Hello, and welcome to a, another episode of the construction corner podcast. I'm Dylan, I'm your host. And now as always joined by my blue collar, bad-ass cohost Matt Vetter, Matt, what's going on,

 

man. How's it going? Dylan? These intros keep getting better and better, sir. I think this one might stick I'm okay with that.

 

A good one.

 

Which really, I mean, ultimately, we're going to talk about it, but how are things going, man?

 

You know, I'm pretty good. It's been a week full of test days so far, but that happens quite often in construction, but we get through it and keep moving forward and everything's probably better because of it in the end.

 

Yeah. So you got to explain to our audience, you know, and those of us that are. In Arete that follow Andy Frisella my, my Noah test days are, but explain for everybody else what, what are test days?

 

So, yeah, and I'm going to paraphrase from, from his, his version, but the test day is the day where everything that could possibly go wrong, go wrong, goes wrong.

 

And you know, it's, it's a more or less, it's the universe testing you it's, it's putting you up against the wall and, and seeing how much of the. How much more bullshit you can take before you break. So in a nutshell, that's what it is. And you know, as long as you, you start learning to like those and, and push forward and, and keep fighting they're good for you.

 

Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Andy, our last guest also agrees that test days are the best days now when you're in them. No. But looking back for sure.

 

Yeah. Th they're good for you. They can, they can add to the stress level, which I think we chatted about a couple of weeks ago, but you gotta be able to shake it off and you know, you can't sweat the small stuff.

 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I've been, I've had a few of those too. I'm doing some project work right now and I it's one of those things. So I wrote about this a little bit is. You never realized like the things that you're doing until like they're gone. Right. So it could be, it could be a relationship, right.

 

That. You miss right. Or something that, or, or, I mean, this goes both ways. Right? Good and bad. This goes for like the one that got away, as well as the one you never want to see again, it definitely slides both ways, but with a lot of things, like time, time heals, all wounds. Right. It's if you did not think about it or deal with it for that time period, right.

 

You still think about it. If you still live in the past. You know, it's basically still with you. So it's, you know, it didn't heal cause it's, it never left. But like in dealing with project work and I, I do project work, you know, every, every little bit I take some, some projects and do some actual design work and it's A reminder at times that there's a reason I don't do these projects as much anymore.

 

Just for the stress, the tight deadlines, the, you know, kicking the ass that, that you get for doing these. The, I have nothing against late nights. I just like late nights on the projects. I want to work on that on my own terms. But yeah, just the, the feeling of. Going through stuff and, you know, coming back to it where it's like, Oh yeah, there was a reason, you know, I've made the decisions I did a long time ago, but yeah, it's in construction.

 

There's always something new man. Always something that you didn't think would happen or something that went wrong that, you know, you look to fix and we, you just get through and learn, learn from

 

them and move on. Yeah, that's all you can do. You know, we're always so busy. We have in our company two or three active projects at any given time, plus all of the prospects we're working on and it just leads to impossibly busy days where, you know, yesterday I was in meetings from about seven 30 in the morning until six 30 in the evening and all the, all the stuff that I planned to do yesterday, that was on my, in my neat written out list.

 

None of it got touched and it, it just has been one of those weeks. It's not atypical, but you learn to handle them and manage time that's for sure.

 

Yeah. And it gets to you know, we've talked about this before, too. But I want to touch on it before we get into our main topic, which is the blue collar bad-ass and future construction, but is you've got to, especially in construction You've got to do the things, you know, you need to do, like, whether that's personal, like working out, reading you know, eating breakfast, or maybe eating period throughout the day.

 

Like, but to take that time for, for yourself again, an hour, right. To, to get through some of this stuff, because otherwise it's not going to get touched, right. Like projects can drag on into the night to. Get it out or whatever. And more often than not finding that 30, 45 minutes hour to just take a break, go for a walk, do something is going to one.

 

It's going to improve your mental state, which we're all about here. Right. Being happier and more productive, all that kind of stuff which we'll get into today too. But it's also, you're probably going to be more productive when you come back. Right. You're. Your eyes took a break from looking at those sheets sets and seeing the same things over and over again.

 

You're gonna see a new solution probably on your walk or the break you're gonna like, Oh, if I just do this, it'll all work out. So often those breaks can be far more beneficial than just to continue plowing through everything that you have going on.

 

Without a doubt, you need to have a little bit of time to, to hear yourself.

 

All right. So the main event for today, you have been working on this thing called the blue collar. Badass which awesome, awesome fricking name by the way, but I'm going to let you lead this one off. What, what is the blue car? Badass what have you been working on? And why is this so important to you?

 

So, you know, as we've talked about, I've been involved in construction in some shape or form for over two decades. Now it's an industry that I, I know intently. I love intently. I choose to be here and I'm not, I'm not being forced to stay here. And, and we've kind of chatted before about, about the future of construction in general.

 

And, you know, I think there's a huge problem that we're starting to see now and, and we're, we're heading towards it even more so in that we have a giant lack of skilled labor and, and really an overall lack of interest in construction in general. And I think there's some reasons why that will touch on today, but You know, over the last couple of years, I kind of had started having this feeling that I needed to be doing something to help this situation other than just continuing to run our company and, you know, build projects.

 

And so it's kind of been a side project of mine. Came up with the name blue collar. Badass to be quite honest with you right now, it's still a pretty disorganized mess of ideas. I scratched together pretty horrible looking logo on, on PowerPoint. I bought a domain, which for the record I bought blue collar ba.com because it was $12 a year.

 

Blue collar badass was more like $600 a year. It's probably easier to market with the BA at the end anyways. And I started some social media handles, and you know, my, my intent is to bring awareness to this issue, to, to somehow get. The youth of today, more interested in construction in general to start backfilling the population backfilling.

 

So we can have a farm team again, because if we don't, we're in for a world of trouble, you know, we, we see, like right now we're in a massive, massive pricing shift in the market because of primarily because of COVID last year, you know, commodities pricing is going through the roof. Now, if you add to that, you know, all of our materials are more expensive and, and now all of a sudden, we don't have enough labor.

 

So labor becomes more expensive. How does anyone afford to build anything anymore?

 

Okay. A few, a few big points here. So in dealing with a lot of projects that I've worked on, right? I mean, it's big commercial stuff and you get like, as much as I, so there's a, there's a like, and dislike factor here, but so hospitals are probably one of the, there they can be the best and the worst clients to work for.

 

They're the best and they, they understand construction one. They. Kind of don't care on cost. I mean, they do, but they don't. And then the, so that's like, that's a good and bad, but they understand construction, which is huge. And then the, the other side of like hospitals and healthcare is they, when they want it, they want it now because they need that room up and running to be build.

 

But they're, they're kind of a unique market segment. And then on the other side of that, you work with. Like school districts, let's say, or a community district which I know you're building a community center now, and those people have no clue. They build a building once every 10, 20 years, probably the only time in their career that they'll put together a building.

 

They just, you know, you don't need them that often, especially in school districts that aren't growing now, there's, there's exceptions to this. All over the place, but you know, 95% of all school districts don't build or they build once every 10, 20 years. Right. So you have so what Matt is talking about and all of a sudden, the industry now that when those projects come up, you, you have your standard designs.

 

This is typically what it costs. And then you have these big pricing shifts, right? So labor is like half the cost of any given job, right? Like just off the bat, labor overhead that's half if not more. And then material costs, let's just say it's 40% in there. And let's say that increases 10%, right?

 

It was probably more than that, but let's just say 10%. So now your overall cost of the job went up. 5%, right. Immediately. That's usually contingency. So you just blew contingency. Now let's say labor went up 10% just because you couldn't get anybody. Like now you're paying overtime. So really 10% light, but okay.

 

Half the job, 40%. There's another 5%. So now you need to cut. Five 10% out of the project and not have any problems. Cause those never happened on the job site to get that project in under budget. So just like these two things, right? Not same design, same everything prices just went up 10% across the board for Manufacturing being decreased because they had their own constraints and what they could do, people in the factories, everything like that, shipping stuff in from overseas, whether that heck that could be the UK, China, or Brazil for steel.

 

Like, I mean, we're in a global economy. This is not just a China thing. This is like, you're getting steel from Brazil or, you know, whatever from Europe you know, we're very much in a global economy. So then. Material, you know, or you just can't get it. So now your job sites down for however long to then.

 

Now you're able to work, but now you're the crew that you wanted is somewhere else. Like this all goes into the, you know, supply chain, getting people onsite at the right time which we talked about last time. And you know, if you have people on top of each other, that's a problem that increased costs versus, you know, being able to streamline everything.

 

So I just want to point out here, like what we're talking about. Is in trying to bring people into the trades so that you have more people in it. And ultimately the thing that I, and then I'll give it back to you, Matt. But the thing here too, is that having more people in the trades, isn't going to take away somebody's job, right?

 

Having more people in the trades, isn't going to take away projects, right? Those projects need to get built one way or the other. What it's going to help do is. So if you're, you're an electrician, you're a plumber. You're a craftsman, tradesmen, superintendent, whatever, somebody on a job site now you're gonna, you're still gonna have your job.

 

You're probably not going to work. 60 hours a week for six months out of the year. Right. Break her back, everything else that goes into that. And then you can work for an extra five, 10 years, right? So you're going to forfeit maybe a little bit of overtime, so you can sit on the couch at home and recuperate versus you know, having to.

 

To kill yourself on a job site, you know, get tired accidents happen, right? That's when people get hurt is in those overtime hours. So at the end of the day, this is still making sure that you can go home. You can have a good and better life and really extend the length of your career and not have to worry about, you know, medical problems down there.

 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because if you don't have quality of life, then you have nothing really at all. And if you're working. Too much and, and, you know, unscrupulous hours, it just it's dangerous all around. You know, it, it breeds a question though, right? I think in that, you know, where did this shortage come from and, and what, what happened?

 

Because, you know, if you think back to when you were a kid, you know, you don't have kids, Dylan, but I have a gaggle of them, you know, as a, as a child, what kid doesn't play with construction equipment, right? Drive Tonka trucks, and plastic hammers and all that stuff. Something, something disconnects though, from, from that point to the point when you come out into the workforce or, or out of high school, and it's, you know, Mike Rowe, the dirty jobs guy has a quote and I'm gonna paraphrase it and probably butcher it.

 

But it's basically along the lines that, that. Pop culture has, has, has really glorified the corner office, right? It's glorified the, the corner office job, the white collar job, but it has in doing that and maybe unintentionally, but it's, it's built this, this belittling effect of the jobs that were created, that, that went to build that corner office, you know, and you can't have one without the other.

 

And I think, you know, there there's a lot that goes into it. But it starts in school and, you know, middle school to a degree, but, but high school certainly, you know, we, we have talked about the Volk tech programs. A couple of times we talked about it last week when, when Andy was on, you know, when I was in school, voc-tech was not.

 

Quote unquote, good thing to be involved in. You know, you, it was for the, for the dumb kids, it was for the, the path of travel that most people didn't want to go. And you know, now it sounds like that may be changing and there's, there's some, there's some schools around here and, you know, Andy mentioned it last week that, you know, there are schools with voc-tech programs that are, are getting better, but there's still a.

 

A general unacceptance of the trades as a worthwhile career, we are you know, shop class, what the hell happened to shop class. It's gone now almost a hundred percent for most schools. And if you go back not so long ago in history to 2001, when our president signed into, into act, the no child left behind act.

 

All of a sudden schools now who are competing on funding ferociously to begin with it, it took the underperforming schools. And now in order to qualify for funding, they can only qualify based on, on standardized testing grades. Well, shop class doesn't provide standardized testing grades home-ec class doesn't provide them.

 

So all those things kind of got cast to the wayside and, and we, we got, we got pigeonholed as a. Educational society, if you will, into just the classes, the academic side classes that can produce a grade to produce the funding, to keep the school running. Obviously, we have to keep them running, but you know, it's a, it's a big, deep rabbit hole of a problem.

 

And then, you know, on top of that, it's, it's, society's insistence now on college. You know that that going to college after high school is, is the only, the only way to a rewarding career. And, you know, we we've talked about my crazy path before I went to college. I ended up graduating. I could argue either way, but, but I also have a lot of close friends and associates that, that didn't go to college make far more money than I ever probably will, are happy as can be in, in their careers.

 

And. You know, there's ways to get to the end that don't always have to follow the same road. So it's, I think it's been going on for a long time. I think, you know, it's just, it's something that's not easy to fix. We can't overnight fix it. But we need to start trying because we're, we're neglecting.

 

We're neglecting kids really, and incense that we're, we're trying to force feed them into, you know, different occupations that, that are deemed more worthwhile in society, but there really is no basis for that, that deeming, if that makes any sense.

 

Yeah, no, it makes total sense. And you know you know, a couple good comments here on a lot of this is.

 

So there are people that are mechanically inclined, right? Like, honestly, I'm not one of them. Right. Like I am great math, science, you know, abstract stuff I can do. Part of that is I also did like farmer's markets growing up. So like I could do simple math and count, change back. Right. Like. I grew up doing a lot of that stuff and people, I think lose some of those small little skills and then with, you know, schools and we talk about kids and education.

 

It's, I'm all for education. And the, I think one of the other pieces that we go into is when we talk about education is fuel. Just think school, you know, that you, you know, whether it's your K-12 or higher ed, that that is the way to get educated. And there's a, I think a big misnomer, right? That the only way to get education is to be in this school system and follow this path.

 

But yet, you know, like the average person reads, like what a book a year? Not even in self-development. So when you start going down, like the education route, which I think is a big, big crux, and what we talk about is you don't need to go to school for education. There's, there's a lot of ways to get educated in the learn stuff.

 

But the, the other thing too is unless you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer. An engineer in some regards, right? So construction is the only engineering industry that requires a stamp. Right? I can, I can design a car, it can kill millions of people and nobody's responsible for it. Buildings on the other hand, right.

 

Or any public infrastructure project, somebody at the end of the day is responsible for their trade, right? So you, you do have to have licensure. You can do that actually through, depending on the state, you can do that through just time in the industry. It takes a lot longer, but. That there is a path for it, a law in the same regard, you can become a Bard lawyer if you know, in certain States, right?

 

This is all state dependent on, you know, time in the industry, passing the bar and all that kind of good stuff. Doctors, you do have to come to school for that, but there's like three, four professions, right outside of that. You know that you don't need college, right? You don't need college to start a business.

 

Like it, it's just not, not it. And then when we look at trade and I think we're a lot of this goes is to. You know, people have innate skills, innate things that they're really good at, right? Some people can think abstractly, some people need like concrete things. Some people are really good mechanically.

 

Like they just can put stuff together and see how it's going to end up being. And we need to. When we look at like our kids and you could talk more to this one is, you know, each kid has their own talent, right? Each and parents know this and you're still on this, you know, I'm not saying you, but like people in general want to shove them in the like, same box, right.

 

They want to put them in the same hole or that like, I need to learn a foreign language, you know, but is this gonna really benefit me, maybe?

 

You know, knowledge is powerful regardless of where it comes from. So I, I'm not an opponent of, of schooling and of college by any means, but, but you kind of nailed it then that there's, you know, everybody's so vastly different.

 

Everybody learns differently and there's no right or wrong way to get where you're going. You know, and there's no saying that, that you can't go back and do it over either. You know, if let's say you go into the trade. I mean, I'm an okay example of that. I went into the trades, very young. I dropped out of college and decided I didn't need it.

 

And I did it for a while. And then I went back to college because I decided I needed it, but all it really did for me. I mean, it was a good experience, you know, I, I took away a lot from it. I'm sure. Including student loans, but I could absolutely be where I'm at now, having not gone that path. You know, and I just pulled up the comments and Andy brings up a really good point in that, you know, the trades lost their sex appeal.

 

When, when you get that, you know, you don't want to be like that guy, do you, you don't want to end up like him, you know? And Andy mentioned the, you know, portraying them as dirty uneducated, knuckle draggers, you know, That's kind of that mentality. That was that that has been proliferated for, for quite some time into the industry.

 

And it, you know, as a, as a kid and impressionable youth course, if that's all you're hearing is, you know, all those, those dirty guys sitting on the side of the road, you know, catcalling women, as they walk by, you don't want to be one of those assholes in the hardhats. And you know, it, it just, it has a negative effect all the way across and it creates this social bias towards the trades in general.

 

But, you know, the other thing to keep in mind too, is, you know, you mentioned yourself as not being incredibly mechanically inclined nowadays. And we touch on this probably every episode that I've been on so far construction is so tech dependent and so tech heavy that you don't necessarily have to be the guy out, swinging the hammer.

 

You know, you don't necessarily have to be the guy down in the bottom of the, of the trench shoveling dirt, what you could be doing. Yeah. The BIM side of it doing the design side of it, you know, planning and scheduling and, and innovating. And there's, there's so much else involved with the trade work that, that just doesn't get much light a day.

 

Construction can never be outsourced. Right. So when we talk about bringing manufacturing back to us, or heck this applies to any country, right? Like you want to bring manufacturing back to your, your country, your industry, whatever you know, it cannot be outsourced, like just like getting a haircut when you're not, you're not outsourcing that.

 

Right. That is a local thing. Construction is a local deal. You know, there are a few. Big mega construction companies, but they all have local offices, and they make a point of having a local office. So this is a very location dependent deal. Even some of the biggest firms, you know, on the engineering side design side, they have one typically major office.

 

They might be in a bunch of different locations, but they have. One main office where probably half their staff is, and then they just have these tiny little satellite offices. So when we talk about a lot of this too, it's construction is your local economy, you know, like, just look at Oh eight to 12, right?

 

That was construction. That was housing. And I mean, Matt and I are more on the commercial side are really all on the commercial side. But you talk about you. Yeah. How many trades are in residential? I mean, it's huge. So when you look at construction, commercial construction, I think the last numbers I saw were in 2019 not including like roads and all that stuff.

 

It's an $800 million a year industry, and that's just commercial. Those are strictly commercial numbers. When you start including roads, that's another, I don’t know, 400. Billion. Like it's, it's a, I mean, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry, right? They're not 800 million. So it's 800 billion is what commercial is, was in 2019.

 

And then like you add a, I don't know, the number is pretty big. It's in the billions for like roads and, you know horizontal construction. And then you add another trillion for residential, and then all the things on top of that with financing and real estate and mortgages and all that stuff. I mean, it's a construction as a whole is a multi-trillion dollar industry.

 

Let's just say it's 2 trillion. That is 10% of the U S economy.

 

It's huge. And it can't go anywhere. You know, you, you can't. There's cool videos on YouTube of, of robots laying bricks. It'll never replace the human element to it. And, you know, you mentioned not being able to outsource it. You can't outsource it.

 

It's just, it's impossible. And you know, there's, there's huge companies like you touched on, but there's a lot of small companies too. And the huge guys they're never going anywhere either. We need them for certain things, but the projects, you know, candidly that I touched that I look at those guys would never shake a stick at it.

 

They don't want anything to do with it. And so the, the smaller, and I'm saying smaller, you know, genuinely, you know, the, the lower dollar volume, you know, less than hundreds of millions of dollars type projects, those have to be served by smaller local companies to some degree. And, you know, it, it's just it's a huge economic factor.

 

It's, it's a giant spinning wheel. All of these companies have employees. We, you know, they all, we all have suppliers and vendors and subcontractors and, you know, the, the web that we create is so vast. It, it, it really spans and it, it touches everyone.

 

And it goes up and down like, you know, from the, the fleet of vehicles, you know, to the auto mechanics, to the, you know, tire guy to the warehouses, the storage facilities, the financing, and that's, that's ultimately what it comes down to.

 

Right? These big, big companies they're going to do these mega projects because they can finance them. Right. They've got the cash to do them and this, these little stuff, they have more overhead than the project is worth to, to deal with. And then it's vice versa for you where. You know, you're, you're not going to be able to finance a billion dollar project.

 

And, but these other ones are, yeah. I mean, small business, great contribution to GDP. Yeah, exactly. I mean, most companies are in that, you know, they're under a hundred people, right? Small businesses, anything under 500 people. Like that's what? So like 98% 95, it's a huge number. Right? Huge percentile is small business.

 

Right and that's like all of construction, right. Is under 500 people except for maybe a couple of hundred firms across the country. Right? So you maybe get 10 in a state that are above that threshold. So, you know, with a lot of this is the trays are super important. You need to, I mean, it's not going anywhere and even let's, let's talk about that masonry robot.

 

So with the masonry robot, you still need somebody to load bricks. That is a US-based company, right? You need somebody to service and maintain the robot. That mortar still came from a local place, you know, or you're mixing it yourself for all the material to do that. Right. So somebody still had to store the bricks, somebody still to transport the bricks, somebody still to load the bricks and the robot, somebody, you know, it's saving.

 

And then the guy loaded the bricks, and the Mason can do all the craft pieces that are needed. The like high-end craftsmanship. They can focus on that and not break their back, doing all the you know, general wall masonry. They can do the actual, like high skill pieces, not the lower, you know, apprentice stuff.

 

So. Now that guy is way more productive. That masonry company is much more profitable. They can do more projects with, you know, the lower amount of people in the labor force that want to do masonry. So now, like, that robot to me is one, a huge benefit. It's not taking anybody's job and it's really making that guy last probably 20 years longer in the industry, because he's doing upright work, he's got a load, you know, move the same bricks that he was going to have to move anyway.

 

And then he's not doing the repetitive hand motion. So no carpal tunnel. No, not, you know, there's up and down the line. It. It helped make them more productive, safer. And it's still like all the other jobs that went around that masonry getting it to the site, all that stuff. Those still exist. Right? Like they're still there.

 

So that robot just made the company more profitable, not like taking anybody's job or harming anything. And it's still, it's a local thing, right. It's still doing like at that job site.

 

And, and it's it, it breeds new jobs, right? Because you, now you have to have a mechanic to take care of the thing and you have to have the, the operator to operate it.

 

It's, it's, it's all cyclical and it's not a bad thing at all, but I think it, that sort of stuff goes to help, you know, to help make the trades cool again. And that's, that's the biggest. The biggest fight we have right now, right. Is, is how do we shift that mindset? How do we shift it back to respecting the, the blue collar badass, you know, cause construction, it results in tangible product, right?

 

It's solving real world problems and it's, it's adding real value and you know, no offense to those that, that do it. But the Tik TOK millionaires, that's a fine. Path ago, but you know, that that stuff comes and goes with the wind, the trades and building is here to stay. So we collectively need to keep working to, to keep this mindset shift that, that you and I are trying to do to keep it growing and, and to push people back into the trades again.

 

Yeah. And the great point, man, like. Construction is not going away. Like you're not gonna, this is not a thing that's ever going to go away. And even if, you know, virtual reality did take it over, you still need to build some data centers like this aren't those aren't going away. You know, you still need a warehouse for food.

 

You still need a grocery store. Right? Like even if we go through all this, like the amount of warehousing and data centers that were built in 2020 is astronomical. You know, like any design firm that I talked to that was in those two markets were busier than they'd ever been. You know, and that, there's a lot of stuff that goes into those.

 

But w when you talk about a lot of this stuff, w construction never going anywhere, right. Always going to be a high paying job, right. It's going to be in for the trades. They have at most like, A couple of years into like electrician school or apprentice school. It's not that much money. Right. They're going to pay that off or their employer is going to pay for it.

 

So the biggest thing that I see across the industry and the reason why people don't stay is, well, if you fold one, you get beat down. So you have to, you know, Keep your spirits high. You have to look for solutions, not problems. And that's probably the biggest thing. You know, when we talk about mental health and everything that goes into construction, you get beat down a lot and you got to take it with a grain of salt.

 

You got to have some thick skin and you've got to look for again, solutions, not problems. You can't keep pointing out problems. That's just a recipe for disaster. But the other thing in construction is if you, if you care, if you. Do a good job. You're never gonna be without, right. You will never not have a job.

 

People will want you on their job sites. People want to work with you. We've covered this a ton, and this goes for any industry, but especially in construction, when you have a lot of Gruff grumpy people on site being that, that Ray of sunshine being the person, you know, they might be annoyed that you're whistling Dixie, but at the end of the day, they're, they're gonna miss it when it's not there.

 

Right. To what we talked about earlier. So having those people that are super happy that are enthusiastic, that want to be on the job site and make other people want to show up to, you know, hear Bob whistle again, that's going to be a, you know, it's a great day for a lot of people. But you have to be that kind of Ray of sunshine and a cloudy storm, which is hot construction.

 

But again, looking for work solutions, being the positive person out there on the job site is going to help everybody. It will make you never be without a job, even in the worst of construction times because everybody will want you on their job site

 

and you can't be afraid of hard work. You know, the, the, the benefit.

 

Of a lot of jobs is the hard work. You know, the, the power is in the process. So there's Tim Kennedy had a quote that I I've taught my boys, my kids and that everything you ever want in life is located on the other side of hard work and people shy away from it. People, you know, there's a, there's a mindset that, you know, construction's too tough.

 

It's, it's too difficult. It's manual labor or it's, it's too difficult. You know, mentally putting projects together and keeping things organized and it is tough. It is hard work. It's supposed to be hard work, anything you do. And I, and I would argue that with, with lots of professions, not just construction, but you have to learn to value the hard work.

 

And I think, you know, societies of the past really got that, you know, my grandfather busted his ass every day and loved doing it. Well, we kind of made this shift in this slide and, you know, everyone's gotten soft and there are no, there are no trophies first place trophies anymore. And you know, everyone wins and that's all garbage that none of that, that we'll maintain.

 

So once we get back to the hard work and, and, and getting back into the trades and getting back, I mean, the other thing too is. You know, we celebrate entrepreneurship a lot in this country as we should, you know, you're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur, we're in an entrepreneurial group. We, we know hundreds.

 

If not thousands of entrepreneurs, we'll look at construction. I mean, the number of trades that are entrepreneurial based companies is astounding. I can't tell you how many companies we work with every single day that were started. With one person with an idea or, or two people with an idea. And now it's grown into, you know, to the industry that it is, you can, you can be heavily, heavily involved in this industry.

 

You can make a ton of money and you can, you can be that prototypical entrepreneur and, and have that, that lifestyle, because I can tell you one thing myself personally, I don't like working for anybody else anymore. I've done it. And I, I. I shine, better doing my own thing and creating my own. And this is an industry that allows for that and promotes it.

 

And it just needs to be, to be celebrated, I think, and really put on the, in the limelight more often than it than it is.

 

And with that too. There's a lot of room for intrapreneurs. Right. So you don't want to take cause really in construction, it's a big financial risk. Let's just, you know, dealing with cashflow, which is the word, you know, if you've worked for a company you don't know, right.

 

Unless you're in finance or accounting. So cashflow is a huge deal for anybody on the, well, both really throughout construction design side, you know, build side it's. Everybody struggles with cashflow. So okay. Outside of that risk, but it's huge for intrapreneurship. Right. So any, any person working in a firm that figures out how to do something better?

 

Right. Which is basically all an entrepreneur does. Right. We find solutions and we sell it the market. You're just selling it into your company. Right. Finding a diff a new process, a new tool, a whatever. That's intrapreneurship right. You're just, you have one client and that is your company, right? That is your boss.

 

That is the people that make decisions within your firm. So it's huge, right? Everybody's always looking for a better way to do something, right. A new tool, something that'll help them do it faster. Something else. Save them. The. You know, pain of, of doing something, right. Like a simple thing is, so there's new tools out there for like splicing fiber optic cable, right.

 

Used to be a huge pain, very highly skilled to do that, to make sure that communications went cause you know, align the light within those cables are pretty difficult. Probably five years ago, a tool came out to where you could place two cables in a box, and it would splice it right. Became the simplest thing to use.

 

Now it's not a skill thing. Quality went up and you improve. Right? So finding that tool if you were in a fiber company, right. That did any type of fiber work, that was a great thing to sell into your organization. Right? If you're one of the first companies to do that,

 

You did pretty well. Yeah. Innovation, innovation drives this industry, and it will what it's, what will help it survive?

 

You know, I, when I did work for a previous company, one of the, one of the aspects they really touted was that, you know, everyone in the ranks from, from the guy in the field, to the guy in the corner office, they're all, you're all entrepreneurs. And what they would tell me or tell us is, you know, you, you run your section of this business of this company as if it's your own business and you're responsible for it, but, but you're also able then to, to be the intrapreneur and to, to innovate and to come up with new ideas and to, to, you know, leave your Mark on the company and on, on the industry.

 

And that's how everything should be run. And with a lot of this, it's. You've got to continue to learn. Right? You've got to continue to grow. You've got to understand the tools that are across the market and far, often than not, you know, there's a lack to learn and this. All hammer on this till the cows come home.

 

Right? Like it is, it is the one thing that we need to all do continuously. And that is learn. That's read like tree journals. That's seeing what's out there seeing the new solutions, you know, even if it's assigning somebody in your Office and your team to go and try it. If it's you doing stuff in your off hours, one, that's how you're going to move up in a company too.

 

That's how, if you're a company owner, that's how you're going to make more money and improve and get better. And by doing this, you're going to have just so much improvement, right? Over a period of time, right? It could be a year, could be five years. You do this consistently enough. You're going to be one of the top.

 

Firms in the world. One of the things that like you'd look at the design world in particular, like let's say Gensler, right? So Gensler is the largest, I think, straight architecture firm in the world. They're like 40 years old. They do a billion in revenue.

 

And when we look at construction, that is not very old, right? Most construction firms that you see out, there are a hundred or 80 years old or whatever. Gensler became that in the I think it's art Gensler right in his lifetime became the largest design firm in the world it's possible. Right. But that became from continuous improvement effort, branding, you know, everything that goes into building a company, you can't do that with like, they're still not Gensler is not drawing things by hand.

 

Right. You know, like, let's take those examples of, you've got to learn. You've got to develop your own tools. You know, some had a, basically a Revit tool 25 years ago that they built in-house and spent millions on. So a lot of this is you gotta be willing to learn, and this is across the board. I don't care, you know?

 

From electrician to plumber, to pipe, fitter, to engineer, to GC, like you have to learn, you have to continue to improve on your craft. And you're not the, this is the other thing in construction too. You're not better or worse than anybody else, right? You're not, you might know more. You might have some different experience than another guy, but we're not better or worse than, than anybody.

 

Somebody just hasn't learned that lesson yet that you've probably had to learn the hard way. So let's be a little more kind, a little more empathetic. You never know what somebody is going through for like all the mental health stuff. Right. They could have problems at home or whatever, but just know that you're not better or worse.

 

You just might have to spend some time to, to educate, to train, to enlighten the people that are around you so that they understand where you're coming from. An email is not the best way to communicate that. Right. Pick up the phone, have a phone call or talk to them in person to, to work through whatever thing you're dealing with.

 

Yeah. And, and, and to add to that, you know, there is no difference in quality of individual, whether they're in the corner office, in a suit selling the project, or they're in the field in blue jeans building. Yes, there's, there's gotta be that mutual respect across the board. And you know, the only place you start at the top is digging a hole.

 

So everybody works. And you got to work your way up in, in any industry, you can be wherever you want to get to. If you set your sights on the office side, or if you set your sights on, on running the field, it's all possible. It just takes hard work. And we just had to keep, keep spearheading this, this movement to make the trade school again, to, to make it acceptable or not, or make it, make it.

 

A good idea, make it a, a valuable commodity to, to be the blue collar. Badass whether you're whether you're that guy in the office or that guy in the field.

 

Yeah. I mean, construction is a great, I can't, I mean, I was the kid that built like cushion Fords, you know, as a kid, right. Like tearing apart the house and doing all that kind of stuff.

 

So with a lot of this, it's. Not only building things, right. Seeing things come to fruition and seeing them stand the test of time. Right. You look at electronics, your laptops bad in three years, right? Like construction's the thing that stands the test of time. Right. It's going to be there for 10 years before renovation.

 

Maybe that's on like the, the. Fast side of the cycle, probably 50 years before renovation, you know, and I'll stand for a hundred if you take care of it. So, you know, constructions here to last, it's not going anywhere. It's the oldest, one of the oldest industries there is and it's a good paying job, right?

 

We all have our cycles, right. A boom and bust. But again, if you're good at what you do, there's always going to be a place for you.

 

Definitely. So I, I think we just continue to spearhead this, you know, if anyone out in the audience or anyone in our network has a connection to Mike Rowe, I think he'd make a great guest for the podcast.

 

Yeah. I mean, it's it, the field can be a dirty place, right. Often it is. But at the end of the day, you know, when you do those final sweeps, walk-throughs right. It's beautiful. There's nothing like walking through a fresh building,

 

nothing I'd agree. I'd agree. A hundred percent,

 

most people just don't. Right.

 

Most people don't get to experience what a new build looks like. They don't get to walk through it on the, on the first day. Right. Of it being open of everything, working the way it's supposed to right on day one. And that's, there's nothing like that feeling.

 

Yeah, it's, it's truly, almost a magical thing.

 

You know, it's, it's not as cool as seeing your, your children born, you know, but when it's a close second, you know, when you've worked on something, blood, sweat, and tears for however long, the project lasts to see it come to fruition. And when, when you were the one making it happen and, and helping to do it, there's no better feeling.

 

Now we're gonna, we didn't cover too much in the future of construction, but the ultimately construction is here to stay right where the blue collar badass right. Like construction up and down the chain. Is a good industry. It's a good place to be. You're going to earn a very good living. If you own a firm, you're going to make a great living as long as you run it well, but with that, you know, it's a great industry to be in.

 

There's a ton of opportunity. Again, it's a multi-trillion dollar industry and that's just in the U S globally, you know, it's 10 times that. So when we look at construction, the built environment, you know, there's, there's a lot of money in it. To be made to help improve and frankly, more projects we built.

 

If we didn't have the labor shortage, we would have more great buildings. We would have more great things opening more apartment complexes, condos, offices, like you name it. They're ready to be built. They were just waiting on some of it's just waiting on the labor force to be available, to start the project.

 

Yeah. I mean, this country was built on hard work. Right. And, and that's how we're gonna keep going into the future. We just gotta, we gotta keep working hard on our end to, to keep spreading the word.

 

Yeah. And I mean, everybody out there, like have you know, in a lot of the firms that I've worked in, it's, you know, have those jobs, shadows reach out to your, middle and high schools, right. Have people come into the, to the office or go out in the field you know, to do a day or whatever probably in the summer, right. To, to go and either be in the office. And this is for, I mean, everybody, right? Subs, GCs, design firms bring people into the office, bring people out on site with you, right.

 

Have them shadow somebody and see if. It's an industry they want to be in, right? That they, this is something that we could do. This is a career path. This exists. This is other things show up to career fairs. I've done a number for like my Alma mater when I lived back in the Midwest, like I went to a bunch of career fairs to talk to like high schoolers, right.

 

Namely I was showing up there for like Rose-Hulman, but for my college to say that like, Hey, engineering is also like a, a degree that you can go and do. Right. But as well as, you know, as a, as a company, I think more companies should show up to like high school career fairs to show up to those types of events to say, Hey, like, we exist.

 

Do you want a summer job? Like as a high schooler, right. Reach down into the community, right? You're not looking for somebody that's just 18 or in college or whatever. You can, you know, start younger and have people to help you. You know, maybe it's not in the field, maybe it's an office, but you know, find some places for them to let them know that, hey construction is more than you see on TV, right. Is it's something that, you know, is a career path. It might not be forever. It's not for everybody. Let's just be straight with that. But it is a good option for a lot of people that might not know about it or how to get started.

 

Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's one of those initiatives blue collar BA that, that.

 

That myself and my business partner, we're trying to, to kind of format that locally. How we, how can we interject or inject ourselves into the high school programs? And, you know, we don't have a ton of interns that come and work for us, but, but to bring kids out for a day, just to show them, you know, here's a real-life shop class.

 

Check it out, you know, it, I think it could be really powerful. So it's just going back to the very beginning here with test days. It's one of those things that it takes time. It takes time to put these programs together and to make those, those introductions. And it's important. So, you know, maybe I'll work late tonight and keep going on it.

 

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's shown people like. Clearing the site, right? Like showing them that, Hey, somebody is driving that a dozer, right. Somebody's digging those holes with an excavator. Somebody is, you know, like there's a person that that's their job and here's how much money they make. Right. Roughly, you know, like it's.

 

And that's the other thing.  like a lot of people, you basically know what other people make. It's one of those few industries where you kind of know what a, you know, journeymen electrician makes, right? Like it's just known. So that's the other thing through a lot of this is, yeah. I mean, everybody wants a real-life Tonka truck and to drive them around.

 

Absolutely that I can't tell you how many times I've, I've jumped on machines. I, I carry you know, master key ring in my truck that I can get into all of them. So once in a while, on the weekends, you might find me out there pushing piles of dirt that don't necessarily need to be pushed.

 

One of the, so yeah, I grew up with cattle and one of the things that we would do on one of the.

 

Ranches that we'd run cattle on is the guy that owned. It was a logger. So this was when I lived in Oregon on the coast. And so, I mean, that's when you get 120 inches of rain trees kind of grow pretty quickly. So we would we had to put up some fence and we did like one of the head Gates, right.

 

For kind of like the master Gates to come through. So usually those are. Big bulky deals. So we use railroad ties as the ends for the gate. We dug a hole with the excavator, set the post, or like, you know, we'd hold the post. And then the guy was a good enough operator to where he just pushed the dirt back with the excavator and set up a post.

 

And then for the other posts we'd use pointed You know, fence posts, one person would stand, hold the point of fence posts. Cause it's got the pencil point on it and there would be, you know, light enough towards somebody hold it, put the bucket on it. And then you just drive it right into the ground.

 

Easiest way I've ever done fence posts versus having to, you know, dig out a hole. But that's a. Equipment is cool. And you get to play with a lot of the big toys when you're on, especially like in the beginning of projects, right. Moving dirt and all that kind of good stuff.

 

Yeah. I will more frequently than I like to admit, even to myself, I'll, I'll find that I'm watching videos on, on LinkedIn or somewhere on social of, you know, the, the crane operators throwing basketballs into hoops or, you know, all that sort of stuff, which.

 

I better, never see on one of my jobs sites, but it's, it's just fun stuff. You know, it goes back to that childhood curiosity of, of big trucks and, you know, banging things together.

 

And that's a skill man to be able to, to do that, you know, like the skill of those operators to, you know, finally grade something, or throw whatever at a skill.

 

Yeah, the skill we need more of.

 

All right, guys, that's going to be, we're going to wrap up the episode here talking about blue collar. We love talking about this stuff. So again, if anybody's got a contact to Mike Rowe, we'd love to have him on talk some dirty jobs and you know, in construction. But with that, any, any closing words you want to leave, Matt?

 

You know, just that, just that keep following along. You know, Dylan and I are working to, to try and bring awareness to the industry as a whole, in all facets and, you know, help us spread the word. We, we don't, we don't ask for payment or anything, but, but sharing this around and, and telling your friends or telling people in the industry, all of that helps and it helps us do what we're trying to do.

 

So let's get after it.

 

Yeah. Back to work. So yeah. Thank you all for joining in live here on a LinkedIn YouTube, Facebook. Thank you all for commenting. We really appreciate we'll do more of these lives. Probably once a week, we got a show coming up on Friday with the welding Lord, Zach Arnold. So we're going to talk about division five metals from specialty metals to all division five.

 

So that's going to be an exciting show on Friday. It was Zack. It'll be we'll be alive again. And then the show will come out on the podcast in a couple of weeks. So thank you all for listening. And that's going to be this episode of the construction corner podcast.