Entrepreneurship and Financial Viability in Skilled Trades with Ryan Kiscaden on the Lost Art of the Skilled Trades

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:00:00

Of course, there's so many things in the world that we can look at that's negative, but look at the positive. The positive is you're helping people, you're solving problems, you're fixing issues. That's rewarded handsomely financially, but it's also rewarded with your mind and with your heart. I think passing that wisdom along for the ones that don't do that today to think about. You never know when you're going to make somebody's day or moment.

Andrew Brown [: 00:00:26

Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost Star of the Skilled Trades podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable, rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the economy that keep us running. And without them, our world would cease to exist. Today we have a special guest, Ryan Cascaden. Welcome, Ryan, to the show, Andrew.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:01:00

Thank you for having me. I can't wait to chat with you today about the skilled trades. A passion topic for both of us.

Andrew Brown [: 00:01:06

They say plumbers have saved more lives than doctors. A lot of people will say that because of their role in plumbing, because that plays in public health, sanitation, access to clean water, waste disposal. I remember there's a famous poster out there with the plumber and he's on this pedestal and there's people below, you know, kind of being like, oh my God, this epic person. And it's true. But my question is, why do we look down at tradespeople sometimes? Where is that old adage coming from? Because in my view, they're heroes.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:01:46

Well, we couldn't agree more about that fact. So I think so. When I think about the history of plumbing and I think about the necessity of it, you start with its essential, right? It saves lives. It moves waste into other areas that are more sanitary, away from homes, away from people. There's such history there going back to ancient times, Romans and the Greeks and other areas where they created things like bathtubs and showers and sewer lines and all those necessities to be safe and to be comfortable, because that really is what the skilled trades are doing. It's making us safe and it's always about comfort. So where did this go wrong? I think a lot of people, when you talk around the last decades, as plural, 40, 50, 60 years, a lot of people will point to this lack of hand skills and the promotion of that done at the high school and middle school level. A lot of that had to do with funding, but a lot of that had to do with this concept.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:02:36

Around four year college degrees were the right way to go, the reality is, is that four year college degrees over time have increased in cost while not delivering on the return necessary to, to have a return on investment of having invested into them. It's just odd when I, even as I have these conversations with our customers and contractors and others that the return on investment to invest to a four year college versus having some of a technical school is not returning there. I think that's part of it. But I also where I focus a lot of my activities is sure that's a rational reason, it's money, it's financially focused. But we have to have these conversations about the emotional benefits. How do people now with the skilled trades solve problems for others and make these others feel well, make them feel safe and happy with the results. So too many times I think we talk about skilled trades as it's money, it's better investment for you. You know, there's always grants and funding coming to the skilled trades where I think a better opportunity is to say what can we be doing on the emotional benefit side? How does that worker in the field, how do they feel after they do their work and the people that they do it for, like the mom that just got their kitchen sink repaired, they're able to handle those things and happy about that end result.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:03:47

So where I think it went wrong is I think we just did a mind shift in society, particularly in the United States and Canada, that moving from the rational mind of expenditure for college and the return there to it just was looked down upon from a negative standpoint, dare I say the butt crack plumbers to the rejects of high school or sent to these tech schools. It's a perception change and it's an emotional problem. I'd say more so than even the irrational or financial one.

Andrew Brown [: 00:04:14

A friend came up to me last year and he said, do plumbers do well? Because when I grew up there was someone in plumbing and that person had the largest house on the block and I was chuckling to myself, people don't really understand that. I think what put it on the roadmap was dirty jobs with Mike Rowe, all these blue collar men and women that had these businesses that make millions of dollars that in some cases people would look at it as well, that's really dirty. You're doing plumbing, you're doing sewage. It's highly, highly lucrative. I always chuckle because a lot of times I do see that these individuals are living well, living below their means and they have enough work, they can charge almost the prices that they want. I was having this Conversation with a well known plumber, Roger Wakefield, and I was on his podcast last year and we said the wages are going to go to 100 to $200 an hour easy with the drop in the amount of plumbers. So we need about 550,000 plumbers by 2030 if it's going in that direction. And not enough plumbers are coming in.

Andrew Brown [: 00:05:28

So for every five that are leaving, only two are coming into the industry. It is a high percentage that it's going to be between 1 to $200. And on top of, you could wait three or four weeks for someone to come in. If you could imagine your pipes are on the fritz, your toilet's overflowing and your shower is backed up and you call your local plumber, sorry, I can't get there for three or four weeks. It kind of shocks you. I think the public knows about the shortage, but they don't really understand the facts and figures.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:05:59

You couldn't be more right. Look, it's a supply and demand problem, right? So without the supply available and demand is high, prices go up. It's economics one on one. And so when you think about how lucrative that can be, I mean, my brother in law is a master plumber in the New Jersey area. He basically writes his ticket every day about what this work will take, my availability and the quality that I can provide to help you be safe in these situations that you need in your home. And so for those that are even thinking about the entrepreneurship side of starting a business, being in this business or going into it, I mean, again, I can't underscore this enough. The financial component is always something you have to think about. It's a very large motivator for some.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:06:38

There could be a lot of lucrative money here to be made. You know, I've heard some figures too, the 102, $100 an hour, I mean, we're talking possibly lawyer fees at some point until this sort of the bubble corrects. Again, if you're thinking about the skilled trades and you go, which career is for me, part of the factors has to be what's my earning potential for my family? Again, why does that matter? Because as you earn more and you save that money and you invest into things that you want in your life and your family and the experiences you want, the more money you earn, the more opportunities you'll have. So, you know, that's something you have to think about. But again, I can't underscore this enough. I think the financial part of it is such a driver to Getting people in. But we have to think about my brother in law in this example or the plumber that you're talking about. Even I know Roger Wakefield as well.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:07:21

But it's thinking about why do they do this work? They do it because for those customers that they have, they walk away being satisfied and likely a repeat customer. To me that's a perfect cycle. In addition to making 100 to $200 an hour, it's really liking to do this work. You know, maybe we'll talk on this a little bit Andrew, but you know, everything in life has pros and cons. I just mentioned there's always a couple things to think about in any industry. You know, one is about how hard this work can be on your body to how can this be hard on your mental health. We've heard more and more stories in our industry about loneliness. People, you know, traveling alone in trucks, how that makes them feel as the work piles up, you know, and so what do you do about that and how do you sort of right size that again it all kind of comes back to this main problem, people, it's a supply issue, it'll continue to be lucrative.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:08:10

The other part to think about is these are non exportable jobs, right? Today we don't make self installed water heaters. We don't make like you think about a refrigerator or other pieces of plumbing or you can go even to the H Vac side for a second, you know, until those become refrigerators and they're plugged that the DIYer or literally a homeowner can put them in, you will always need somebody to do that work in your home consistently and safely. And so until those pieces of equipment change to a more self install model, this work is not going away. Last comment I'll make is you got to think about the economics recession proof. You always hear about that as one of the reasons to stay in an industry like this. Look, I think there's downturns in every industry. As being a participant, a proud one I'd say of ours. For 15 years I've seen this industry kind of weather some tough storms that other industries can't fathom to be where technology and tech companies are down double digits.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:09:02

Construction, H Vac, plumbing, all the down the vertical is down single digits, right? So again for those that look at this kind of work, to think about it, you got to say to yourself, do I want to work at a job? That's more likely that I have my job during tough times. And the answer is for most people, if you're Thinking about it should be.

Andrew Brown [: 00:09:18

Yes, when something goes down in your house. And I do this all the time. I had an AC problem and it kicked off and of course it's 90 degrees out and it always happens when it's hot or it always happens when it's cold and your boiler starts leaking from the body. I'm like, that's a problem. I always say to myself, I wish I can fix that. I wish I knew how to do that. I wish I had the skill set for me. I should have went to trade school.

Andrew Brown [: 00:09:42

That's probably another podcast for another time. I always chuckle because everybody has a plumber, an electrician, H vac tech on their speed dial and everybody trades these numbers within your own town. And it's funny that the same names keep coming up. But going back to fixing things with your hands. Yeah, I wouldn't be able to plug and play for my AC unit that's sitting outside. I'm not going to sit there and recharge it. I wasn't trained how to do that. I want to be able to do that.

Andrew Brown [: 00:10:14

But I'm happy to give them a call and I'm also happy to pay them what they deserve. I mean, when my AC kicked off and it was super hot, when I venmoed him at the end, I was super happy. It costs a few dollars but my AC was on. My family was happy. They feel accomplished because they got the job done. It's just a fulfilling career. I wanted to ask you about and I don't know if you had said your brother or brother in law is a plumber. Did he come up in the trades or did he decide to kind of get into the trades just because he liked working with his hands? What was his journey like?

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:10:55

I think his journey was unfortunately more what I described in the beginning where it was sort of this lost journey and didn't know where to go. And so he's kind of getting pushed down this tech school route because he's not really thinking through what he wants to do at that age. I mean we are all there at some point in our lives, right? That 16, 17, 18 year old age and thinking what do I do next? And not knowing and sort of being moved into that when you ask people like that. So they sort of fell into it, which it seems like most in our industry. That's the case. I would even say that was me. H vac and plumbing was not the first thing I wanted to do, but I ended up falling into it. And then a common phrase in our industry has always been, then you never end up leaving it.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:11:33

Maybe you switch jobs and roles and different places in the vertical, but you just don't tend to leave it once you're in it because you just maintain these networks. But no, his journey I would say is more related to that pathway of didn't know what else there was and kind of went down that path. It's just funny because I think about folks like him and others, there's always trade offs with everything. So on one end it may be glamorous to sit behind a computer and type away all day to him. But then as you're talking, Andrew, I hear you say you, you wish you were doing what he was doing, right? Being with your hands and learning more of those skills. Which by the way, when you said that, my first thought was it's never too late, we can always go back. And also I wanted to say, I know one of the questions to think about here for me was what's one of those big ideas that we ought to be doing? If I had the magic wand, I would change today. There's definitely a outreach options out there.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:12:24

There's always that, that we could do more skill trades, improvement on the perceptions. But I also think this is one of those issues you can't fix alone by outreach. It has to be legislatively or regulatory or through codes. And so one of the best ideas that I've heard in the last couple of years and I've been beginning to move this through, is when I think about a four year college degree, there's always these electives that you can take. Why are we not requiring that those electives go through a tech school or the local tech school? So an example that the Wall Street Journal gave, what if the chef that's getting a business degree gets pushed to the local tech school to become a culinary to develop those skilled trades to be a culinary chef. Imagine the potential there where you can do both. The management side, maybe the theory of a four year college degree plus the hands on capabilities. It seems like that would be a no brainer.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:13:09

But we really haven't incentivized that nor required it from a legislative or regulatory or code standpoint. So there's a lot of ways to get people into the trades. But I know that through mandates there's always an option too.

Andrew Brown [: 00:13:23

I do have a solution to that and we need about 10 to 15 more of these schools. It's the Williamson College of the Trades up in Pennsylvania and I had a chance to go up there one to meet President Rounds. I Meet the kids and take a look at the school. They bring kids from challenging backgrounds, even from poverty, and they give them a full ride, tuition, room, board, and they're put up at the Williamson College of the Trades. They have to wear a suit and tie, and they are taught a trade. They are also taught academics, and they come out either being in power plan or electrical or plumbing and other skilled trades. And they have no debt at the end when they are seniors, there's 150 companies that come because everyone knows Williamson, a lot of these companies, and they are fighting for about 80 students. And these kids are leaving with options to go to all these different companies.

Andrew Brown [: 00:14:24

And I said to President Rounds, I'm like, why don't we have 10 more, 15 more? It comes down to funding every single kid that comes through that school. It costs $100,000, and there's only a certain amount of seats. I only think they bring in about 300 kids. But it's all donors. If you had that, you would squash the whole skilled trades shortage across the board. People would be more interested and you'd be exposed to working with your hands even if you didn't go a trades path at least gives you lifelong skills that you can be curious and fix things and know how to use power tools. I mean, kids are just coming out of school, they don't know how to swing a hammer. All the basic stuff.

Andrew Brown [: 00:15:06

We're so reliant on technology. And that's why I dubbed this podcast the Lost Start of the Skilled Trades, because it is becoming a lost art. And I have so many different examples of people that are leaving the industry. There's no one replacing them.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:15:21

I agree so much with everything you said there. Williamson College, to the lost art of these hand skills. The hand skills, again, I think back to the beginning of the podcast, really trace to that time period where funding's cut at that level to shop. And, you know, honestly, when I first started in my career, I'm like, you know, I heard it a lot from what I called then the gray beards. I'm like, all the gray beards say. And then the other week, I realized I'm one of the graybeards now. But, you know, the gray beards would always say those things like, oh, they cut shop. And that's, you know, a tragedy.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:15:48

And I'm like, yeah, I didn't understand it then. I do now because of what we're talking about, because there isn't that skilled hand coordination available to them to practice on. And again, the reality is, is that if you can't develop basic skills like that, you will be calling on the local tradespeople to help you do these things, which is going to be more and more expensive over time. This is the other thing that I always try to tie to those that are even looking at the skilled trades. I think there's this perception that the skilled trades is just behind the curve on things. Skilled trades has connected technologies now. I mean, we in our industry have IoT sensors embedded in so many things. They are interacting with buildings, they're helping shape the energy efficiency to the water usage, to the safety.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:16:36

I mean, some products have alerts on your phone when there's things like leak detection. So again, there's another connective tissue there too. Yes, it's not only those hand skills, but it's more like you need a little bit of IT skills and computer knowledge in addition to those hand skills because of the technology advancements that will help both automation help, you know, alerts and monitor. And so when I think about kids and Gen Z and even younger, they have to think about, sure, I don't have the hand skills, but maybe I can be productive in this industry related to connecting devices, running and making sure that I'm monitoring those things. I mean, even now the new buzzword is AI entering prompts to help extract information around AI prompts. That's all prominent in this industry. And it's not going away. In fact, I think it's going to get more complicated, more included.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:17:26

And as those gray beards, I guess me included, age and we are not keeping up on those skills, that's where this next generation could really be beneficial. And again, I think kind of is interesting for them to think about. It's not just about soldering a piece of pipe anymore and all those things. It's actually everything else in addition to what it took to make the pipe connections.

Andrew Brown [: 00:17:44

Gamification is becoming so powerful for the next generation that are interested, they're already on Xbox, they're already on the iPad. And what you brought up about the technology that's brought into the trades, that has to be supported, that also gets kids interested. I think of cobot welding, it's all done by an iPad of some sort. It gets kids interested that, okay, maybe I don't want to do this portion in the trades, but I can do this portion that's more geared towards the tech side. So that gets kids really interested. I've seen this in a lot of different areas. I've seen this when I was at Bergen county in Paramus at A technical school, speaking in front of 300 kids with Jamie McMillan, who is a well known iron worker up in Canada. These kids were super interested when we were talking about the tech side of it.

Andrew Brown [: 00:18:34

We just kind of brought games into it. And it's funny, when I was speaking to these kids, I said I had asked my kids who were young, I said, how do I connect with that audience? You got to talk about cell phones, you got to talk about iPads, you got to talk about Roblox. I'm like, okay. So I started off my conversation and my speech and every kid started laughing. And then I said, well, what would happen if your WI fi went out? Because it's not enough skilled tradespeople in the back end to fix everything. And then I made it sort of an analogy behind that. But getting kids engaged, bringing the gamification in, that is extremely important. I think that gives them an interest level.

Andrew Brown [: 00:19:09

I think that's going to be sort of the next evolution of this. And I'd like to see over the next couple of years where it goes with the technology. You know, I even see it on the tool side. You know, we're in the industrial distribution side and all the tools, everything is becoming geared towards technology and AI eventually will start to be built into this stuff. And you have to be up and up on this. This is the next step and the next evolution.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:19:33

Oh, it's so true. And I would add a couple comments to everything you said. You know, one is when you're talking about these things, one of the books that my team recently read that I'm employed by, we read a book called Quantum Marketing. And Quantum Marketing really talks about these concepts around how technology will advance so quickly to the point where we have to keep up even in some of these older industries that we're talking about 5G, the ability with 5G and higher data and Internet connections today means that there are surgeries that can actually be done remotely from California to New York. Because there's no lag time to, if I think about our industry, the growth of AR and VR technologies with headsets. So I was talking to a union hall recently, within this year, and we talked a little bit about, I asked them, I said, so what are you doing to introduce learning technologies into your hands on? So I said, I can't imagine this union hall was in a downtown city. And I said, so what about the outskirts in the suburb? As you have more traffic coming in and you want to expand your schools, are you bringing more of that virtual experience out to them? Not Just taking online quizzes. But what about immersive technologies? And it was almost like I was seen with a deer in headlights.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:20:43

The reality is that we have technologies now that can actually do this, serve that student, serve the learner remotely and immersively. Post Covid. I mean, I think Covid really accelerated our industry's adoption of this technology because we had to. This technology is incredible with data and the chips and everything else that's happening. And so for anyone that's really thinking about that again is, wow, the skilled trades are a step behind. We might be a step behind maybe to the technology sector, but generally speaking, these products, these trainings, the things we're moving to is rapidly going quick towards someone that understands what we're talking about, like AR VR. And your idea about gamification I think is spot on. I think when I think what motivates human behavior, its incentives or possibly disincentives.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:21:33

So incentives in this case are you're going to reward things as tokens to prizes or other things to completing certain levels and leveling up experiences. There's something to be said about the stick to itness of someone that wants to go through that and learn these skills versus just following maybe a tired old curriculum. As you progress, you get rewarded. Seems like a pretty good model to get people to use. As we think about skilled trades and.

Andrew Brown [: 00:21:57

These kids being in them, VR is a game changer. I was down at SkillsUSA down in Atlanta. It's a competition where they bring 6,000 kids and they compete. Welding, electrical, plumbing. The amount of trades advocation down there, I swear there's so much energy it could run the state of New York. It's unbelievable. And just watching these kids just compete. And I had a chance to go over to a VR booth and it's a company named Transfer.

Andrew Brown [: 00:22:27

I put on the goggles and they put me right into a situation where the power went out in a small town and I had to get power back on because the hospital had no power. So I had to climb the tower about 50ft and I had the goggles. Feels like I'm climbing. Of course, I think I've aged out of the technology because it took me five minutes to figure out how to climb. That's a separate story. Finally got up there and then it took me through all the steps of what I needed to do, Turned on the power, boom. I basically saved the town. That was exciting.

Andrew Brown [: 00:22:56

It got me exposed to being a lineman and it felt like I was there. You know, same with welding and same with plumbing and other Trades, at least it gets kids interested that you could bring these VR experiences into school. You know, there are programs like Classroom Talks, which is a national program that brings in different tradespeople to talk to kids. And you bring in these VR goggles. These kids, they get excited. They truly get excited. On top of children's books, I believe sharing these experiences with kids at a young age can really get their juices flowing. You wrote a book.

Andrew Brown [: 00:23:37

The water came to a stop. And I want to know more about this because what was sort of the inspiration, sort of behind this, of when you had that aha moment that I want to write a children's book.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:23:49

I too believe that children's materials, books, and going after that age range underneath a lot of what we talked about, middle school, high school can be just as equally powerful. But it's a longer play. But I think there's a lot of great things we can do there. But yes, I wrote a book about it. I actually have my second coming out this year in November about H Vac. I'm really excited about that. The reason I wrote this book is kind of like what we're all doing is we look around and I said, there's not enough positivity happening about this activity that's happening in the homes. And it kind of struck me.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:24:23

I have two young boys at home perfectly situated for this children's book age range. Today. One is five, another is eight. I wrote the book with them as the inspiration. So if you know the book or you've seen the book, the plot is based on one of the children of mine, but it's also written for the guardian, the parent, the grandparent, whoever had purchased the book and to read it to their children. If the children, if that child can't read yet, to sort of change the perception. Like, wait, this was a problem. I did call a plumber in this case.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:24:53

And how was that solved? And so it's positive. At the end, they celebrate the fact that the plumber came and fixed the problem. Now, the story itself took a lot of turns. I lovingly say this about my wife. She was my best editor. She only gave me 40 rounds of edits, made this book shine. So I give her all the credit and the quality of that particular book and actually my second one, that's going to be coming out as well. But, you know, the inspiration had everything to do with.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:25:19

I knew we had to do something. I look around a lot of the headlines. I'm in this industry. I hear what's going on with our contracting base. With the shortage, no one's going after the 4, 8, 10 year olds. And how can we sort of inspire them sooner? One thing we all share in common, forget politics, forget anything else that divides us today, we all share our love of our kids and that sort of how do we inspire them? How do we show them positive things in the world instead of all that can be negative at times. And so that was my way of doing that, was to write a book based on that story. The other thing I'd mention is the book is written really about, yes, a situation that happened in a home, but it has animal characters, it has a light hearted feel.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:25:58

It's not meant to be really heavy in terms of its understanding, but there's a problem introduced, problem solved and we really have these plumbers in that book to thank for fixing our issue. And there's a little fun that happens in there too, which I wanted to sort of introduce why I was so.

Andrew Brown [: 00:26:12

Inspired to write it really is a game changer. I mean my kids light up and when they were younger, when we had these construction books and obviously if they had this book too, it just gets them thinking in a way that, and you make it fun and you break it down and what they can do with their hands and it gets their juices flowing to think about an option going into the trades. And it's interesting that you're coming out with an H vac book. So we'll watch out for that when that gets released hopefully later on during the year.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:26:45

Andrew One of my proudest moments about this book, it happened, I'd say 50% of the time when someone tells me they enjoyed the book, they immediately say my son, daughter, whoever read it, it's of course they love the story or whatever, but they say, yeah. And they now told me what a PEX pipe is, right? Or they told me what a water heater is. They told me a toilet is because that's all referenced in the book. And even my sons, both of them, when the plumber came over to fix a problem in our house recently, we had a leak with our pressure reducing valve. He came over and my son's like, oh, the plumber was here. Great. Yay. You know, he's very happy about that.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:27:23

He knew that he was coming to fix the problem based on the story. But it's one of those proud dad moments when maybe they're a little infatuated as I am looking at things like pipes and water heaters and H vac systems because I'm talking about it in a book and they're like, oh, I kind of know what that is now. And that was the point. That was exactly the point of it.

Andrew Brown [: 00:27:43

I let my kids play with my tools under supervision, just like with your book. And just like they can recognize certain things around the house, my kids can now identify tools that will fix certain applications. And I remember doing this with my dad too, just kind of watching him. The earlier they're exposed, obviously under supervision. If it's not even a trades path, at least gets them interested and at least maybe they'll fix stuff or get curious to fix stuff around the house. Of course on the electrical side, I draw the line in the sand at some point, but little projects here and there and it's a really good feeling to really do it and fix it with your own hands. Ryan, this has been an amazing conversation. Before we leave the studio today, what is one of your special tools of the trade that you can offer our listeners on what are the best qualities that a plumber or an H vac tech can have to be successful in their trade?

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:28:48

I interact with contractors frequently. I think about them a lot. I'm driving down the road, I see the vans, I see my brother in law. The thing that I always think about is help change the perception. And I know that these guys are stressed. They got a lot of work, it's 16 hours in a truck, they're moving around, just smile. It's such a simple thing. Kids, adults, young people, they need to see that this is a good thing that you're doing.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:29:14

Of course there's so many things in the world that we can look at that's negative, but look at the positive. The positive is you're helping people, you're solving problems, you're fixing issues. That's rewarded handsomely financially, but it's also rewarded with your mind and with your heart. I think passing that wisdom along for the ones that don't do that today to think about. You never know when you're going to make somebody's day or moment, especially if you're in a home. Look, I've heard so many stories of great contractors and technicians and folks that do this work that they do realize it. They do see the child in the home, they do see the stay at home parent. They see someone that's taking off for the day and even though they're at high stress moments, you're solving their problem in their time of the most need.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:29:57

It's that comfort crisis we have. We now need water and we need air to be in a comfortable environment because that's the kind of society we live in. It's not a nice to have. It's a must have. It's expected especially in certain regions in the south and depends on what we're talking. So pass it along. It's the old African proverb, each one teach one teach what you can. Certainly you need to talk about the things that aren't so great too.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:30:21

Let's not hide those, but focus on the positive and I promise you we can bring more into this to our industry. The plumbing and H Vac skilled trades together. Use your resources to help do that.

Andrew Brown [: 00:30:33

That is a great response to that question. The recognition side for the people that actually fix stuff, just say thank you Goes a long way for the hardworking men and women that really don't always get the recognition they deserve. Ryan, if people want to find out more information about your book or your information social media channels, where do they go?

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:30:55

I'm Most active on LinkedIn so I post daily to. I share a lot of content there. So a lot of my information is there where you can find my book. My book is available on Amazon.com as well if it interests you. It's available in the US and Canada along with an ebook. So if you have a Kindle reader and you're part of that subscription, you can also read the book there off of an ekin or you can certainly buy the hard copies. As I mentioned, you will find more with my series coming out this year at the end of the year on H Vac. Can't wait for it to come out.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:31:25

I know it's going to make an impact. Just like the water came to a stop did. And Andrew, I want to say thank you for your podcast, for what you're doing. I enjoy your content, I love what you have out there. At some point I'd love to do the reverse side of this and interview you. I think you deserve an interview as well for everything great you're doing with your company and with this initiative and let me know along with anybody else in the skilled trades enthusiast how we can best help you as you continue down this journey. But thank you Andrew and appreciate your time and to the listeners and thank.

Andrew Brown [: 00:31:55

You for your support. Ryan and I will definitely take you up on that on a future episode. So thank you for coming on the show today.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:32:01

Thank you and thank you to our listeners.

Andrew Brown [: 00:32:03

If you want more valuable insights and trades related information, head over to andrewbrown.net and join our Trades Movement newsletter where we advocate for the trades. We share inspirational stories, we share cool books like the Water Came to a Stop. We provide resources and you join a passionate trades community. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Lost Art.

Ryan Cascaden [: 00:32:33

Of the Skilled Trades. Visit us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips. Join us next time for real stories and meaningful initiatives as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape the future together.