09/04/15 – Scott M. Brown – The Scott Horton Show

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Alright you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, it's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Alright, well this is not so much substance as business, but it's alright man, I'm into it.
Hope you don't mind.
Our next guest is Scott Brown.
He is The Scott Horton Show's latest and newest, and greatest for that matter, advertiser.
Why not?www.
MasterSamuraiTech.com www.
MasterSamuraiTech.com Leading appliance experts.
Welcome to the show Scott, how are you doing?
Thanks so much Scott, great to be here.
Appreciate being on with you.
Well, very happy to have you here and very happy to have you sponsoring the show and doing what you do.
And I have to admit, well you know me with the blabbing and everything, I admitted to the audience a segment or two ago that I'm considering quitting this show and taking your classes.
The problem is, it's just not my talent man, the technical type stuff.
I mean, obviously I can do my breaks, but I'm not like a real engine guy.
Really, this is eminently learnable by anybody.
Anybody can learn these technical things like reading schematics, basic electricity, how the new appliances work, and that's what we're really dealing with is all these computer controlled appliances.
Sounds real high tech and mysterious, but anybody can learn it.
And here's the big secret.
There's a huge need for it because there's a big skill gap among appliance repair techs in America, uniquely in the U.S. and I think Canada as well today.
And that is, guys who know how to troubleshoot.
It's a very learnable skill.
It's a teachable skill.
In fact, that's what we do.
We teach people how to think like real technicians, follow that logical cause and effect chain of thought to its conclusion and identifying the problem, measuring inputs and outputs.
I mean, this is the essence of what technicians do.
Techs can learn this stuff.
And the problem is, and the opportunity this creates for people like you, although I've got to say, Scott, what you do is phenomenally important.
This is another big reason we support your show.
I love what you do.
You're the voice of sanity and reason in a crazy world today.
But it creates an opportunity for people who are looking to be self-employed, looking for a change in career, looking to do something interesting.
And that opportunity exists because there is such a skill gap among appliance techs today.
A lot of these guys out there have been in the trade for 20, 30 years.
They don't actually read schematics.
They don't really troubleshoot.
Things are done by pattern recognition.
If this problem, replace that part.
Well, the days of appliances when they were made with discrete mechanical parts, those are gone.
And it was cheap to just try a part.
Oh, that didn't fix it.
Okay, I'm going to take that off and repackage that, and I'll try another part.
You go broke doing that today with these modern electronic control boards.
They're actually single-board computers that are running a lot of these appliances.
It is eminently learnable.
You don't have to know a lot of higher math.
You just have to learn some things.
And the way we teach it is with a combination of written text, but as well as there's lots of screencasts, video screencasts, where I'm actually showing you and explaining.
There could be a video where I'm actually on a service call, and I'm going back and forth between the schematic and then finding those circuits on the actual appliance.
Or it's a screencast where I'm actually stepping through in a more teaching-type mode and showing how to do things like read schematics and basic electricity and series and parallel circuits and Ohm's Law and all the stuff that every technician who calls himself a technician should know, but, in fact, probably 80% to 90% of the guys out there doing the trade today don't.
Whenever I hear you talking, you remind me of Jeff Tucker.
He likes to write these articles about all the fancy new kinds of toasters in the world.
And I know you're talking about bigger-ticket items, but his point being because of the miracle of capital investment, we have such progress and such changes going on in these kinds of appliances and that kind of deal.
So it makes a lot of sense what you're saying, that there's a big gap that needs to be filled there where the old refrigerator repairman and washing machine repairman, he needs to come and refresh his skills to keep up with the new technology.
But at the same time, the ones who aren't, they're being replaced by the new young guys who are coming in and learning this stuff and are ready to work on the higher-end devices.
And then, of course, when we're talking about the higher-end-type appliances, we're talking about the higher-end fee-paying customers for the repair on those devices too, those appliances.
So it seems like it makes pretty good sense to be in that business right now, Scott.
Well, and you mentioned something about younger guys coming in and replacing them.
That's the big thing.
There's not a lot of younger guys coming into the trade, in any of the skilled trades, but especially appliance repair.
There's a lot of reasons for that, a point of a whole topic for a whole other discussion on it.
But the average age of appliance techs in the U.S. is 55.
Happens to be my age as well.
And there's not a lot of young people coming into it.
And the reasons are varied.
You know, the whole government school business and they're pushing the whole college mill and you go get your degree in basket weaving and $80,000 in debt, and then maybe if you're lucky you get a job at Foot Locker.
Well, and you're not a lot of job satisfaction or managing McDonald's or something.
Why do that?
I mean, there is a – and meanwhile what that does is it creates – it diverts away good talent from going into the skilled trades, and I'm specifically talking about appliance repair, but all of the skilled trades are in the same boat.
And so you divert good talent from the skilled trades.
And now when was the last time anybody – finding a good electrician, good plumber, good appliance repair tech in particular, it's very difficult today because a lot of kids who would have gone into that have been diverted and I think done a great disservice by the government school system.
And so they've been diverted into the college mill and then on to be cogs in the corporate mill instead of – and this is the other big thing.
Yeah, or just sitting on their parents' couch trying to figure out what to do at all.
But the other big thing with the skilled trades, great way to be self-employed.
Fantastic opportunities in self-employed.
So you learn the trade, maybe you apprentice for a little bit, or you go through some training like our training.
You come up to speed real quickly and then you get out there and you just start doing it on your own.
If you are a young person and you've got that degree and it's not really doing you any good and you find yourself sitting on the couch at your parents' home, you're in a perfect situation.
Learn a useful skill and then just start slowly doing service calls while you still have a place to live and you don't have a lot of living expenses.
I see it as a great transition jumping off point.
That's what you should use that situation as.
Hey, tell me this.
I guess it must be different in the 50 states and this kind of thing, but typically what kind of licensing does this kind of work require?
Okay, great question.
And there's really only two states that come to mind that are really kind of silly.
I'm not sure about California, but two states in particular come to mind where they're really silly about this.
Washington state, if you even go and remove a dishwasher from an undercounter dishwasher, two screws, right, two screws underneath that counter hold that dishwasher in.
Well, if you're going to do any, according to the way it's written, if you're going to do anything to, it might be Oregon actually.
I'm sorry, it's Oregon.
Washington state has another one.
So Oregon, you remove those two screws to pull out the dishwasher.
You need, guess what, you need a contractor's license.
And you need to go 40 hours of training, something like that.
It's very expensive training, very time consuming, and it's all about house construction.
Just because you need to remove two screws to remove a dishwasher or four screws to pull out a wall oven, if you're going to do it because the law is written there, so if you're going to do anything to remove any where the appliance is affixed to permanent cabinetry in the home, you need a contractor's license.
And then Washington state requires that you have some sort of, it's not actually an electrician's license, but it's some sort of specialized electrical training so you can learn about how power comes into the home and circuit breaker boxes and circuit breakers, which, again, has nothing to do with, well, it has something obviously to do with the appliance, but that's not what we're doing as appliance techs.
We're inside the appliance.
We're tracing down digital signals, looking at DC voltages for control voltages.
We're also looking for AC voltages, but there's a lot of circuit troubleshooting going on.
That's what we do.
We're not looking, we're not chasing down circuit breakers, and we're checking outlets to make sure that, you know, it's where you want to start, check your outlet.
Are you getting a good power supply?
If you are, then you're going inside the box.
That's what we call inside the appliance.
And that's where your troubleshooting goes.
So it's kind of silly then that they require you to have this electrician's subset license.
But other than that, maybe some states require that if you're going to install a gas appliance, that you would have some gas fitters license.
New Hampshire is like that.
And that's only if you're going to do installations of gas appliances.
Working on them, different deal.
But other than that, there are no, like, electrical licensing, plumbing licensing.
There is no state-sanctioned appliance-repaired technician's license.
And I hope it never goes that way.
Yeah.
Well, that was really the point I was trying to get to there, too.
Unlike, you know, being an electrician or a plumber where, I guess, virtually all states, there's a ton of hurdles to jump through.
In most cases here, you won't have that problem.
Now, we've got to take this break.
We'll be right back, everybody.
I want you to hear a little bit more from Scott Brown from MasterSamuraiTech.com.
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All right, big Syria news coming up, y'all.
Breaking news here in just a few.
Right now, we're talking with Scott Brown, new advertiser on the show, MasterSamuraiTech.
And, well, their deal is this.
They teach you how to repair high-end, brand-new, high-tech appliances so that you can not just go and make money at a new job repairing appliances, but so that you can own your own business repairing appliances.
And that's a big part of it.
So first, on the repair part, I was hoping, Scott, you could kind of tell us a little bit more.
You did mention a little bit, some examples there.
Tell us a little bit more about what people might expect if they sign up, what the classes are like, how many, the different kinds of things that you're going to be covering, that kind of deal.
And then, also, I want to ask, after that, about the business training here.
I mean, I guess you're not giving away an MBA, but you're teaching people how they can really do this themselves.
No gimmick.
Right.
Show them the stuff that we've learned in our 20-plus years of running the trade, how they can run a successful business themselves.
We absolutely have a separate course on that.
I just want to clarify one thing.
Virtually all the appliances today, and I'm talking major kitchen and laundry appliances, low-end as well as high-end, are all using computer control boards.
And this is all driven by our government, Department of Energy.
Energy Star Requirements is requiring manufacturers to micromanage their amount of water, in the case of wet appliances, and energy that all of the appliances are using.
That's why they're using these control boards.
Oh, so no wonder for that gap in the market that you were talking about.
It's a government distortion here.
So it's like an arbitrage thing.
Exactly.
Totally, precisely.
So we have this artificial creation.
So there are a whole strata of appliances that really are throwaway items, and they're that because the cost to repair them quickly runs close to the cost of replacement.
And that's the big enemy in appliance repair.
That's precisely, though, why you want to focus on higher-end appliances, the ones that are too expensive to just throw out, because you want to be able to fix them for a reasonable repair fee, one that is fair for you and fair for the customer.
And so there is that bifurcation.
Some of that comes with skill and experience in learning the offerings of the industry, and you'll learn that quickly.
We teach a lot of that too.
Mostly what we teach, though, in our course and our technical training, so it's all online.
It's not like we wait for a class to form.
And the fact that it's online means several things.
One, that it's always up to date, so it's comprehensive, because it's easy for us to update things as new technologies come out, as new models come out that are implemented.
Because all the technology used in appliances, it's not like they make up new technology for it.
They're basically using technology that's already been out there in other applications.
They just incorporate it into the appliance world, and they're applying it to appliances.
But the techs who work in the trade need to learn that technology in order to troubleshoot.
So we're teaching you right up to date the newest technologies that are applied and used in the appliance industry today, the variable frequency drive systems and all the rest, and we go into all of that in detail.
And we do this.
It's all in online training, so that means it's also the other benefit of it, that it's accessible to you whenever you are ready to sit down and spend some time learning.
So you'll go through maybe each day, if you're disciplined, and do a lesson or two.
And then at the end of each lesson, so each lesson, I should back up a second, each lesson is composed of, I think I mentioned, text and videos or screencasts.
At the end of that lesson, you're going to have a quiz of varying length, and a student has to get 100%.
You have to score 100% on the quiz.
You get three attempts to score 100%.
If after three attempts you're still not getting your 100%, then we talk with you.
So there's a human interactive component to the training.
We have student forums.
People communicate with us through the contact form.
We can do webinars in the case of people who really aren't getting it.
And we have people with all kinds of different abilities.
Some people need a lot more help than others.
Some people just are quick on the uptake, and they get it.
And there's no predicting who is what, and it doesn't matter.
What matters is persistence, sticking with it, and if you do that, you will get it, because we will make sure you get it, and that's the whole point of the course, is for you to master the material and not just score a grade.
We want to make sure that when you go out there and when you get the certification from us that you know what you're doing and you're going to have confidence in what you're doing.
And we're going to interact with the student as much as they need to make sure that they've mastered the material.
They're going to continue on the lesson in like manner.
So at the end of each lesson, they're grouped into modules, and, for example, basic electricity in the Fundamentals of Appliance Repair course, which teaches all of the basic skills that every technician should have, all the electrical skills, parts skills, gas, motors, et cetera.
At the end of each module, there's an exam that a student has to score 90% on, and you get two attempts.
And, again, if they use up their two attempts and they get blocked, then we talk with that student.
What can we do to help them understand?
What extra do they need?
Do they need to just be reset at the beginning of the module?
No extra charge for any of this.
The tuition you pay is good for as much work as you need to get through the course, and you maintain access in the course.
Once a student, always a student.
You're a student for life.
You have access to that course for life, even the new stuff that we add to it.
You work your way on through, and in the case of the Fundamentals, you get all the way through after the motors module, which is the last one, and then you have a final exam.
Final exam is almost 100 questions, but it's not just true-false multiple choice like the other quizzes and module exams are.
There's a lot of open answer questions in there, too.
So I have to grade those myself.
And students need to get 90% on that, and they get one attempt.
And if they're not getting it, again, the whole conference thing, and we can do webinars and things, go over the exam results, because I want to make sure that everybody who gets the certification from the Fundamentals of Appliance Repair course really knows what they're doing.
It's not just like this meaningless piece of paper, so it's kind of a quality control check.
But it's also if your people are doing this, they really want to learn this stuff, and they're going to.
We also have a refrigerators course.
It's structured similarly.
And an advanced schematic analysis and troubleshooting course where we go into advanced troubleshooting topics, get into weird situations, open neutrals and things like that.
But there are also a number of labs where I just – there's no lesson per se.
I just – here's a link to a tech sheet, here's the service manual, and then I ask them a bunch of questions about it.
It's exactly what a real tech would do in real life.
Get the tech sheet, get the schematic, and then figure out what's wrong based on certain scenarios.
Do your load analysis, figure out a troubleshooting plan, and then go forth and conquer.
So – and that's – those are our technical courses.
We've also got a professional development course that focuses on the soft skills.
And soft skills are kind of ironically named because, you know, the technical skills are called the hard skills.
The people skills are called the soft skills.
It's actually in terms of difficulty, the technical skills are much easier to learn than the soft skills.
You can learn the technical skills in just a few weeks or months.
It can take you a lifetime to learn the soft skills.
But they're called soft skills because they deal with people.
And that's – we have a course that just deals with just that.
And then we have our business course that teaches you how to set up, run, and operate your own successful appliance repair business.
We offer all of these in a package, too.
So fundamentals, refrigerators, advanced schematics, and the business course also includes a lot of soft skills on its own.
And that's offered as a bundle.
Now, what kind of pricing are we talking about for all this stuff?
Okay, so the – Oh, and keep in mind that we're almost out of time.
Okay.
So fundamentals of appliance repair course, $4.95.
Again, you can get a 10% discount off the tuition if you use the coupon code Scott Horton on the enroll page over at MasterSamuraiTech.com.
The business course bundle, which includes all the courses that I mentioned before, runs a little over 1,000, all those courses put together.
And it's, again, 10% discount coupon code applies.
So the business course is, oh, $1,320, and that's all of the technical courses plus the operating a profitable appliance repair business course and getting that at half price as part of that bundle price.
Coupon codes apply to all of our course and course bundles.
Yep.
And now listen, I mean, I just don't think that there's any question that all of that sounds, you know, to me, like, anyway, like, you know, very reasonable prices for the – anyone who's serious about this and for the amount of return that they're going to get from the skills acquired here.
That's got to be worth it.
And then – so now tell me again, what's the promo code?
Because I've noticed one thing that happens with the promo codes is sometimes they're Scott, sometimes they're Scott Horton, sometimes they're Scott Horton Show, sometimes it matters if they're caps or not, and nobody can ever remember which is the right one they're supposed to use and that kind of thing.
Yeah, the promo code is simple.
It's just Scott Horton.
No spaces.
Don't put any spaces.
So it's all one word, Scott Horton, and it doesn't matter if it's uppercase or lowercase, and that's going to get you 10% off the tuition for whichever course or course bundle that you select on the enroll page over Master Samurai Tech.
The way to get around when you're on there is to look at the main menu, and you'll see the enroll page right up there.
There's also a sample course that you can take for free and just take it for a test ride and see what the online learning experience is like and see if it's right for you.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea there, too, to take the sample course.
I've gotten a couple of e-mails from people saying, Oh, man, this is really great.
I'm looking into this.
This is what I've been looking for.
And I think down at Ron Paul's birthday party, somebody mentioned that they were going to take the free course there to learn about it.
So I don't know how much business I'm sending your way, but I sure hope that this helps, and I sure hope that you guys, I mean, obviously you can tell this guy, Scott Brown, he's a straight shooter.
He obviously knows exactly what he's talking about and how to teach it.
He's been doing this for decades.
The website is MasterSamuraiTech.com.
Get involved, learn some things, make some money.
Thanks very much, Scott.
That's it.
Thanks so much for having me on, Scott.
Great talking with you.
Appreciate it.
Thanks again.
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