Mechanic to Media Mogul: A skilled trades journey with Ryan R. Sullivan

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:00:00

I didn't realize I could have my own business. There was all these entrepreneurs around me, but they were local businesses. I didn't realize I could work with people all over the world virtually. I didn't realize I could do a four hour work week if I wanted to. Right. I didn't realize I could have real estate investments when I'm 26. Like, none of that seemed possible, but I had the Internet. Hi, I'm Andrew Brown.

Andrew Brown [: 00:00:25

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 Sullivan. A podcast principals welcome, Ryan, to the show.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:00:57

So excited to be here. We've been connected for a while. This is something I'm very passionate about and hoping I can bring a couple different perspectives today to hopefully help somebody out.

Andrew Brown [: 00:01:06

I am very into cars, if you know me. I love fast cars. I always tune cars. I don't know, it's like a, I don't want to say it's like a sickness, but like once you get into that realm, you just keep doing it. And I used to have Corvettes when I was younger and I would just make them faster. And I remember I always would bring them to one shop in Long Island, New York, and it was called Vet Doctors. It was owned by Carmen and another gentleman. They were the go to guys.

Andrew Brown [: 00:01:37

Like, they knew everything about Corvettes. Like, you bring it in, it's not running right. They're like, we know what it is. And people would write blank checks. It didn't matter if it cost $10,000 was a blank check because that's what people love to do. And those were the guys and they did very well. And that is the great example of working with your hands and finding your niche. But you were a mechanic in your former life.

Andrew Brown [: 00:02:04

What led you down that path first?

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:02:06

Yeah, for sure. And I'll say, you know, I'm a car guy as well. I do have the bug. It'll eat in your pockets a little bit as our fellow car guys and gals. No, but that's part of the passion. But to your question, what happened was I had one of the most reliable vehicles in the world, Andrew, a Volkswagen gti. So that's the. I love them.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:02:30

I actually own another one now, but they have a lot of issues. And this particular car had the issue of the speedometer. Did not work. So luckily it was a manual. But I was like, you know what, Maybe there's something we could do about this. Maybe somebody could fix this thing. So I brought it down to the local shop. When I was at the local shop, having them kind of give me a estimate on or to even figure out if, hey, could you even fix this? Or is this something that's beyond your expertise? A gentleman walks out of the shop.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:02:58

He was like, hey, good to see you, man. This is my friend Sean, who I hadn't seen in years. And he was like, hey, do you want a job here? I'm like, job? I hope you guys can fix my speedometer because I can't keep telling when I get pulled over my speedometer doesn't work. And I was like, I mean, I guess I'm open to it. And I was 17 at the time, by the way. So this is my second car. I actually bought a car when I. Before I had a license, but that's another story.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:03:23

And he said, I'm going to leave. I'm going to welding school. You know, I'm going to take a different career path. So if you want this job, I'm going to leave and maybe you could work here. So the stars aligned, right? And at the same time, I didn't want to be in high school anymore. So I signed up for a class, auto tech class, you know, basically mechanics class. Because they were like this, so easy. It's just like you have to take a couple tests.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:03:45

You don't really have to work on the cars, you know, it's just a way to get out of school. So stars really did align. I was going to that class, which I didn't. Wasn't really planning on learning anything. But then I also got offered this job. So I'm like, maybe this is something, you know, that I'm actually interested in. And my first word was tractor. So I was going in on in the direction my life was kind of set up, I guess to work on cars at some point.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:04:08

So that's how I got into it.

Andrew Brown [: 00:04:09

Well, let's go back for a second because the speedometer thing, I don't know how much you can get away with it if you get pulled over. But that's an interesting, interesting glitch.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:04:18

It works a couple times. Yeah, I didn't know how many times it's going to work. I would get pulled over, going five over because they would just target. They're like, this kid, 17, like, let's pull him over. But yeah, I remember I left the Car on. When I got pulled over and the cop came to the window, he was like, please turn off the car. I'm like, no, I'm trying to show you, like, look, it says I'm doing 50 right now. Like, I don't know how fast I'm going.

Andrew Brown [: 00:04:39

Disclaimer to the audience, don't try this at home, but if it's helped a couple of times, definitely worked out. So you fell into this world just because you had this problem and your friend said, hey, do you want a job? And you were at the age where it's like, okay, maybe I can work with my hands. And maybe at that time there was decent wages or good money or your friend was making good money or it was just a, maybe a passion behind it because you enjoyed cars. Did you like working on cars?

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:05:10

Oh yeah, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the job. I have a business coach now and we were just talking about this and he was like, you don't realize how much that's influenced what you do now. I loved it. I also love the diagnosis aspect, right? Which is. And by the way, when I say love, I really mean hate because it's. There's a lot of time suck there, right? There's like you're battling with the customer and trying to tell them what's wrong. But I remember the first day my boss was there, I thought I was going to be doing bodywork.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:05:40

This was a four generation shop. So I'll just give the context before I get into anything. Great grandfather, he started a shop in the 60s. He worked for GM and then he said, I'm going to start my own shop. It was the first shop in that town. Below him was grandfather. That's Jim, that was the name of the shop. Jim's Autobody still there.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:05:57

Shout out to Jim's Auto Body. Then Jared, that's Jim's son, he was the mechanic. So Jim had the auto body, Jared had the mechanic. They worked in the same shop. Two sides and then below them is Darren, who's now a police officer. Full time police officer, but he worked there on and off as well while I was there. So it was four generations at one time in one shop. That was crazy.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:06:17

They're the best people ever. Jim originally hired me, auto body guy, but then he handed me off to Jared, who's the mechanic guy. And I was just there to learn. So they, it was just about where are you going to pick up slack, right? So I ended up picking up more slack on the mechanic side and the first day he was like, hey, I'm going to go up to my house real quick, put these brakes together by the time I get back. So he goes up to his house, comes back, the rotor is not on the car. And that's because I didn't know how to put a rotor on the car. So the first day I basically knew nothing. Like had never worked on any cars before except for maybe changing the oil with my dad back in the day.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:06:51

But yeah, I fell in love with that job, man. I really did.

Andrew Brown [: 00:06:53

Yeah. And that it sounds like it's just been passed down the generation. Generation or it's just generations that are working there. But it stayed within the family. It's interesting where people get that technical spark. Whether it's somebody in your family was in the trades, maybe was an uncle in the trades. It really depends. You know, it's interesting when you're talking about working on cars.

Andrew Brown [: 00:07:16

I had Bogey Laitner, she's a TV host of All Girls Garage, pretty well known and she said, I asked her like, what is it about cars? She's like, I like to figure out the puzzle of things. Like what's wrong with the car. It's just, you know, working on a car that's from 1970, whatever, versus a Tesla that you're working on today is this. It doesn't even compare. It's like a. Just a rolling rocket ship. It's just an iPad. And you have to change with the times.

Andrew Brown [: 00:07:45

I would imagine just for the time that you were a mechanic, you had to keep up and up on the technology.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:07:50

Yeah. And cars are not static. Tesla is the most static vehicle. Right. Brakes, tires, everything else is kind of internal. You're not going to mess with it. Except for if you're that guy that puts V8 and Teslas, which. That's awesome.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:08:03

Any car with an engine. Right. Is non electric. Car is not static, meaning everything's changing all the time. So a car is literally disintegrating each day. The second it hits the second it becomes a full form vehicle from the manufacturer, it's now beginning its process of disintegration. Right. So that's the challenge with cars and that's the never ending puzzle.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:08:31

The car is constantly fighting nature all the time.

Andrew Brown [: 00:08:35

I think it's the excitement working on the car and fixing a customer's issue or problem. It's more so today you're not so much going the engine, you're fixing like a squeaky seat or squeaky something in the car. It's like I had this squeak in the window. And please fix this. Yes, you have to get into the engine when you have to. But like the reliability is there much more than it was back if you working on muscle cars from the 70s.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:09:02

Oh yeah. And that's what they used to say, you know, Earl, shout out to Earl. He's like the guy who started this shop, right? And he would tell me stories about carbureted engines and having to work on them all the time and you know, constantly rebalancing them. And to your last question, which I now remembered, cars are constantly, constantly, constantly changing, right? And it's incredible. We've seen, you know, the four cylinder turbo is something that completely changed cars, right? Think about it. They still make V8s. Same V8 as it always was. It's just more efficient or just makes more power.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:09:32

But like it was really cool. Cause I started working on cars in 2015. And so at that time, yes, they were getting more technologically advanced. Teslas were becoming like a regular consumer car. That kind of happened in the last five years. But yeah, I got to see this. I mean, I had to learn about all different types of systems within the car and the computerization. And back to that, the last point too, you know, it's kind of like you love the process.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:09:58

You have to kind of love the process of figuring it out. And right now I'm trying to figure out how to tune this GTI that I have. And there's a thousand options, hundred clutch options, there's like 20 downpipe options. Do I need an O2 sensor spacer now? Do I? If I get a downpipe, do it now. I have to get an intake. It's like that constant evolution of the journey is really the thing. Once you get in and you drive the car and it's. And now you did the stuff to it, right? You tune that Corvette or you drop $5,000 at the shop.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:10:27

And now it's how you want it. Now you're kind of like, now I'm like waiting for the next thing that I have to work on, you know, 100%. It never ends.

Andrew Brown [: 00:10:36

No, it never ends. And it's interesting that. And I'm not going to go into the whole dynamic of modifying cars and that's a whole different subsection. I'll put up my Type R against your GTI anytime you want.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:10:48

You have a Type R?

Andrew Brown [: 00:10:50

Type R, baby.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:10:51

Oh, man, they're so nice. Oh yeah, that'll blow. That's a 2.5 liter, right? I mean, dude, the Type R is meant for you. To just leave it how it is. You're not supposed to mess with that car.

Andrew Brown [: 00:11:01

I did tune that car, and I just don't leave things alone. And I got an extra 40 horsepower.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:11:06

Yeah, but they look so cool, man. Yeah, they look right. That's kind of like, similar to the golf r, where it's like, they kind of just made it look right how it should look, at least for a sports car. But, yeah, man, I would say you would definitely win.

Andrew Brown [: 00:11:19

When kids, they usually come up to me because they know what it is, and they're like, they think it's a young kid in it. It's like this old dude in the car. It's like, I love. I just light up when I talk about cars. So you came from a blue collar sort of background. Talk to me about, did that have any influence on you when you were 17? And then, like, you're like, okay, I'll work in this shop.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:11:40

Yeah, absolutely. So I had a kind of unique upbringing. You kind of start to unpack. You start to realize the aspects of how you grew up as you kind of get older, and you start to talk about it and you realize, like, oh, this was kind of different. So for one, like, so many of my neighbors owned businesses, so that was really interesting. But it was like a blue collar, really rural area, so they owned pretty predictable businesses. Right. So my one neighbor had a landscaping company.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:12:07

My other neighbor had a restaurant, and my other neighbor had another landscaping company. Neighbor right across from me had a nursery. Almost everybody had, like, a blue collar business kind of. Right. Whether it's a restaurant or a landscaping company. And so that influenced me, but just I didn't even realize that till later. And then in terms of my family, yeah, my dad's a union pipe insulator. My mom was a bus driver and a waitress.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:12:30

And then my uncle is a plumber. Very successful, mostly retired. Now he's got a lot of real estate. So he invested and, you know, he made that work. He had a great income, but he also invested. And then my grandfather was a heavy equipment operator who used to do bathrooms and, like, tile floors on the side. And so he had done tile floors for this lady, and she had 10 or 20 different houses. So one day he was, like, in his 50s.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:12:55

He finally asked her, how did you get all these houses? She's like, well, I'll teach you how to do it. How much money do you have? And he was like, Well, I have $30,000 that was inherited. His mother passed away, and he got some inheritance. So she said, okay, that's enough. Buy this house. So he buys the house and just takes her steps, right? And then when he passed, he had like four or five homes, you know, and had done the real estate thing. But he started when he was in his 50s again, heavy equipment operator. My dad being a pipe insulator.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:13:23

And so yeah, it was like I had all, a lot of blue collar background. What I always say is if I didn't have the Internet, I would have worked on cars and then I would have gotten sick of that and then I would have sold cars and then that would have been it. I would have been probably a car salesman.

Andrew Brown [: 00:13:38

So it's funny how everybody's journey is a little bit different and I don't know if a lot of times sometimes it's spoken about so much in your household of like what, like your father, your mother does, like, it rubs off. Like my wife's parents, they're in healthcare, right? So my wife's in healthcare, my father's in industrial distribution and my grandfather had hardware. So store like it just was in our blood. And I had a, a life changing event on 9 11, which is a different story why I went into it, but like it was just in my blood. It almost kind of followed suit that you were so exposed to all these different blue collar trades. It kind of made sense that you want that director slightly different. But you stayed in the trades.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:14:24

Yeah. And this is something I'm really passionate about, which is as early as possible learning trades. My dad was a contractor on the side. Like he would go to his regular job during the day and then after work he would go to my soccer game. And then after the soccer game I would lose the game. And then he would be like, hey, we just gotta go like hang some drywall real quick at this house. And I'm like, what? I'm like, I just want to go home. Like, I just lost this game.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:14:51

I probably lost the game for us because I was a goalie. And now he's like, yeah, but you gotta come to work for a couple hours, right? But then he was gonna take me to Dinner or McDonald's and it was all worth it, right? But my surroundings, at least with my dad, right, was just work only. It was just like if you're not working, you're working on the house or you're splitting wood, right? It's like you're doing something, you gotta do something here. And so that's why I'm really passionate about, you know, you don't have to do what your parents do, but you have to do something, and the earlier you start, the better learning. What I always say is, there's no it. You don't, like, make it one day. You learn how to learn things. So I learned how to be a mechanic.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:15:35

I learned how to edit podcasts. I learned how to write music. I learned how to DJ a wedding. I learned how to learn things faster. The mechanic thing wasn't the first thing I learned. I learned music first, and then I learned how to make me my own music. And then at this similar, kind of around the same time, I was also DJing parties. So I was learning how to be a DJ.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:15:56

And this is all when I was 16, 17, 18 years old. And so at that time, and it's not that I didn't get into the other side, I had my first business was an illegal business, but that funded my life, which actually allowed me to go to college. Crazy enough. So it's a little bit of everything, for sure. But it's easy to get caught in a wrong path or no path. No path is almost worse because then you get used to not having a path. Right. At least if you're in the wrong path, you're doing something.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:16:25

You can at least argue about, you know, your position in life. Right. But I think for that age range of like, I'd say like 15, especially 14, to like 18. Yeah. If you could get even a couple hours. For me, it was two hours a day. I worked at the shop, not full time. I would go to high school, go to a pizza place, get a slice of pizza, drive to the shop, work there for two hours, and then I would go work at a liquor store after that.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:16:49

But I was doing it consistently, even if it was 30 minutes here, two hours there, eight hours on Saturday. Summer, full time, winter break, full time. But I'm all about that. Like, get in. It's not the skill you're gonna use for your entire life. It's learning how to learn the skills.

Andrew Brown [: 00:17:05

Well, you were learning discipline as well, with these different things that you were trying. You were testing and trying different things. You were way ahead of the curve. Because when I was that age, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just kind of roaming around, I remember. And I went to college as well. I went to University of Rhode island for four years, and I literally just kind of walked around aimlessly. I was in a fraternity, right.

Andrew Brown [: 00:17:25

I got sucked into college.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:17:27

One of the worst things you can do.

Andrew Brown [: 00:17:29

I remember walking into a class by mistake, and they were teaching programming for computers and C And I'm like, yeah, I think that will work. For the first, literally two years I was a programmer and I would sit there and I would program in C and take advanced calculus, which I was completely lost. I was sitting in a lab at Saturday afternoon with 20 other people and looking around and saying, I don't know what the frick I'm doing, What am I even doing? And that was two years in into college. And then I was like, I don't know, maybe I'll switch to business and management and information systems. And guess what? I'm going to minor in finance. And then I went into it and then I went into tools and equipment and industrial distribution. Like I was just kind of floating around and there was nobody holding my hand. And I always make that argument about school and college and about a trades path versus a college path.

Andrew Brown [: 00:18:23

Just because you're in college doesn't mean you're going to fully succeed in a sense. Like you're going to come out, you're paying all this money, have all this debt that you're getting the return. Like I walked out of there, I'm like, I don't know what I want to do. I really don't.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:18:36

And that's a big point of contention, which is it's easy to look at it like college or trades, but that's not how life works. My life isn't. I was a mechanic and then I was this and then I was that. It's easy for me to explain it like that. Everything I do is all together, it's all in one, right? Our mind tries to put things in boxes, but that's not how it works. So I did both. I did a skilled trades path and college path at the same time. And also if you're below 30 years old, don't have a wife, or you have a girlfriend and no kids, it's like, what do you have to even do? And then most people do the traditional.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:19:13

I watch football, waste my time on fantasy sport, maybe get into some gambling stuff, whatever. Just things to numb your brain to not actually face the reality of your life, right? And then you do that forever. But it's like when you're at these ages, especially, you know, to your point, in college too, at least you were doing that. But it's very possible to do. Everything is together. It's your life, it's one life, you know, I was the same way. I didn't always consciously know what I was doing, but I was just doing it and I was interested in it. And the thing that Motivated me, pros and cons to this, being a motivator, but it was money.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:19:48

I quit sports to do that mechanic job. You know, I gave that up because I saw the path, though. I was like, my parents aren't giving me any money. Nobody's here giving me money. So then I got to get my own money. And if I'm going to get my own money, then I got to learn a skill that makes me more money. And people were working at like shoprite or, you know, that's east coast, but, you know, whatever grocery store, and that's fine. And I was getting paid a little bit more than them, but I was learning something, you know, and so that tactile nature, my adhd, it worked out perfectly because I could just go from job to job to job to job.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:20:23

But yeah, it's all part of the process. It's not like college. This path trades this path. The amount of mechanics that I know that have never been a mechanic, most of them are better than me. Titles are just titles.

Andrew Brown [: 00:20:34

You know, What I like is that you can always fall back on a trade. So even if you go on a college path, you also learn to trade. That's never going to go away. Like, if what you're doing now, we'll get into it just a moment, but like, if that goes away, you can always fall back on your roots, right? You can always go back to a trade. You know, My buddy worked for BMW. He was a tech there. Either he hit a ceiling or he just wasn't happy. And he owns his own shop and he just works on all different cars and he modifies the cars, but he does relatively well.

Andrew Brown [: 00:21:10

He didn't have, like, he could have stayed at BMW, but there was a reason why he moved over to his own shop and he's happy being an entrepreneur. You can go down that route if you want to. You might hit a ceiling again working for the shop that you were working for and you want to have your own business. There is that opportunity to do that if you want.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:21:32

You don't fall back on a trade, you fall back on the skills that you have. So it's just about what skills do I have, right? It's career transition. It's not even going backwards, it's going forwards, right? So if I'm a mechanic when I'm 20, and then I do something else for 10 years, and then I'm a mechanic when I'm 30, I'm just moving forward to the next thing or really getting down to maybe what I truly love to do. But that's how I look at it. And I'm like, it is, to your point, a separate plan. Plan B, essentially. Right. But if I stop doing what I'm doing today, I may not be a mechanic, but I may do something with cars that combines what I do now with what I used to do with cars, and it all comes together.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:22:16

Right? So I also look at that as, like, it's skilled trades for a reason, and it's skill heavy, and that's the thing that you accumulate these skills as you go. Right. So I love it as a fallback plan. But I also think that if you're coding on the weekends or, like, at night or just building websites just on the side just because it's fun, then you're also a mechanic. Well, now you can have a business helping auto shops create their websites. Right. It can all kind of come together, and it doesn't have to be looked at as like, well, that's just your fallback plan.

Andrew Brown [: 00:22:49

Everybody has a purpose in life, and you might not be in the right path. And I do want to get to a pivotal point where you change path. I had this exercise yesterday at my CEO group that I meet with once a month, and it was all about, as a speaker. It was about your purpose in life. What's your journey? Why are you here? And they did this exercise. They write down the year you're gonna die. I was like, okay, I'm in it. I'll keep it to myself, what year that I wrote down.

Andrew Brown [: 00:23:16

But then it started talking and working backwards, like, how many summers do you have left? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? What's the meaning? And it's funny. It's like, with me and what I've been doing in my life with my business and tool fetch and stuff like that. Like, I didn't know I was going to have a change to become a thought leader in the space of the trades advocacy. And it really made me think about my legacy. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing here. This is what I want to do. Even just being on this podcast, I love talking about this stuff, and it just brought everything together. I'm like, yeah, this is right for me.

Andrew Brown [: 00:23:52

What point were you? Like, the aha moment? Like, this is not for me, and I want to go into podcasting and branding and help people.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:24:01

There were a couple moments, but the one was where I had to make a decision. So like I said, I had a business before this business that was a thriving business in New Jersey. And I'll just leave out all the details. You can try to figure out what that is. So I saved up on top of that, plus my mechanic job, I saved up like $20,000, which at 20ish or 19 was kind of a lot of money. The shop that I worked at had a shop down the street that they would rent out. And it was kind of just kept cycling through tenants, you know, nobody ever kind of got established there. And so I'm like, okay, I can just rent out this shop for 700amonth.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:24:36

I have enough for like 612 months of rent and I can do my own shop. And they were with it. They're like, yeah, sure, you can be like a satellite shop for our shop and we can send work to you. And, you know, it seemed great, seemed good, you know, so that was an option. And then I was also going to community college in which I wasn't getting a degree. And so my parents said they were like, you only have to go to college two years, but you got to go two years. And they didn't really care, I guess if I got a degree or not. I could have like convinced them that, hey, I went for the two years and that was it.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:25:03

But I wanted to go to real college. I wanted to go to state school. I wanted to do what all my friends just did. I just watched them do for the last two years. And I just, I would go to their schools and was so cool. And there was a campus and there was dorms and I was still at home fixing cars, driving to community college, you know, doing that all on the same day, trying to figure out my life. So I was like, you know what? Here's these two options. I'm going to go to real college.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:25:27

This is my last chance that I have to do it and I'm going to do it. I'm going to take this 20 grand. I spent 8,000 paid for the first semester. I was supposed to live with one of my best friends. Once I sign up to pay, he's like, hey, by the way, I'm dropping out.

Andrew Brown [: 00:25:42

Guess what?

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:25:42

I'm dropping out to sell antiques. It's like, what, are you kidding me, dude? Shout out to Chris Miller, Chris Miller Construction. By the way, we were supposed to live together with his friend, so us three. And I didn't know the other friend, and he was like, hey man, I'm not going to do this, but like, this kid's going to do it. My buddy, why don't you live with him? So I toured apartments with A guy that I didn't know. We're all best friends now, you know, to this day. But it was one of those pivotal moments where I was like, okay, I'm going to invest in my education. I've seen the path, the mechanic path.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:26:15

I see it. You can go mom and pop. You can start your own shop, you can go big dealership. Those are your three options. I wanted to see the other side of the fence. I wanted to know, hey, what if I went to college? Maybe what could happen? And at the same time, I was making podcasts at night, started my own podcast in 2018. It was a self development angled podcast. It was just me talking the camera.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:26:35

Then I started interviewing people. That's when it started to get interesting. I figured, you know what, if I'm going to pursue this type of path, then maybe college might be the way to do it. And I ended up going in that direction.

Andrew Brown [: 00:26:45

And then you sort of developed on the podcasting side and also the branding side, how important is it for a construction company, someone in the trades, who owns a company on the branding side, to be on social media and to have a podcast and how important that is and what you can do with it. What is the power of having a podcast being in the trades or a trades business?

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:27:09

So the power of the podcast is, number one, it's a connection tool, right? So if you want to get people to know, like and trust you for any reason, whether you want to sell things to them or buy things from them, or speak on their stages, or for them to speak on your podcast or whatever it is, it establishes a relationship. If you are a company who wants to get bigger contracts, right? You know, you're a welding business and you want to scale and you want to have more welding businesses going to have a podcast where you interview people who already did that, and then they're just going to give you essentially the playbook, right? I would also say from the workers, the tradesman side, right? If you're working for a company, which is what I did, I turned the shop into a client. So meaning I said, hey, can I bring a couple cameras down here and shoot some videos? Right? I started all of their social media accounts that they now run, right? And I was the facilitator of that, that I did pictures, I got everybody together for a group photo. I did the bout section, I did all the posts three days a week, I did videos, photos, all that stuff. From the business perspective, podcasts can do many, many, many things. It can essentially do whatever you want. It to do. And then from the worker's perspective of the tradesman or the person, tradeswoman or whoever's actually working the job, if you have an interest in social media, you can just film what you're doing.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:28:26

Not only is that valuable to you and that's gonna open more options to you, which many people on this podcast have done something similar where they're literally just filming themselves doing it and then that opens doors for them. Or now you're higher leverage at this company. And I know people who literally full time just record construction companies and that's their full time job, is they went from being a heavy equipment operator to a heavy equipment filmmaker. So it depends who you are or what you want to do. From the company perspective, it's a great marketing tool, brand awareness tool, lead generation tool, talent acquisition tool. And then from the internal side, if you're somebody who's working in the company, that can be create opportunities for you, create opportunities for the company and ultimately might turn into a different career path for you like it did for me.

Andrew Brown [: 00:29:16

It's an interesting perspective of having a potential client or somebody that you know, you potentially want to work with. That builds a trust, get to know the person more than just on the surface level and vice versa. So there's a trust that's built. Maybe you're on their podcast if they have a podcast. I like the fact of just sharing those stories in a podcast and it just, it opens up opportunities that you may have not known that were even feasible. So I think it's a great way of just getting your foot in the door with certain companies. Especially if it's B2B in that case. Oh yeah.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:29:51

Business to business. Podcasting is exploding. It's huge. It's gonna be even bigger. But yeah, I mean, it's the same way that you got to where you are. It's just another skill set, right? So having a skill set of documenting, right, what you're doing, if you're a welder, just putting a phone there, then you're gonna go, well, now I need to edit this. Let me download cap cut. What? How do I use this thing? All right, and then you're gonna start editing videos and then you're gonna.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:30:19

Right, and it's another skill that you learn, right? So like all of this, podcasting is a skill, marketing is a skill, you know, so it depends what you want to do with it. But yeah, I love it on the business side. Obviously that's what I do for a living. But I also love it on the consumer side. And what podcasts enabled me to do was give me options. Right. I didn't realize I could have my own business. There was all these entrepreneurs around me, but they were local businesses.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:30:44

I didn't realize I could work with people all over the world virtually. I didn't realize I could do a four hour workweek if I wanted to. Right. I didn't realize I could have real estate investments when I'm 26. Like none of that seemed possible. But I had the Internet and I had podcasts and I was an avid listener. I was an audiobook person, I was a reader, I read, I see other people doing it and that gives me the permission to, oh, now I can do it. Right.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:31:09

And so, yeah, I mean, thousand benefits to podcasting, but those are just a few.

Andrew Brown [: 00:31:14

So many people in the trades have blown up because of just taking a day in the life. I mean, I could spew about 50 people right now, men and women who are doing very well just taking their phone, their iPhone, their Android and just showing what they do. And some of their businesses, they explode. People are so intrigued by how they develop stuff. And I'm just going to rattle off one person, Barbie the welder, who's a sculptor and she can sell her sculptures for a lot of money. If she didn't put it online and out there, she wouldn't have the same opportunity that she does versus being on social media.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:31:52

Yeah. And it's right there on your phone. So it's like one click away, really. And you don't know, I've been doing marketing for a while now. I still don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work. Right. Obviously we have systems and strategies and all this stuff, but the audience gets to decide. So you don't even get to decide.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:32:09

So you're here in your welding job or in your mechanic job or in your electrician job or whatever, and now you just turn on a camera and now a million people just watched you do your job. Now what you do with that million, that's another conversation. But that was never possible. But it is now.

Andrew Brown [: 00:32:28

Yeah, I was just having this conversation recently. Like, you know, a handful of years ago, you, it was too expensive that you would need a whole production team. It's just today, all the software that's available, it's not that expensive. You have your phone, you're making content. Case in point. You know, I started doubling down on TikTok and I had one video that did 2,5 million in views, another one that's Almost at a million. And I jumped 13,000 followers in no time. If I didn't just put it out there, test and try.

Andrew Brown [: 00:33:02

And it's always like, wait, why didn't this video hit? I don't understand. And it's like, wait, this video was crap. But why did that go viral? I have no idea. It's an unknown to some degree of what hits and what doesn't hit. But you gotta keep putting yourself out there. You gotta be putting content out there. Cause you never know.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:33:19

That's it. Yeah, well, the best way to. If you don't want any of the results that can come from it, then don't do it. But if you want the opposite, yeah, it's not that complicated. It's just more about creating. And that's like a barrier, you know, and that's not easy to do. For me, it was easy. I had always been in music.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:33:40

I had been on stage before. Not that I don't get nervous, I do. But to me, for me to turn on a camera was nothing. If that is you too and you don't mind and you're already talking on your Snapchat to your local, you know, people you went to high school with, then it's not too far of a jump to maybe record what you're doing day to day could even go viral. What we know about virality too. If you try to force it, not gonna work, right. So it's about catching that red drift. And that only happens by just doing it over and over again, you know.

Andrew Brown [: 00:34:09

And follow the trend. I mean, video is the trend. Whether you're on LinkedIn, obviously, TikTok and other social media platforms. It's all about video. And you just have to start and start getting comfortable on video because that's really what it's at. If you want to blow up your business, then start getting on social media. I understand this pushback and stuff, but like you said, if you don't want the attention, then don't do it. Now, the tools of the trade.

Andrew Brown [: 00:34:38

Brian, this has been an amazing conversation. But before we leave the studio today, what is one of your special tools of the trade advice you can provide? Trades people or a trades business owner wants to start a podcast, what can they do today?

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:34:54

Tomorrow, number one, figure out why, even if you're going to start just turning on the camera, why? What do I want to happen Just today when you turn it on, it might not come to fruition, but as you continue to do it, that why is going to be very important. And then if you Want to get into podcasting specifically for you to do your own podcast is a lot of work, time, energy, money, resources, all that stuff. I would not recommend that when starting. I would recommend being a guest on a podcast if you can, and figuring out why. What do you want the people on the other side to know or learn or take value from? Right? And when you design that and when you think about it, you know, we've been talking about this podcast for months. Then when you get on, it's not really a question, right? It's more about what are you going to not include versus what you're going to include. And then what happens is you get more comfortable being in these scenarios on camera maybe, or on the mic. And that's gonna help you in your business.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:35:57

How many blue collar business owners and blue collar workers do we know who don't know how to talk to people? A lot. A lot. And that's the one thing that maybe a corporate job or a white collar, that's their whole thing is they talk, right? Unless you're like a programmer or something like that. If you're in like sales and marketing, it's like calls all day, right? So you're learning how to public speak. If you're sitting there working on something all day, you're not really talking to anybody, right? Again, if you can add this skill of being able to tell a story, talk on camera, captivate, et cetera, those are the skills that every person at the highest level of what you do has those skills, whether their job requires it or not. So that would be my advice for stepping into it is step into it. You don't have to run, just step into it, try it, get started, talk about something you're passionate about that's going to get you comfortable. And then by the time you know it, you're going to be recording a lot of videos on your phone.

Andrew Brown [: 00:36:55

That is great advice. It's the why? Why are you doing this? And I like the be a guest on another podcast. And I remember being on my first podcast, I was so nervous. I was like, what's it going to be like? Am I going to be able to, you know, keep the conversation going? Almost 40 something podcasts in episodes, it becomes natural. It's like anything else. It just you test and try and you have a bad episode, but you move forward and it didn't edit, right? Like it happens and you just get better. What is it going to like? Another 50 episodes and you're going to get it even better from there. So I think Just start.

Andrew Brown [: 00:37:31

I think that's great advice if people want to find out more, if they want to start their podcast, where do they go? Where do they find you? Website, Social.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:37:39

So it's Ryan R. Sullivan. If you put the R, I'll come up faster because there's a lot of Ryan Sullivan's, a lot of people trying to be me. And so you can look that up and then it's Podcast Principles. L E s, not a L s. And you can Google that too. LinkedIn's my main platform. If you can find my Instagram, you're gonna see things that you probably didn't expect there.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:37:59

So you can go and find that Google around. And then we have a program. So this program would probably make the most sense for folks listening to this podcast, which is we have a community and a course and it's 25 plus hours of everything that we know. So find me on social media and DM me and then I can send you the information for that and that's the entire playbook. And then obviously if you're a business, a larger business that has predictable revenue, you know, predictable client base, all that stuff, then we can talk about some one on one podcast strategy for you.

Andrew Brown [: 00:38:29

Definitely check out Ryan and definitely check out Podcast Principles. He's really doing some unique stuff in the podcast world. Ryan, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:38:38

So much fun. Thank you so much, Andrew. Really excited. Love your mission, man, and thank you to our listeners.

Andrew Brown [: 00:38:43

If you're looking for a dynamic keynote speaker to elevate your next event, head over to Andrew brown dot net and review some of my speaking topics. Trades awareness, career exploration, advocacy and addressing the trade shortage. 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 of the skilled trades.

Ryan Sullivan [: 00:39:08

Visit us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.

Andrew Brown [: 00:39:12

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.