Why training is key to a strong workforce | Donald Armstrong

Jun 18, 2025

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

HTM Insider, Don Armstrong, biomedical training, internal training program, entry-level biomed, technical training, career development, certification, micro learning, soft skills, confidence, mentorship, skill gap, professional growth, networking. 

SPEAKERS 

Chyrill Sandrini, Donald Armstrong 

Chyrill Sandrini 00:13 

Welcome back to HTM Insider. I’m Chyrill with MultiMedical Systems, your host, and today I’m so proud to have on my friend, a colleague in the HTM industry. He needs no introduction. You know, he was Educator of the Year for Tech Nations Awards the Wrenchies for 2025. 

Chyrill Sandrini 00:34 

So proud to have him on so with no further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Don Armstrong. Hi Don. 

Donald Armstrong 00:41 

Hey, Chyrill, how are you doing? 

Chyrill Sandrini 00:43 

I’m great. We’d like you to, for those who don’t know you, or maybe new to the industry, can you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your career in HTM? 

Donald Armstrong 00:53 

Absolutely. So my name is Don Armstrong. I’ve been a biomed since I was 22 years old. So I’m 64 years old now. So if you do a little bit of math, I’ve been doing this for 42 years in all kinds of different positions, as a biomed, as a lead biomed, senior biomed, ultimately as a senior manager of a big in house program out in Northern California. Been with Renovo for about the last five years, the first two years as a traveling casual bomb. It traveling around the country, 

filling in for whenever a one of our sites had was down a man. And I love being a bomb head. And the last three years, I’ve been the Technical Training Manager with renewable solutions, and it’s just been an amazing, amazing new position for myself and a new way to impact as many people as I can in the Biomed world. And I also teach the AAMI’s CBET review course with Dave Scott from Colorado. So that’s how I got the chance to meet a lot of other people. But I think we figured out the other day we put through 1000 people through that sea bed review course in the last five years. 

Chyrill Sandrini 02:00 

Wow. 

Donald Armstrong 02:00 

250 a year. Yeah. And I don’t know how many of those passed, but our numbers are pretty good. Did that CBET review course. 

Chyrill Sandrini 02:08 

And you know, I love that about you. Don is the fact that you’re training the biomeds in so many arenas. It’s not just getting them into the field, it’s progression and training. So today, that’s what we’re going to talk about. Is really what is training and how you can affect an internal training program like Don has, and really make it almost contagious, in a way. So Don, let’s talk about that. What does internal htm training mean to you? 

Donald Armstrong 02:37 

You know, it’s, there’s been, there’s all kinds of forms of this, of almost every place I’ve worked at, you know, we get a lot of our training from on the job and, you know, training learning how we when we’re doing our jobs. You know, we don’t really have other than OEM training, real formal internal training programs. Now, when I joined Renovo solutions five years ago, there was a small, kind of homegrown, kind of internal training for biomeds that we had built. There was a person that kind of was before me, when I got off of the position, and he was transitioning to a new a new position, he was changing careers. And so at that point, I started really thinking about my past history, about being a bomb Ed and changing jobs. A few times I did is, how did I really learn how to do my job? Well, at that specific, you know, either either location or company, a lot of it was on the job training, by a mentor, by a supervisor, by maybe even an educational person within that department. So I started thinking about Renovo, and how can we really impact our technicians internally, instead of, don’t worry about the external OEM training stuff, they could try to get that through the through the hospitals. They work at it through our purchases, or whatever it might be, traditionally, way to get our manufacturer training. But we started putting together, what does an entry level Biomed need to know to be an effective biomed, starting off day One day, week, one, month, one. You know, it falls other than a falling onto the managers that just hires a brand new entry level biomed. Send them to me for like, six months, and I could really train them up, right? You don’t come out of the womb being a great biomed. Someone has to train you and teach you how to do it, and show you how 

to show you how to be a professional biomed so we started doing they came to me and said, How do you want to put this together? We worked collaboratively with the CBET College. Then, you know, to help us get some educational stuff together. I’m a trainer, not an educator, so I’ll tell you real, honestly about that. So we started putting together, well, Renova started putting together a plan to entry level stuff. What does an entry level biomed need to know if they haven’t been taught that already, Intro to electronics and intro to anatomy and physiology, and then intro to troubleshooting all the kind of things. 

Donald Armstrong 05:00 

I’m at one person should know, right? Yep. So we started working with our own company, and started saying, how do we do this? How do we recruit, how do we skill match all the kind of things you could think of. And this is internally, just with the Renovo, and we’ve talked about it. I know a lot of other educators in other companies. You know, we’re kind of compared some notes. They’re doing similar stuff, but I don’t think it’s formal. I don’t, at least I don’t think so as we are, you know. So we have five phases of our training, internal training program that our technicians could go through, managers, sign them up, identify them, sign them up, and we put them through phase one, all the way through leadership and management training, if they progress along the phases. So we’re just trying to build a really good force of bomb it’s, we have over 300 bomb it’s, or, you know this, you’re, you’re part of, part of what we do. And we have 300 anywhere between when we first, when I first started, we had about 200 something. I think now we have over 400 or 500 vomits out in the field, you know, so and honestly, Sherelle, this has changed our the way we could think about hiring too. 

Chyrill Sandrini 06:12 

You have hit the nail on the head when you say Obama coming out of school, hitting the ground. It is so much when you walk in the doors at that shop, and shops are so stressed in many ways across the country to effectively train and grow up that biomed, they’re just not there is there’s not time. And the expectation of them to walk in the door and it be efficient is unrealistic, 

Donald Armstrong 06:40 

absolutely. And what happens is it falls on that manager that a lot of our sites are two or three or four people sites too. So it isn’t like there’s a whole lot of time to carve away from one person’s time to train the new person. And honestly, Cheryl, our training program, our face programs, are tailored toward they’re actually learning as they’re working. So if there’s a six week phase, let’s say phase one is six weeks remote with a one week capstone in San Antonio, where we do our training center there that week that they’re doing an online training, they are actually at work, you know. So they’re learning and working as they go. So we’re not jeopardized. We’re not taking them away six weeks full time, and then the seventh week away, live Capstone. We have them train, learn, Intro to electronics. Let’s say we give them a two and a half. We give them a two hour lecture, and then say by the end of this week, we need you to go through all this, this, this information, whether it be, you know, spot test or some exams or something, and they have a access to a lecture and access to me, and so we put them through that as they’re learning, because we want them to still be gaining that on the job experience, 

right? Because even if they gave me for six weeks full time, then I send them to, let’s say, Mount Sinai, Miami, then they’re still walking in the door, kind of like, what is this, you know, where am I? You know, what Don was training me? Doesn’t this doesn’t fit what that is, you know. But so, you know, then I would expect someone like a manager like ISIS on site and outside of Miami, that she has to take over. So we’re kind of working in conjunction with the sites, with our collaborative partner in the educational world too. And you know, we go from phase one, once they get out of there, then their manager can reassess, and then enroll them in phase two, which is just a little more advanced, right? And then, of course, they can go on to phase three. You know, if they go through all three phases, it takes about six months just to get them through phase one, two and three, remotely, and then some hands on, in person. So it makes it I think we it makes a big difference for our, for our for our managers and our sites. 

Chyrill Sandrini 08:46 

I gotta tell you, from being retired law enforcement, it sounds a lot like going to an academy, yeah, and going through training modules. And I think what you’re building is an excellent program that maybe others can adopt in their systems. I know you’re open to help with that. I want to talk about. I want to talk about, you’re not just building skills, though, because I see it, you’re building confidence, right? 

Donald Armstrong 09:12 

Well, the number one thing, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Number one things I wanted to say, when, when I started getting managers saying, What? What? What’s our ROI, or what’s our return on me, sending me, you my technician for a couple hours a week, and then doing online stuff during the week, and then I’m going to lose him for a full week after the seventh week to go away for on, on, I’m like, Listen, what I’m hoping you’re going to get back is someone’s a lot little more knowledgeable, a lot more knowledgeable, hopefully a lot more engaged in the biomed world, it’s another government. Also teach them about accreditation and teach them about communication, and teach them about ethics, and teach them, just for myself and the other instructors, what it means to be a pilot, right? What it means to get the job done. And then we want to instill confidence in them and tell and show them that you know. So we want to model the way for them, right? We want to encourage the heart, you know, we want to encourage because it you’ve got a chance to know me a little bit and know people that I’m around. I’m a lifelong vomit, and I love this stuff, and I want them to love it as much as I do. Now, I know that sounds a little pie in the sky, you know, red, rosy, rosy colored glasses, or whatever it might be, but, you know, and so we try to instill that in them with the instructors we have in San Antonio and myself, and just getting them to think about publishing, think about presenting, think about going to these conferences, or maybe they didn’t think about that before. And so the confidence part of it is huge, you know, like I’ve always said a lot of the bombs will tell you that I say this a lot, that two of the best ingredients for a great vomit is confidence and humility. If you can have both of those that that that’s a great start. 

Chyrill Sandrini 10:55 

And I think you’re teaching them a skill set that retains an employee. You know, people don’t leave jobs. They leave workplaces. They leave when they’re not appreciated, when they’re not shown, yeah, or given the opportunity to train and to move up in their career. Yeah, let’s talk 

shown, yeah, or given the opportunity to train and to move up in their career. Yeah, let’s talk about that. How are you preparing them for that opportunity to promote, because we know, if we’re training them, they’re going to be vested, they’re going to want, they’re going to know that there’s going to be something ahead. Now, how are we trying to cycle them up to test to promote an htm, 

Donald Armstrong 11:38 

yeah, so that’s a, that’s a really good I mean, I don’t want to throw out my one of my words of wisdom down the road. I know that we’re, you know, you like that, and I like that as well. I we’ve talked to them a lot about growing their own career and growing where they are. Try to be great where you are. Growing a plant your product out, if you’re if you’re a bomb at one right now, if you’re an apprentice, or you’re a bomb at three, going through some of the entry level stuff, because maybe you’ve been a field service rep or a striker company or getting up or Steris, for you, they haven’t had the full biomed experience, but you’re coming in as a biomed three, because that’s where we hire you. And then you want to learn what it’s like to be a full grown biomed we tell them how the things to try to promote yourself within the industry, how to grow, how to encourage yourself taking certifications. Obviously, I’m a big time promoter and proponent of certification. The cap T is huge. I love the cap T. You know, you only have to be a junior in high school to take the cap T. I know. 

Chyrill Sandrini 12:33 

I know, and I think that should be promoted more. I think if we all shot that from the rooftops, I mean, somebody’s going to hear it, 

Donald Armstrong 12:40 

right? Yeah. I mean, I looked at it the other day because I was talking to some of our technicians. I like, well, I’ve only been doing it for a year, and I’m like, all you have to be as a junior in high school. You basically could go home to your niece or your son or daughter or nephew, or say you’re a junior in high school. What do you think about this career? Give them a little bit of study material and have them try to take it right? And I tell, I tell our technicians that, you know, be great where you are. Try to communicate as best you can. Don’t have it about the money. Don’t have it about the position. Have it about the career. How about what you want to try to achieve in your career? You know, a lot of them look up to some of the instructors. All I want to be where you are. I’m like, you could be there someday. That’s the beautiful thing about this career. There’s all kinds of avenues, you know, you need leadership. You could specialize. You can go into field service. You can do all kinds of things, you know, and just gotta try to pick, pick what you want to do. And we do some lot of sessions, especially not and not week long, capsule, in person. We have a lot of discussions about, how do you communicate what you’re doing, right? How do you communicate what you do? Period, even within the hospital, you’re trying to have that kind of conversation with them. So I’m a big deal about getting certifications, and I’m a big deal about, you know, taking ownership of your own, what you’re what you’re doing in your professional and personal life. You know, you’re going to have a lot of decisions to make. And in this competitive world, scroll, you get somebody trained up, and they’re doing great, there’s great opportunity. They might go somewhere else. That’s 100% 

Chyrill Sandrini 14:08 

correct. And I cannot stress enough, and I’m sure you do the same is when you’re getting these certifications, this experience, you need to keep a book that you track everything. You keep it on your computer. You keep the hard copies and keep it all in one place, because it’s going to matter, and you’re going to need those so when you get out the door, start keeping those certificates, yup, those awards that you get, the mentions the experience. Just keep it all written down, so it’s going to make your career more valuable. That up right on That’s right? 

Donald Armstrong 14:43 

I mean, it’s one of the guys, I think, was calling it a love me book. I think it was like his binder, where he had everything in his binder. And it’s like a real thick binder he’s collected over the like, 25 years, with every certification, every kind of, you know, going the extra mile award, or whatever it might have been, he saved in there. And I think, I think that’s way to go. You’re not. I still have mine. I still have my manila envelope with everything I got. I got my wrenchy. I wish I would have thought about bringing it up here, but, um, you know, it’s the field offers you a lot. 

Chyrill Sandrini 15:09 

You keep that wrench on a shelf someplace. 

Donald Armstrong 15:13 

Yeah, oh yeah. They keep it in my in my home office. My wife and I both work from home, so we’ve got a really nice home office. And we got, we got that wrenching in there. And next to my other award, I got one award when I was working at a hospital in New York City. I got single shop, single person biomed. I was a biomed program coordinator, single person biomed in the tiny little hospital in Manhattan. I got a friend of nursing award. So I keep that little plastic friend of nursing work, which is a big honor too. So I try to try to teach our biomeds too, that, you know, other than the technical stuff we teach them, other than the, you know, all the, all the, all the intro level, you could be a great electronics technician. You could be know everything about anatomy and physiology. This is about relationships, man, if you could build those relationships, and you can have those, those those those those kind of things built into what you do. And someone could give you the freedom to know that that’s part of it, versus you just got to be a technician and a wizard to know that you could go up and actually be friendly and have have relationships with people on the in the floors and administrators, nurses, even patience. I tell them, you could say good morning to someone. You know it’s okay, you know you’re not overstepping your bounds. 

Chyrill Sandrini 16:27 

No. Dave Scott, I need to have him on this podcast, but I’m really big on soft skills. If you can’t communicate, it makes everyone’s job harder. But for those who maybe are very technical and they don’t have the soft skills wear that cape when you walk in the door because you are a 

superhero, get on stage, yeah? And, you know, I walk into the or and introduce yourself, 

Donald Armstrong 16:52 

yeah? And I’m an old or guy, yeah? Then I’m an old 3030, year plus or guy. So I know, you know, we tell people that humility and confidence, people could see that you walk into an or not knowing, and that’s okay not to know. That’s where the humility falls, falls into the confidence you walk in. And they go, Oh, it’s Donnie. He knows what’s going on versus but Donnie also knows that I might not know something you know. So we try, we really encourage and one of the phrases I tell our technicians through our technicians is, you know about being a little bit introverted and not knowing what to say when you go up there, or being extroverted, but not knowing how to control that also, which is my problem. You know, when you get a call and you don’t know what to do, you just walk up and say, Hey, I’m gone from vomit. What can I do to help? That’s it. That’s your that’s your whole whole that’s how you answer every call you know. And if that’s your job, if you could help in any way, because there’s 44,000 or so make models in our database, nobody knows everything. Yeah, so, so how do you but you can help, yeah? And you can find out exactly so. And I really I go, I spent probably an inordinate amount of time trying to push that idea through to them, because I want them to feel comfortable and confident about what they’re actually asked to do. They’re not asked to be a genius. They’re asked to go up there and help have some background, have that kind of troubleshooting mentality, and have that kind of way to see things, and to go up and give our clinical partners a break and say, I’m here to help you. What is it? And my wife’s the nurse, so maybe that might come from that too. So you know, that’s all she ever wanted from a biomed with someone to come up and help 

Chyrill Sandrini 18:35 

her out. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Now I know something that you take very seriously too, is we have to remember, we’re bringing in new people to our shop. Not everyone’s a trainer. Not everyone is the right fit for that right? And we’re pushing people I see into he’s going to she’s going to shadow you today or this week, if they don’t have the passion and the energy to train, they don’t have good communication skills, they might not be the right fit. So can you talk about that a little bit more, too? 

Donald Armstrong 19:10 

Yeah, that that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a really good point, because we, a lot of people, want to, really, I don’t know, focus on, on the job training. If we send someone to to OEM training, then they’re expected to come back and then train our people that are working around and we’re with them on that same device. And my pushback on that has always been, how do you know that person is a good trainer, and how do you know that that person’s really teaching that person the right way? You know, um, because, yeah, it does take a certain type of person that wants to mentor and, you know, train and bring people up, you know. And a lot of people that sometimes some of the best technicians that are great at what they do aren’t great trainers or aren’t great teachers, because they just basically say, Watch me, and then do what I do, as opposed to having you teach you how to do it, you know. And you. I think that that’s why I was very lucky to find this role, because I do focus on my soft skills, and I’ve been a technician 

forever. I know how to make things go but what I like to do more than anything else is lift people up and have them, you know, find their way. So it’s not easy. It’s not easy. And you know, when I’m in class, when I teach our technicians, even I have them identify who wants to be kind of, who wants to be a mega trainer, who really wants to mentor, who wants to go into leadership, because we can identify that now and then we could maybe foster that. So yeah, it isn’t, it isn’t for everybody, and that’s why a lot of diamond ones and entry level bonds get left behind. That’s why a lot of managers struggle. New managers struggle because there’s really no one to show them and train them how to do it, because a lot of our managers have been stuck in an office for a lot of years, and they don’t know how. There’s nearly no succession training for who’s next. You know, me 

Chyrill Sandrini 20:58 

to bring up. You know, across our industry, we try to standardize, be met one, be met two, be met three. It’s all still very different. And how do you know where someone’s at, where they need to be at to train and move on in their career? I think identifying that is very important to encourage advancement. But how do you meet them on the rat? Probably one of 

Donald Armstrong 21:25 

the hardest questions we can tweak it really try to tackle right? I mean, this is that’s a hard one, matching, you know, and we’re lucky we get to train people, kind of customize our training in certain buckets, like 123, leadership, management FaZe Connect, which is our new one, which is a networking and communication ethics course we put together. So right now we’re having, luckily enough, I get them on phase, on board call once a month, so I could kind of go through and see and listen to and talk to do my presentation of onboarding, or onboarding our new biomeds, and have conversations with them. I could see your Obama too, and I could see if you’re getting it or not. A lot of times, it still falls onto the manager. With the old standard technical competency sheets and forms that we have over all these years. We’re trying to do a little bit different renewables, trying to do a little bit different with that would have some technical competencies. You know, of course, line items, there might be 60 or 70 technical competencies, but we may have some questions around them. You know, as opposed to your one through five, you know one you you barely know what five you can teach it say, if you classify yourself at a certain rate, maybe what might ask you a question might trigger a question or two about that, about that you know about that skill. So it is very difficult to do this. This part of it’s the hardest part. I would think, coming from a couple big in house programs, we got to know the people pretty personally right away. But coming from where I sit now, like you say, anywhere between three to 500 bomb it’s depending on where you’re looking. How do I know that this new hire that comes out in Ohio was Obama, the one they just hired. How do I know where to place and say, our training, our phases, if they’re coming in as a bomb and one of like, an experienced one or two, maybe they don’t need to go through the Phase One course, which is all intro level stuff. They’ve graduated from Obama in college. See better Texas, Texas viewers, or SCI T out in California, they’ve come through one of those biomed programs. We probably don’t need to put them through phase one, because they’ve done that already, and they should let us know that. They will let us know that then we try to place them in two, three or more of the advanced courses. But yeah, that’s the difficult part of it. It really is I wish, I wish I had it really, really wish I had an answer for that one. It’s a tough one. 

Chyrill Sandrini 23:39 

It is a tough one, and I think finding so as we have attrition through retirement, and you understand the age gap that we have currently in htm when you’re in need of specialized training, and we know how hard it is to get into some of these OAM schools, and the cost, right? That’s a factor for a lot of a lot of facilities out there. How do you find that specified labor? How do you fill that skill gap when you’re missing you no longer have an anesthesia tech, you have one anesthesia tech, and he or she left, yeah, 

Donald Armstrong 24:19 

well, at that point, especially, especially like anesthesia or respiratory or things like that. And we’re starting to get into imaging. We could home grow, we could home grow as much as we can. Like right now, I don’t have a specific anesthesia course or respiratory course. We’re still 

depending on the OEMs for that, but we have, um, about three or four traveling specialists within our company to go around and do that kind of work. But that, that that’s, that’s, that’s complicated as well, you know. And hopefully each site working with, you know, of course, we’re ISO, so we’re third party. We’re contracted in most of these hospitals, and lot of times the hospitals themselves will actually help us broker those OEM. Training courses, or a lot of times they don’t like to train us. Just be real honest. Sometimes the one of the manufacturer might say we’re not to train Renova, because you’re a competition of ours, you know, if we train you, then we don’t get the service contract, versus maybe going through the organization that we have to contract with helps. But yeah, that that’s that’s a complicated issue for us across the board, and right now, we’re really focusing on home, growing our own biomed fleet, and we have to get in that specialization part of it, you know, one day or soon, sooner than later. Put it that way, we’re working on that with our imaging folks now to try to build in some homegrown training for that. Because, like hiring entry level biomeds is difficult. Hiring trained imaging people are difficult to you know? So, 

Chyrill Sandrini 25:48 

yeah, right. It’s a delicate balance. It is. It 

Donald Armstrong 25:53 

really is, and the age gap and the people retiring out of the field. I mean, I’m 64 and I’m still going strong, and I know a lot of people that are my age that are still going strong and still love the industry. But you know what? And you know looking about promoting and moving through the traditional 123, and all that kind of phases. I mean, Reno has done a really good job of looking at that and saying, What is it really, what does it mean to progress from a one to a two to a three to maybe a lead supervisor, manager type of thing. And the old traditional, I’ve been a strong proponent of this all my whole career, is you can’t basically tell a brand new bioma that you’re not even going to be considered for next promotion for like, four to eight years. You know, Obama two has to have at least four to say, four to six years experience. Who’s going to stick around for that? And then the next level up, another for it. So you’re not going to be Obama three for 12. You know, anywhere between eight years I’m like, it has to be more balanced. It has to be more performance based. It has to be more what they’re actually doing 

day to day. So renewables did a really good job about looking, about looking how to how to work on that, to make that more realistic within our groups, because, let’s face it, we have several 100 sites of across the country, and you know, some of these sites are very hard to 

staff. Specialists are not I mean, it’s just hard enough to staff somebody in a in a site that may be 250 miles out of the nearest city. And you know, it’s hard. They’re hiring deserts, you know, so we could, we’ve been really lucky. Cheryl, I gotta tell you, some of our biggest success, success stories have been in, like, a very rural hospital. We have one bomb, and they were looking for a second bomb Ed, or the one bomb, and knew somebody that he had welded with, or maybe even gained with, you know, on the video games. And he said, I know this person, I bet he’d be really good at this. So we’re like, well, let’s bring him in and talk to him. We have our VPS, our managers talk to them. And that really good guy. Good background right? Good background checks being that we have our predict probationary period anyways, and they could send them to me, and I could evaluate them and put them through all of our face training. It’s changed the way we could hire, you know, it’s open that up, you know, this, we’re doing this for a while, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. That entry point was very, very rigid to try to get new people in the field. And it’s changing. Thank goodness. 

Chyrill Sandrini 28:10 

I see it. I see it. Yeah, one more. One term that I hear you use, that I love is micro learning. Yeah. Can you explain what micro learning is 

Donald Armstrong 28:23 

done well, and without getting too technical about it’s, you know, we we basically just try to break all of our little our faces down into where they can actually learn something and feel like they’ve accomplished something and then move on to the next little thing, as opposed to just throwing our first original attempt at this five or six years ago. We just basically opened up the fire hose on them and, just like, shot everything we can at them for a couple weeks, and they would basically walk walked away, almost more confused than they did coming in. So we want to keep our learnings kind of really specific, really small, really short, and let them kind of, that’s all adults learn. Anyways. Adults aren’t like, you know, you’re not going to school full time with a book and writing 500 page essays. This is, we want to teach you how to do some of this. Just quick, understand it. Move on with your life. Let’s go. So it’s been a it’s been, you know, and it’s one of the things I’ve worked on. I had to learn myself, because, you know, I’ve, I’ve come from the old school way of learning and training, and to train like this way makes it a lot better for us. So, yeah, I’m glad you brought it up, because it is something we we try to focus on, because we, we want small victories and small accomplishments, and they build onto something big, you know, because they’re not, we can’t they’re not gonna learn they’re not gonna learn everything. They’re not gonna have everything down in several months. They’re gonna get a few things down and then let it build on itself, because that’s what we really want to happen. That’s best way to learn. 

Chyrill Sandrini 29:44 

Thing is short everything’s tick tock, yeah, no more than five, five paragraphs in an email, right? We want it instantaneously, 

Donald Armstrong 29:53 

absolutely. And some of them take to it better than that, but that’s just the way of adult learning. That’s the kind of thing I had to learn about. Uh, the training, education, adult learning. Because, I mean, I didn’t get my advanced, my even my Bachelor’s, we took way later on in life, and it was different than when I was going to get my associates in electronics. It was more, you know, the frickin mortar school lab, essays, writing, where now we can do a lot differently, you know, kind of meet them where they are, you know, 

Chyrill Sandrini 30:23 

well, gosh, it’s been great having you on. I could talk to you all day long. You’re inspiring to the industry, and it was shown how much you appreciated and what you’re doing by winning the the Red Chief for Educator of the Year. So proud of you, my friend. 

Donald Armstrong 30:38 

Well, that was, that was a renewal gig, because I got nominated by my director, Dan, Dan Adams, and he nominated me, and that, once that got through, then, you know, it was, it was a voting situation. And, you know, there’s a lot of people with that, with the Amy C bet review, course, with all the people we touch at Renovo, you know, I’m not going to say that the voting was, I’m glad that was a vote, not not on merit, but I’m voting, so no, 

Chyrill Sandrini 31:01 

it was that well, 

Chyrill Sandrini 31:03 

it’s well deserved. I’ll say that. Thank you so much. We always close every episode of htm insider with your Wow, your Word of Wisdom, or your words of wisdom. So I’m ready for it. Don hit me with it. 

Donald Armstrong 31:16 

Okay, here’s my words of wisdom that I talk to our technicians all the time about is you have to own your own career. You do. You have to own it yourself. Don’t depend on your manager, your company, your hospital, to there where you work, but you you’re talking about that book of your certifications and your diplomas and everything you have, everything you’ve accomplished, that’s yours. You gotta take that with you, um, if you’re looking to move up or try to promote yourself, there’s no reason you can’t go out and get certifications. There’s no reason you can’t take those exams. There’s no reason you can’t study a little bit on your own. If you want this to be a nine to five job, that’s fine. There’s a lot of nine to fivers out there, and I 

have nothing but respect, because it is a trying job, but if you want this to be your career, then you take it, you run with it, and you do what you got to do. I have a lot of our technicians now that have sadly, not sadly. I mean, I’m not sad about it. They left the company and went on to other organizations or other promoted positions, and I’m happy for them. You know, I promote everybody in this field to do the best they can, and don’t call their own career. Be selfish to me, to hypocritical and selfish for me to say, you have to stay here. I don’t care. I’m like, No, you grow, man, throw out and grow on your own. You know, it’s a lesson you have to learn, I mean, and I had to learn it myself in I was at Stanford for 20 plus years as a younger guy for my first Obama job, all the way till 2009 This is from 84 to 2009 and my wife’s a nurse, and she got an opportunity to get a big promotion in New York City. So I had to leave my job, which I thought I was going to retire like at 50 years of service. Thought I was gonna be the guy walking up there 50 Years of bomb at Don Armstrong, and I had to, all of a sudden, move, yeah, leave my job that I had and loved. And then I had the realization was, I don’t know anybody outside of this hospital, you know. And so the whole networking thing really started having to come into play, and the whole find a way to promote yourself and lift yourself up a little bit. So my words of wisdom is, are you know, keep your resume up to date. Do everything you can to promote yourself. Don’t feel bad about spending a couple hours every now and again on your own time to promote, to grow. Join vomit associations, join Amy, go to MD Expo. All those things make you stiff. They’re little tiny steps forward, right? Those little, tiny steps forward are what makes it all worthwhile. You know, 100%  

Chyrill Sandrini 33:52 

you know, I’m going to say this, Don I believe this wholeheartedly. Your choices and your experiences make you Yeah. So you take both of those and every time you look at something to say, yes, or should I try it? Or no, maybe it’s not for me, that decision is going to shape you have all the experiences that you can be the best you. 

Donald Armstrong 34:14 

Donald Armstrong 34:16 

absolutely agree with you completely. I mean, that’s why I say even though people are really perseverating about a decision they’re going to make. I’m like, well, what’s the worst can happen, and if nothing’s permanent, you can always, you can always, I don’t, maybe not come back, but, you know, you always leave something better than you found it. And if you needed to come back, we’ve, we’ve had people leave our company that have come back. You know, I’ve gone back to hospitals before that. I worked at that. I six or seven years later, went back and applied and said, I really want to come back. And, you know, I was lucky enough to do it so, but yeah, on your own career. And I don’t mean that in a selfish way. I mean that in a you know, you want to do what you got to do. Yep, agree. 

Chyrill Sandrini 34:51 

Well, it was great talking to you don and listeners, I want you to remember that if you are a C 

Well, it was great talking to you don and listeners, I want you to remember that if you are a C bet and you will listen through tech nation every. Every episode of htm insider is worth one CE credit. So there’s, there’s 40 ish of them out there now. So if you need CE credits, you tune in through tech nation, and you’ll get one for every episode. But you can also find us and follow us on YouTube, Spotify Apple Music, any place you can get a podcast. And I know that you want help. If you have a question it, whether it be education or your own career, you could reach out to Don and I know joyfully, help you 

Donald Armstrong 35:32 

absolutely. I give my email address if you if it was okay, but I’ll let you. I’ll let you tell me if that’s okay. Yeah, sure, give your email address. That’s 

Donald Armstrong 35:40 

awesome. Yeah, my email address is D Armstrong at renewable one.com I’d be happy to if you want to send me an email. I have a question, if something I went over today touched you or not again. D Armstrong at Renova one.com which is a typical renewable email address, 

Chyrill Sandrini 35:56 

perfect. Well, thank you for tuning in to another episode of htm Insider, and we will see you next month with a new episode. Thanks again, Dawn, thank 

Donald Armstrong 36:05 

you so real. Been an honor. You.