From Cable Dressing To Closeout How Pros Protect Profit

We come back live after a short break and jump into rapid fire field questions that hit the real pressure points in structured cabling work. We talk about protecting quality, protecting profit, and building a career that keeps up with the pace of the low voltage industry. 
• planning cable bundles before the first pull so racks stay clean 
• keeping the telecom room controlled so patching does not undo your work 
• choosing Velcro for serviceability and avoiding overtightened ties 
• using ANSI style rack unit and port numbering for small installs 
• avoiding estimating traps like missing labor factors and wrong averages 
• budgeting mobilization time and project management hours up front 
• catching scope gaps early and treating change orders like leverage 
• separating certifications from competence while staying a continuous learner 
• treating closeout as a day one process with documentation and test results 
• learning project management skills after you have real field reps 
• understanding pathways, bend radius, fill ratios, and why they matter 
• explaining to management that quality prevents expensive rework 
• balancing fiber growth with copper realities for PoE and edge devices 
• earning leadership opportunities through solutions, clarity, training, and accountability 

If you ever have any questions, DM me and I'll help answer those for you for your studying. 

Transcript

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Live Return And OSI Warmup

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Wednesday night six PM Eastern Standard Time That can only mean one thing live after hours with your favorite RCDD. You know my favorite Chuck Bowser. So as I said, Wednesday night, I if you might have noticed, Chuck took a little bit of a break there for a little while. I didn't do a podcast episode, I didn't do some QA shows. I was dealing with some family issues, traveling to Maryland, coming back, bunch of stuff going on. Not stuff I want to really get into here, but just a lot of stuff has been on my plate, and uh and I've had I had to take a break. I had to take a break. I literally just did not have the time. Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that, buddy. I appreciate that. So let's start off with tonight's show. What are you drinking? What are you drinking? Tonight Chuck is drinking just water. Caitlin, what are you drinking? What are you drinking, Caitlin? Tonight's Chuck's just drinking. Just drinking water. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, I always then also do um the acronym challenge. And I'm trying to talk Ed, the old tech guy, to coming on to the show to do a show on the OSI levels. Right. So let's do that. Let's do that for our acronym challenge tonight. OSI. OSI. Tell me in the chat box what does that mean? Let's see if anybody can get that. Let's let's ship up and flip over to the chat box over here. See if anybody's talking in there. Nope. Nobody's talking in there. Very good. Uh-huh. Nothing right now. I was drinking a diet Mountain Dew. Nice. Nice. The beard of knowledge is in the house. Man, I got I got some big rollers in here tonight. I got the beard of knowledge. I got Ed the old tech guy. I got lots of good people in here tonight. So OSI. Open Systems Interconnection. Excellent. Excellent, Kevin. Yes. So we know the uh the OSI model, the seven layers of the OSI model, right? That has to do with networking and stuff. We're layer one, the physical layer. Um, although there's some debate about that, and that's something we can get into later on when I get Ed the old tech guy on the on the on the maybe maybe maybe even the beard of knowledge will come on too. Yeah, both of them on talking about the OSI model. That would be a cool show. Absolutely cool show.

Cable Dressing That Stays Clean

SPEAKER_01 2:51

So let's get right into the questions. I have about 10, 12 questions, something like that. First one comes from Jake, not from Stay Farm, but Jake from TikTok. And he says, How do I stop my cable bundles from looking terrible after a few weeks? My advice there is keep the customer out of the telecom room. Keep the customer out of the telecom room because they are the ones who cause the most trouble for us. Because we will spend all that time and energy to get those cables to look right and beautiful, and then they'll come in and use the cheapest patch cords and mess everything up, not use the wire manager we installed for them. So the best way is to keep keep the customer out of the telecom room, right? I always teach in a class on the 22nd or 28th business design. I am not, no, I am not teaching that class. I appreciate that, Scott. Um, that's probably a Bixie class, is it not? That sounds like a Bixie class. Um, I am a former Bixie trainer, uh not a Bixie training delivery specialist. So I gotta make sure that's abundant clear. So I don't teach Bixie classes. But to answer Jake's question, number one, you know, the proper cable dressing starts long before you pull in that first cable. It's you know, if the first step is, you know, because a lot of technicians like to split the cables down the back side of the racks, not cross that center line. So you gotta think about how to put all those cables in the right bundles because one bundle is gonna have cables one through six, and the bundle goes on the other side is gonna have seven through twelve, and then thirteen through thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and then eight and eighteen, then nineteen through twenty-four. So you gotta split them out. You gotta think about that long before you come in, and then you have to really think about you know the whole Velcro versus cable ties, that that whole that whole conversation. And I'm gonna tell you right now, even though tie wraps are allowed per the standards, my personal preference is gonna be Velcro. Velcro is re-animable, and Velcro is almost impossible, almost impossible to over cinch. Right? Um, and also you need to you need to be one of those technicians why who who doesn't I hate when technically oh but it's good enough. You can't see it from my house. It's low voltage, it's okay. No, no. The the the person has the uh um the good enough at attitude, that becomes tomorrow's night tomorrow's service nightmare, right? What is the best labeling method for rack on the cable and what to do when the label why is the label so small? Pretty pretty simple. Go by the ANSI standards, Mr. Ed. Um so the ANSI standards for a small install, let's say for like a veterinary office, we got one rack. So the racks have rack unit numbers in them, right? Rack unit 45 is at the top, rack unit ones at the bottom. So just put just put do a la label 45 and put on the panel, and then use the number one that's already on it, and then go to the panel, label that 45.1, 45, 2, 45.3. That way you only use one small piece of labeling tape, and uh and because and then the labels are on those patch panels from the factory, they will never fall off. So that's the best way to do that.

Estimating Errors That Kill Profit

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Uh question number two: this comes from what is the biggest mistake that new estimators make on low voltage projects? Okay, I think probably the the biggest mistake is forgetting labor factors and only pricing the materials. So labor factors is how long it takes to do something, right? So, for example, um if you have uh putting in jacks, right? Now, I know most people can probably terminate jack in three minutes, right? But as an estimator, you can't really estimate three minutes because that doesn't give you time to go between jacks. So typically, a lot of times for estimating for jacks is gonna be five minutes. Well, the labor factor for five minutes is 0.083. That's 60, no, five divided by 60. That's your labor factor. Now all you can do is just multiply by the number of jacks. So you're forgetting your labor factor or using the wrong ones, you know, again, using a labor factor that that you know, well, I could terminate this jacks in two minutes, but but guess what? You're not gonna be the one terminating those jacks. You have to know what is the average, average number of minutes that the people who work for you takes to uh to terminate those jacks. And the best way to do that is to do random QA inspections out on job sites, go out on a job site and and uh while you're there doing QAs, just kind of time how long it takes the technicians to do things and then make notes, and then that way you can come up with averages. If you work for a really good company, then they're gonna have they're gonna have project management in unit tracking. Will you you'll be able to use those spreadsheets that drill down to exactly how long did it take to use those to terminate those jacks or whatever the task may be. Because you want to use the actual time, not what you think. Okay, underestimating mobilization and project management time. When you estimate a project, you need to put hours in there for the project manager to manage the project. As a rule of thumb, I I would usually do eight hours a week.

unknown 8:13

Right?

SPEAKER_01 8:14

So if I have a project that's going, you know, four weeks, that'd be eight times four. So that'd be what 32 hours. The project manager needs time to uh to do the the ordering the material, getting the material, setting up the tracking mechanisms, tracking everything, coming out and doing inspections, answering your questions, ordering materials, all that stuff. All that stuff. And then mobilization is one that a lot of people tend to forget about. You don't just show up at the job site with with cable and start pulling right away. You have to go to the warehouse, get the material out of the warehouse, drive it to the job site, offload the truck, and if it's a truck, if it's a job that's got, I don't know, a hundred thousand feet of cable, that's a hundred boxes. A hundred boxes. You know what? Those hundred boxes take time to go up into the uh into the building. You can't just you know pick them up there. Shotzi's in the house, he says he's late, and he's drinking his Dr. Pepper as usual. Shotzi, good to see you, my friend. Uh, do you get into a lot of fiber optic splicing? What kind of fiber optic splicing? You're talking about mechanical splicing, fusion splicing, pigtail splicing. I just bought a fusion splicer, so you can actually start watching for videos on how to do fusion splicing. So that was a significant investment by the by the podcast. But yes, you know, I do talk about it, and there's gonna be videos coming up out of it as well, too. So getting back to uh to Lisa's question, what are some of the the biggest mistakes? Right? Um, missing the scope gaps, right? With the hidden stuff in the specifications. I'm telling you right now, project Derek RCD's in the house. Project managers and estimators, they gotta read through the the scope of work, through the request for proposal, request for quote, and the problem is that kind of stuff just there's there's so many so many pages, so much information, it's easy to miss stuff. It's the missed stuff that just c causes you problems. Watch out for your change orders, right? Just because the customer wants you to do more, you know, make sure that make sure that you know, number one, how much extra labor you're gonna have, how much extra material you're gonna need to have, how's it gonna impact the schedule? And never, never execute, never do the the performance for a change order without getting the change order signed first. Because even if you get it signed first, you still are gonna have you know about a 90% chance of getting getting paid for that, right? The estimator protects the profit before the first cable gets pulled. Yeah, when I you know what I mean by that is sit down with the estimator and ask them, hey, how did you come up with these how did you come up with these routes? How'd you come up with these numbers? How'd you come up with these part numbers? I did a project one time. Um you can't you can't estimate every single nut, bolt, washer, you know, all you know, sometimes you gotta make up part numbers, which are combinations of things, which which build up the miscellaneous values of a project. So if you, for example, you can have a a sample prop part number for you know one drop-in anchor, one lag bolt, one lock washer, one fender washer. You can go to Home Depot, price them all out, get that part number to it so that way if you're putting in two racks, you need eight of those kits. But you didn't actually go out and you know prices individually. Make sure you buy the make sure when you price them, you price the retail versions of those. And that's gonna help a lot there.

Certifications Versus Real Competence

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Question number three. This comes from Marcus on Instagram. He says, Do certifications really matter anymore in the ISCT industry? Tell me in the chat box, what do you think? What do you think? Do you think our certifications man still matter in our industry? Because this is one of those subjects that that tends to tends to get people fired up. There are some people that absolutely say yes, credentialing matters. Yes, it's gonna help you. And then there's other people like Kevin who says, no, it doesn't. Uh there's enough room for everybody to sit at the table, Kevin. Everybody, even you, my friend. But uh, I honestly think that it kind of depends on what you're doing. Right. If you're just uh if you're just doing a, you know, you've got a small little office out in rural, you know, um Hernando County, Florida, where there's only two other contractors, and you're only doing cabling at veterinary offices and stuff like that, you know what? Probably not. Probably not. Other than learning how to do it, right? You start doing work in larger markets like Tampa, Atlanta, Philly, DC, where you're competing against the best of the best, credentialing does matter sometimes. Sometimes you'll find bids say you have to have a certain amount of Bixie RCDs on staff, Bixie uh text on staff, certified FOTs on staff. Certifications, but they do they really help the serious professionals from what like like like like uh Kevin was saying, the trunk slammers. You know, but there's a difference between a between a paper certification and actual competence. Actual competence. You notice I didn't say experience, I said competence. You can have experience with no competence, you can have competence with no experience, right? Um, so it really kind of all depends. Daryl, the RCD, says his employer has never asked for any degrees, but they require RCDDs, and we have 25 of them on staff. See, and there's a perfect example because Daryl happens to work for uh in the DC area, and he happened to work in a very large building, and so they need RCDDs there. So you kind of really all depends. Um, but again, I'll you know, when it comes to you know why do Bixie credentials still carry weight globally, because they're putting out a lot of great content, a lot of great stuff to make people better. See, not everybody starts off in this industry with a ton of experience, and not everybody has access to people, like for example, I'm kind of weak. I'm meeting one of my weaknesses now. I'm kind of weak with OSP because I've never I haven't done a lot of it. I've done some, but not a lot of it. You know, I haven't done any of the you know, you know, pole-to-pole, you know, long distance stuff. I've done, you know, had a customer where they want to run a you know a copper fiber cable between their two buildings, you know, 100 feet apart. Done that, but you know the big OSP stuff, I don't. So how am I if I don't if I'm staging my career now, I don't interface with a whole bunch of OSP people. So how am I gonna learn how to be good at OSP? Again, that's where that's where you know FOA comes in. That's where the Bixie credentialing comes in. You can take those classes and you can learn that stuff so that way when you get the opportunity to do it, you're not really shooting yourself in the foot. Uh so Daryl RCD says he's currently studying for his SEC Plus to open additional doors for him. Good job, Phebe, Daryl. Good job. The one thing I will say about this industry, if you don't want to get left behind, if you don't want to get left behind, you better be a continuous learner. Because our industry changes way too fast. I remember a day not too long ago when we were we weren't even pulling category-rated cable. We're pulling type 1, type 3, coex, 2x. It wasn't that long ago. And then when you look at today's environment, yes, cat 5e, cat 6, cat 6a, in the ISO standard, Cat 7, Cat 7A, Cat 8 in the in the ANSI standards. You know, there's gonna be a time when Cat 5E falls off that list. There's gonna be a time when there's gonna be Cat 9, and there's gonna be ways that specific installation methods and manners that you're gonna have to follow to install Category 9 cable if and or when it ever comes out. So you have to be a constant learner. Just because that's the way your dad has always done it that way, doesn't mean that's the way you still do it today. In fact, I'll give you an example. It was a common practice, a common practice to staple cables to a wall, especially for telephone systems. So then when the first Ethernet systems came out that were done over twisted pair cabling, right, because you were doing low bandwidth, um, it's that doesn't really affect that kind of stuff. But when you start getting into like the the 500 megahertz ring, the 250 megahertz, stapling will absolutely affect a cable. Absolutely affect the cable. How much can a DCC, a DC, DC, and RCD change my future? A lot. It just depends on where you're working now and where you want to be in your career. It will open up doors for you. It's gonna cost you some money and some study time, but it will absolutely open up some doors for you. And depending on what how much you're making now, it might even make you make more money. I wish I'd gotten mine a lot earlier, right? Um, but there are, you know, I talked about the Bixies credential, I talked about the FAA credential, but there are other credentials. There's manufacturer certifications that you can take. You know, all the manufacturers offer them. And the manufacturer certifications, they're good, but they're specific to their systems, right? I failed my RCD four times as of today. Well, uh man's Sir T, I am so sorry to hear that. It's not a hard test. Keep your nose to the grindstone. You got this, buddy. And if you ever have any questions, DM me and I'll help answer those for you for your studying. Okay? That's a that's something I give it, just give up. Kevin, be nice. Play nice, Mr. Kevin. Right. Um, credentialing will absolutely open the doors, but attitude and work ethic keeps you it keeps them doors open. So keep that in mind. The credential only gets you in the door, it doesn't keep you there. Question

Why Projects Blow Up At Closeout

SPEAKER_01 18:18

number four why do so many projects fail at the end during the closeout? And this comes from Devon, and he came to me on Facebook. Now there's lots of reasons here. Um one of the things I'm going to say is uh um poor administration. Right? You don't you weren't you weren't writing weekly reports, you weren't documenting changes, right? You you ignored ignored anything to the last minute. Well, guess what? The heart the the worst time in the world to get your change order signed, the worst time in the world to get approval for extra is at the very end of the project. You have lost all of your leverage. All of your leverage. So take the telecom administration seriously up front. Have that kickoff meeting with the with internally with the estimator, have the kickoff meeting with the customer. Make sure everybody's on the same page. Everybody's on the same page and document, document, document that. Okay, document, document, document. Right. Um, another thing that happens at the end of the project is um the as builds weren't done right, the test results are missing, all that. Those are big, big things that can happen. Um, and what happens is they will absolutely, absolutely hold up the payment if they don't have the test results. Okay. Scott scope creep scope creep, I mentioned that earlier. Don't, you know, if the customer comes up to you and asks you to do other stuff, don't just do it for them and make the customer happy. You've got to look at the whole entire picture because it that's extra labor, extra material, and extra time. And again, don't do that kind of work until you get that change order signed. Okay. Just remember this. I had a project, I had a seasoned project manager tell me one time about closeout. He says, he always used to tell me closeout starts on day one, not on the last week. Right? Right. And get get that in the email. Absolutely. That's called a confirming email. Absolutely. 10,000 points to tow weight to wizards. All right.

When Techs Should Learn PM

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Question number five. This comes from Sarah on TikTok. She wants to know should technicians learn basic project management skills? Yes. Well, let me qualify for that. If you're a technician with less than five years of experience, no. If you've got five years experience and you're an old hat of being a technician, start learning project management skills. Okay? Because then that way it helps you be able to communicate and work together with your project manager, right? Understanding what is the schedule, understand uh, you know, what what tasks have to be done next, what materials you have to order for those tax tasks. Project management thinking, it also improves the productivity because you thought about okay, we're gonna be terminating Jackson in the two weeks. I need to get those ordered, right? It also helps with uh with communications. Who was it? Somebody just said uh get that in email, right? That's a project management thing. Document, document, not document. Knowing how much labor impacts uh helps field decision making. Okay, I used to get asked this all the time, but Chuck, I'm a project manager. Yeah, how many hours do you have in a job? Uh I don't know. How much materials do you have in a job? Uh I don't know. How are you tracking that? Oh, I'm not tracking it. You're not a project manager. Start learning those skills because not everybody wants to be a technician for their entire life, unless they're Kevin. Kevin might want to be a technician his entire life, but a lot of us want to kind of grow and move on and keep climbing that ladder, right? So having great techs eventually will lead crews to whether they plan to or not. So if you know that stuff, Know what the project manager is going to ask, and you can give him what he needs before he asks for it. That's gonna help you climb that ladder even more, right? Kevin, I wish, but I've been a project manager for the past decade. I'm just yanking your chain, Mr. Kevin. That's all. Just that's all. Just yanking your chain, brother. Um just remember, you know, you we often will will get the the the assignments, the duties long before we get that title, right? So there's a lot of people who function under project management scope or project management job description, but they don't have that title yet. It happens all the time.

What Designers Wish Installers Knew

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Question number six, and this comes from Anthony on LinkedIn. What's one thing designers wish installers understood better? Uh okay, so here's here's number one thing, right? The number one thing. When an estimator estimates a job, they don't always get the opportunity to go out and look at the job. The building may not even be built there yet. Um, they don't they they don't necessarily go up into the ceiling and look in the ceiling because, again, that space might not be available. They might have to literally estimate off of a set of blueprints. You know, I hear it all the time. Oh, the estimator never even stuck his head in the in the in the in the ceilings. Okay. But that's where terms and conditions come into play. That's where assumptions come into play. Right? The you know, you the the So I really wish that technicians understood that pathways and spa pathways and spaces matter long term. It's not just not just the beginning of the project, but from the very beginning, from all the way through the project. Better bend radiuses, fill ratios, those things aren't suggestions. Those are mandatory. You exceed bend radiuses, you're gonna affect the way the cable performs. If you exceed fill ratios on a conduit, you it's gonna be hard to pull the cable through conduit. You might actually break cable. If you exceed a fill ratio on a fire stop, you might have a code violation. Okay, so keep in mind estimators are typically balancing between the general contractor, the customer, maybe a uh a MEP firm, maybe even the HVAC contractor, they're balancing all these things, trying to kind of they're they're trying to they're trying to come up with a number based on labor and materials on a moving target a lot of times. You have you've tried to take a gun and shoot at something moving, it's kind of hard. It's kind of hard. Sometimes you hit it on the head, sometimes you miss it, sometimes you miss it. It just gotta happen that way, right? Also, small field changes can lead to huge documentation problems. So just because it says, hey, let's put one more cable over there back in that drive, nobody will know. Okay, so when you when you submit 101 cables for the warranty instead of 100 cables, people are gonna start asking questions. And your boss might ask you, wait a minute, there's only 100 cables in this project. Why do we have 101 test results? Again, I know we work in the communications industry, and I know we suck at communicating, but the most critical thing is to have a kickoff meeting between the project foreman, the project manager, and whoever estimated the job. Now, again, you don't have doesn't have to be a full schedule the conference room for all day, have donuts delivered. It doesn't have to be that big of an ordeal. Can be, but doesn't have to be. It can be a Zoom call nowadays, right? Just email the the prints and the scope of work to the to the lead project foreman, to the the project supervisor. Let them read through it before the meeting. Don't send it to them the day of the meeting. Okay also, I wish I wish estimators knew this better. Better installer feedback creates better projects, better designs. The worst thing you can have is a is an estimator who Well, that's just the way we've always done it. I'm gonna do it this way, and I don't care what anybody says. A good estimator listens to the installers, right? Listens to their suggestions. Now there might be a reason why they can't do the work that way. If that's the scenario, then explain to the tech that's why we can't do the work this way, because in the scope of work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But guess what? Who's gonna give you the best feedback? Right? The person actually doing the work. So, estimators, keep your ears open. That's that's one thing, one tip of advice for you. Question number

Selling Quality To Management

SPEAKER_01 26:29

seven. This comes from Mike. Mike wants to know how do I explain, how do I explain to management that quality takes time? Oh, oh, that's a good one. Oh, that's a good one. Because you see this come up a lot when people start arguing between TIRAPs and Velcro, right? Right, that you see that, oh, but it takes so much extra time to do with that work, do it that way, and and I don't have enough time in the job. Well, you know what? Rework costs more money than it does doing it right the first time, right? Quality, quality impacts the warranty eligibility. It absolutely will, because good companies will come out there, they'll inspect your work, your customer will inspect your work, and if it isn't good quality work, they may not sign off and take it. You may have to go back and do rework. And again, it costs more money. Velcro's fighter. Velcro's faster. Fight me. I hear you, I hear you. Poor workman management, poor workmanship, sorry, damages the reputation of a company and a technician faster than anything else. Oh, that's a good point. Toe Zier says quality also brings future work. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yes, yes, yes, it does. Absolutely. Good quality, and I've I've told the story on the podcast many times before. When I was a younger technician, I went from one communications company to another communications company. And the when I was working for the first communications company, I was doing all the voice and data came for a pretty large law firm in DC. Well, technically, they're in DC, Baltimore, and Frederick. Um, when I went to the new company, they followed me to the new company because they liked my quality of work. And that, again, is gonna make you more valuable. And here's another thing, too. You know, customers, customers may forget about the speed. They may forget, oh, you know, he didn't cable dress it, he just put in, they're not gonna think about the time you save, but they will remember when when there's when there's problems because of poor quality workmanship. And you know, the funny thing is we carry phones, mine's up there. We carry phones around with us, right? Phones are great for taking pictures for documentation. A lot of companies have tracking apps on the phone so you can track your labor, your material, right? All that kind of stuff. Use it, use technology to your advantage. If you don't, AI will. AI absolutely will. And if you don't think AI is not gonna take your job, you are living in fantasy land, my friend. Fantasy land, right? Scandalous says the look says it all, especially when it comes to the racks. Absolutely. Yeah, most customers, when they think of QA or think about quality, they'll just go in the telecom room and look to see how the cables pulled. Once it goes out in the hallways, they typically won't look at it there. Now, me as a QA inspector, I will, but as most customers don't.

Fiber Versus Copper Reality Check

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Question number eight. This comes from Hannah on Twitter, or X, or whatever you want to call it nowadays. Is fiber really becoming more important than copper? Now, there's absolutely no doubt that there's a lot of fiber being installed now for data centers, for AI data centers. And in fact, there's so much fiber being installed in data centers that there's a shortage on fiber. But you know what? Copper's still gonna dominate the edge devices and PoE. When I say the edge devices, I mean I'm talking about the phone sitting on the desk. I'm talking about the computer sitting on the desk. That's gonna be copper for still a while. Uh there will be a day where we it'll be fiber from the device all the way back, but I think we're still a ways from that. Fuber is a fiber is a great media. You don't have to worry about EMI, you can go long distances, you can have a lot of bandwidth on it. But unless that equipment is putting out photons, if it's putting out electrons, you gotta convert them. And those are transceivers, and transceivers are not cheap. Okay, they are not not cheap. Uh, the Dr. Romeo says, What's a good project management class? Why are there so many project managers that have never been a technician before? Those are two great questions. Uh, so what is a good project management class? I would say uh any I've never taken a project management class. I can't say, you know, the uh the project management classes at a university, I can't say good they're good or not. But if you go with the PMP credentialing stuff, the PMP, the project management uh professional, um, if you go through their books, lots of great stuff will make you a good project manager. And and the reason that that um um there's so many project managers that have never been a technician before, those are two different skill sets. Two different skill sets. I can't tell you how many times from teaching classes, how many times I watch technicians type their names on my computer with two fingers. Well, you need more than two fingers to operate a computer when you're a project manager. There's a lot of uh um um good uh RTPMs out there, a lot of uh PPs out there that can actually walk circles around it. So those two different skill sets. Good tech, I think a great project manager will have technician experience, but they're also gonna be good with computers, they're gonna be good with you know thinking about budgets and and schedules and stuff like that. Not all technicians have those those kinds of skill sets, unfortunately, right? Um, getting back to Hannah's question about uh is fiber really becoming more important than copper. Um I think we're gonna you're gonna have we're we're gonna have copper and fiber both together still for a long time. The the great the good technicians are gonna be able to do both copper and fiber because this industry, this industry, the low voltage industry, it rewards adaptability, not tribalism. That's why I hate the what I call the fiber princesses. The people who all they do is fiber and they think they're better than everybody else because they do fiber, but they can't do copper. I hate the people who only do copper, but they don't do fiber because they're scared of fiber. The best technician is going to be able to do both of those. Both of those. Alrighty. One more question. I'm already three minutes past time, so one more question. The five banger is pretty much obsolete. Unless you're seeing C5 clips on a 110 block,

Getting Noticed For Leadership

SPEAKER_01 33:05

then it's not. Uh, question number nine: what's the best way to get noticed for leadership opportunities? And this comes from Chris on Facebook. Okay, number one, I learned this from my my manager early on. You know, I used to go to him, hey, we have a problem, and I'd give him the problem. He goes, So what are you gonna do about it? And I learned eventually that when I would go to him, I would say, Okay, here's the problem, here's the solution. I just need your approval. Okay, don't give them the problem, give them the solution and the problem. Trust me, they'll notice that. You need to be able to communicate clearly and professionally. You know, I'm done, but I got that's not done. You know, learn to communicate concisely, clearly, and quickly. That will get noticed. Start training and helping newer technicians. You know, we we're horrible in our industry about not training new people, okay? But you know, the best way to learn something or to reinforce something you already know is to teach it to somebody else. Okay, learn how to do that. Learn how to do that. Um, also, another thing you need to do if you want management to notice you document everything and take accountability. Take accountability, they matter. I remember one time I did a project uh and I forgot to put something in, and I went to the customer and said, Look, we'll honor the price, but I forgot to put the material in and you know, I explained why it happened. And then, you know, so you know, I appreciate you being honest with me. I got some extra cable in the warehouse. Accountability matters. See, leaders they reduce stress, they don't want to create it, and you don't want to create stress for leaders. If you do that, if there's you and and some other technician, and this other technician is causing headache after headache after headache after headache, and you're solving the problems. Who do you think the manager is going to look at and say, man, we need that, we need to make him the new project manager? We need we need to elevate him to a management position. So, but then again, not everybody wants to be in management though. And I I get that. I totally, totally get that. Alright,

Final Takeaways And Sign Off

SPEAKER_01 35:15

it is 6.34. 634. So we're actually four minutes past the past the show time. So I'm gonna go ahead and close out the show. So let's till next time. Remember, knowledge is power.