This Old House Host Kevin O’Connor on Why the Trades Still Matter
Host Andrew Brown sits down with This Old House host Kevin O’Connor to explore the state of the skilled trades career path in today’s economy. They dive deep into the construction labor shortage, discuss real-world apprenticeship opportunities, and reflect on the impact of places like Williamson College of the Trades.
They also confront outdated assumptions around the trade school vs college debate — and what needs to happen for the next generation to see the skilled trades not as a fallback, but as a first choice.
IN THIS EPISODE:
[00:01] – Kevin’s path from finance to This Old House
[08:45] – How trades-focused TV really gets made
[18:22] – Inside Williamson College of the Trades
[31:40] – Trade school vs college: fixing the PR problem
[45:10] – Addressing the construction labor shortage
[59:00] – Building better apprenticeship opportunities
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Williamson College of the Trades is a tuition-free trade school creating career-ready graduates with multiple job offers, and no debt.
The construction labor shortage is real, but solvable if we invest in training, technology, and awareness.
Apprenticeship opportunities are the fastest, most effective way to launch a skilled trades career path and companies should promote them.
The trade school vs college decision should be based on ROI and lifestyle, not outdated assumptions or prestige.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Kevin O’Connor is the host of This Old House, a legendary PBS series now in its fifth decade. With roots in finance and family construction, Kevin brings a unique lens to the skilled trades industry, combining storytelling with advocacy. He’s a champion for institutions like Williamson College of the Trades and a vocal supporter of closing the construction labor shortage through smarter training and increased apprenticeship opportunities.
KEYWORDS:
Skilled trades career path, construction labor shortage, apprenticeship opportunities, Williamson College of the Trades, trade school vs college, Skilled Trades, Trades Industry, Andrew Brown, Kevin Oconnor, This Old House, Toolfetch, Carpentry, HVAC, Electricians, Plumbers, Millwrights, Construction, Craftsmanship, Problem-solving, Creativity, Tradespeople, Advocacy, Trades Careers, Industry Experts, Contractors, Education, Skilled Trades Advisory Council
RESOURCE LINKS:
Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinoconnortoh/
Website: https://officialkevinoconnor.com/
Transcript
Because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
Speaker:maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
Speaker:change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
Speaker:inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
Speaker:we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
Speaker:providing them training? Are we providing them access
Speaker:to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
Speaker:progression?
Speaker:Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost star of the Skilled Trades
Speaker:podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on
Speaker:careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,
Speaker:rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the
Speaker:economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
Speaker:would cease to exist.
Speaker:Today we have a special guest, Kevin O'Connor, host
Speaker:of this Old House. Welcome, Kevin, to the show.
Speaker:Very good to be here, Andrew. Nice to see you again. Likewise.
Speaker:Everyone at some point has a fork in the road
Speaker:with their journey in life. For me, it was 9
Speaker:11, finding survivors and working back to back with
Speaker:tradespeople on ground zero. And that sent me down a
Speaker:different path to start a business named Tool Fetch to
Speaker:provide tools equipment for tradespeople to get their jobs
Speaker:done. And interesting enough, your journey really started out in
Speaker:finance. But fate sort of stepped in after your wife
Speaker:wrote a letter to a show this old house and
Speaker:fixing up your house. How did that play out? It was
Speaker:dumb luck. No doubt about it. You're right about the finance
Speaker:career. I was in corporate banking. My wife was in finance as well.
Speaker:Although I grew up around construction because of my dad's company and his
Speaker:work and brothers that are in the business and all of that. So when Kathleen
Speaker:and I bought our first house, we bought a fixer upper two
Speaker:family. Kitchen didn't work, bathrooms didn't work, and did it
Speaker:mostly because I grew up as a fan of this old house, watching the show
Speaker:and then enjoyed the working with my dad and brothers
Speaker:doing the kind of sideline construction stuff, part time stuff and mostly labor
Speaker:type of things. But anyway, we set about to fix the house up.
Speaker:Like a lot of people were immediately in over our heads. We're like, oh my
Speaker:God, how do we do all this stuff? So we were
Speaker:trying to replicate a historical detail on our 1893 Queen Anne
Speaker:Victorian and didn't know really where to turn. I don't know
Speaker:why we did it, but we wrote a letter to the magazine the sole house.
Speaker:And at the time, unbeknownst to us and to anybody, they
Speaker:Were in the first year of production of what is now our sister show Ask
Speaker:the Soul House. And the basic idea there is the same
Speaker:tradespeople who do the season long grand renovation
Speaker:of an entire home were now going to the mailbag,
Speaker:answering homeowner questions and showing up for half a day and fixing their frozen
Speaker:sinks or whatever may be afflicting them. They didn't have a
Speaker:mailbag for the show because it wasn't on tv. So they went to the magazine,
Speaker:found our letter sent Tom Silva and our painting contractor
Speaker:out filmed an episode which we were thrilled. I was the
Speaker:fanboy on the porch when it was all said and done saying, hey Tommy, don't
Speaker:leave. Can we take a picture with you and show to the friends and family.
Speaker:The next day, completely unbeknownst to me, they are on the look out for
Speaker:a host. They called me back three weeks later,
Speaker:pretty much on that phone call and one quick lunch meeting, asked if I
Speaker:wanted to be the host of both shows. This Old House and Ask this Old
Speaker:House, which was insane. Wasn't looking for a job in television,
Speaker:never thought about it, didn't really want it. But that's the one show that I
Speaker:was like, huh, pretty cool. So I hung up the blue suit and put away
Speaker:the wingtips and joined Tommy and Roger and Norm and
Speaker:Richard and the rest of the crew on the show. And that's 20 some odd
Speaker:years ago. It's amazing how these opportunities come out of nowhere.
Speaker:You're not even looking. I caught fate, only that it kind of sent
Speaker:you down a road that really that's where you should be.
Speaker:That's where your, your specialty is, being a host of the show
Speaker:and guiding people through different stories and people's journeys
Speaker:and fixing up people's houses. And I had the opportunity to meet
Speaker:you on one of the sets over the summer
Speaker:in Westford, Massachusetts. And I'll have to get an update from you
Speaker:of how that is going. And you know, I watched you
Speaker:do a scene 20 times over and over
Speaker:again and you didn't even miss a beat because you went right into
Speaker:the. Whatever you were talking about or something didn't work right. And you went into
Speaker:this particular piece of it and I was just in awe of how much
Speaker:production and how much redoing things. It was really
Speaker:just interesting how that all worked and played out. Yeah, you call it interesting,
Speaker:I call it laborious. I don't enjoy the TV part of
Speaker:my TV job, you know, like I really like being on the job site as
Speaker:do all the other folks who I'm on camera with. We like doing the work.
Speaker:I think people know this who watch the show. But for those who don't,
Speaker:everyone on our cast, if you will, everyone
Speaker:on the television show is a professional contractor who still has their
Speaker:professional contracting company, whether it be landscaping, painting, general
Speaker:contracting, plumbing and such like that. I'm the only person
Speaker:generally on camera, other than our homeowners, who isn't
Speaker:a pro. So that sensibility, they all just want
Speaker:to work. And the television cameras show up and are a bit of a
Speaker:distraction. I'm kind of with them. I'm just like, oh, my God, we got to
Speaker:do it again. But we do, because at the end of the day, we're trying
Speaker:to put out, you know, high quality content. It served us well
Speaker:47 years later after it started. But as you saw,
Speaker:it can be tedious to get it right from a television perspective.
Speaker:The easy part is getting it right from a content perspective, because everyone we deal
Speaker:with are professionals, top of the trade, know the stuff inside and
Speaker:out. Their knowledge is what actually produces the scenes.
Speaker:And just watching that and just watching it, and I forget his name. Who does
Speaker:the camera work. And he was on the lift. He was. Realistically, it was
Speaker:only about one camera that was really doing most of the work, and
Speaker:they were doing different angles. But you would think it would be
Speaker:more cameras, more people, but it really wasn't. It was a
Speaker:small crew getting all that done. That's part of our DNA,
Speaker:and it's by design. You know, the show goes back to
Speaker:1979. And the way they made television back then was
Speaker:completely different. I tell these stories when I speak publicly. You
Speaker:know, big cameras that were tethered
Speaker:by hardwire to, if you were lucky, a
Speaker:portable truck as opposed to a studio revolutionary. You know, at the time,
Speaker:to take television cameras out of the studio and into the field, but
Speaker:they still had to be tethered by cable. We still needed a portable truck.
Speaker:The terms that we use in editing, you know, which is cut and
Speaker:splice, they come from the old days when
Speaker:this stuff was done on tape and it was physically
Speaker:cut with scissors and taped back together. And the
Speaker:legendary story is that the founder of our show and basically
Speaker:creator of Modern how to Television, Russ Morash, who
Speaker:started this Old House, but also the New Yankee
Speaker:Workshop, the French Chef with Julia Child and a whole other list of things that
Speaker:were the first ones out there. He despised the editing process
Speaker:so much, which increases exponentially as you add
Speaker:cameras. As now you have multiple rolls of tape that
Speaker:could come into play. He Despised that process so much, he pushed us back
Speaker:to a single camera operation and said, you know, if we can stay in a
Speaker:scene for 8 continuous minutes or 10 continuous minutes, then there's no edits
Speaker:necessary. And that was how the show was filmed early on. I worked
Speaker:with him as the director of the show for a couple years early on, and
Speaker:I learned how to do it that way and I enjoy it. That's my preference.
Speaker:It's efficient. It doesn't quite fit with television genre
Speaker:right now, which is snap cuts and real fast moving and all that kind of
Speaker:stuff. It still keeps us in a one camera
Speaker:world for the most part. And that's what you were seeing.
Speaker:The iteration of what we were doing was so that Dino could do the wide
Speaker:on his camera and we do the scene and then he'd move into a medium
Speaker:and we'd do the scene again and him to move it in on tight, we'd
Speaker:do the scene again. So it comes with a little bit of downside.
Speaker:It's a vestige of our DNA going back to the very early days. It's part
Speaker:of what makes our show distinctive. It still looks a little, you
Speaker:know, one take ish, meandering, walk and talk type stuff. Yeah, it's
Speaker:interesting the evolution of the show, you know, especially obviously Bob
Speaker:Villa and then Steve Thomas and then you. And it's just how it's
Speaker:evolved over the last handful years. And I, I always remember watching the show as
Speaker:a young kid. I always remember my father watching the show, my brother watching. It
Speaker:was just like baked in as part of the shows that we
Speaker:watched, especially on Home Improvement. But again, it was all
Speaker:inspiring just to see it in person and how it really gets broken down. Because
Speaker:when it's on tv, obviously it's edited and. But there's a lot
Speaker:of work that goes into behind the scenes and the
Speaker:homeowners and the design rights and getting everything together, the
Speaker:materials and getting everything in sequence. It's a
Speaker:lot of work. So you had this growing up. Your dad was
Speaker:in, you said construction. He was commercial construction. So a
Speaker:little different. He's a civil engineer, so he built high rises and steel
Speaker:mills and football stadiums and all that kind of stuff. And so my
Speaker:exposure to his job sites was as a union laborer,
Speaker:you know, because boss man dad could, you know, tell the, the shop
Speaker:steward. I got a couple kids over summer break coming down and
Speaker:so I would work on his job sites because the pay was triple what it
Speaker:was, you know, washing dishes that I used to do at the restaurant. And we
Speaker:could work overtime and he could plug us in and out. So I was fortunate
Speaker:in that regard. But it was strictly laborer work
Speaker:and mostly, you know, cleanup type work. But I was around it, you know, I
Speaker:was around the DNA. And then when we were at home,
Speaker:the seven of us, five boys, myself included, it was the
Speaker:time and age when you did a lot of stuff on your own. So we
Speaker:built tree houses and go karts and he was always bringing home extra plywood and
Speaker:two by fours for supplies. And we were, you know, hammer them into trees
Speaker:and stuff like that. So it's just what we like to do. But
Speaker:you know, my older brother went and construction, you know, the twins who were
Speaker:below them. One does finance for construction, you know, one does
Speaker:project management, utility, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of seeped into our,
Speaker:our DNA a of it. And you get familiar with that job site
Speaker:feel. You get a little sense of the smell and the taste of it. And
Speaker:I've always really enjoyed it. And even when I went down the
Speaker:finance route, I did it in my spare time because I missed
Speaker:it. And like that's what Jord was to buy that fixer upper that I thought
Speaker:I was going to be able to do it my own two hands. Now it
Speaker:all makes sense of why you bought a fixer upper in the 1800s and you
Speaker:beat me because my house is 1958. I'm only the second
Speaker:owner of this house. And we were looking for a while. We settled
Speaker:up here in Chapqua, New York, and we looked for quite a while. And I
Speaker:remember looking at a bunch of houses and this house popped up and I said
Speaker:to my wife, this is the house. She's like, you're crazy. It's not the house.
Speaker:I said, this is the house. And on a Monday night, my son was
Speaker:a couple years old and I drag her out here all the way up from
Speaker:the city. She's screaming at me. She's like, why are we going up here? It's
Speaker:Monday night. My son is screaming in the background. We get here, she's like,
Speaker:oh, I get it now. But the biggest characteristic,
Speaker:which I don't know, it's kind of an eyesore, was a big green kitchen from
Speaker:1983. The whole thing is green. It's like, why would the
Speaker:homeowners put a green kitchen in and say, wow, that's
Speaker:really nice. So I said to my wife, we're going to redo it. But it
Speaker:took seven years to redo that kitchen, tear
Speaker:down a wall, and to make it into something that we really wanted
Speaker:because it was separated from the house. And I also remember
Speaker:walking with the inspector when we inspect the house and he's like,
Speaker:your roof is a 30 year timberline roof and it's
Speaker:almost at that 30 year mark and your boiler is going to go. And
Speaker:I'm thinking like all the dollar signs and the kitchen, I was like,
Speaker:all right, let me do it. And eight, nine years later, we're
Speaker:happy with where we are. But it's funny, you look at
Speaker:the house like, how am I going to fix it up? How are you going
Speaker:to do it? And you do it slowly. But yeah, I'm always ambitious too, that
Speaker:I want to do projects, but there's only so much that I can do where
Speaker:I need to call on a person in the trades. I mean, your story, my
Speaker:story, it's played out, you know, by hundreds of thousands of people who do
Speaker:that, who, you know, buy their first home that, you know, they can only buy
Speaker:what they can afford. And it needs a lot of work and some people live
Speaker:with it, some people hire out and other people get to it and do it
Speaker:themselves or a combination thereof. And so it's a very, very familiar
Speaker:story. It's why we're still on the air, quite frankly, because, you know,
Speaker:people ask me why we're on the air. My short, snarky answers is because
Speaker:people keep buying crappy old houses, they need expert advice on how to fix
Speaker:them up. Our renovation of that two family, Queen Anne took about nine
Speaker:years as well. Yeah. And we did every room, you know,
Speaker:all throughout, added dormers to finish off an unfinished
Speaker:attic. I mean, every bit of that project, you know, house was done over.
Speaker:And it's great. I mean, I love the experience. We still have it. We
Speaker:eventually moved out of it when the second and third children came because my
Speaker:wife came home from the hospital with two kids in a bucket and was
Speaker:walking up to the second floor and said, guess what we're not doing anymore. He's
Speaker:carrying these kids up to the second and third floor of this house. And we
Speaker:didn't have a backyard to speak of. We did move to a single family,
Speaker:but we kept it. And it's been a great investment. We still have a very
Speaker:sort of warm, endearing spot in our heart for it. We kind of love the
Speaker:house as our first spot. It's hard to pick up and go and to find
Speaker:something else, especially when you have memories in your first house. But, you know,
Speaker:you don't have enough room, you don't have enough space. You gotta, you Gotta move
Speaker:on and find something else and make memories somewhere else. That's the American way.
Speaker:We're less so now, but we're transient. You know, people move around a lot in
Speaker:this country. Sadly, not quite as much as we used to, which is probably
Speaker:part of the housing crisis. But that's a whole nother podcast. But, yeah, people
Speaker:buy a small place and they move to a medium place, and then they move
Speaker:to a bigger place or they move for a job or schools or whatever. It's
Speaker:nice to have that ability to move around. So I have to thank you because
Speaker:I was listening to a podcast about a year, year and a half ago,
Speaker:and it was the micro podcast, and it was titled Apple Juice and
Speaker:Saltines. And I remember the. I remember the podcast because, remember Mike Rowe? I
Speaker:think, like, he cut himself shaving. He was bleeding or something. And then he named
Speaker:it, you know, this name for this podcast. And you were talking about,
Speaker:obviously, this old house. And then he's like, somehow it came up
Speaker:Williamson College of the Trades. And you put it on the
Speaker:map that it's a trade school where kids go. It's
Speaker:about 300 or so students. They learn a trade, it's
Speaker:tuition free, and they come from tough backgrounds. I'm like,
Speaker:whoa, what's that all about? And I'll talk about President
Speaker:Rounds, and I got to go down there myself. But how did you find
Speaker:that school? So I do hope we get to talk about it. I mean, I
Speaker:know you interviewed Mike, and so you're viewers and listeners can go tune
Speaker:that in because he's phenomenal. But the story for me is I had a high
Speaker:school soccer coach who I am very close with
Speaker:Remain. So Rick Jacobs and I
Speaker:went to a very unique high school in Newark, New Jersey, that also
Speaker:serves, you know, a population of kids who don't often
Speaker:get a lot of opportunities and are facing hard situations. And it does a
Speaker:remarkable job of turning those young people
Speaker:into men. It's now co ed. When I was there, it was all guys. Now
Speaker:it's, you know, guys and girls. But anyway, Rick, who lives
Speaker:near Williamson, actually was on a. On a business call with Mike
Speaker:Rounds. Rick was thinking, when he saw Williamson College of the Trades, he
Speaker:said, boy, this is the only place I've ever seen that operates with the
Speaker:sensibility and the values of St. Benedict's Prep, where he was
Speaker:soccer coach for decades and where I graduated from. And
Speaker:he immediately thought about me and saying that I
Speaker:needed to know about it because of what I do on television. At the same
Speaker:time, it turned out that Mike Rounds, as president of the college,
Speaker:had his eye on St. Benedict's Prep because the school had a very flattering
Speaker:expose on 60 Minutes that went national. And Mike was intrigued by
Speaker:how they pulled it off. And in particular, the headmaster, who has been long term
Speaker:headmaster for 30 years. And so Rick became the sort of,
Speaker:let's put the two, you know, three things together. Invited me down to see
Speaker:Williamson. We called the headmaster, who's also a friend, and he came down and
Speaker:Mike, myself, Rick, father Edwin from St. Benedict's all got together. And as
Speaker:soon as I saw it and heard their story, I knew that it was something
Speaker:that was very much in the DNA of this old house.
Speaker:We were in the middle of our Generation Next initiative, which was just
Speaker:calling attention to people into the trades. And that it was a good career path
Speaker:and these types of things. And so that led us to
Speaker:bring a production crew and a camera crew back to do what has now
Speaker:been three different visits to the school to
Speaker:show them off on our television show and make it known, hopefully to
Speaker:the wire public, that it exists and places like that exist. So it was
Speaker:fortuitous. But it was that connection to my high school and these
Speaker:very influential mentors in my life, soccer coach, headmaster, that brought
Speaker:me to a place that is full of mentors like President Rounds and those young
Speaker:mentors, men who go through that program. And as you now know, it is
Speaker:spectacular. It is one of the greatest stories in this, you know,
Speaker:field that is out there. It's just tremendous. And I remember going up
Speaker:there, obviously you did the commencement speech for graduation.
Speaker:And I believe it was like 80 plus kids that graduated around that
Speaker:amount. Just watching their faces. They're starting off with no
Speaker:debt. They're getting three or four offers from 150
Speaker:different companies that come down their senior year and they're
Speaker:making 50, 60, $70,000 right out of the
Speaker:gate. They're respectable. You know, kids that are coming out
Speaker:of this school that like you said, came from tough backgrounds, they have to wear
Speaker:a suit, they got to wear a tie, they got to make their bed, do
Speaker:the flag and everything. And I remember going there
Speaker:originally and meeting. I forget his name offhand, but
Speaker:he was in the carpentry side. But he took me around, he came
Speaker:over, he shook my hand and he almost broke my hand because I can grab
Speaker:my hand, like really strong grip. And he looked me in the eye. He
Speaker:was really good. He wanted to own his own construction business. And every time
Speaker:I met somebody from the different
Speaker:departments, it was the same thing. Look in the eye shook my
Speaker:hand, firm handshake. And they all had
Speaker:aspirations of being successful in the traits. And that's what
Speaker:that school teaches kids. And when I sat down with
Speaker:President Rounds, he gets emotional. It's no bullshit. Like, he is,
Speaker:like, in it and just watching him and what they do there.
Speaker:And they said it was like a hundred thousand dollars a kid if they had
Speaker:to pay tuition. And I Wish they had 10 more schools like that. When I
Speaker:gave that commencement speech, aside from a terrible case of imposter
Speaker:syndrome, like, I remember a couple of the stories that I told from the
Speaker:stage. I at one point started talking to the parents
Speaker:of the people, of the graduates there, you know, and just
Speaker:pointing out that they deserve some recognition for
Speaker:finding this path for their sons, for choosing it, having
Speaker:the courage to kind of take a different path than
Speaker:society says is acceptable right now. But then I had this line about and making
Speaker:a wise decision of your kids graduating with no debt. And that was the
Speaker:applause line. That was the one when the crowd started cheering and chanting.
Speaker:They, as parents and as benefactors of these young men, were, you know,
Speaker:acutely aware of what a gift that was and how important it is for their
Speaker:success to come out, not just with, you know, an
Speaker:education and a skill and job opportunities,
Speaker:but not to have those things be weighed down by excessive
Speaker:debt, which is right now probably one of the greatest scandals going on in our
Speaker:country is that the, you know, the trillion dollars of college debt that's hanging on
Speaker:out there, that's just sand in the gears of our country,
Speaker:is terrible. And I was not expecting that to be the applause line.
Speaker:I had a couple jokes that I thought would go over better, but it was
Speaker:that one that got the applause. And in hindsight, rightfully so.
Speaker:You know, it's always funny. It's. You always think that you put in a certain
Speaker:joke, a line you think that's going to get the most attention, but it's some
Speaker:obscure thing that you say. You're like, how did that hit? I don't even understand
Speaker:that. I see that with video and stuff that I do, and I'm sure you
Speaker:do. Why did that hit? You never know. It's a remarkable place, though.
Speaker:It's a great, nice thing for me personally, to have
Speaker:discovered that and become friends with Mike who. He and I go back and
Speaker:forth all the time on stuff, and I really enjoyed telling that story to Mike
Speaker:Rowe and hope that someday he goes down there. But I could tell that Mike
Speaker:Rowe was intrigued by it as well, because it shares the values that I think
Speaker:he does a very good job of espousing with his foundation, with his work
Speaker:fellowships. There's nothing really that exists out there like
Speaker:that. It's unique in its own way. I'm glad that you brought it up
Speaker:and I'm glad that it was brought up on the show that others can share
Speaker:that. So if you definitely want to find out about the Williams from College of
Speaker:Trades, definitely take a look at it and look up President Rounds. I have a
Speaker:podcast on that. And he is just deeply in touch with that and
Speaker:just emotional when he talks about the kids. And impressive, right? I mean, he's a
Speaker:West Point graduate, he served in the military, he taught back at West
Speaker:Point. And he and his wife are all in with Williamson. Absolutely all
Speaker:in. Perfect people to be associated with that school. I remember you asked
Speaker:me a question when we met and you said about the trades. Are we at
Speaker:the tipping point? Where are things sort of changing with the
Speaker:trades? Are things getting better? Because obviously we have a massive
Speaker:shortage, about 40% retiring over the next five or 10 years. And I could rattle
Speaker:off statistics and welding, carpentry and others, but I think
Speaker:it's is over the last handful
Speaker:years, especially recently with the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker:the tool belt generation trade school being up about
Speaker:16% in about 2023, the trades are in a
Speaker:much different light than they once were, although it still
Speaker:has PR problems and people assume and still
Speaker:think that it's less than or option B
Speaker:for kids who are just not doing well in school. So you can go into
Speaker:the trades, but what's happening and what I see is that kids are coming out
Speaker:of school not knowing how to swing a hammer or even read a tape
Speaker:measure. Just the basic, basic stuff. And they're
Speaker:bypassing. A lot of these kids are just kind of bypassing, even though that they
Speaker:have a technical spark or they good with their hands. A lot
Speaker:of times they get forced and pushed into college, you know, spending
Speaker:hundreds of thousand dollars in getting into debt and getting jobs coming out of
Speaker:school. There's no real return on investment right away. But I
Speaker:think over the last couple years it's starting to
Speaker:shift. Are you seeing that or are you seeing something
Speaker:different? No, I think I agree. I feel the
Speaker:sentiment shifting for sure. I
Speaker:feel the public perception improving.
Speaker:I see more people talking about this
Speaker:in the mainstream, which is all good. I think
Speaker:sadly, part of it is because it had gotten so
Speaker:bad, you know, that the pendulum had swung so far in the wrong
Speaker:direction that there was really nowhere else to go. But I
Speaker:am encouraged by the shift in momentum, I'm still a little
Speaker:discouraged because the hole that I think we have to dig out of
Speaker:is still very deep. And I do think that we are
Speaker:structurally still sort of misaligned for what
Speaker:we need going forward, even though the sensibility is
Speaker:changing. What I mean by that is I think most people
Speaker:understand that over and over and over again, you
Speaker:kind of get out what you put in. If you work hard at
Speaker:whatever you do, you're probably gonna find some success.
Speaker:And if you goof off and you don't work hard, you're probably
Speaker:gonna find yourself in trouble. That type of thing. The situation that we've had for
Speaker:the past, let's call it 50 to 70 years, where we
Speaker:overvalued a higher education over a lesser
Speaker:degree and manual work and that type of stuff, that's a battleship
Speaker:that's going to have to be turned slowly and redirected.
Speaker:We are still supporting higher
Speaker:education on an annual basis in this country. The numbers I've
Speaker:heard are 500 billion of
Speaker:support for tuition assistance,
Speaker:loans, funding, direct grants, subsidies,
Speaker:these types of things. And it's a gigantic number.
Speaker:I'm not suggesting that all of it is misdirected, but it's a gigantic
Speaker:number. And to put it in perspective, if you look at what the country supports
Speaker:in terms of apprenticeships, that number is about 400
Speaker:million. So for every dollar that we push in the
Speaker:direction of apprenticeships, which is the marker for going into
Speaker:a trade, working with your hands, we spend a thousand dollars to support
Speaker:higher education. You're going to get out what you put in.
Speaker:So those big structural things, while
Speaker:changing, are going to take a long time. So
Speaker:I think we're going to live with this deficit and this perception problem for years
Speaker:to come. I'm glad it's moving in the right direction, but I do think we've
Speaker:got a long way to go. We do. And I'm just thinking what people are
Speaker:doing out there. I have a foundation called the Skilled Trades Advisory Counselor.
Speaker:And I have about eight other members. Seven of them are women. And there's
Speaker:one organization called Explore the Trades. Kate Cemento and
Speaker:her organization sends out these poster kits. You can't see them off
Speaker:camera here, but they're posters that go out to guidance counselors and about.
Speaker:I think out of all schools, about 20, 25% of all schools have these posters
Speaker:where kids can go in and see paths of what
Speaker:you can be in H Vac, what you can be in electrical at least sparks
Speaker:their interest. When you see college, college, college, college, College. Oh wa. What's this
Speaker:trades thing? Organizations like that are trying to kind of
Speaker:push back and fight against, you know, for kids that are just don't want to
Speaker:go to school because it's not built for everybody to go down that path.
Speaker:I went to University of Rhode island for four years and came out more confused
Speaker:out of school than I was in school. And I was a freaking programmer. I
Speaker:was a programmer. I minored in finance and I went into it and then I
Speaker:went into industrial distribution because of 9 11. Like I
Speaker:zigzagged around and no one helped me. And if I would go back in time
Speaker:and get him to my DeLorean, I would probably take a different
Speaker:route. Only that my parents just said go to college. I'm like,
Speaker:okay. But it didn't help me today because I
Speaker:had to figure it out myself. It needs to change and as I said, I
Speaker:think it is changing, but it's going to take a long time. The system is
Speaker:wired in a particular way that favors one over the other
Speaker:and that wiring is a mess and it has to be, you know, rewired in
Speaker:a different way. The other thing too. I'm not sure if we spoke about this
Speaker:in a time together, but I've heard you talk about it. I
Speaker:certainly believe it. Young people make pretty rational decisions.
Speaker:They are self interested in many cases and thinking about
Speaker:their opportunities and their future. And the reason I say that is
Speaker:because the trades as a whole needs to clean up its act as
Speaker:well. When you are a young person, you know,
Speaker:in your teens, and you're thinking about leaving the house and going into
Speaker:a career or a job or whatever, you start thinking about important
Speaker:things like how much am I going to get paid? And for better or for
Speaker:worse, on average, the skilled trades pay
Speaker:less than other jobs. Now that's not the only reason to take a job, but
Speaker:it's a pretty rational reason. So you can see why people say I want to
Speaker:go to Google and get paid a ton of money and not, you know, make
Speaker:even 75,000 or $100,000 in a trades because they can make 150 or
Speaker:two, you know, somewhere else. People
Speaker:generally avoid very heavy hard
Speaker:manual labor. Some of us love working with our hands, but it doesn't mean that
Speaker:we love breaking our backs and breaking our knees either. And the
Speaker:trade still is a very manual, you know, by hand
Speaker:type of thing. And the more that changes, the better. And that's not
Speaker:to say to get the skill out, I'm just saying to get the brute force
Speaker:out. So these Decisions that these kids
Speaker:have made have been steered in some part by the
Speaker:incentives put out there. Support for college education to the tune of
Speaker:a thousand to one over apprenticeships and whatever. But they're also rational decisions
Speaker:because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
Speaker:maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
Speaker:change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
Speaker:inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
Speaker:we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
Speaker:providing them training? Are we providing them access
Speaker:to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
Speaker:progression? Are we finding ways to make our companies bigger
Speaker:and more profitable so that we can share those profits
Speaker:with these jobs and make them competitive with the other
Speaker:opportunities that are out there? That's one of the pushbacks. Online
Speaker:especially, I have a very active TikTok account and I always pose
Speaker:these questions to people out there about the trades and wages come up all the
Speaker:time about, well, as an apprentice only making X amount of
Speaker:dollars, I can't afford my lifestyle but I can go work at
Speaker:a fast food Chipotle something make X amount of
Speaker:dollars. There's this pushback back and forth and there's the older generation
Speaker:that comes in or people been in the industry who are Union. I make
Speaker:$175,000 and obviously it's over time and I do extremely
Speaker:well. And then there's pushback that some people just don't do well. And then there's
Speaker:pushback where people, I don't want to work with my hands. It's all over the
Speaker:place. I do think that we have to at least
Speaker:inform the younger generation of what the possibilities
Speaker:are that in the beginning stages you're not going to make a lot of money.
Speaker:Look, my relative is going to be an electrician. He's
Speaker:36, he's in California, he's got two kids and he was in corporate
Speaker:America and now he's starting all over again. But he's happy in what he's
Speaker:doing. He's trying to get into the union. Yeah. Is he not going to make
Speaker:a lot of money right away? No, but he will. And especially with
Speaker:the demand for electricians, that we need 80,000 electricians every single year up to
Speaker:2030. There's a ton of demand out there, but I think it's rewiring
Speaker:people's mind about thinking about working with their hands.
Speaker:And I need to read Apprentices Nation where you told me about Ryan
Speaker:Craig. I need to read that the general public, to some degree, is not given
Speaker:all the right information. And when you're going through school, you're not given the
Speaker:right information and you're pushed into, you know, a four year college degree that
Speaker:may or may not be right for you. That's to some degree. Today you don't
Speaker:even need a degree. I do think the opportunities exist. I do
Speaker:think the chance to make, you know, those Sally levels
Speaker:exists. And I do think we need sort of an information PR campaign
Speaker:to get the word out there. I'm still sticking with, you know, the
Speaker:other premise too, which is we as an industry need
Speaker:to continually make these jobs better, you know, in the interest of
Speaker:a little bit of pushback and stirring it up. If you look at productivity growth
Speaker:rates in this country, construction has
Speaker:consistently lagged behind in terms of productivity. If you
Speaker:compare us to manufacturing, to farming, even
Speaker:retail, you know, they outperform us by magnitudes that are
Speaker:three, four, five times. And small increases in
Speaker:productivity over long periods of time make a huge
Speaker:difference. And why is that important? Well, you
Speaker:know, productivity growth is what makes your company
Speaker:stronger, bigger, more profitable. It allows it to grow and attract people
Speaker:into those things. And stagnant productivity growth is what
Speaker:keeps you small and uncompetitive. I think you just can't ignore
Speaker:the fact that on whole, construction has lagged when it comes
Speaker:to productivity. So not only do we need to get the story out
Speaker:there for the wider public that there's opportunity
Speaker:and good choices and good compensation within the
Speaker:trades, but I think we need to get the trades and these construction companies,
Speaker:home services companies, to understand that there's huge upside too. If they
Speaker:focus on productivity, that can help them grow, be more
Speaker:profitable, improve the jobs. I've had this argument with
Speaker:buddies of mine. I love this guy who told me about how, you know, when
Speaker:he got into construction, the old timer who you work for,
Speaker:you know, made him install the shingles on the roof, the
Speaker:asphalt shingles, you know, with a hammer and nail, and not to use a nail
Speaker:gun to learn how to pound the nails and all that kind of stuff. And
Speaker:it sounds kind of romantic and it does sort of sound, you know, like trial
Speaker:by fire. But on the other hand, you look back and you're like, oh my
Speaker:God, that's just ridiculous. That is not a skill that you necessarily need
Speaker:or we should be promoting when we've got, you know, more advanced ways of doing
Speaker:it. What we should be talking about is how do we install the best roof,
Speaker:you know, in the most Cost effective way that has the highest performance
Speaker:and takes the least amount of time. Like, that's productivity and that's going to free
Speaker:it up so that that laborer or that roofer can do it in a different
Speaker:way. I do really, really think we need things you mentioned, but
Speaker:not to the exclusion of looking inward and improving the
Speaker:industry as a whole for its benefit. I'm thinking about another article in the
Speaker:Wall Street Journal about smaller H Vac companies, plumbing companies.
Speaker:There are private equity companies buying up these smaller companies,
Speaker:you know, these three, $4 million companies that
Speaker:opportunities there. I mean, they obviously, private equity sees that if
Speaker:you're running this organization and you're sort of at the point where, you know, you're
Speaker:thinking about retirement, that it could be sold to private equity. But
Speaker:my fear is that example would be the one guy.
Speaker:He's the guy in our area that fixes the dryers. He fixes
Speaker:all that type of stuff, all the appliances. He's the type of guy, he comes
Speaker:in and he can listen. He's like, I know what that is. And we sat
Speaker:down, we talked. He's about 66, 67. He said to me, Andrew, he's like, I
Speaker:have no debt. I don't work that hard. I make good money, but no one
Speaker:wants to take my job. And I'm like, well, what happens? He's like, it's over,
Speaker:it's done. So who do I go to? Who. Who's going to fix xyz?
Speaker:That's what I'm afraid of. And also the quality of work. My
Speaker:boiler, My H Vac guy was talking to him. He's like, we can't find
Speaker:anybody to replace, and the people that we're bringing in are not as qualified.
Speaker:I called my plumber. We talked about when the cameras were unrolling about
Speaker:my sink that froze again now for the third time. And I called the
Speaker:plumber just to ask him, and he's like, if I come down,
Speaker:it's 200 an hour. I'm like, 200 an hour. I'm like, good
Speaker:for you, man. He's like, yeah, we don't really have a lot of competition around
Speaker:here, but that's what it is. So I'm like, okay, I'll try to fix it
Speaker:myself. I'll put heat on it and I'll do it myself. But the opportunities
Speaker:are there in certain markets, going back to the same thing with
Speaker:wages. The money is there if you want to. It's just a matter of how
Speaker:much time, effort you want to put into it, level up your skills and get
Speaker:to a place where you're the person to be called
Speaker:for that problem. That is the message. If you're a young
Speaker:person, if you ever aspire to run your own company.
Speaker:I mean, I joke, they were never going to let me run the bank. I
Speaker:wasn't going to be the owner of the bank. But if you're a young person
Speaker:and you aspire to own your own company, the trades is probably the shortest,
Speaker:most direct line that you can draw to getting there. You know,
Speaker:one person becomes two, becomes five, becomes 15, and you've got a
Speaker:viable business. I was, you know, chatting up with one of our H VAC contractors.
Speaker:I was pitching him on an idea with software to work as backroom
Speaker:operation. And I was trying to figure out how big his company was in terms
Speaker:of people. So I said, how big is your company? He misunderstood the question and
Speaker:he shot back, oh, 13 million. Because he's doing $13 million worth of
Speaker:gross. And you started the company from scratch 15, 17 years
Speaker:ago. That is a huge opportunity to be your own boss, to
Speaker:run your own company, to be an entrepreneur, to provide an
Speaker:incredible resource for your community, both in terms of the
Speaker:service, but also to be an employer for the people who want to do
Speaker:this kind of stuff. What's difficult, making that transition, because a lot of people
Speaker:start off as technicians in the trade doing the
Speaker:work, but the transition over to business owner is completely
Speaker:different set of skills. And I find some people in the trades have that
Speaker:difficulty because they don't have that knowledge base. Once you step in those shoes and
Speaker:you have employees, you gotta pay taxes and you gotta do payroll and all that
Speaker:stuff, and it becomes a challenge for that person. And you're kind of
Speaker:getting away from your love of working in the field. Like you're not going
Speaker:to be doing that as much as an owner, but you could get back in
Speaker:the field if you have to. If somebody's out or somebody gets let go or
Speaker:somebody leaves, you need to walk in those shoes before you
Speaker:run that business. I'm not here to tell anybody that they should, you know,
Speaker:put the tools down and pick up the management side and grow the company. If
Speaker:that's not for them. That's not for me to say. Certainly not on a. On
Speaker:an individual basis. But on a macro basis, if you want to talk about it,
Speaker:let's say theoretically, your dryer repair
Speaker:guy, the dryer whisperer, had he develops
Speaker:a couple people underneath him for the last 15 or 20 years and
Speaker:took them, you know, as an apprentice and, you know, Grew into a mentor
Speaker:role. He'd have somebody to fill in behind him and you know,
Speaker:he chose a different path, which was to do it himself for a very long
Speaker:time. And it worked for him. He enjoyed it. He probably loved the independence and
Speaker:not being a boss and having a boss and all that kind of stuff. You
Speaker:know, you reap what you sow. Now it's 60 some odd. He's got no one
Speaker:that he's taken on as an apprentice, no one that he has
Speaker:mentored for that business. And that's not a criticism, it's just
Speaker:an observation that that's why there's not somebody to take his
Speaker:place. It is partially his fault and probably could have done a
Speaker:better job trying to mold somebody. There's a lot of those people out
Speaker:there that just did it themselves and they didn't really train the person
Speaker:underneath them or have somebody, a helper of some sort. And
Speaker:now it kind of goes away. But I think today, especially business
Speaker:owners and I spoke about this recently, is that you have to be on
Speaker:social media, especially if you're in the trades, if you want to
Speaker:get your name out there. It's all about having a brand, a personal
Speaker:brand. There's a ton of tradespeople, influencers,
Speaker:from women who are in their 20 something to guys who are in their
Speaker:60s something. And they're getting a ton of business because
Speaker:of the social media, because of putting themselves out there and being an ambassador there
Speaker:themselves, that it's grown their business exponentially.
Speaker:That's where the audience is, that's where the customers are. If you're good at it,
Speaker:it is incredibly powerful. Construction is very
Speaker:local. Two thirds of construction companies in this country
Speaker:serve one, maybe two geographic regions. You know,
Speaker:so a mass marketing approach doesn't really work. You know,
Speaker:the television commercial for your services, unless it's,
Speaker:you know, hyperlocal, it doesn't really work. Whereas social media can be targeted to be
Speaker:hyper local all the time. It's also in addition
Speaker:to a great way to advertise, if you will. It's a
Speaker:phenomenal way to recruit. We work with several
Speaker:people on our crew and I'm friends with other people who run their construction
Speaker:companies. On three or four occasions, they
Speaker:tell me that in excess of 90% of the new
Speaker:hires came to them via social media because their
Speaker:social media platform was not just showing
Speaker:off what they did, but it was
Speaker:projecting their values. You know, when they on
Speaker:their social media showed that they really care
Speaker:about the trade, about the skill, when they showed
Speaker:off, not what they were doing. But what their employees were doing
Speaker:and the projects that the boss man was able to get so that the
Speaker:carpenters could do some really high end custom work and those types of
Speaker:things. They ended up recruiting
Speaker:just through those stories, all of their new
Speaker:hires because they were able to express their
Speaker:culture to prospective hires.
Speaker:Opportunity, paths of progression through the
Speaker:job. And it's remarkable to think that you can get customers,
Speaker:but also that you can get the hardest thing that you could find out there
Speaker:right now. And that's employees. I used to, you know, do it a ton. I
Speaker:try to not anymore because we've got smarter people than me. They're
Speaker:helping the company do it and I don't have to do it. So I kind
Speaker:of despise it personally. But that's just because I just don't want to spend my
Speaker:time on the phone. It is the most powerful resource for these small
Speaker:companies right now. Not just for customers, but also for recruitment. The perfect
Speaker:example of this is Roger Wakefield. He's a
Speaker:plumber out in Texas. He's got a huge YouTube channel, about
Speaker:650,000 subs. And I was on his
Speaker:podcast about a year, year and a half ago. Literally you type in
Speaker:plumbing into YouTube. He's the first result. He's
Speaker:built it up to a point. So he ran his own plumbing company. All he
Speaker:wanted to do was make the phone ring. And he sat in a seminar
Speaker:somewhere and someone said, do you know that YouTube is the
Speaker:second largest search engine? He's like, really? He was 55
Speaker:years old, put it all down on YouTube. And now X amount of years
Speaker:later, he's almost become celebrity based for plumbing.
Speaker:He was able to sell his business and it's opened up so many different
Speaker:doors. Just talking. It's funny, he gets up because he speaks loud. He's like, I'm
Speaker:just a plumber. He's got a white mustache, he's got a bald head, he's got
Speaker:a red shirt on that says Roger Wakefield. And he's living his dream. He's
Speaker:like, I'm living my dream. That's an extreme case, but that's
Speaker:sometimes what owners need to do in these smaller companies. Just kind of put
Speaker:yourself out there a little bit because you never know what the opportunities and doors
Speaker:are going to open up. Yeah, we were working with a great general contractor
Speaker:in New Jersey, Zach Detmore. He was always
Speaker:very active on social media, you know, before we started working with them.
Speaker:Just in doing more with him as we put him on television and running
Speaker:two of our job sites over the last two years. You know, what's remarkable about
Speaker:what he does is he's very deft at the social media, but he's
Speaker:also very genuine. He turns the phone
Speaker:onto his guys who are doing the work a lot of the times.
Speaker:And when I film scenes with Zach, if we want to talk about a particular
Speaker:thing that he's done for us in a kitchen or a rebuild of a stair
Speaker:or something like that, the first thing he says is, well, one of my
Speaker:guys, Kaelin, did most of this, so he's gotta be on camera
Speaker:too. It's just sort of speaks to what kind of person Zach is,
Speaker:that he wants to be honest and genuine and he wants to make sure that
Speaker:the person who does the work is the person who gets to talk about the
Speaker:work. And that's very much within our TOH DNA. But you can do that on
Speaker:social. You know, that's the great thing about it. And that's, I think, one of
Speaker:the reasons why people who I know that have been successful and not just promoted
Speaker:themselves, but recruiting employees is that's what they've done. They've shown that their
Speaker:culture is to support the people who work with their hands in the company,
Speaker:to find them good work, to promote what they do, to respect what they
Speaker:do. And social media is a great, great way to do that.
Speaker:When people say they're self made, but not really self made, because there's people around
Speaker:them that got you to that place and you're highlighting people in
Speaker:your company that they did that work and you're not taking all the full credit
Speaker:for it, that's what people want to see, culture.
Speaker:You take care of your employees, it's well operated
Speaker:and you can make a good living. People are more apt to
Speaker:want to work for you in this day and age, that's what you need to
Speaker:do. And if you're not out there, if you were just doing ads
Speaker:and doing billboards or doing the basic stuff
Speaker:that years prior brought in leads and brought in
Speaker:customers, it doesn't work anymore. And you just need to evolve
Speaker:and just need to stay what's trending out there. And you really need to be
Speaker:out, you know, on TikTok or YouTube and just showing day in life. And I
Speaker:was just. My father just told me about someone on Long island who does plumbing.
Speaker:I forget his name offhand, but he's like. I tune in because he's going and
Speaker:he's fixing things around the house and he's telling about common problems and
Speaker:he's now got a big business all from his social media and
Speaker:Just being real. That sentiment that you're expressing. Andrew, if I
Speaker:may step back up on my soapbox again, I agree 100%. And what you're saying
Speaker:is that these people need to embrace what the new technology is.
Speaker:We're talking about it in terms of awareness with social media.
Speaker:But that sort of sentiment, that sort of
Speaker:admonishing people to say you've got to keep up with the times, you've got to
Speaker:embrace the new that goes across the entire
Speaker:industry, you know, this is one of the things that construction has not
Speaker:done well, which is why they lag in productivity. They have not
Speaker:embraced technology as quickly and as early as other
Speaker:industries. They have not figured out how to turn
Speaker:manual work into mental work when it's appropriate. They have
Speaker:not embraced off site productivity and
Speaker:production. You know, the farming industry, which I generally
Speaker:think, you know, is a good proxy for the construction industry because it's
Speaker:very dispersed. It typically starts with family organizations and small
Speaker:ones. I know that there's agribusiness out there, but they're kind of like the national
Speaker:home builders. A lot of it is small family type things, small companies
Speaker:for them to invest in machinery and self driving
Speaker:tractors to increase their yields from an acre
Speaker:of land because they're using GPS to
Speaker:maximize the tilling or the harvesting and that type of stuff
Speaker:that is embracing what is out there. And if we can tell
Speaker:with good humor and from the right place that these companies should embrace social
Speaker:media as a powerful tool that can help them, we should also
Speaker:tell them that they should be embracing technological things, that they should be embracing
Speaker:some form of off site production, that they should be making these jobs less
Speaker:laborious. You saw us up on the roof, right? It
Speaker:was a hot day and you're up on a metal roof, like that's
Speaker:uncomfortable. You know, when you're young and a cowboy, it's great to rope
Speaker:the cattle, but not 25 years later. It's hard to do
Speaker:that. And that's why we get a lot of people who turn away from this
Speaker:industry. I think it is incumbent upon us to make these
Speaker:jobs more rewarding, more profitable, less physical.
Speaker:I'll stand down off that soapbox. But if we can tell them to embrace social
Speaker:media, we could certainly tell them that they should probably embrace technology,
Speaker:efficiency, productivity as well. Look, it's an uphill battle and just,
Speaker:you know, one last point about technology and I'm thinking about the welding
Speaker:industry and cobot welding can't find welders. It's very difficult to
Speaker:find welders. And running these machines These cobot welders, what's good about it
Speaker:is that it runs off of almost like an iPad. So kids
Speaker:today who are more technologically driven, who is looking for
Speaker:that, they can actually go into cobalt welding and work on
Speaker:these machines, but in more of a game environment that they're
Speaker:used to, it just, it's different. It's just the technology is changing
Speaker:where kids are getting more interested in it. But I completely agree with you across
Speaker:the board. You know, if you're standing on a hot roof and I, I know
Speaker:a bunch of roofers and it's dangerous too, being on that roof at a certain
Speaker:pitch and I give him all the credit in the world. You know, I once
Speaker:saw a robot doing shingles and was like, is that
Speaker:going to replace roofers? And I was like, I don't know if that's going to
Speaker:happen. But I don't think AI is going to really breach
Speaker:the blue collar skill trades. I think it will help it. I don't think robots
Speaker:tomorrow are going to take over the blue collar skilled trades. Yes,
Speaker:maybe on more white collar jobs, but I think you are more
Speaker:secure in a blue collar skilled trade. As long
Speaker:as you provide value, as long as you provide quality
Speaker:work and you keep upscaling your ability
Speaker:and you can climb that ladder of success, I think it's really possible. The
Speaker:headline is the future's bright. As the pendulum swings back, good jobs,
Speaker:good pay, good opportunity, we're finding out that the alternative
Speaker:isn't always as glamorous as it was made out to be.
Speaker:Now the tools of the trade. Well,
Speaker:Kevin, this has been an amazing conversation, but in every episode
Speaker:we always ask our guests tools of the trade.
Speaker:For someone considering a career in the trades, what is
Speaker:the best way to explore different options and
Speaker:find the right trade for them? Well, I think it depends on
Speaker:how young you are. If you're very young and you're,
Speaker:you know, high school, college age, the opportunities I think are sort of
Speaker:boundless because entry level positions are
Speaker:abundant. You can go find work with
Speaker:a lot of different contractors in a lot of different
Speaker:professions, whether it's the plumbing, the general contractor, the carpenter, what it
Speaker:is, you're going to have to right, size your expectations, you know,
Speaker:because you're going to be starting on the bottom, but you'll have an exposure to
Speaker:it. If you're older, I think it's a little bit more difficult,
Speaker:but I think you also have the ability to sort of match some
Speaker:of your skills that you might have as a 30 or 40 year old,
Speaker:you know, which might be a little bit more wisdom and management type thing. These
Speaker:companies all are in search of people,
Speaker:the friends that I have who do it and who run successful companies. They're looking
Speaker:for talented craftspeople, but they're also looking
Speaker:for project managers, supervisors, marketing people who
Speaker:understand and are willing to do this type of work. The opportunities
Speaker:are abundant. It's still probably in a
Speaker:nutshell, requires making the move and trying it out. But the good
Speaker:news is there's a lot of demand. There's a lot of
Speaker:opportunity to try it out. I'm not quite sure you could try out being
Speaker:an AI programmer at Google very easily,
Speaker:but you can in these companies. I think the
Speaker:opportunity is there. I do think the opportunity is there to learn a trade,
Speaker:to work with your hands. Even if you don't go into the trades,
Speaker:you learn a few things or you take a class or a shop class of
Speaker:some sort. These are lifelong skills. Shit breaks around
Speaker:the house. If you can fix it, obviously you save yourself
Speaker:a lot of headache and also a lot of money. Obviously if you can't
Speaker:fix it, you bring people in the trades. But I do think the opportunity is
Speaker:there. I do think that in some trades it's going to be one to $200
Speaker:an hour. I told you about the plumber who wanted $200 an hour. It's
Speaker:there. It's possible over the next handful of years with all the people
Speaker:retiring, it's always needed shit breaks around your
Speaker:house. Things need to be fixed. Even if in a recession, if
Speaker:projects slow down and people are not doing a kitchen, your plumbing goes, or
Speaker:your H vac or your boiler or your hot water heater, all those
Speaker:things can give you sort of more job security. So I do think the
Speaker:trades is a great route. Kevin, where do people
Speaker:find more about you on social and obviously this old
Speaker:house. Well, certainly the first stop is this old house. You know, we've got the
Speaker:website, we've got the TV show. You can watch it, you know, wherever you want.
Speaker:In terms of the more personal stuff, I've got social
Speaker:media and my handle is Kevin O'Connor. T o h on
Speaker:TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, these types of things. But don't go there
Speaker:and expect a lot of activity. It's not really my thing. I
Speaker:periodically post, but mostly those are counts. I've turned over to this old house
Speaker:people and they can post stuff about it. So you can find me on TV
Speaker:and on podcasts and on streaming. Wherever this old house is,
Speaker:it's been. A blast having you on the show and learn about your journey. Thanks
Speaker:so much for being on the show today, Andrew. Always a pleasure. Nice to speak
Speaker:with you again and hope I see in person on a not blistering hot
Speaker:day. And thank you to our listeners. If you're looking for a dynamic keynote
Speaker:speaker to elevate your next event, head over to andrewbrown.net and
Speaker:review some of my speaking topics, trades awareness, career
Speaker:exploration, advocacy, and addressing the trade shortage. Don't
Speaker:forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode.
Speaker:We'll see you next time.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to the Lost Art of the Skilled Trades. Visit
Speaker:us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.
Speaker:Join us next time for real stories and meaningful initiatives
Speaker:as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape
Speaker:the future together.
