Success stories
AIR TIME The Rawson brothers, Shane and Brad, recently racked up their 50th episode of the Air Conditioning Podcast. HVAC&R Nation editor Mark Vender spoke with Shane about the art of conversation, the industry, and hanging up the headphones. Mark Vender: How does it feel to reach the big five-oh of podcasts? Shane Rawson: To be honest, we never expected to get to 10 episodes! Brad and I thought that we would be just entertaining ourselves, sitting in our makeshift studio talking into a microphone, and wondering why anyone would want to listen to two blokes having a couple of beers and talking HVAC! We were absolutely staggered when we saw the downloads starting to come through, and the support that we received in response was so encouraging and supportive, it truly blew us away.
Through their podcast, Brad (left) and Shane Rawson have helped build Australia’s HVAC&R community.
MV: It’s pretty amazing that you have done this on top of your usual business, personal commitments, and through COVID-19. How did you do it!? SR: It has been difficult at times, I’m not going to lie. Anyone who has dipped their toe into podcasting, maintained a website, social media and so on, will vouch for the fact that there is a fair bit of work, time and expense that goes into putting it together.
it truly blew us away
Not only is there editing, but show notes, updating the website, sending out invites, putting relatable questions together, social media promotion. etc. And of course, there are also costs associated with putting it together in terms of media hosts, website hosting, domains, blah, blah, blah ...
MV: What were you hoping to get out of this project when you first started it, and did you achieve your goals? SR: The reason we decided to jump into podcasting, wasn’t because we like the sound of our own voice by any stretch. In fact, like most, we cringe at the sound of hearing your voice played back! It was simply HVAC&R Nation
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www.airah.org.au/nation
because when I first started listening to podcasts, about seven years ago, I was curious to see if there was much relating to the HVAC industry. And at that time, there wasn’t much around, particularly in Australia. We decided it would be a great idea to start a conversation and invite guests onto the show that we could potentially learn from and share the information with our listeners – if there were to be any! We confessed right from the beginning that we were not the gurus of the industry, but wanted to speak to the experts so they could impart their experiences and knowledge onto us, and our audience. We also made the conscious decision to not mention our own business, Morphett Air (shameless plug), because we knew that would be the nail in the coffin. We would have come across as being cheesy and salesy, and that’s not the reason we got into it in the first place. We have always tried to be as impartial as possible, and I believe we earned the respect of our listeners because of it.
Having said all of that, the satisfaction of finally getting it uploaded and live, and receiving positive feedback is euphoric.
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received in response was so encouraging and supportive,
The biggest challenge of course, is during the peak seasons when there’s never enough arms and legs – as our listeners will attest to. It’s 40°C-plus in the shade, you’re absolutely cooked, and you finally get to head home, your mouth drooling over your steering wheel at the thought of an icy cold beer in hand. Feet up when you hit the couch, and the last thing you feel like doing sometimes is editing an episode.
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The support that we
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MV: What are some of the important things you learned along the way? SR: We honestly learned from every single guest on the show – from those who are smashing it globally
Summer 2021
with their corporation-style businesses, to the single fridgie getting about in their van, making a living and giving it a crack at running their own business. The biggest take-away for us though, has been to not underestimate or undersell what we do in this industry. You will always find someone who will do it cheaper, and to avoid the “race to the bottom”, we should be selling our acquired skills, our knowledge and the years of experience without having to discount what we do. I believe that discounting our pricing to simply win jobs only really devalues our own self-worth. I remember hearing a story of an old barber who has been working in the same shop on the same street for decades selling men’s haircuts for $30. Out of the blue, another young fella decides to open up a barber shop right next door, with a huge sign that smugly reads, “Men’s haircuts, $15”. The original barber was at first dismayed by what he had seen, but thought deeply about how he would respond. The old barber finally decided to change his own sign out the front of his shop to read, “We fix $15 haircuts!” Love it. We’ve also learned that a solid and growing business is built on the foundation of having processes and procedures in place for every single role in the business. We have spoken to many highly successful people from Australia and the US about where they started and how they grew their businesses successfully, and the underlying theme was the processes and procedures that they implemented dramatically changed their businesses. We have taken this advice with our own business, and, working with business mentors, are slowly implementing processes and procedures ourselves. It’s not as easy as you would first think, but the results I’m sure, will be everlasting.
