Mile Marker 62 – JJ Owen on Closing the Connection Gap with Gen Z and Skilled Trades

We sit down with JJ Owen, Executive Director of Skills Jam, a non-profit built to reach Gen Z where they already are and show them what a reaal career in the trades looks like. JJ spent seven years inside a major foundation from 2011 to 2017, learning what storytelling can do when it comes to galvanizing a community, changing hearts and minds, and reframing the trades as a first-choice career, not a fallback.

JJ walks us through why he sees the labor gap as much as a connection gap as anything else, how Skills Jam builds trust with 14-to-29-year-olds through TikTok and YouTube, and what that trust looks like when it converts into actual apprenticeship signups, like the Colorado welder who landed five recruiter interviews inside 48 hours. We get into real-world examples of how showing up in middle schools, donating tools, hosting field trips, and posting raw day-in-the-life content online work together to make the trades "Plan A" for the next generation.

We also dig into the parent side of the funnel: why the supportive relationships at home matter, why griping about work in front of kids cuts both ways, and why the 16- or 17-year-old who graduates high school with 2,000 hours of welding under their belt and a six-figure job offer is the best marketing the trades will ever get.

JJ discusses:

- His path from the foundation world into Skills Jam and what he learned about using storytelling to reframe a generation's perception of the trades

- Why "skill based hiring," text recruiting, and easy landing pages beat email and resume requirements when you are trying to reach Gen Z

- How Skills Jam's content engine on TikTok and YouTube turns casual scrollers into actual applicants, with a real example of how one ad led to interviews in under 48 hours

- The mechanics of closing the connection gap: showing up in real life and reinforcing it online, not one or the other

- The parent, mentor, and family role in framing trades as a primary career choice instead of "Plan C"

- High-school registered apprenticeship programs, community college dual credit, and how those pathways reposition the trades on a level playing field with a four-year degree

- How accelerating earning years can swing a half-million to a full million dollars in the first five years of a career compared to the cost of a five-year degree

- Where Skills Jam is going next: rebuilding trust, normalizing "the work," and showing, not telling, what life in the trades really looks like

This episode is a look at a generation gap that is really a connection gap, and what it takes to close it with a 14-year-old's attention span in mind. JJ makes the case that the trades are not Plan C: they are a primary career path, and the next generation will only believe that when we show up in real life and back it up online. What's next?

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