year but I’ve also lost 48, like, you can start seeing those glaring issues pop up to you. If they’re you know, it’s a lot easier to sweep it under the rug if you can’t see it.
Danielle Wernert: So when you have those pie charts and those things in your face, it’s like, oh gosh, you know tracking your IAQ sales, your water quality product sales, like, do you have a bar chart that shows you that, Like just having a full-blown dashboard that tells you everything, from your standard KPIs that you’re tracking already, but also your technical analytics.
Danielle Wernert: How many hours have we invested in training this year? How many people have passed their customer service role play test, or whatever it might be?
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good stuff Do you find in terms of that? Two or three-year mark, I’ve heard often, is when technicians tend to drop. Three-year mark, I’ve heard often, is when tacticians tend to drop Anything that business owners could be doing that can keep them engaged or making sure that two or three-year mark doesn’t stay up for their business.
Danielle Wernert: Yes, I think starting with having a career path is important because that’s a lot of times, especially newer you know this younger generation coming in. They want to see where am I going, I want to climb the ladder, where’s my next step? And if they can’t see their next step then they’re going to find another place that will show them where that is.
Danielle Wernert: So I think the first place would be having a career path, having that outlined, and then I think from there it’s quite literally asking your team, asking your technicians, asking your office staff what do you want to learn? You know there’s a really fun activity that you can do where you throw, you know, flip chart paper around the room in one of your department meetings and say, okay, at the top you could say CRM training, at the other you could do customer service, the other you could do technical skills.
Danielle Wernert: You could even break it up by equipment, have a flip chart for an AC and a flip chart for a heat pump you know all of these different things and just quite literally rotate them, play some music in the background and say what do you wish you could know right now, like if I were to schedule a training, what do you want training on and through self-assessments, just ask them, because I feel like so often we try to fill the gap for them, but we’re not filling it the right way, and so had we just asked them from the beginning, then we could have prevented all of that.
Tyler Martin: It sounds so simple, but it’s like an aha moment, it’s like wow, that’s so empowering if you get feedback from your own team in terms of what they’d like to learn. Yeah, we forget to do that. I mean, we just kind of, you know, oftentimes put our own opinions and thoughts of what we’re seeing on it, so that’s interesting.
Tyler Martin: But I meant to ask you, going back to that dashboard, is that all done in Excel or do you use any type of tools in terms of that dashboard?
Danielle Wernert: So my personal favorite is going to be Airtable. I always tell people that is. I will recommend that resource until I’m blue in the face.
25:44Airtable, AI formulas and the 80 percent accuracy problem
Danielle Wernert: I absolutely, absolutely love it. I tell people, though, if you plan to tackle it, make sure you grant yourself a lot of grace. It is an excessive learning curve. It probably took me about a year and a half to really learn how to build it out.
Danielle Wernert: So, resource-wise, yes, airtable is my favorite. It can all be built in Excel or Google Sheets, things like that. It just really this is one place that I would recommend investing in somebody that knows the formulas and knows how to do it, because the bigger your dashboard gets and the more robust and the more analytics it tells you, the harder those calculations and formulas are, and if you’re just like I could do, sum equals cells A through seven, you’re going to need more advanced formulations than that.
Tyler Martin: I think we’re all in for such a big change. I was watching the other day a YouTube video and there’s this new like vibe coding. I don’t know if it’s new, but it’s new to me. So it’s called vibe coding and the guy was talking about how he was going on Upwork and he was finding Airtable projects and he was literally like doing he was doing it in the video to show how he was doing the Upwork projects but he would vibe code or tell vibe coding to do it and they would create this whole like either app or website that automates all the stuff that you would do on Airtable.
Tyler Martin: That normally would take you like hours in matters of minutes and it’s like just mind blowing. And when he was like walking, I’m not doing justice in terms of explaining it, but it’s like where our technology is going with all this stuff.
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, and it’s so. I would say, be careful with it. I use AI all the time, every single day use AI. I think it’s got a place. Personally, what I’ve found with this it’s got like an 80% accuracy rating, so I would caution by coding.
Danielle Wernert: Yes, it can be done, absolutely. I would caution, though, because sometimes it might create a formula that looks like a lot of times. Right. Right, it looks like it’s working from the average user, but if you don’t know the fundamentals of the formula and what you’re trying to look for, then it might sometimes spit that 20% of the time like it might spit back information and data that wasn’t what you were actually tracking and so you thought you were tracking X and it’s really tracking Y and you have no idea.
Danielle Wernert: So I would just use caution with that. I think there’s a time and place for it. For sure, like I said, I use AI sometimes for my formulas, but you have to know what you’re tracking too.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I was. Manus is one of these AI type things and so I was using Manus and I said I’m just curious if it could create calculators, because I do a lot of calculators for my clients and I think I tried like five different ones and every single one had a pretty significant error that probably the average individual might not catch it and if they were to rely on it it could.
Tyler Martin: One was even a business valuation calculator and it was off by like half a million dollars just in the way it was computing. And so, yeah, to your point, like I would even say potentially even more than 80%, I mean I think. I think it gives you that nice foundation of maybe if you need a setup on something, but you really have to audit those formulas and the logic because it’s just not there yet.
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, and I think so. Like I said, I use it every single day Me too Amazing, amazing resource, but I think it should be utilized with caution and I think it should be utilized with the intent of like idea generation. Like it should be helping you generate ideas of where you want to go, but don’t rely on it to do all the heavy lifting for you, because it might be able to help, but it should never do all of the heavy lifting because it’s probably not going to be a hundred percent accurate.
Tyler Martin: Yep, yep, that’s good stuff. And now talking about so, sometimes you’ll hear financial loss of a technician leaving.
29:14The real cost of a tech leaving and budgeting training hours
Tyler Martin: I mean I’ve heard numbers 50,000 to 70,000. I’ve never really quantified it to. I think that could be a reasonable assumption, depending on what you’re including in that. I won’t necessarily ask you the cost of it, but I will say, like when you’re thinking about the ROI of training and just losing in the cost of losing people, like what are your thoughts around that?
Tyler Martin: Like how do you, how do you kind of quantify the ROI, even in terms of having a training plan? Can you even do that? And what are your thoughts around that?
Danielle Wernert: It’s really hard. There are so many different calculations out there. I mean, you type it into Google right now, or even about GPT, and say okay, how much does it cost to lose an employee? You’re gonna find like 50 different articles all giving you different numbers.
Danielle Wernert: So I don’t think it’s possible to be like here’s the exact dollar value. But maybe it is, maybe that’s a whole like MIT class, I don’t know. But for the standard user, the standard company, I think I like to think of it more as like yes, just know it’s gonna be expensive as heck, and then on top of that, but like, think about your culture and think about what that’s doing for your business.
Danielle Wernert: Because, from what I’ve found is, most often we get our new employees through, you know, your standard website, social media. That’s great, but a big chunk of them come from referrals. But the exact opposite can happen too. If you’re constantly driving people away, then they’re going to tell all of their friends and family absolutely never work for this company, because it was horrible, and here’s why you know.
Danielle Wernert: And so I think it’s more than just okay. Well, now I have to invest hours in filtering through resumes and now I have to retrain somebody all over again. I think culturally it is a cancer and it can spread past what you probably expected it to.
Danielle Wernert: But from a training’s perspective, I know there’s tons of different calculations and articles out there too. It’s like how many people are looking to leave a company in their first year because there was no training, because their onboarding was hey, welcome to the team, sit in this chair.
Danielle Wernert: Because your manager has a meeting that just got thrown on them. And now you have to sit here for an hour waiting for your next steps on what to do, like the onboarding and the training experience, I can’t give you a dollar value on what that will save you or what that will cost you, but it’s significant.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, I agree with that. So what about from, like, a budget standpoint, do you? Is there a percentage in your mind that we should be allocating of revenue for training? Like you know, if you take total million dollar business, like, what percentage should they probably be putting?
Tyler Martin: Or $5 million business, whatever it happens to be?
Danielle Wernert: You talked about about having calculators for your clients. So I kind of do the same thing, and so it’s like, okay, if you can build your own little calculator on Excel or something and say, okay, if this is our revenue, this is what we brought in, here’s our profit.
Danielle Wernert: We want to invest, try it with one, two or 3%, and just kind of play with it and say, okay, I have X number of technicians at 1%, this is this amount of dollars divided by you know, the hourly average, hourly rate, you know, gives me X hours of training, and so that’s something that I like to do.
Danielle Wernert: I, prior to my time in the trades, I was in retail management, and so for those of you that don’t know, at least from like a corporation level retail management, when it comes to, like, building the schedule for the next week, they typically say your store gets a thousand hours and in that thousand hours I want you to allocate 75 hours for setup, 25 hours for truck, you know truck teardown, you know all of these things, and it defines your hours for you.
Danielle Wernert: And so I kind of take that approach when it comes to training and say, okay, I have, this was the amount brought in, this is how many, how much? I want to invest as a company that spits out this many hours now, work backwards and build out my calendar.
Danielle Wernert: So that’s, that’s a calculator that we build a lot in Excel.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. What about evolution of the industry in terms of technician training? Do you? Where do you see like five to 10 years? Where do you kind?
Danielle Wernert: of see things heading, and are there things that we should be thinking about now in terms of preparing for that? Yeah, I think so we kind of hit it a little bit. I think AI I think AI is going to make a major shift in how we train and what we do.
Danielle Wernert: You know, especially in the trades, we see it all the time Like there’s these new apps and there’s these new home service companies that help offer us, you know, training support through AI, and I think it’s incredible and I think more and more companies are gonna start utilizing that in building out their lesson plans or their, you know, customer service scenarios and all of that.
33:36Gamifying training and the academy book she owes people
Danielle Wernert: But the other direction that I think we can have more of a direct impact on is like A learn AI, yes, but I think gamifying our training that’s something that I speak on a lot is just we focus on these technicians as seated learners sitting in a room staring at a PowerPoint, and they’re hands-on learners, they’re kinesthetic learners, and so we really, as leaders in the training and the learning and development industry for the trades, need to get them out of their seats.
Danielle Wernert: We need to make our training fun. We need to, you know, gamify what they’re learning, and so that’s a really big push. Maybe that’s just my soapbox, but I will be on it forever. Let’s make games into your training, so the learning sticks better.
Tyler Martin: That’s great, and then got a couple more here and then I’ll wrap up. You’re writing a book on internal technical academy. Can you talk about that?
Danielle Wernert: a little bit Sounded interesting to me when are you going with that? Yeah, man, so many people are holding me accountable to this book. It’s got to happen. So it’s almost done. So it doesn’t have a title yet. It’s ironic it’s got 20,000 words but no title yet.
Danielle Wernert: That’s all right. But it’s about how to start a technician academy when you don’t know where to start. And so a lot of the book talks about, like you know the why, why is an academy important? What can it do for us? And then it talks a lot about like, hey, I made this mistake, so you don’t have to.
Danielle Wernert: You know, in my years of doing this, I have fallen on my face a handful of times and I’ve made the wrong decision, and that’s all part of it. Like, if you’re, if you think it’s going to be perfect, then don’t start one, because it absolutely will not be.
Danielle Wernert: And so my book is really kind of designed to help the people that want to take that leap of faith, maybe not make some of the mistakes that I did, so maybe they’ll make their own later.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s going to be fun. I and I did kind of want to put you on the spot because it’s one of those things you’re now on recording. I know now I have to finish it.
Danielle Wernert: I’m in the editing phase so I’ve been telling people. You know, my goal is to get it in people’s hands. Whether that’s December 31st, that’s fine, but it’s in the hands in 2025. So it’s accountable. Now I have to do it.
Tyler Martin: That’s awesome. Okay, so your website is upskilledconsultingcom. Once again upskilledconsultingcom. I’ll put your links, also your LinkedIn link, in the show notes at profitandgritcom show notes. Is there anything else? Anything I didn’t ask you or anything where you want to wrap up before we close out.
Danielle Wernert: I don’t think so. I’ll definitely share with you the learning needs analysis, so if you want to share that with anyone that’s listening. So those kind of focus on like, hey, I want to do a self-reflection of like, is it the right time to invest in some sort of training?
Danielle Wernert: It might not be an academy, but is it the right time, like, do I need to focus on adding more training or more training structure? So I’ll be sure to get that over there if anybody wants that.
Tyler Martin: That’s great. And then if there is someone in the audience who should be reaching out to you, Is it any home services? Is it HVAC? Is there certain sizes?
Danielle Wernert: Like, who can you help the most? Yeah, my background primarily like library, locked and loaded ready to go is going to be HVAC, plumbing and electrical. I’m branching out on that and so I’m very transparent and like I am happy to help support any trade at all.
Danielle Wernert: It just might take me a little bit more research time. I don’t have that library ready to go. So you know, remediation, roofing sorry, my goodness garage doors, like all of those. The learning theory and the learning model transfers over, so I’m happy to kind of jump into those.
Danielle Wernert: But yeah, again, I’m just going to go back to that same method with the training dashboard. Even if you just want a dashboard and you’re like, eh, I’ve got a pretty solid like training structure, but this dashboard sounds great, like, help me with that.
Danielle Wernert: Like I’m happy to do that too, but you’re never too small to invest in your training.
Tyler Martin: That is so true, man, that is like I’m going to quote you on that in the show notes, because that is so true Like you’re never I mean you could be two person and you’re not too small. I mean it’ll pay dividend if you do it right and you invest in it.
Tyler Martin: And, honestly, the earlier you start thinking about it, the probably and you can correct me on this if I’m wrong, but the probably the easier it gets as you grow.
Danielle Wernert: Thousand percent. I can tell you I have implemented training strategies for like multiple hundreds of technicians and I have implemented training strategies for like 10 and less. And I can tell you it can be done and it should be done at all levels.
Danielle Wernert: It’s a lot easier at that smaller scale because when you go and say, okay, the design of the strategy is easy peasy, like that’s my bread and butter. I love doing that, I could do that all day long. But then I have to pass that baton back to you as a manager or a company owner.
Danielle Wernert: You still have to implement it with every single technician on your team. So if you have 400, what might take this company with 10 employees, you know, a week to figure out? It’s going to take you a couple months. And so a thousand percent.
Danielle Wernert: If you can get it in the beginning, like when you’re still small, and grow it as you hire and bring on people, it’s a lot easier.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, good stuff. Okay, Daniel, thanks so much for being a guest on the show. You are an awesome guest. I’m excited to see your progression and you already have a standing invitation when you’ve got your book out. I’d love to have you come back and we can talk through it.
Danielle Wernert: Yeah, thank you.
Tyler Martin: Thank you, take care you too, that was an awesome conversation with Danielle. Here’s my takeaway Losing technicians isn’t just a people problem. Takeaway Losing technicians isn’t just a people problem, it’s a financial one. Every time a good tech walks out the door, there’s real cost it’s recruiting, onboarding, lost revenue and even potentially damaged your culture.
Tyler Martin: What stood out to me most is how Daniel ties retention back to structure, clear paths, consistent expectations and leadership that listens. That’s where a lot of service businesses fall short and from where I sit, poor retention often shows up in the financials long before it shows up in the resignation letter.
Tyler Martin: If your labor costs are climbing, productivity is inconsistent or you’re constantly plugging holes instead of planning ahead, that’s a sign something deeper needs fixing. That’s what I help with. I’m a fractional CFO. I work with service business owners to align their numbers with the reality on the ground.
Tyler Martin: So you’re not just making payroll, you’re building a business that can grow without burning out. As always, guys, thanks for listening to Profiting Grit. If you found value in this episode, please do me a favor. Share it with another business owner in the trades and leave a review.
Tyler Martin: And if you’re ready to make smarter financial decisions that drive real growth, head on over to Profiting Grit and let’s talk Until next time. Keep grinding smarter.
Related Episodes
- The Pay System Top Home Service Companies Use to Double Revenue – Ryan Shank
- Most Contractors Price Themselves Broke Without Realizing It – Danielle Putnam
- Building an Ethical Sales System for the Trades – Lenny Gray
- Why Your Tech Training Strategy Determines Your Bottom Line – Joey Henderson
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: HVAC business coach.
