Craftsmanship and Professional Pathways with Matt Kitzmiller

Discover the transformative power of lean methodologies in the construction industry with our insightful conversation featuring Mr. Matthew Kitzmiller, a professional shooter, journeyman electrician, and lean trainer for Rosenden Electric. Gain practical insights into the crucial role of discipline and communication in developing craft professionals, as Matthew shares his extensive experience and introduces a groundbreaking handbook for continuous improvement. With contributions from experts like Rob Light at Penn State, this resource bridges the gap between theory and practice, promising to revolutionize efficiency and culture in construction.

Embark on a journey through the unpredictable career path of an electrician, starting from an initial curiosity in the trade to navigating challenges and triumphs across various roles. From the elevator industry to unexpected opportunities in Building Information Modeling (BIM), witness how resilience and adaptability lead to alignment of passion and profession. Get inspired by stories of significant projects, learning new technologies, and embracing leadership roles, illustrating the importance of mentorship and technological adaptability in career growth.

Explore the critical impact of training and development on employee retention with a focus on emotionally intelligent workplaces that prioritize soft skills and cross-training. Through personal anecdotes, Matthew recounts the negative effects of outdated teaching methods and highlights the shift towards supportive environments that foster workforce satisfaction. This episode wraps up with reflections on life lessons and mentorship, where strong relationships and dedication become the foundation for success and fulfillment, leaving a legacy of positive impact in the industry.

Connect with Matt:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kitzmiller-229a378a/

Make yourself a priority and get more done: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing

Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So when you teach people that, hey, man, you don't
have to yell and scream, Firstof all, I'm right here.
Second of all, I don't need tobe yelled at.
And third of all, your message.
I don't even know what you'retrying to say because your tone
is so offensive.
Discipline and hard work aresupreme currencies that will
always be there.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
You don't have to be as sexy as I am to be a plumber.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I was drinking whiskey and Coors Light.
From the second I got home tothe second I went to sleep every
day.
So my relationship with my wifeat the time was pretty rough.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
What is going on?
L&m family?
I got somebody here that's gotsome serious street cred.
I just learned that he's aprofessional shooter, which is
interesting.
I think we'll learn a littlebit about that.
He's also an adjournmentelectrician maybe a master by
now.
He's in the learning anddevelopment space.
He is a lean trainer forRosenden Electric.

(00:56):
Mr Matthew Kitzmiller and, ifyou can't tell already, some of
y'all that have been here beforesome of you repeater fenders
probably have an inkling now ofwhy I'm so interested in having
this conversation with Matthew.
I got to see him present at LCICongress in San Diego and he's
had some major, major impact ontraining and developing and

(01:18):
educating craft professionals,which is just the thing that
moves my spirit, and so we'regoing to get to learn more about
Mr Matt.
And if this is your first timehere, if you're a first timer,
this is the learnings andmissteps podcast, where you get
to see how real people just likeyou are sharing their gifts and

(01:40):
talents to leave this worldbetter than they found it.
I'm Jesse, your selfish servant, and we're going to get to know
Mr Matthew.
Mr Matt, how are you doing mybrother?

Speaker 1 (01:51):
I'm good sir.
A little bit of technicaldifficulties, but we got it done
, my man, we got it done.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Amen, man, we made it through that bad boy, which, of
course, that's like justfurther evidence of you haven't
spent time in the trades,because the tenacity that you
displayed to do all the thingsthat needed to happen for us to
be on here, that's rare.
I might've thrown in the hatmyself if I was on the other
side.
So let's just get to it.
I've talked about you being intraining and development, or

(02:18):
learning and development, and Isuspect that you didn't do it
cowboy style the way I did, andwhy?
I suspect that is because I gotto see your presentation in San
Diego, and so there's thishandbook that I kind of read
about.
What is it?
What's that handbook ofcontinuous improvement?

Speaker 1 (02:37):
So we have a handbook .
Well, let me back up.
So there's a couple of thepeople that presented with me at
LCI this year we present witheach other pretty much every
year for the last three or fourand one of those guys is a guy
by the name of Rob Light and heworks as a faculty member.
He's basically a teacher atPenn State here in Pennsylvania,
so he basically his job is tocollect data, like one of the

(03:00):
parts of working at Penn Stateis.
They're a very big researchinstitution, like probably one
of the biggest in the world, sothey do a lot of white papers
and they do a lot of researchand they're a very active bunch
of people.
I've been there to Penn Stateand presented in front of some
of their PhD candidates oncelast year.
Yeah, pretty neat, definitelydifferent, but he was.

(03:22):
He came to our Rosadin officeand in Tempe, arizona, which is
in the Phoenix area, and Ibasically he was handed off to
me like hey, take this guy, yeah, yeah.
So I took them and we went to acouple of jobs that looked good,
a couple of jobs that didn'tlook so good, and kind of had
the opportunity to compare andcontrast and we shared a lot of

(03:43):
information back and forth asfar as you know what good lean
products look like from theproduction standpoint and what's
some that could use a littlebit more, a little bit more in
culture.
So all of and he did that withseveral other organizations
other than the one that I workfor, rosendon Electric and he
basically started puttingtogether this handbook and used

(04:04):
a lot of the research that hegot from his site visit to
putting this handbook togetherand it's basically it's a
collection of ways that leanresources are applicable to
actual trades.
There's a lot of things in thatlean sandbox that play well
with perfect star alignment, butthere's a lot of them that

(04:26):
really lend themselves to actualtrade work as well.
So that's basically what thathandbook is.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Awesome, all right.
Well, let me know what youthink about this, because I have
this debate.
It's probably more of acomplaint, or maybe even more of
me just whining.
But, gcs, this is me sayingthis out loud.
This is not you, this is me.
Gcs seem to believe that theyneed to teach the trades how to

(04:53):
be lean.
My argument is, if anybodyunderstands and for clarity,
folks, if you don't know whatkind of lean we're talking about
, we're not talking about losingweight and working people to
death.
We're talking about continuousimprovement.
We're talking about respect forpeople we're talking about.
We're not talking about losingweight and working people to
death.
We're talking about continuousimprovement.
We're talking about respect forpeople.
We're talking about developingpeople, which, for me, is the
whole damn purpose of this leanphilosophy, ideology, cult,

(05:17):
whatever you want to call it.
And so if anybody understandsthe value of eliminating waste
and developing people, it istrade contractors.
I think again, this is me a lotof what's in construction,
because I haven't seen the sametype of problem outside of
construction.
But in construction, most ofthe lean tools that are

(05:38):
available are about organizing,coordinating, kind of higher
level type stuff, and maybeblind to how these concepts can
be attached to work at the pointof installation.
What do you think about that?

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, I totally agree .
You can see it in P6 schedules,right?
Or any of those tools, right?
You can see that on this datethe electricians are going to be
on the site.
On this date they're going toinstall gear.
On this date they're going toenergize and then, by God you
know, on the fifth bullet point,they're done.
You know?
So all the stuff that takesplace in between the predecessor

(06:16):
and successor work to all ofthose things, those are the most
important parts, right?
Yes, right, yes, and that's thepart that you know.
When you look at most GCs,specifically like
superintendents, you don't see awhole lot of superintendents
that are electricians or thatwere previously electricians
before they took their currentassignment.
So the likelihood of themunderstanding the intricacies of

(06:36):
our work as electricians orcarpenters or painters or pick
your poison, the likelihood ofthem understanding that is not
very likely, right?
It's not very clear.
So, when it comes to theeducation piece, yeah, they can
educate on some things, butthey're surely not equipped well
enough to educate us on mostthings.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, yeah, and it's not because they're inadequate,
it's a frame of reference.
They haven't walked in it.
I don't know if you know this,but and folks out there, this is
a rare thing, so you might wantto save this and share this
with people as evidence.
But before that we're going todo the LNM family member shout

(07:18):
out, and this one goes out to MrLance Furuyama.
Lance dropped me this note.
He said I was fortunate enoughto join the second session of
the time management workshop andit changed the way that I look
at my calendar.
For those that know me, it lookslike I'm a master of
organization and planning, butwhat I didn't realize is that I

(07:39):
wasn't.
I wasn't allowing time in mycalendar for myself or the
things that I really want to do.
So, lance, first of all, thankyou for taking the time to hang
out with us in that workshop andleaving this awesome comment to
the rest of the L&M familymembers out there.
Drop me a comment on thesocials.

(07:59):
Leave us a review on thewherever and everywhere, because
that gives me the opportunityto celebrate you on the future
podcast.
I'm a plumber and so the reasonI'm saying that is it's rare
for a plumber and electrician tohave a, we'll say, civil
conversation.
I know that was not going tohappen, bro, I ain't got time to

(08:22):
talk to them.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, that's a fact, sir.
You should have told me youwere a plumber when we first met
.
I probably wouldn't be heretoday.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
That's why I kept it a secret.
Yeah, and it's interesting that, like, the common point that
you and I have is Henry Nutt.
Right, he's a sheet metal guyRight, like what is happening
out there, man, it's amazing.
Yeah, all right, so when was itlike sixth or seventh grade
when you discovered that youwanted to be a lean leader and

(08:51):
train and develop people in theconstruction industry?

Speaker 1 (08:55):
No, it was probably a 20th grade.
I would say Something close tothat.
Yeah, yeah, I had no idea aboutthe trades most of my younger
days, as far as that being aviable path for me.
Yeah, yeah, I had no idea aboutthe trades most of my younger
days.
As far as that being a viablepath for me, yeah, yeah, not at
all.
It wasn't at all something thatwas on my mind.
I was.
I was pretty hell bent that Iwanted to be a Navy SEAL.

(09:15):
That was my calling.
10-4?
Yeah, I went and took a, tookan ASVAB test in the 11th grade
and did really well, and I had aan old, an old injury where one
of my pinkies didn't close allthe way.
It kind of you can kind of seeit, doesn't.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Oh yeah, I see that blast, yep, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
So the interesting thing about that is that they
basically the recruiter, theNavy recruiter that I was
working with told me that youknow, you can do pretty much
anything you want in Navy Navy,but you're not going to be able
to go to BUDS because you're notgoing to be able to pass a
physical examination.
So from there, you know, I kindof asked him a couple other
questions like hey, well, whatelse prevents me from being in

(09:54):
the Navy?
And he started telling me youknow well, tattoos and all these
other things.
And so, in my infinite wisdom,at 17 years old, I kind of took
that as all right.
Well, I'm going to startgetting tattooed a lot, I'm
going to show you people what'sup and I'm literally like
covered in tattoos present day.
So from there I didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do.
I wound up dropping out ofschool.

(10:16):
That was my 11th grade, the endof my 11th grade or going in my
12th grade.
I dropped out of school and Ididn't really know what to do.
I had a friend that had anopportunity for me to go to this
aircraft mechanics school andI'd met somebody.
The next I don't know week orso, as I was kind of getting my

(10:36):
paperwork together to apply forthe school, I met this person
that said hey, you know, myfriend owns this elevator
company, you know, and I knowhe's looking for people.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
So if you're interested, you know, let I know
he's looking for people.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
So if you're interested, you know, let me
know.
And I was like, eh, I didn'teven know people work on those
things.
And, yeah, this is, yeah, itsounds horrible.
This is like in the South LAarea where I lived at the time.
So so, yeah, I took this jobfor this crazy, this Turkish
dude named Ted, in the LongBeach area, and after I don't
know probably three or fourweeks, we were building
residential elevators there andafter about three or four weeks
of being on these jobs, Istarted noticing that, you know,
there was these guys that were,you know, a different trade and

(11:12):
they always seem to be shootingthe shit and having fun and
carrying on.
I remember asking my journeymanone day.
I was like, hey, man, oh, don'tworry about those guys you know
.
And I'm like, well, who arethey, you know?
Do they live here?
Do they work here?
Oh, those are the electricians.
Bro, don't worry about thoseguys.
You know, that's so awesome.

(11:33):
So a short, a very short amountof time later, and I, as an
elevator guy or elevator personI wouldn't really call myself an
installer at that point in mycareer, but working in that
craft, you do a little bit ofeverything.
You do some electrical work,you do a lot of plumbing, you do
a lot of everything, and I hadalready, like, kind of fallen in
love with the wiring portion ofmy work, which is, you know, I
was very new to the job so I didvery little work, but they did

(11:54):
throw me a couple of bones hereand there, you know, allowing me
to work on some electronics andsome electrical stuff.
So, yeah, probably the end of1997, something like that, I
went to work for an electricalcontractor in the South LA area.
I did that for probably two orthree years.
Then I moved to CentralCalifornia.
So three hours north of LA orthree hours south from the San

(12:16):
Francisco Bay area is an areacalled San Luis Obispo,
California, which is one of thepretty much God's country, the
most beautiful place I've everlived, yeah, okay.
Which is one of the pretty muchGod's country, the most
beautiful place I've ever lived,yeah, yeah, I mean, if you
imagine where a country kind ofliving in in the ocean come
together, the Pacific ocean kindof come together, that's what.
This place is just expensive tolive there.

(12:36):
But I made it work, figured itout.
I stayed there for about fiveyears.
I moved to the Phoenix area andI'd been working as a non-union
electrician the whole time.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
So did you go to like apprenticeship or you just went
straight to work?

Speaker 1 (12:50):
I went straight to work.
Yeah, so, so 2005,.
I got to the Phoenix area, tooka job in a similar kind of shop
as I worked at in Californiasome light commercial but mainly
, you know, heavy residential,like custom home type stuff Got
it.
So I was working there and Iwas jackhammering this footing

(13:11):
for this guy's garage that hehad.
It was like a I don't know a20,000 square foot garage and
the service was coming up.
Yeah, it was a humongous thing.
The service was coming up offthe side of the building and
there was a footing in the waythat was kind of preventing my
conduit to smoothly transitionup the wall outside.
So I'm jackhammering a littlebit and I slipped and I hurt my

(13:33):
back.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Oh damn.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
My boss is hey, man, you know we still need to get
some distances for and I need tobuy wire, you know.
So I need to get some distancesfrom the actual street to this
building.
I'm like dude, I don't thinkyou understand, like I can't
even barely pick up my tools.
Man, like, my back is prettybad yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and I'm at that point inmy life, I'm 25.
So I'm not like overweight, I'mpretty fit.

(13:58):
You know, I've always beenpretty fit.
So I mean, this is just one ofthose things that happens, right
, Right.
So he's kind of upset and I gothrough a worker's comp claim,
miss a week of work or somethinglike that, probably not even a
full week, and when I come backthey lay me off.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Oh, that's yeah dirty , that's dirty.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Arizona is a right-to-work state and there's
some things going on there.
But me coming from California.
I'm like I'll show you sons ofguns, you know, and I call a
lawyer and they basically laughat me.
You know, hey, dude, that's nothow this works.
So so I called the uh, I calledthe local IBW, the local
electrical union in Phoenix, andlet them know my scenario.
And they're like well, you know, and this was about two hours
from where I was living I wasliving about two hours away from

(14:38):
from Phoenix, in a town calledPrescott Valley, prescott Valley
.
So so I basically let them knowwhat was going on.
They're like hey, you know,it's about a two hour drive to
get here every day, but ifyou're willing to make the, make
it work, you know we'll put youto work tomorrow.
Damn, all right.
And it was for like two bucks,maybe three bucks more than what
I was making after, you know, Idon't know, five or six years

(14:58):
of being doing electrical work.
So I'm like shit, dude, I don'tcare about that.
I'm in, you know, so I got mylittle four speed, you know,
toyota, and I started making thedrive every day, wow, yeah.
So I got there.
You know, I was telling themhow much experience I've had and
you know, I thought, like mostyoung people, I thought I had it
all figured out and knew prettymuch everything.
But I immediately startedworking on a convention center,

(15:20):
a brand new convention center indowntown Phoenix, and it was a
pretty heavy commercial, likebordering, some light industrial
work that I was doing there.
So they told me, you know,we're going to put you through
some school, you're going totake some classes and you'll be
a journeyman electrician in notime.
So I'm like, okay, you know,this is perfect, right.
So I started dumping my moneyinto these classes, right.
A couple of years I start, youknow, just putting more and more

(15:47):
time in and all of a sudden,the program that I was a part of
that gets me from being asub-journeyman to a journeyman.
It wasn't an apprenticeship, itwas just some classes, right.
That program was thrown away.
The contractor that I wasworking for at the time they
weren't accepting apprentices towork for them.
So there were zero apprenticesat this contractor because we
were going to school, you knowaround one, 32 o'clock, you know

(16:10):
, a couple of times a week.
So they needed bodies on thejob.
So to basically say, hey, youknow, this daytime school is
bullshit, we're not going tohire any apprentices how do you
like that?
You know, I never met anapprentice, never heard anything
about the apprenticeship.
So I kept on going throughthese classes and going to these
classes and then, you know, itfinally got to the point.

(16:31):
It was like you know what I Iin my time on the planet.
At that point I come to therealization that it's time to
cut my losses, right, yeah, soso I joined the apprenticeship
and started from scratch, youknow, and took about a three
this is what seven years into itnow, yeah it is Ooh, baby, yeah
, that's huge.
So 2008, I took a I think it waslike a three somewhere between
a three and $5 an hour pay cutin the apprenticeship as a first

(16:53):
year apprentice and it washorrible.
It was another very closefriend of mine.
Current day.
There was another guy in myclass and basically had the same
thing happen to him.
But yeah, I graduated myapprenticeship in 2012 and went
straight to it.
Man, pretty rough way to get itdone, but got it done.
Kind of went to Alaska viaMexico.

(17:14):
You know what I mean.
I do.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
I think there's some critical points there.
First of all, good on you forsticking it out, because I know
a lot of people that would havesaid, oh, it's never going to
work, the world's against me,and just floundered around.
I think one important, reallyvaluable point that I'm assuming
has played forward in your lifeis sometimes you got to take a
step back, to take a big leapforward.

(17:38):
Apprenticeship folks, if youdon't know, for electricians
it's five years, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, it's between three and five years and it all
depends on the frequency of yourclass date.
So if you go to school one daya week, it might take five years
.
Two days a week, and so on andso forth.
You get there faster.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
And so you've been in the trade.
You signed up for this specialprogram.
You were taking classes toaccelerate, to earn the
journeyman license and status,and then you had to go back as
if you had just graduated highschool first day on the trade as
an apprentice.
That's a lot of, I'm going tosay, humility and maybe an

(18:17):
understanding or appreciation ofthe long game.
So props to you.
Now, what would you recommend topeople out there that are
interested?
I want to be electrician or youknow, maybe they want to be
super cool, like for real y'all.
You don't have to be as sexy asI am to be a plumber.
I want to be clear about that.

(18:37):
But would you recommend, if youknew, going back then, because
part of the problem is theydon't tell you this, right, they
don't talk about theopportunities that are in the
trades, and when I say they, I'mtalking about the adults that
young students are interactingwith.
Would you choose or recommendto say you know what?
Just find an apprenticeship andstart there, or would you

(19:00):
recommend go out there, get somedirt on your boots and do a
couple of jobs before you pickan apprenticeship?

Speaker 1 (19:05):
I think that working as a summertime helper or
anything that you can do to kindof see what's happening around
you and have the opportunitylike maybe working for a general
contractor on a cleanup crew oranything like that, you know,
once again, this is goodsummertime work for a lot of
young and you'll probably makemore money than you could

(19:25):
imagine.
You know, just working as asummer helper, I think, seeing
it and understanding it andhaving the opportunity to see
the different folks and how theydo what they do, I think a lot
of times we think about, wethink of plumbers and we think
with those two things.
You think about light switchesand toilets, right, and it's a
very small portion of our job,right?
I mean, the very last finishedproduct is that toilet or that

(19:49):
sink or whatever fixture you'redealing with, or light switches
or outlets.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Whatever it is.
Yeah, it's.
There's a lot out there.
You know, the term electricianor the term plumber or the term
painter is open forinterpretation, right, there's
so many different alleys andavenues that you can kind of
pursue within any of those,those, those different jobs,
different careers.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
I mean there's service, there's new
construction, there's renovation, there's residential
residential right and all thosefour.
My dad's a plumber, that's howI got into it and he liked doing
residential service.
Plumbing man, I couldn't handlethat, like cleaning out
somebody's stuff.
Laugh at me because I I gagright, you're not a real plumber

(20:34):
, I'm a commercial plumber.
I like new stuff or I don'thave to smell the stink or see
the stink.
That's my style.
I tried service for a little bitand the guy that I was riding
with two days into it, he's bro.
You're not a service guy.
You need to go back to theconstruction side.
I said no problem, cause I thissucks.
I don't appreciate that.
But the point is that there's awhole world, like a whole

(20:56):
galaxy of work and experience tobuild in the trades, whatever
trade you choose to go after.
So you've given us some light.
You went, got your, you gotyour journeyman license.
You didn't give up on that,which is interesting.
I want to come back to that.
But you told us about yourpinky and you also mentioned

(21:17):
that you're like a professionalshooter.
How did that work?
So I guess the pinky doesn'tkeep you from being a pro
shooter huh.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
No, the irony there is, there's a lot of special
operators, like a lot of SEALsand Green Berets and things like
that in the competitiveshooting world, and let's say
that very seldom are their nameson top of mine when it comes to
the final pecking order aftershooting matches.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, oh, and I bet you love that huh, Like y'all
didn't want me to play with youand I'm smoking you now.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah Well, I'll tell you to get to the shooting part.
I'm going to.
I'm going to go down a littlebit further down the hole of how
I got there professionally.
That's a huge thing.
So so I graduated myapprenticeship about I don't
know, two or three months beforeI graduated my apprenticeship,
my general foreman so my boss'sboss he was keeping me in the
job trailer.
I was working at an Intelcampus in Phoenix, arizona, big

(22:09):
industrial complex with asemiconductor plant there.
The jobs we were working onwere kind of slowing down, so he
had me in the job trailerrunning through all this
leadership training that we hadback then.
So every day that's all I did,for it feels like an eternity
and I was cussing him andtelling him every day you know,
I don't want to do this anymore,I don't care, I don't want to

(22:34):
be a foreman, I don't want to doany of this and as an
apprentice, one of the one of so.
I couldn't even threaten himthat I wanted to quit my job
because he'd just laugh at me.
You know what I mean.
So I was learning how to beforeman, how to be a foreman and
all the leadership stuff, and Iwas reading the foreman's
manual that my company hasproduced.
So when I graduated, which wasin December of 2012, I was a

(22:55):
journeyman on my tools for aboutfour hours and they called me
up and gave me a phone and aniPad, or a phone and a computer
maybe, and basically told me hey, there's this new thing called
BIM buildinginformation modeling, and I
think you're going to be aperfect person for it.
We're going to set you up,you're going to have a little
crew and you're going to startdetailing and learning how to do

(23:18):
this.
So I did that for probably twoor three months and then they
asked me to go and work in thecorporate office and start doing
the same thing.
So I thought it was, there wasgoing to be some training, but
once again it was like hey man,here's some fire you know, throw
you right in it, right, yeah.
So so I'm learning how to use,you know, these, all these
programs and learning how tomodel electrical equipment.

(23:39):
I did probably, I'd say, about aweek of training, very informal
, you know a couple of peoplestanding around me and kind of
helping me from time to timewhen I got stuck.
And then they gave me a job atthe University of California,
san Francisco, at a medical well, it's a hospital there, it's a
specialty medical facility, butthey were just, they were
re-innovating it.
And it's a specialty medicalfacility, but they were just,
they were re-innovating it andthat was my job.

(23:59):
So I went to work every day inan office at that point and I
basically I drew all theelectrical systems and then I
coordinated that, all of thosesystems with the other trades
you know, on weekly models andmaking sure that you know we can
all play in the same spot.
So, building information,modeling, bim, basically your 3D
model, all of the electricalequipment and all of the

(24:21):
plumbing stuff and all of theframing, everybody coordinates
it.
You build the model and thenonce we're feeling pretty good
that everything fits pretty well, then you start releasing
packages to actually construct.
It's kind of what that means.
So I got two questions.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, shoot.
The first one is why did theypick you for that job?
Did they just flip a coin?
Did they ever tell you?

Speaker 1 (24:44):
I don't know, man.
So there's a stipulation orthere's a clause, I should say
in the inside agreement, so theunion agreement for my home
local IBW, local 640, that saysthat if you've completed your
fourth year of school and you'veexceeded 10,000 hours or
something like that, on the jobtraining which at that point I
mean I've been an electricianfor almost like 12 years at that

(25:07):
point Right, so yeah, I'm likeyou know 100 million hours of
documented time so if both ofthose requirements are satisfied
, then you're allowed to notwork under a journeyman anymore,
so you can take workassignments directly from your
foreman.
So my foreman, who's still avery my foreman at the time,
who's still a very good friendof mine, he was like dude, he's

(25:28):
a great, he's a great big olddude that didn't take my shit
for nothing, right, which iswhat we needed.
as a youngster Right, I neededsomebody that was going to take
what I had and give it back tome.
You know, 10, 40.
And this guy did that.
So I respected him a lot, tosay the least.
He just he ran me ragged withall of these new technologies.
How to measure, you know,instead of using lifts, I'm

(25:50):
using, you know, lifts and tapemeasures and reaching out, you
know, way outside of this lift,I'm using laser levels and I'm
using lasers and I'm measuringin different ways and I'm using,
you know, the computer a littlebit to do some of my math for
some of my conduit.
So they had they'd seen that Ipicked that stuff up pretty
quick and that I wastechnologically savvy.
And there was a couple of otherlike just random things that I

(26:12):
had done here and there, but Ithink it was more.
So, you know, I was young, theyneeded somebody to start doing
this work and I was probably thebest option at the time.
I think is how they picked me.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Got it and it's worked out well for you.
Okay, here's a second question,because I remember when BIM
like first hit the scene for meand at the time the company I
was working with I used to workfor TD Industries here in San
Antonio we had added we boughtup some electrical companies.
This was back like the Enronfallout there was a big people

(26:46):
went under.
We picked them up Veryexpensive decision Anyhow.
So now we had MEP mechanicalelectrical employment and so
we're doing this coordinationand I'm like, oh, this is going
to be awesome so we don't haveto fight anymore in the field.
Right, I got there first andI'm guessing that you weren't
this type of coordinator, butthe guys that I was working with

(27:06):
, we'll just say, in the firstthree years of BIM hitting the
scene, the electrician'sdefinition of coordination was
they just needed from structuredown four inches and from
ceiling up 10 inches and theircoordination was done.
Please tell me you weren't thatkind of guy.
No negative.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Okay, good.
No, that's an approach.
It's called zones and how yourun a zone model is very
different, yeah.
And so this is all big conduitand big equipment.
So this isn't any of the branch.
So anything less than I wouldsay an inch and a quarter or one
inch tubing nobody cares about,right, Right.
The only clearances that Ineeded to worry, I mean, those

(27:48):
are things we'd figure out inthe field, typically, Right,
right, yeah, so this was all bigstuff, all the three inch and
the four inch conduit and allthe you know all the Cable tray
conduit and all the you know allthe cable trade, right, right,
got it, got it All right.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
So I cut you off.
You're at UCSF, right.
On the verge of starting tooutperform Navy SEALs and
special ops people shooting.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
Right, right, yeah.
So I'm on this job,everything's going great, and
then I get this call at seveno'clock at night on my work
phone, which you know strongunion person nine times out of
10, I turned my phone off, but Ihappened to, just I happened to
have just left it on, so thiscall comes through.
I take the call, it's mysuperintendent at the.

(28:34):
It's not even a superintendentthat I work for, but it's
somebody that's very respectedin my office.
So I take the call and he'slike hey, man, I need you to
report to this new job.
And I'm like, okay, when?
And he's like tomorrow.
I'm like, dude, I have a jobthat I'm working on you know
what I mean in San Francisco.
And he's like, yeah, I don'tcare about that, somebody else
will deal with that.
This is from the very top downthat they you specifically on

(28:54):
this job.
And I was like, okay, well, Imean, you know I ride.
I rode a Harley pretty muchevery day.
I lived in Arizona, so that'skind of what we do there.
So I was like dude, you knowlike somebody needs to bring my
computer.
You know I ride a motor.
I don't care about any of that,just be there.
This is the address tomorrowmorning at seven.
Yeah.
So I pull in, I'm lookingaround and it's like less than

(29:15):
10 minutes from my house, whichis amazing, right?
And it's when you try to searchfor this property it just says
that it's first solar, right?
Just some random, humongoushundreds of thousands of square
foot, just huge space.
So nobody knew what was goingon.
It was really crazy.
I'll spare you all the drama.
It was a company that wasbuilding glass, so this company

(29:38):
they build these are alltypically sapphire crystals on
an iPhone, Okay.
A cool lens is made out ofsapphire crystals.
So this company was contractedthrough Apple to build those
sapphires, and by build them Imean grow them.
So there's these ovens and allthis stuff that they use, and
I'll spare you the details.
But it was a very hush, hushjob.

(30:00):
We didn't even know we wereworking kind of indirectly for
Apple.
The security was ridiculous.
The guy who I reported todirectly there, he made a
humongous error and they firedhim, which is pretty hard to do
at my company.
You know you'd have to work atit and be fired from Rosenthal.
So they basically said, hey,this guy's out, you're in,
you're the guy now.
And I'm like bro, I justgraduated the apprenticeship,

(30:22):
like weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I feel like this is crazy.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
You know what I mean.
But I talked to that samesuperintendent and I'm like, hey
man, how often?
Like what are my work hours?
And he's mad.
I want you to be here everyminute, that you can be here
seven days a week, and I'm like,say, less, dude, I'm an hourly
employee.
You know what I mean.
Oh yeah, so you're like yes yes,I was working at my
apprenticeship at the time,part-time, but collectively I

(30:46):
was working between 70 and 80hours a week and getting paid
for those hours and getting paidbig money.
Yeah, I'd never seen paycheckslike that, but going back to
some of the trials andtribulations to do something
like that for me.
I'd never seen paychecks likethat, but going back to some of
the trials and tribulations liketo do something like that for
me.
I was drinking whiskey andCoors Light.
From the second I got home tothe second I went to sleep every

(31:06):
day, I mean seven days.
I would do it eight days a weekif there was eight days in the
week every day.
So my relationship with my wifeat the time was, you know,
pretty rough.
But it was a lot of sacrificesto do to work with that type of
just nonstop chaos.
So I did that for I don't know,probably a year and a half on
this project and then I had theopportunity to work directly

(31:27):
with Apple and a couple otherdifferent.
You know I could stay withRosendon.
Of course I had some differentoptions there to work with and I
wound up taking this jobthrough a sister company of
Rosenden called Modular PowerSolutions and they build modular
electric rooms for the datacenter industry.
So it was a little startupcompany that we had.
So I went there as a designmanager, took the job, basically

(31:48):
worked there.
There was like four of us thatworked in the office and I think
there was probably 30, 35people that worked in the field
at a factory in Sherman, texas,just north of Dallas there.
Okay, yeah, so I started makingthese trips back and forth.
With a little startup like that, there's not enough people to
do all the jobs, so everyonethat worked there has 12

(32:09):
different hats, so I startedmaking the trips.
One of my hats was a deploymentmanager, so I would fly out
wherever these products werebeing sent.
These electric rims were beingsent on trucks.
They're humongous.
I would be there to kind ofhelp along the subcontracts with
the people that are installingthem the integration piece,
making sure that they don't soyou were selling them outside of
Rosenden.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
So it wasn't just okay okay, gotcha, yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
So this company that I worked for, they designed
these electric rooms and thenthey subbed out the actual
construction of them to Rosenden.
So when we shipped them out toa data center, sometimes
Rosenden would be the actualelectrical company on site, but
more times than not they werenot.
So the subcontract I'd have tokind of move that along,

(32:53):
sometimes set them up, sometimesnot so.
So I'm traveling a lot, like inmy at my highest I was flying.
I think the most I did in ayear was like 158 flights in a
year.
Yeah, a lot.
So yeah, once again, I'm almostgetting divorced before I'm
even married.
So I keep on, I keep on at it, Ikeep doing that work.

(33:15):
Then I get to the point wherewe needed a second factory.
Right, we weren't putting outenough work and we had a big job
in Prineville, oregon, withFacebook.
So they asked me if I'd beinterested in running my own
factory in Arizona and I waslike, yeah, absolutely.
So we jumped right in.
In fact, my friend that was inthe apprenticeship with me, that
I said, had a similar story tomine where he had worked

(33:36):
non-union a lot.
He was actually the generalforeman under me, one of the two
general foremen that were underme and from there we started
building them.
There, man, we did.
We had one humongous successfulproject at Facebook and when
that was done they basicallyclosed that factory and I went
to work in an office andbasically worked in an office
for the next six or seven months.
I had a guy.

(33:57):
I know this is a long story,but I'm getting there.
I'm almost to the shooting, myman, yeah you're good, there was
a guy that worked for us.
We had one guy that did all ofthe estimating and he had a
terminal illness and he sensedthat in his past.
But Parker was the only guyresponsible for all the
estimating.
So they asked me to go into thelocal Rosendon office and
basically do a quick down anddirty apprenticeship with the

(34:17):
chief estimator there in theRosendon division of our office.
So I learned how to estimateand it's one of those things
that, as an electrician and assomeone that's technologically
pretty sound, it's somethingthat I picked up in a very short
amount of time yeah, very quick.
So I pumped out some estimates,kind of learned that.
But as I'm going back to thisnormal Rosenden kind of world,

(34:39):
I'm realizing that I'm fallingin love with the normalcy of the
electrical business, as opposedto the chaos that I've been
enduring for probably four yearsat this point.
So yeah, I'm falling in lovewith it and there's 13 or 14
Rosenden offices in the countryand I was very fortunate that
our CEO worked out of the sameoffice that I worked out of, so

(35:03):
I would meet with him everymorning.
He was an early bird and I'm anearly bird and you know I
started.
I would just have, you know,shoot the shit with them a
little bit, having a littlecoffee in the morning times, and
I'd ask them hey, man, I'mthinking about you know, maybe
coming back to Rosendon you haveany idea where all of my skill
sets can kind of come together,what would make sense for me?
And he said, you know, the QAQCarea and training are the two

(35:24):
places that I think you wouldreally shine.
So, I thought about that.
I went back to my office atModular Power Solutions and I
just I went from, like I said,working crazy hours to now.
My job was to sit in this roomand put estimates together.
And I mean my day I was working, you know, 30, 40 hour weeks.
It was a normal thing.

(35:44):
Well, my wife was in nursingschool.
I'm accustomed to nonstopgrinding and I started shaving
off a lot of the weight that I'dgained from drinking nonstop
for several years.
So I felt kind of I was at ashooting range and this guy kind
of came up to me and he's hey,man, you seem to be coming here
pretty regularly.
And I'm like, yeah, and he'syou ever think about getting out

(36:05):
of this little box that you'reshooting at a piece of paper and
maybe doing some running andmovement?
And I'm like I didn't know thatwas even a thing, man.
And he kind of turned me on tothis.
There's a weekly match onTuesday nights in Arizona at a
gun club called Rio SaladoSportsman's Club.
It's called Tuesday Night Steeland it's just you show up with
whatever you got and there'ssome steel and you know they

(36:25):
start a clock and you kind ofrun through and shoot all the
steel.
So that's when I kind ofstarted jumping in and, like I
said, my wife was in nursingschool.
I have all these resources, Ihave all the time, I have all
the money I need to do it.
So, yeah, I started shootingpistol matches.
And there's another eventcalled Three Gun, which is rifle
, pistol and shotgun, kind ofthe same, kind of squint your

(36:47):
eyes kind of thing, but you'reshooting all different guns.
Now you know, I did that onetime and fell absolutely in love
with it and probably a year anda half later I had some people
supporting me and, quote unquote, started my professional
shooting career there 10, four,all right.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
So first, this kind of random question you connected
with or seen the humblemarksman on YouTube?
No, all right.
Well, I need to connect youwith them because I've been able
.
He's in, the guy that runs thatYouTube channel.
He does reviews on guns andhe's in the competition space.
I'm not sure where he ranks,but I know he's got a heavy

(37:26):
following and I've worked withhim.
He works for one of thecompanies that I was supporting
or providing services to.
His name is David Lenton, somaybe I'll connect the two of
y'all because y'all havesomething like pretty, pretty
similar or a shared interest.
You've said it already, but,like the estimating, there's a
level of detail there thatpeople with brains like me

(37:48):
cannot suffer.
I just don't have that.
Whatever it takes to stay inthat space, I could do it, you
know, for maybe a day a year,but not every day.
Could do it, you know, formaybe a day a year, but not
every day.
And shooting, I'm sure there'sa, especially like what you're
talking about, not just standingthere but your mobile movement,
et cetera.
There's a lot of things thatyou got to learn, improve, tweak

(38:09):
and adjust to be performing atthe level that you're performing
.
And then the big switchesyou've had some pretty
significant shifts in trajectoryin your career and all of that
combined kind of comes to me andsays highly flexible, highly
adaptive and a rapid learner.
Were you always aware of that?
That's kind of like the metaskill, yes, like have you always

(38:33):
been aware of that?
Or when did you become aware ofthat little concoction of
awesomeness?

Speaker 1 (38:41):
did you become aware of that little concoction of
awesomeness?
Man, I'll tell you that growingup in South LA area is a pretty
rough area.
It can be a pretty rough area.
So, learning how to kind ofchameleonize myself and kind of
being able to jump in wherever Ineeded to jump in and kind of
spooling up a little quickerthan everyone else, I started
learning different ways, man,where you know, you think about
two dogs, you know before.
They're best friends, they'resmelling each other and sniffing

(39:01):
around, going in circles, andthen after a while, after a
short amount of time, they'reeither going to fight or they're
buddies, right.
And I started, I started usingthose kinds of analogies and
those kinds of metaphors in myhead, of like, how can I shorten
this process?
And then you, you know, you addthe fact that I'm literally
covered in tattoos, right.
So I'm not as approachable asthe average person.

(39:21):
I know a lot of that's changed,but I've just I've learned
different techniques.
Um, and when it comes to mycareer, what I noticed very
quickly is that as soon as Idiversified myself from all of
the other people, I've, I've,I've lessened the pool that I'm
in.
There's less people in my pool.
So anytime I had theopportunity when someone said

(39:44):
hey, you want to try this newBIM thing?
Absolutely, bro, I can't wait.
Hey, what do you think aboutthis new product?
It's this new startup companythat we're working in.
It's the weirdest thing I'veever seen in my life.
Yeah, dude, I'm 100% in.

(40:06):
If everything checks out, I'min.
And I just kept on diversifyingmyself to the point where I
don't know anybody that has thesame amount of skill sets with
me as I do anywhere around me.
There's people that are veryclose and I'm not saying that
I'm like this rare, specialindividual.
However, when you look at thethings that I've done and some
of the areas that I've done themin, I don't meet people that
are like me, and once Iunderstood that, it made it very
easy for me to see very clearlythe path that I needed to be on

(40:29):
, and training is a veryinteresting place now because it
always changes and my customersnow like one of my customers
that I work with in fact, I justgot done talking to their head
guy over there just before Icame on the show.
One of my customers is themodular power solutions company
that I used to work for, sothere's people under our holding
company, right.

(40:49):
And now, like I said, there wasfour of us in the office and
there was probably 30 or 40electricians in the field or
people in the field.
Well, now there's 365 peoplethat work in the field and
there's a hundred people thatwork in the office.
So that company is you know.
I mean, I just went there andtaught six classes two months
ago or a month and a half ago.

(41:09):
So, yeah, it's.
It's funny how it all works out.
But, yeah, the diversificationif you're the same person as
everyone around you whichthere's nothing wrong with that,
right.
If your name's Jill or yourname's Sarah or Jim or Tommy or
Luis and you're an electriciancool, that's awesome.
And if that's where you'regoing to end your professional

(41:31):
career, that's perfect.
We need those people.
But we also need people thatstep up and take some leadership
positions and do some of theother things, and a lot of times
when we're in the trades, wedon't think about you know.
We think about oh man, if Icould just be a journeyman, you
know, if I could just do that,man, I'm set for life.
And then we stop the learning,right?
Yes, the most foolish thing youknow that you could ever do is

(41:55):
to stop learning because youneed it.
You know, to your point earlier, you know continuous growth and
continuous improvement andrespecting people.
Those are the most importantthings in my entire life.
So having the opportunity toexercise those, those abilities
regularly has really fulfilled,you know, on the career side of
me it's fulfilled me a lot.
You know helping people andtrying to lessen that curve and

(42:16):
teaching other people how toreduce the amount of time those
dogs are, you know, kind ofcircling and sniffing each other
.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, all right.
So you mentioned thefulfillment you get out of
training and developing others.
You also said that you delivertraining to a different company.
So my understanding is you haveyour full-time learning and
development for Rosendip andthen you go and deliver training
, like on the side or as a partof the company.

(42:42):
How does that work?

Speaker 1 (42:44):
So the company- that it's an interesting question.
So, like I said before thatcompany Modular Power Solutions
they're under our holdingcompany, so we own that company,
so they're under the umbrella.
Okay, so the people that workin the office the same business
model or structure is stillholding true.
So the people that work in theoffice work for that sister

(43:04):
company of ours, got it.
The people that work in thefield there are actual Rosenden
employees, so that's neverchanged.
So I'm still working forRosenden and going and teaching
a sister company and theelectricians.
If I can get field and officeemployees in the same sessions,
that's like the best thing everon the planet.
Yeah, because anybody who knowsconstruction companies a lot of

(43:27):
times.
Field and office don't playwell, and when I say a lot of
times, I mean all the times, allthe time, brother truth, yeah,
oh, I love that so much.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Okay, so what's fulfilling about training?

Speaker 1 (43:41):
oh, man.
So most electricians and youcan sub in any trade you want,
but most electricians we.
We start the job.
Sometime after the job isstarted, we show up boots on
ground and sometime before thejob ends we leave.
Right, we have these magicalcreatures that start these jobs
and these magical creatures thatfinish these jobs right the

(44:03):
top-notch people start them andfinish them right.
Oh yeah, you might have a coupleof helpers, a couple of
apprentices on the front end andthe back end, but most, like
the bulk of the people, arecoming in when we need labor now
right.
So when you ask any electricianand I concentrate on field
leadership because I don't havethe opportunity to train every
single electrician on the planetbut when you ask them to do

(44:24):
certain things so we can startthe next job better than we did
the last one, or we ask them todo certain things so that we can
finish this job strong, andthey don't understand the full
spectrum of the electricalbusiness, from requests for a
quote to actual closeoutdocuments or closeout work that
we do.
When they understand that fullspectrum of our business,

(44:44):
they're much more intelligent.
Right Now, we're filling in allof these gaps of knowledge as
far as how the business actuallyworks.
So when I'm asking them to dothings so that this job finishes
strong and they understand thewhy, then they're not making up
their own why, right, theyalready understand it.
So when I see them understandthat, I think one of the most
fulfilling things that I see isteaching somebody that I've been

(45:08):
working side by side with, likewhen I go back to.
I live in Harrisburg,pennsylvania now, so I don't see
the people that I worked within the field very often.
I mean, I go to Arizona I'mthere in three weeks from now
and I'll see some of them againbut when I first started
training, I was training inArizona and when I would teach
these guys that I've been, someof them were my apprentice.
You know, when I say myapprentice, I mean they were

(45:28):
apprentices of mine at theapprenticeship that I was
teaching at.
Some of them were my journeymen, some of them were, like you
know, my foreman and generalforeman, and now they're in
classes with me.
So teaching them the fullspectrum of the business and
having them apply some of thatstuff, or seeing the people that
I taught at the apprenticeshipclass and seeing them elevate,
you know, to you know, highlevel leadership people, that's

(45:49):
super fulfilling man.
And I've been beating my headlike most of my earlier career.
I'd beat my head against aconcrete wall and somebody would
kind of come up and be like,hey, you know, metaphorically
speaking, they'd say, hey,there's a door right there, you
don't have to keep banging yourhead against that wall.
So I guess for me it's kind ofsharing that information, and a

(46:10):
lot of times we have thatability.
We have that ability to sharethe information, but the ability
to tell a story is somethingthat we've lost, right, and the
ability to share and communicateand get in front of people,
right.
These are things that terrify alot of people and they terrified
me initially.
So going to LCI or goingthere's a couple other
conferences that I speak at.

(46:31):
I went to Finland last year,last June same thing terrified.
You know it's hard, but youhave a message that people need
to hear and they want to hear.
So sharing that message is veryfulfilling for me.
Having conversations like theone I had with you in San Diego
when I came off the stage, whereI hit the right note right,
where you saw what you needed tosee or heard what you needed to

(46:51):
hear, and we connected in thatsense.
And that happens to me prettymuch every time I speak and
that's why I do it, that's why Icontinue to do it.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, that's amazing.
I mean I feel you in that beingable to interact.
I made a post I think it waslast year, me and a buddy of
mine, rick Mendoza.
He's a production manager herein San Antonio for TD when he
and I met, when we were sniffingeach other out, it was the
first time I was ever a foremanand it was a university hospital

(47:21):
, four-story kind of trainingeducation facility, hospital,
four-story kind of trainingeducation facility biggest
project I ever had.
And I was a foreman like sixmonths at this point.
Right, they gave me this biggiant project.
He was the piping foreman onthe project.
Anyways, we had our differencesand it was awesome.
We grew and then, looking back,now he's the freaking
production manager of the wholething.

(47:42):
The guy that took the pictureof us talking.
He was an apprentice when I wasa foreman.
He was on my project and I kindof lost my mind a bunch but
really wanted to contribute tohis path.
Now he's a superintendent andso being able to see people grow
into leadership roles or takeon more responsibility, have
greater influence this is theultimate and the only way you

(48:06):
get that that I know of is toinvest in other people, is to
train is to share your story, isto share your message and, like
you said, you were up there andit resonated.
I'm like man, I got to talk tothis dude because, yes, and
you've had some major impact.
Now, what's interesting, I'veworked with journeymen, back

(48:26):
when I was an apprentice.
I remember the first journeymanthat I worked with that wasn't
my dad, his name was Oscar, andthe reason I remember him is
because he was a son of a bitch.
I was my first job out of highschool on a commercial
construction site and he said gograb the snap cutters and cut
that piece of cast iron.
And I'm like what's a snapcutter?
And he lost his freaking mind.

(48:46):
He got cussed me out and gaveme the plumb bob and said go
upstairs and I want you to holdthis plumb bob through that
sleeve and hold it still until Icall you.
And he just left me there forthe rest of the day.
I needed to be taught.
Instead of teaching me, hepunished me right, and this
happens more often than itreally needs to happen.

(49:07):
But I worked with some awesomepeople that were about training,
teaching and developing.
Now, construction.
We talk a lot about this laborshortage, which I can't totally
disagree, because we don't haveenough people to do the work,
but we ignore the leadershipshortage and the training and
development and appreciationshortage.

(49:30):
And so you're in the learningand development space for
Rosendin doing big things.
Have you seen a connectionbetween the training and
development that y'all do andretention of talent training?

Speaker 1 (49:46):
and development that y'all do and retention of talent
.
That's a very good question,sir.
I can't say that's a fact.
I can't say that's happening,and the problem is that there's
a couple of things.
So quantifying theeffectiveness of training is one
of the most challenging thingsever on the planet.
It's extremely hard, and it'sextremely hard when things are

(50:10):
normal, but things haven't beennormal for a lot of years now.
Right, you have all of theseroller coasters, all these sags
and swells, but I think that thebiggest thing to kind of
counter that, the biggest thingthat I see that's happening with
training, is we'recross-training people.
I'm bringing people in, and thetime and place of yelling and
screaming and all of that withinmy organization is like very,

(50:33):
very rapidly being kicked out.
Right, like emotionalintelligence and teaching people
.
Like that I don't just teachregular formanship, like I teach
a lot of soft skills, typethings.
Right, like emotionalintelligence, I teach, I teach
people.
You know what they're.
We use a couple of differenttools, a couple of different
surveys and a couple ofdifferent third-party
organizations that help us withbasically showing where

(50:56):
strengths are within ouremployees so that they can
capitalize in those strengthsand actually invest in something
that's going to returnhandsomely and return well in
their investment, as opposed to,you know, being exhausted from
working outside of their natural, innate abilities.
You got it.
So when you teach people that,hey man, you don't have to yell
and scream, first of all, I'mright here.

(51:17):
Second of all, I don't need tobe yelled at.
And third of all, your message.
I don't even know what you'retrying to say because your tone
is so offensive.
I'm not hearing you, bro.
You know teaching people andit's an interesting thing,
because teaching people thatonce you're actually like a
grown, responsible person, youneed to learn how to throttle up

(51:38):
and throttle down your emotionsat your own discretion, right.
Most people can have them allthe way shut, so that you're a
robot, and some people can havethem all the way open and you're
just a waterfall right.
Crying all day and being able toreside somewhere in the middle
is a skillset that it goes alongwith a lot of the content and a

(52:00):
lot of the curriculum that Iteach and develop.
So, yeah, it's an importantthing, but I wish, I wish I
could.
If I had more time, I wouldlook into how we can quantify
that a little bit more.
But it's hard, man, it's hard,but I do see more intelligent
people.
I do like when we're donetraining people, they are more
intelligent than when beforethey walked in the classroom and

(52:23):
they're asking right, right,they're hungry for more, they
want more training.
It's crazy.
It's getting to the point nowwhere training that we just
offered to our office staff isbeing asked to be taught at our
field level.
You know and I mean I startthat I'm going to alabama in two
weeks to start doing some ofthat, some of that soft skill
stuff with electricians.

(52:43):
You know a big ass room of themand it's awesome, it's cool
Hell yeah, well, I'm going to goout on a limb and just say yes.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
And because I worked for a company back in the days a
long time ago where it wasinteresting, where we hired, we
put a program together torecruit students out of high
school.
We started internships rightout of like while they were in
high school, anyways, sometimesright out of like while they
were in high school, anyways.
Sometimes they get to liketheir second year of
apprenticeship and all of asudden you know we were the evil

(53:12):
empire and they needed to gowork for a company that loved
them more.
Okay, I understand, Right Causethey're in the apprenticeship
program, they're hearing abouttheir buddies making 50 cents
more an hour or whatever theywould go.
And almost every time, sixmonths, six to 12 months later,
they come back and they're likeman, it was bad and I'm like we
kind of knew that, but you hadto figure that out on your own.

(53:34):
And over the years I've got towork with tons and tons of craft
workers across the country andit's like why do you like your
company and they will credittraining, they do all kinds of
training.
Everywhere else I've workedthere was no training.
They just yelled at me all thetime.
One of my clients that recentlydid.
They hired me to do trainingfor their leadership.

(53:55):
And, over and over again, theirnew hires, the people that were
new to the company we're talkingabout general contractors,
superintendents, projectmanagers they would say it's
amazing to be here, I'm sograteful that they're investing
in us, it's awesome that they'retraining us, and so all of
those data points I take asindicators that and, if I like,

(54:16):
really for real, think about thepeople that you love and the
people you spend time with.
They are people that haveinvested in you.
They are people that havelistened to you and taught you
something, and so, as anorganization, if you're not
investing in your people, ifyou're not developing them,
helping nurture some of theirskill sets, like you're missing

(54:36):
out because others will andyou're going to lose the
personnel that you have, and soapplause to you for taking that
on.
As the next step, I got oneheavy closing question that's
kind of a not kind of it's acurveball.
But before I get to that one, Iwant to ask you you've been
down this windy road, which isamazing.

(54:58):
You can chameleonize yourselfand learn at an extremely rapid
rate.
What do you think the next bigstep is?

Speaker 1 (55:06):
That's a very good question, sir.
So it's an interesting one inthat I'm at a point right now
where I'm still traveling a lot.
I can travel probably, I wouldsay, between I don't know
between five and 10 days a month.
I travel.
My wife is a nurse.
Like I told you earlier, shewent to nursing school a while
back.
Now she's going through agraduate program to be a nurse
practitioner Nice.
So she's basically going to bea doctor here in about a year

(55:29):
and a half.
I have a daughter that's 19months old.
My wife is significantlyyounger than I am.
She's almost a decade youngerthan me.
So, yeah, so I have a lot that,that everything that's going on
right now is pretty muchperfect, like I couldn't ask for
a better anything, like Icouldn't change any aspect of my
life and make it better rightnow.

(55:50):
So I'm at a point where andthat's kind of one of the
beauties of not relying on mycareer as being my sole source
of measuring of ability, youknow so I still carry all my
sponsorships, I still shootpretty regularly.
I mean, it's winter, it'sliterally snowing outside of my
office window right now at home.
So I think that by the time mywife is done and she's in

(56:11):
practice, and it'll be about thesame time that my daughter is
probably starting school thenext few years.
That's when I'll probably startlooking.
I started putting my feelersout recently to a couple of
superintendents one in Charlotteand one in Virginia and one in
Maryland recently and kind ofletting them know the same thing
.
I said, hey, you know, look, Idon't know how, how or what I

(56:31):
could do, or when I could do it,but I want you to know that at
some point I'm going to need tosink my teeth into something
back in the field.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
It's hard.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
It's once again.
It's hard to.
It's hard to take all thethings that I know and what's
something that's going to feedthose things, because now I'm
very particular about what I doand how I do it.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
And.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
I've seen efficiency and I've learned.
There's nothing else that theshooting world has taught me
it's discipline.
You don't become the top of alist of 300, 400 people by luck.
Again and again you do it bydiscipline and hard work, and
those are, like I said in SanDiego, that's a discipline and
hard work are supreme currenciesthat will always be there, you

(57:13):
know they'll always be there.
So, luckily, I've established alot of good relationships within
the organization that I workfor and outside of the
organization I work for.
So I don't know, man, it wouldhave to be something amazing for
me to leave the best job everon the planet, that's for sure
10, four.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
All right, man, you ready for the closing question?
Yes, sir, All right Again.
You've walked an amazing pathand probably left it clear
enough for other people tofollow, and I know you dropped a
lot of mental models and lifelessons or principles that
people can latch onto tostraighten out their path right
or take a big leap in their path.

(57:52):
So thank you for that.
And so here's the question whatis the promise you are intended
to be?
That's a very interestingquestion.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
I think the promise that I'm intended to be is
definitely the best father onthe entire planet, a very close
friend, someone that people canrely on, and in a teacher like I
really take the mentorshippiece of my career and both my
personal and professional life.
I take that very serious.
So shortening the curve ofresistance for people is

(58:22):
something that you know I pridemyself in having that ability to
do.
So I think those are allprobably the promises that that
those are also the things thatmove me and keep me happy and
things that I'll be whittling onuntil I die.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
But yeah, I'd say all of those things, and they none
of those are small things, whichdoesn't surprise me at all.
Did you have fun, my man?

Speaker 1 (58:44):
I did man.
I really enjoyed ourconversation, oh yeah.