July 8, 2025 • 37 mins
Skilled trades summer camps are transforming lives. Angie Simon joins Andrew Brown to talk trades careers, apprenticeships, and women in construction programs.
Host Andrew Brown speaks with Angie Simon, founder of the Heavy Metal Summer Experience, about how skilled trades summer camps are creating real careers in the trades for youth. From women in construction programs to sheet metal apprenticeship opportunities, this episode explores how hands-on camps are reshaping the future of the trades industry by giving teens, especially those from underserved communities, an exciting trade school alternative to college.
You’ll hear success stories, insider insights, and the practical tools these camps offer: free boots, tools, real trade skills (welding, plumbing, electrical), and mentorship from industry professionals.
Whether you're a parent, a contractor, or someone passionate about trades careers, this episode gives you a clear look at what’s working—and how you can be part of the change.
IN THIS EPISODE:
● (02:10) – How 65% of sheet metal contractors started in the trades
● (08:35) – What skilled trades summer camps look like day-to-day
● (14:20) – The growing impact of women in construction programs
● (20:05) – Trade school alternatives to college and why they matter
● (27:50) – Why sheet metal apprenticeship opportunities are booming
● (34:30) – How camps are changing the future of the skilled trades industry
Key Takeaways:
● Skilled trades summer camps are opening doors to high-paying, hands-on careers for teens.
● More women in construction programs are succeeding—especially in welding and fabrication.
● These camps are effective trade school alternatives to college for at-risk youth.
● Sheet metal apprenticeship opportunities are in demand and can lead to business ownership.
About the Guest:
Angie Simon is a pioneering figure in the trades industry and co-founder of the Heavy Metal Summer Experience. With over 35 years in construction, including 15 years as president of a major mechanical contracting firm, she launched this nonprofit to grow the next generation of tradespeople. Her summer camps introduce youth to carpentry, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and sheet metal trades, while also leading initiatives for women in construction programs and creating trade school alternatives to college for underserved communities.
Keywords
Skilled Trades Summer Camps, Careers in the Trades for Youth, Women in Construction Programs, Sheet Metal Apprenticeship Opportunities, Trade School Alternatives to College, Skilled Trades, Trades Industry, Trades Careers, Contractors, Industry Experts, Education, Advocacy, Tradespeople, Problem-solving, Creativity, Andrew Brown, Angie Simon, Heavy Metal Summer Experience, Toolfetch, Skilled Trades Advisory Council, Carpentry, HVAC, Electricians, Plumbers, Millwrights, Construction, Craftsmanship
Resource Links:
Website: https://www.hmse.org/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angie-simon-pe-666744/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
About 65% of the sheet metal contractors across the nation are
owned by people that started in the trades. So they're not owned by
engineers, they're not owned by contractors. They're people that started in their trades, their career
in the trades, they worked their way up and now they own the company.
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost, star of the Skilled Trades
(00:22):
podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on
careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,
rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
(00:44):
Today we have a special guest, Angie Simon of Heavy Metal
Summer Experience. Welcome, Angie, to the show.
Thank you very much, Andrew. I'm excited to be on the show. Yeah,
likewise. You know, I am a big believer of
starting kids early in the trades and that's to
get them using their hands. And you can do that in many
(01:06):
different ways. And obviously you can speak with them at the
elementary level, the middle school level. But what I like to see
is programs where kids get interested working with
their hands. And I'm just thinking of a woman by the name of
Mary Gaffney who is actually on my Stack
foundation, the Skilled Trades Advisory Council. And she brings in about 80
(01:28):
young women over the summer. And they get free
work boots, they get free tools. Usually it's a tool company
distributor who gives them free stuff. And I think it was Milwaukee Tools. And
they learn a trade and they learn how to swing a hammer,
read a tape measure, and by the end of the summer, they can do stuff
with their hands. You know, I did some research on
(01:50):
the Heavy Metal Summer Experience and it seems like you
guys are doing very similar things. Tell me about sort of the day to
day of the program and what kind of kids get
interested in that. Yes, Heavy Metal Summer Experience. Our mission
is really to get kids to know about what an amazing career they could have
in the trades. And we do work with all high school kids,
(02:12):
sometimes anywhere from 15 to 19, depending on the
age range. And we offer free summer camps just
similar to what you were just talking about. Usually a minimum of about 30
hours. And they're at a host facility across the United
States. So we actually this Summer have about 53 locations across
the United States and Canada. We're going to have almost 900 kids on our
(02:34):
campus this summer. We are only in our fifth summer. We just started
not long ago, so we've really grown. They start this camp,
they will get a set of red Wing boots. Day one and that's so they
get their brand new set of boots because that's what we fundraise for the boots.
And they start to learn about mechanical, electrical, plumbing and
piping trades. So some camps will do primarily. Like, for example,
(02:56):
we have our first all electrical camp this summer. We might have some all sheet
metal camps, but we try to do all three MEP trades if possible. And
I'll tell you, the kids, oftentimes we have to teach them to use a tape
measure. They've never used even measured anything. Kids love
fire. They seem to love to weld and to solder and anything
with fire is exciting. They make their own projects. They actually get to take
(03:17):
these projects home oftentimes make like lamps and toolboxes
and different things out of sheet metal and piping and electrical. And they
gain confidence in themselves. They're taught by union
professionals, either sheet metal piping or electricians. And they
have support of the either the contractor's shop or they might be in a
union training center as well. So we've kind of got a number of different models
(03:39):
across the United States. We really had no idea it was going
to take off like this. When the kids graduate, they get a set of tools
either from Milwaukee Tool or DeWalt. We have two amazing partners.
And to think about it, my partners In Milwaukee and DeWalt are donating over
900 tool bags to our kids this summer. They've been great partners for
us and we have a lot of corporate sponsors and people that have been helping
(04:01):
us with this camp. But we are seeing 20 to
25% women in our campsite and we're seeing about
65% in minorities in our camps. So we focus on
underserved and at risk kids. It's so rewarding to see the
parents come to you and say, I had no idea my son or daughter could
have a career that can make so much money and that they don't have to
(04:22):
pay for college and that they can learn things right away. Their kids come home
from camp every day and they talk about what they've made and their confidence
level goes up every time they do. So it's really something that
I had no idea was going to grow this fast, but obviously is needed across
our nation because it's really hitting a hotspot right now. I'm a big
believer of letting your kids play with your tools under supervision
(04:44):
and getting them interested. I did this with my son. He
was making something for my daughter and he was out with a saw, a
Milwaukee cordless saw. And I was Watching and making sure he had the goggles on,
making sure he had gloves on, making sure he, you know, watched his, where
he was cutting. But now he's interested, working
with his hands. I don't push anything on him. We're in the tool business.
(05:06):
I always have tools around in my house so he can
pick and choose what he wants. But it's good to put this in front of
kids at an early age, especially being at
a camp. Do most of these individuals,
the younger kids, are they coming from parents who
worked in the trades or a lot of them have not worked in the trades?
(05:28):
There might be a couple in the camp that have their parents have worked in
the trades, but a lot of them, we really focus on working with the
underserved areas, the continuation schools, the career tech
schools, where it's kids that probably don't have a lot of options.
And so we're trying to encourage the at risk kids, the ones that really don't
have the opportunity to go to college and that we're encouraging
(05:49):
them. I mean, I think one of the things about our trades is, and I
being a woman, I was the president of a large mechanical contracting firm.
I was there for 35 years as president of about 15 of those. And I
was kind of a unicorn in that. President of a large, you know, a million
plus mechanical in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay area. You didn't see a
lot of women in that position. Our trades, our construction is a
(06:10):
fairly white male industry overall. So I think this,
we're trying to make this. We encourage our camps to
make the demographic of their camp look like the demographics of their cities.
You know, some camps, definitely a couple kids from every company is typically a
kid from, you know, one of the people in the company. But we really do
encourage them to go out and go help the areas that really need help.
(06:32):
Our very first camp was at my old company and we worked with East Palo
Alto, which was in Northern California area and a really underserved area
that just really could use help. And these kids
were very appreciative, as were the parents. So it's really neat to see
you. Said that it was 25% women or
girls going through this, which is unbelievable because there's only about 3 or 4% of
(06:54):
women really in the trades. I mean, plus or minus whatever statistic you
see out there. But the interesting thing is that
there's that amount of women who come in through your camps
and that maybe, just maybe they might be
interested in working in a trade. Are there any
success stories that you can share that.
(07:17):
Really just stand out there that someone who started in
your program and maybe went into the trades. I have a
great one. I mean from our very first summer. So what happened was our very
first summer it was my company, Western Allied in the Bay Area and my friend
Rick Hermanson and Hermanson company up in Seattle. We together
decided let's run a summer camp. Just because we were and we didn't. We
(07:38):
picked a name and we named a heavy metal summer experience. We prepped it and
we made up a plan and we both, we ran camps up in Seattle and
in the Bay Area. So in the Seattle camp at graduation a mom
pulled us aside and asked if she could speak with us. We said sure. She
says, I'm a housekeeper and my husband's a framer. My
daughter was in a very dark place. Her last semester of senior year. She
(08:00):
didn't know what she wanted to do, but she knew she didn't want to go
to college. And she really got depressed and the mom started
crying. She said, I lost my daughter and I didn't know what to do. And
she says now six weeks later, after your camp, I have my daughter
back. And this young lady now is in her fourth year of her
apprenticeship and is just killing it. She was a pre apprentice for
(08:20):
about eight months. Got into the apprenticeship and she's almost done
with her apprenticeship and she's killing it. Everybody fight over her. They had to
rotate her away from Hermanson for two years because of the requirements.
And Hermanson sure hopes they can get her back because she's amazing.
They actually have her work for them in the afternoons. After
she's done working. They bring her back to help at the camp because she's a
(08:42):
great story about the camp but she loves what she does and
she's great at it. So that was a story where a young woman just didn't
know what she wanted to do. And she had never experienced something like that and
she fell in love with it. That's an interesting story that someone was
in a dark place and decided to go down this path. And it turned out
to be a win win. And now people are fighting for her in an
(09:04):
apprenticeship. Did you say what she wants to be? What trade? She's in the
sheet metals union. And so she's going to be a sheet metal worker. Currently, I
think she's working for McKinstry which is a big company up there in the Seattle
area. We also have. There's a young woman who was interviewed
and went to our camp in Boston at Canastraro and
she's been working for Canastraro for a while. And actually she was just interviewed by
(09:26):
the Wall Street Journal. They're gonna have an article a little bit about it, but
her story is gonna be in there too, about what she did after she got
out of camp and how she's been working in. The Wall Street Journal has been
putting out some pretty stellar stuff. I think it's
Taiping Chen. I've spoken with her too. She's. She's put out some
really good articles of the last year or so. That's pretty amazing that
(09:47):
it's being put out there. I'm excited. She interviewed me too as well, a
couple weeks ago. So I'm thinking of women who've come out of different programs.
I'm thinking of this woman that I met about a year ago. She was
graduating out of high school, thinking about college, but she went through
this program with Mary Gaffney called mywic, Women in
Construction. I don't think she really swung a hammer or really did
(10:10):
anything in the trades. I think that she had blue collar in
her sort of like family life. Somebody was in blue collar, but
I don't think there was an interest there until she went through this camp and
really just got supercharged working with her hands and then came back
as a teacher. Now maybe wants to own a construction company one day.
So the power of these camps, mind boggling what you
(10:32):
can accomplish. You will find that they say the girls and women, I guess
women as high schoolers, but they're the best welders in the camps typically. And I
think the attention to detail is a little bit more there for the. On the
women's side. So all the camps are like, oh, my gosh, the girls are knocking
the boys out of the picture when it comes to welding. So they're finding that
the things that they do in these camps that they can do. And the other
(10:52):
thing is, there was a young woman at graduation I was talking to one time
in Kansas City and she said, well, she really wants to be involved in robotics.
And I said, do you realize construction has a lot of robotics? She goes, really?
I really like what we do here, but I want to do robotics. I said,
you could be doing robotics. You could be running the robots that are out in
the job sites. And so she was pretty excited about it. The technology in
construction today excites me because I think it's what we need to attract the next
(11:16):
generation. I see it firsthand too, and being in the tool business, being up and
up on the latest and greatest tools and the technology and everything that
how far it's come and the safety aspect when it comes
to trades, because that's numero uno when it comes to working on site.
You want to make sure that you get home to your loved ones. But I've
seen that the technology jump is just unreal. To make
(11:38):
life easier for people in the trades. And also from a safety
perspective, it's great to have these young kids
in these programs. It's great to have women or young girls in the program
who we desperately need to get into the trades.
Did you come from a trades background? What
was the backstory for you? How did you get into all
(12:01):
this? Were you exposed to it or. Oftentimes you fee a woman that was
owning a company or involved in a company. They usually assume it's my dad. My
dad was an electrical engineer, but he worked for Point Magoo. He worked for the
government at a missile center for the Navy. So you didn't take your
daughter to work when you worked in the missile center? So I did get maybe
some of. My dad made his own TV with the Heath kit. He made shelves.
(12:22):
I mean, I did get some of that from my dad in that he liked
to make stuff around the house. But part of it is I am a mechanical
engineer. I went to school for that. But I was very interested
in the solar and H Vac side of things at the time
energy crisis. When I was in high school, we were waiting in line at gas
stations. So I thought, well, we could do something with energy. And I kind of
fell in love with that. But I ended up loving the H vac side and
(12:44):
I went to work for a contractor. I also played softball in college. So I
really not somebody who wanted to sit at a desk. So I wanted to go
somewhere where I could at least be. I didn't want to work for a consultant.
I wanted to work for a contractor where I could go out to a job
site and I could see what they're doing. But I had a lot to learn.
I still don't do well super well with a lot of the different tools.
I can make a few things. I mean, I did take welding in college. I
(13:05):
was terrible at it. So I have an appreciation of it
anyhow, but so I just fell in love with it. And team is a big
aspect for me because of the sports that I've played. And team
is important part of construction. I learned that right away as a project manager.
Your team was really important for you to do well. And the team on the
job site, not just your company, but the entire team, the general contractor and the
(13:28):
subs. So that to me was what I. How I fell in love with
construction was we built a team, we built a project, we built a
building, we did a lot of life sciences and biotech where we
built buildings that helped research, that helped solve world's issues.
So I really fell in love with that. And that's just how it came.
I stayed at one company for 35 years, so started
(13:50):
as one year out of college as a young project manager and just kind of
grew up in the company. So many parents, and I see this
too, some of them push back in the trades. It could just be
misinformation or old adages of what they think the
trades is all about, and some of them think that the
wages are not there. Did you get pushback when you
(14:11):
went into this side of, you know, the trades? Did
your family push back and say, hey, look, maybe you should try something else? Or
are they very supportive of your journey?
My family was very supportive, but partially. I was the mechanical engineer, so I was
on the office side of it. But my dad was very interested in.
He understood that what we do is very important. But it is interesting
(14:33):
because I remember even talking to my dad recently and he was talking about
putting money aside for his grandkids for them to go to college. And
I said, well, dad, you know, is it fair that one grandkid decides to go
into the trades and not go to college and that he doesn't get any of
your money? And he said, oh, you got a real good point there. He said,
maybe I should just put aside money to help them and let them choose
(14:55):
what they want to do with it. And I said, I think you should, because
maybe somebody chooses to go. I mean, I was amazed that all of our plumbers
in the Bay Area, they owned houses by the time they were 27.
And most of us that were getting out of college had enough debt that we
were not even done with our debt by the time we're 27. And these guys
are starting to buy houses in the Bay Area. So I have two sons and
(15:16):
one's a journalist and a sports editor, so he's not in the trades. But the
other one actually worked at Western Allied, where I worked for a while. But he
even said to me, he went to college as a industrial technology. He was a
manufacturing kind of guy. But he said, why didn't you have me go to college?
I could have done the trades. And I said, well, you could have, but you
would have missed your college experience. He goes, I would have. But he's very supportive
(15:36):
of my camps and he loves this idea. He actually was doing some
tutoring with the East Palo Alto kids to try to help them with passing that
union test to get them into the apprenticeship. So it's not for
everybody. And college is for a lot of people. There's such an opportunity
for people in the trades, in the apprenticeships. Currently, their
average age of somebody entering our apprenticeships is 27 years old.
(15:59):
So that means they've roamed around, they went to junior
college. They might have worked at In N Out. They might have gone, you know,
I'm not sure what they're doing. But they finally get into the trades at 27.
My goal is to get those kids into the trades at 19 years old. What
a great career they'll have. They'll be getting journeyperson wages by the time they are
24 years old. And that's the sweet spot. I'm just thinking of
(16:19):
my extended family member who wants to be an
electrician. Now he is 36, so he's on the
slightly older side, but he was in corporate world and he
just didn't like it. It's not for me. He felt a burning desire working
with his hands. And just the electrical side is really what
gives him, you know, juices start flowing when you start talking about electricity
(16:42):
with him. But he's got a family, he's got two small kids,
and literally he's starting over and trying to get into the union.
So it's difficult when you're a little bit older and
you're a little bit further ahead in life versus somebody who's younger, who's just
starting out. And you were talking about the college versus sort of
the trades path. And I. I light up every time I hear this argument back
(17:04):
and forth because I went to college for four years to the University of
Rhode island and came out more confused out of school than I was in school.
And I wasn't given a choice. I was just told to go
to school because people would ask me all the time, well, what college are you
going to? The guidance counselor say, what college are you going to? So every time
that a young individual is going through high school,
(17:26):
a lot of times when they're sitting down with the guidance counselor, it's just college,
college, college, college. Where is the trades path for
somebody who's got that technical spark or that mechanical
ability? And a lot of times I feel that person gets passed over
and somehow gets pushed into college and then takes on all this
debt, like you said, and it's just constantly not
(17:48):
getting the return that they should really get. And maybe should have thought about
a trades path, but it wasn't really discussed with them. And I think we
need to do a better job at that. And I can tell you a story,
actually. Year two of our camps, we had a summer camp in
Pomona, California, and there happened to be three kids from
what they call the La Verne School district, which was an adjacent school district that
(18:09):
had gotten into the camp. How they found out about it was probably just through
the recruiting that the contractor did. Well, that summer, of those three
kids, I think one of them was a superintendent of school's daughter
and she loved the camp. So then the superintendent of schools, as she was
superintendent of schools for La Verne School District. So she called one of her counselors
at La Verne School District and said, listen, this camp was amazing. We need to
(18:29):
get more kids into this camp. So the counselor called me and
asked me more about the camp. We started talking about it. I said to her,
I mean, you guys as counselors are sometimes my problem. You guys
are the ones who are pushing every kid to college, and not every kid's meant
to go to college. And she said, you know, you're right. And so we started
talking a bit. She started educating herself. The next thing you know, she set
(18:51):
up what they call SoCal Trades Day. She organized a group
to go around to all the high schools to talk about the trades. She's bringing
the trades in. Superintendent of schools then made her a new
position. She does no longer counsels for college. She's a
counselor for those that. I don't know if they call it. I don't think they
call it alternate careers. But she's a counselor that's not counseling for college.
(19:12):
She's counselor counseling for other careers. I mean, just a little step.
Luckily, that daughter liked it so much, the superintendent told her about it. And then
the next thing you know, this counselor did a great job and started realizing that
maybe I'm helping the world a bit by showing kids another alternate
to what they can do. I wish we had more counselors and more school districts
that would look at that. I was thinking about a story too. Somebody who was
(19:34):
on the podcast, Angela, I think it was Caldwell up
in Canada, and she was a teacher. And I think
one of the students came up to her and mentioned that I believe it
was an electrician. And she looked at him sideways like she wasn't
informed at that time. But after that conversation, she Went
sort of down the whole path of what the possibilities are with working their
(19:57):
hands. Changed everything that she did. She's no longer working at the school, but
she formed a program to give back to kids in the
trades and teach. Like she wasn't informed about it. It was
interesting. Like just thinking about how many times that happens when
somebody is in school and a kid who's interested working with their
hands. How many times a teacher says, are you sure
(20:19):
maybe you want to go to college? I think it's better today.
I think it's gotten better with all the information out there on social media
and all the people in welding, people electrical, like they're showing
A Day in the Life. So kids are more exposed to it and teachers are
more exposed to sort of what the trades are all about. But that conversation
seems to come up quite often. So I
(20:41):
think we all have a story surrounding something like that. Like you said,
they had that Million Dollar plumber article about how the plumbers are making a million
dollars a year. And I think that got some people's attention, which is great. And
they need to do that more often if they can. So that would be to
be able to share that. I think that's great and I'm thrilled when you hear
those kind of stories. I joke about it and I say we
(21:01):
need to change a perception of what construction's like. People think back and
they think of it as a butt crack industry. I hope I can say that.
But that's what they think of it. They think of the plumber with his pants
half down and they're digging a ditch or doing something like that. And there's so
much more to the construction industry and the skilled trades are
so important and there's so much technology being used nowadays that
(21:23):
you very well could end up being the BIM designer for the project. And you're
working at a computer all day. You're making great money and you're doing all kinds
of technology. You're not even outside digging a ditch at all. So again,
there's so many options of where you can go with what you do in construction
and that's. We try to tell the kids in our camps. We just try to
give them a little taste of everything. We hope that we can get them interested.
(21:45):
We're finding it's hard to track them if they haven't graduated. Each
camp probably has. About a quarter of the kids have graduated high school. Like that
was their senior year and they just did the camp right afterwards. And. And we're
finding of those kids that we're getting close to 70% of
them are getting jobs in construction of the ones that have graduated high school.
That's how much they enjoyed it, and they really are trying it.
(22:06):
Are they retaining in there? I hope so, but that's the challenge also. There's a
little bit of a retention challenge in construction as well, and that's where we need
to work on that as well. I like that you can start off in the
field and then work your way up and then maybe
own your own business if you're entrepreneur. Obviously, that's a different skill set.
Some of people who start off in the trades, that's what they want at the
(22:28):
end of the day. And I've spoken to many people who have sort of made
that journey, and some of them are extremely,
extremely successful. I mean, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs kind of put
it on the map years ago with his show to show blue
collar and, you know, all these different industries that people just
never really heard of in blue collar. And they do extremely, extremely well.
(22:49):
I remember a friend came up to me, I think, earlier this year and
said something about, like, he grew up with somebody who was in the plumbing
world and he had a really big house. He's like, do they do well?
I'm like, dude, they do do well. They
do well. Because he's in finance in a whole different world. But
people just don't realize. And I get this too, especially
(23:11):
on social media, because I'm heavily active on TikTok and I put out a lot
of content, so I get a lot of feedback from people. But a
lot of kids do say, I don't make any money.
At first. I'm looking at apprentice wages
and I'm making 18 to $20 an hour. But I'm also looking
at working at McDonald's or Chipotle, and it's 22, $23
(23:33):
an hour. I don't have to be in the field, and then I have
all these individuals push back who are in the trades and
saying, you level up. You don't just stay at 18 to
$20. You're working way up, and they're getting. Trained
in the same time and they're getting education. So in the long
run, when you graduate, I mean, in the Bay Area particularly, I think we are
(23:55):
the highest unions in the Bay Area. But when you graduate your apprenticeship, when you're
done with four or five years of apprenticeship, you're making six figures with no
hesitation at all. And with construction the way it is, sometimes you're working a lot
of overtime. So you're making really good money if you're willing to work the overtime.
Yeah. Some of the numbers that people come back with on social media
and the people that they include overtime, I'm like, that's a lot of money. Yes,
(24:16):
it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of money. It's what you
put in is what you get out. I just want to swing back to your
camp for a second. What is the number one trade that kids
want to get into that you've seen? We focus on
mep, so mechanical electrical, plumbing trades. We haven't had
as much electrical lately. I mean, we're finally going to have our first all electrical
(24:37):
camp this summer. I have a feeling when our union electrical contractors get involved in
this and we start getting more of that, we might find that being very popular.
But I think piping and plumbing, they seem to be very interested
in the welding and the fire side of that. We teach all three of them
and they seem to be. We kind of have a mix. You know, some will
go into the sheet metal side. I think it just kind of depends. Now, I
(24:57):
know in sheet metal, I was a SMACNA as a sheet metal contractors and air
conditioning national association and I was national president of
SMACNA about the time I started the camp because I started finding out how
every contractor across the country is sheet metal contractor. Was complaining about
not having enough people. And that's when I said, you know what we need to
figure out? We need to stop complaining and get some skin in the game and
(25:18):
do something about it. So when I had this camp, we wrote a
playbook after we did the first camp, and I basically started sharing it across
the nations and kind of holding contractors accountable, saying,
stop complaining about it. Do something about it. Host a camp. Because we
rely on hosts. We need to find a host to host a camp. We will
help them host a camp. We give them tons of resources, but I've got
(25:40):
to have somebody step up. About 65% of the sheet metal contractors
across the nation are owned by people that started in the trades.
So they're not owned by engineers, they're not owned by contractors. They're people that
started their trades, their career in the trades, they worked their way up and now
they own the company. So we tell these kids, you can do what you
want to do. And I was a young man in one of our videos is
(26:01):
online. He's like, no, I think I'm interested in plumbing. Yeah, I like plumbing.
He goes, I want to own my own plumbing company. And I'm like, well, good.
You go through the trades and you're going to. You're going to be able to
own your own plumbing company. So I think it's awesome. I love it when they
have that desire, because get a base in the trades, you know, five,
six, seven years, and then work on owning your own company. That's sort of the
goal, to showcase what the possibilities are
(26:24):
and what that ladder of success looks like for kids. And
these individuals who own their own company are the ones that
you can say, oh, yeah, in a handful of years, it's possible that I can
get there. It's interesting, you bring them up that the ones that are complaining that
they can't find enough people, is there pushback
on why they won't do a camp? Is it an investment
(26:46):
thing? Like, is it time? Probably more time than money. I mean, I.
It does cost them a little money, too, but it's really probably more time. And
what we try to say to them is, listen, we're making it as easy as
possible. We're giving you the recipe, we're giving you. We call it the easy button.
We're giving you everything you need, forms and suggestions. You just
need to be able to give us the time. Because they have to recruit for
(27:07):
the kids in their areas. I mean, I mean, I can't because they're all over
the nation and we have four in Canada as well. They have to go recruit
the kids in their area. But I have a camp this summer, and he's brand
new camp. Never run a camp before. And usually the first summer is a challenge
to recruit the kids. And he's in DeKalb, Illinois. I'm not sure I'm saying that
right, but it's a relatively small town. He's working with the Chamber of
(27:27):
Commerce. He had 120 kids apply. He wanted
25 kids. Now he's going to do 31 kids. But the Chamber of commerce
in that town got very involved and started putting it out there and helped him
with recruiting and really need to involve the city like he did and
involve some nonprofits and encourage the kids. So it'll be interesting
to see how his camp goes. But this guy went all in. He said, you
(27:50):
know what? I'm going to run a camp. And you know what? He's probably going
to have more kids than he can hire. So he's going to have to bring
in other contractors to say, hey, or hire these kids. They're really good. So I
keep challenging these guys and saying, listen, it's your turn to step up and do
something about it. You can't just. And I will tell them, their
employees that work for them now, they love it. I mean, that
(28:10):
generation of employees that are working for most of these contractors now want to give
back, and they love giving back. And I think sometimes they
don't realize that side benefit that the companies that are running these, that the
employees love it and they share it. The ones that are teaching, I mean, the
union folks that are teaching the classes just love it because they're
sharing their knowledge with the next generation. And you can't sit on the
(28:31):
sidelines if there's a shortage out there. You're not getting the right people.
This is a good way to get them in. And I assume it creates
stickiness for the kids that go through because they get to
witness firsthand. And working with that particular
company, seeing the culture and seeing what the possibilities
are, I would assume there's a good percentage of kids
(28:53):
that are the right fit for that organization, as opposed to
somebody who's not doing anything and just complaining and sitting on the sidelines saying,
there's a short. And that's what it is. There's a couple things we have. Some
of the kids are going back to high school, right? Because they're not out of
high school yet. So they're telling their friends about what they did this past summer
and how great it was. So that's awesome. The other thing we're finding is that
(29:13):
even the kids that are applying and graduated and trying to get into the
apprenticeship, they're enjoying it so much that the next thing you know,
because what we're hearing is to get in the apprenticeship, it's a lot of word
of mouth. Well, word of mouth. When you now are in an
underserved area and an area hadn't been before, all of a sudden
there's the brother, older brother and the neighbor are also applying
(29:34):
because their friend has told them or their brother has told them what a great
situation this is. So we're finding that we're getting more kids into the
trades than we even planned on that didn't even go to our camp. But because
of word of mouth and the kids or the neighborhood and that type of thing,
which is what we want. Because if we can work with areas,
underserved, areas like that, then we can change the look of construction a little bit
(29:54):
too. So if I am a company who wants to get
involved in the camp, walk us through what that looks like.
So if somebody's listening right now and says, wow, this is a really Good idea.
What do they need to do and what's given to them so they're set up
for success. Yeah. So they would reach out to us at Heavy Metal Summer
experience, which we're hmse.org
(30:16):
or just Google Heavy Metal Summer Experience and you'll find us and reach out to
us and we would work with you to explain to you. You are going to
have some costs to run the camp. Every kid gets to go for free and
it costs about $2,000 per kid to put them through the camp.
But about half of that is my costs. The Heavy Metal Summer, meaning the
boots, the tools, which again are kind of costs. They're in kind
(30:38):
costs. We get donated. But there's many things like that. But part of that costs
are you. Cause you're going to. You as the host camp are going to have
graduation and you're going to host their. You might have to pay your instructors depending
on the timeframe that you're running it. Some of the camps are run in the
afternoons after work is done and they get volunteers. So it just depends on your
situation. Reach out to us and we will provide you if you
want to run a camp. We have a huge amount of resources. We'll give you
(31:01):
a login to those and you'll be able to go in there. You'll have permission
slips and marketing material to help you recruit the kids. We give
you release forms. We share all of those with them.
We share graduation certificates and just pretty much try to make
it, like I said, the easy button. So I usually assign a liaison.
We have a couple guys that are retired and volunteering to be my
(31:23):
liaisons. And so either myself or a couple of these guys will volunteer
and I'll call them up during the time that they're setting. Like, how you doing?
Have you made your schedule yet? How's recruiting going? And I have a
social media group that like a couple areas right now are struggling to find kids
right now. In a few areas, I mean we're. We're struggling, we're a little low
on kids. So we're going to start a social media blast in those areas and
(31:43):
see if we can get kids to go. And again, a lot of it depends
on the person out there recruiting the kids. So I mean, that's a good blueprint
for somebody who's thinking about doing this. It's not just like go start a camp.
There's an actual blueprint that you've put together from the beginning to
the end. And there is an investment in of course. But think about it.
You know, long term of if you invite X
(32:04):
amount of kids but you get a good percentage of them or they tell somebody
else about your company, you're going to be leaps and
bounds past some of the other local companies that are not
doing that. And you get to the shining stars as well. I mean, there might
be a couple gems in that group of kids and, and if they're graduated, they
want to work. You're the one who hosted the camp, so you're going to say,
(32:25):
I definitely going to offer this one and this one a job. You know, if
you don't have enough jobs for everybody, then you can say, oh, there's a few
other kids for the other contractors. But you get the gems in the room because
you're the one who put the time into it. And I tell the story about
my purchasing lady at Western Allied when the first year she worked there, she
didn't think she was qualified to help. We get volunteers for the camp, project
managers, purchasing engineers to kind of more
(32:47):
eyes on the kids. But the third year of our camp and her second year
there, the young man running the camp kind of for us encouraged her and said,
come on, Justine, you can do this, you can do this. Just come volunteer. And
she said, okay, fine, I'll just volunteer. She called me that night on her way
home and she said, angie, today was the best day of work I've ever had
in my life. She goes, it was so much fun volunteering and watching these kids
(33:08):
and seeing the light in their eyes. She goes, I just had a great time.
It's not just good for the kids, it's good for the employees as well. So
it really made me realize that there's more benefits than just helping the kids
and you're helping our industry, but you're helping your employees as well and. Building
a culture and just making an impact overall.
Do these camps, is it a one time thing or they
(33:30):
do it every single year? Some of these companies, Every time we've. Had
companies run a camp, they do it again the next year. We pretty much, other
than we have two companies this year that are remodeling their shops. So they took
the summer off because they don't have a shop to do it in the summer,
but everyone else is 100% return. That's why we've grown so much. I
mean, literally we went from two camps to 11 camps to
(33:52):
32 camps to now 50 camps. I mean, something like that. I
think I missed one in there, but we really went from 28 kids to 125
kids to 325 kids to 500 kids to this summer, 900
kids. So I'm a little scared where we're going next summer. So
I knew how to run a for profit company when I worked as a mechanical
contractor and now I got to learn how to run a nonprofit company. So yeah,
(34:14):
a little bit different, but super exciting what you're
doing. And you know, just going back to anybody who's listening, you know,
definitely reach out to Angie. You guys are doing some amazing stuff and
that's really how you curb this shortage is being the forefront of
like doing these camps and showcasing what you can
do with your hands that, you know, the shortage of
(34:36):
40% of men and women that are retiring over the next five or ten years,
maybe we can start to pull that number down with these type of
camps and you know, these type of opportunities
now. The tools of the trade. Angie,
this has been an amazing conversation, but in every episode
(34:56):
we always ask our guests a tools of
the trade. What's one lesson,
mindset or piece of advice you can give a young person
stepping into the trades for the first time? The number one for
me is you can do anything you want to do. And to see
like me talking about the young women that are great welders, if you
(35:19):
want to do something and you enjoy it, go for it. You can do anything
you want to do. And I think don't be afraid of it. And I never
minded being a woman. If you think about it. I've been in the construction industry
for over 40 years, so I've seen a lot in the construction industry over 40
years and I love the industry. So I would tell them, you can do
anything you want to do. Just don't let anybody say you can't. And that's important,
(35:40):
particularly for those of us that are not the majority in the
construction industry. Don't be afraid. Just do what you need to do. That's great
advice and it's just, you gotta just start especially you know, women
with 25% who are coming through your camps. It's just
amazing to hear that, to see that, that they're
interested in working with their hands. Cause we desperately need women. We deem people in
(36:03):
the trades and these camps are doing some amazing things. So keep up the great
work. If people want to go down the rabbit hole and find out more, where
do they find you? Yeah, we are on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook,
Instagram. Check out our website, which has a ton of great videos
and a lot of information on our website. So that's
www.hmse.org
(36:24):
that stands for heavymetalsummerexperience.org and that's where you'll
find all kinds of information about our camps and all of our locations. We
have a map of the United States and Canada on there that shows every location.
There's a lot of states I'm not in yet, and I'd like to get in
some of those states. So excited that we are in a few in the South.
We're in Nashville this summer for the first time ever, so. But we are
(36:45):
missing some big states. We don't have anybody in Florida. I mean, there's a lot
of big states we're missing. So I'm hoping to find a few more hosts for
next summer. Well, maybe next time we check in, that number will be
5,000. Angie, it's been a blast having you here. Keep up the great
work. Thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate you having me on. And thank you
to our listeners. If today's episode got you thinking about the trades, take the
(37:05):
next step and grab your free copy of the no BS Guide to Careers
in the Skilled Trades@Andrew Brown.net. it's packed with
real steps, real stories, and everything you need to start a career
that pays. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never
miss another episode. We'll see you next time.
(37:26):
Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Lost Art. Of the Skilled Trades. Visit
us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.
Join us next time for real stories and meaningful initiatives
as we celebrate our. Men and women in the skilled trades. And shape
the future together.
About 65% of the sheet metal contractors across the nation are
owned by people that started in the trades. So they're not owned by
engineers, they're not owned by contractors. They're people that started in their trades, their career
in the trades, they worked their way up and now they own the company.
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost, star of the Skilled Trades
(00:22):
podcast, a show that shines the spotlight on
careers in the skilled trades that are high paying, honorable,
rewarding and fulfilling. The trades are the backbone of the
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
(00:44):
Today we have a special guest, Angie Simon of Heavy Metal
Summer Experience. Welcome, Angie, to the show.
Thank you very much, Andrew. I'm excited to be on the show. Yeah,
likewise. You know, I am a big believer of
starting kids early in the trades and that's to
get them using their hands. And you can do that in many
(01:06):
different ways. And obviously you can speak with them at the
elementary level, the middle school level. But what I like to see
is programs where kids get interested working with
their hands. And I'm just thinking of a woman by the name of
Mary Gaffney who is actually on my Stack
foundation, the Skilled Trades Advisory Council. And she brings in about 80
(01:28):
young women over the summer. And they get free
work boots, they get free tools. Usually it's a tool company
distributor who gives them free stuff. And I think it was Milwaukee Tools. And
they learn a trade and they learn how to swing a hammer,
read a tape measure, and by the end of the summer, they can do stuff
with their hands. You know, I did some research on
(01:50):
the Heavy Metal Summer Experience and it seems like you
guys are doing very similar things. Tell me about sort of the day to
day of the program and what kind of kids get
interested in that. Yes, Heavy Metal Summer Experience. Our mission
is really to get kids to know about what an amazing career they could have
in the trades. And we do work with all high school kids,
(02:12):
sometimes anywhere from 15 to 19, depending on the
age range. And we offer free summer camps just
similar to what you were just talking about. Usually a minimum of about 30
hours. And they're at a host facility across the United
States. So we actually this Summer have about 53 locations across
the United States and Canada. We're going to have almost 900 kids on our
(02:34):
campus this summer. We are only in our fifth summer. We just started
not long ago, so we've really grown. They start this camp,
they will get a set of red Wing boots. Day one and that's so they
get their brand new set of boots because that's what we fundraise for the boots.
And they start to learn about mechanical, electrical, plumbing and
piping trades. So some camps will do primarily. Like, for example,
(02:56):
we have our first all electrical camp this summer. We might have some all sheet
metal camps, but we try to do all three MEP trades if possible. And
I'll tell you, the kids, oftentimes we have to teach them to use a tape
measure. They've never used even measured anything. Kids love
fire. They seem to love to weld and to solder and anything
with fire is exciting. They make their own projects. They actually get to take
(03:17):
these projects home oftentimes make like lamps and toolboxes
and different things out of sheet metal and piping and electrical. And they
gain confidence in themselves. They're taught by union
professionals, either sheet metal piping or electricians. And they
have support of the either the contractor's shop or they might be in a
union training center as well. So we've kind of got a number of different models
(03:39):
across the United States. We really had no idea it was going
to take off like this. When the kids graduate, they get a set of tools
either from Milwaukee Tool or DeWalt. We have two amazing partners.
And to think about it, my partners In Milwaukee and DeWalt are donating over
900 tool bags to our kids this summer. They've been great partners for
us and we have a lot of corporate sponsors and people that have been helping
(04:01):
us with this camp. But we are seeing 20 to
25% women in our campsite and we're seeing about
65% in minorities in our camps. So we focus on
underserved and at risk kids. It's so rewarding to see the
parents come to you and say, I had no idea my son or daughter could
have a career that can make so much money and that they don't have to
(04:22):
pay for college and that they can learn things right away. Their kids come home
from camp every day and they talk about what they've made and their confidence
level goes up every time they do. So it's really something that
I had no idea was going to grow this fast, but obviously is needed across
our nation because it's really hitting a hotspot right now. I'm a big
believer of letting your kids play with your tools under supervision
(04:44):
and getting them interested. I did this with my son. He
was making something for my daughter and he was out with a saw, a
Milwaukee cordless saw. And I was Watching and making sure he had the goggles on,
making sure he had gloves on, making sure he, you know, watched his, where
he was cutting. But now he's interested, working
with his hands. I don't push anything on him. We're in the tool business.
(05:06):
I always have tools around in my house so he can
pick and choose what he wants. But it's good to put this in front of
kids at an early age, especially being at
a camp. Do most of these individuals,
the younger kids, are they coming from parents who
worked in the trades or a lot of them have not worked in the trades?
(05:28):
There might be a couple in the camp that have their parents have worked in
the trades, but a lot of them, we really focus on working with the
underserved areas, the continuation schools, the career tech
schools, where it's kids that probably don't have a lot of options.
And so we're trying to encourage the at risk kids, the ones that really don't
have the opportunity to go to college and that we're encouraging
(05:49):
them. I mean, I think one of the things about our trades is, and I
being a woman, I was the president of a large mechanical contracting firm.
I was there for 35 years as president of about 15 of those. And I
was kind of a unicorn in that. President of a large, you know, a million
plus mechanical in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay area. You didn't see a
lot of women in that position. Our trades, our construction is a
(06:10):
fairly white male industry overall. So I think this,
we're trying to make this. We encourage our camps to
make the demographic of their camp look like the demographics of their cities.
You know, some camps, definitely a couple kids from every company is typically a
kid from, you know, one of the people in the company. But we really do
encourage them to go out and go help the areas that really need help.
(06:32):
Our very first camp was at my old company and we worked with East Palo
Alto, which was in Northern California area and a really underserved area
that just really could use help. And these kids
were very appreciative, as were the parents. So it's really neat to see
you. Said that it was 25% women or
girls going through this, which is unbelievable because there's only about 3 or 4% of
(06:54):
women really in the trades. I mean, plus or minus whatever statistic you
see out there. But the interesting thing is that
there's that amount of women who come in through your camps
and that maybe, just maybe they might be
interested in working in a trade. Are there any
success stories that you can share that.
(07:17):
Really just stand out there that someone who started in
your program and maybe went into the trades. I have a
great one. I mean from our very first summer. So what happened was our very
first summer it was my company, Western Allied in the Bay Area and my friend
Rick Hermanson and Hermanson company up in Seattle. We together
decided let's run a summer camp. Just because we were and we didn't. We
(07:38):
picked a name and we named a heavy metal summer experience. We prepped it and
we made up a plan and we both, we ran camps up in Seattle and
in the Bay Area. So in the Seattle camp at graduation a mom
pulled us aside and asked if she could speak with us. We said sure. She
says, I'm a housekeeper and my husband's a framer. My
daughter was in a very dark place. Her last semester of senior year. She
(08:00):
didn't know what she wanted to do, but she knew she didn't want to go
to college. And she really got depressed and the mom started
crying. She said, I lost my daughter and I didn't know what to do. And
she says now six weeks later, after your camp, I have my daughter
back. And this young lady now is in her fourth year of her
apprenticeship and is just killing it. She was a pre apprentice for
(08:20):
about eight months. Got into the apprenticeship and she's almost done
with her apprenticeship and she's killing it. Everybody fight over her. They had to
rotate her away from Hermanson for two years because of the requirements.
And Hermanson sure hopes they can get her back because she's amazing.
They actually have her work for them in the afternoons. After
she's done working. They bring her back to help at the camp because she's a
(08:42):
great story about the camp but she loves what she does and
she's great at it. So that was a story where a young woman just didn't
know what she wanted to do. And she had never experienced something like that and
she fell in love with it. That's an interesting story that someone was
in a dark place and decided to go down this path. And it turned out
to be a win win. And now people are fighting for her in an
(09:04):
apprenticeship. Did you say what she wants to be? What trade? She's in the
sheet metals union. And so she's going to be a sheet metal worker. Currently, I
think she's working for McKinstry which is a big company up there in the Seattle
area. We also have. There's a young woman who was interviewed
and went to our camp in Boston at Canastraro and
she's been working for Canastraro for a while. And actually she was just interviewed by
(09:26):
the Wall Street Journal. They're gonna have an article a little bit about it, but
her story is gonna be in there too, about what she did after she got
out of camp and how she's been working in. The Wall Street Journal has been
putting out some pretty stellar stuff. I think it's
Taiping Chen. I've spoken with her too. She's. She's put out some
really good articles of the last year or so. That's pretty amazing that
(09:47):
it's being put out there. I'm excited. She interviewed me too as well, a
couple weeks ago. So I'm thinking of women who've come out of different programs.
I'm thinking of this woman that I met about a year ago. She was
graduating out of high school, thinking about college, but she went through
this program with Mary Gaffney called mywic, Women in
Construction. I don't think she really swung a hammer or really did
(10:10):
anything in the trades. I think that she had blue collar in
her sort of like family life. Somebody was in blue collar, but
I don't think there was an interest there until she went through this camp and
really just got supercharged working with her hands and then came back
as a teacher. Now maybe wants to own a construction company one day.
So the power of these camps, mind boggling what you
(10:32):
can accomplish. You will find that they say the girls and women, I guess
women as high schoolers, but they're the best welders in the camps typically. And I
think the attention to detail is a little bit more there for the. On the
women's side. So all the camps are like, oh, my gosh, the girls are knocking
the boys out of the picture when it comes to welding. So they're finding that
the things that they do in these camps that they can do. And the other
(10:52):
thing is, there was a young woman at graduation I was talking to one time
in Kansas City and she said, well, she really wants to be involved in robotics.
And I said, do you realize construction has a lot of robotics? She goes, really?
I really like what we do here, but I want to do robotics. I said,
you could be doing robotics. You could be running the robots that are out in
the job sites. And so she was pretty excited about it. The technology in
construction today excites me because I think it's what we need to attract the next
(11:16):
generation. I see it firsthand too, and being in the tool business, being up and
up on the latest and greatest tools and the technology and everything that
how far it's come and the safety aspect when it comes
to trades, because that's numero uno when it comes to working on site.
You want to make sure that you get home to your loved ones. But I've
seen that the technology jump is just unreal. To make
(11:38):
life easier for people in the trades. And also from a safety
perspective, it's great to have these young kids
in these programs. It's great to have women or young girls in the program
who we desperately need to get into the trades.
Did you come from a trades background? What
was the backstory for you? How did you get into all
(12:01):
this? Were you exposed to it or. Oftentimes you fee a woman that was
owning a company or involved in a company. They usually assume it's my dad. My
dad was an electrical engineer, but he worked for Point Magoo. He worked for the
government at a missile center for the Navy. So you didn't take your
daughter to work when you worked in the missile center? So I did get maybe
some of. My dad made his own TV with the Heath kit. He made shelves.
(12:22):
I mean, I did get some of that from my dad in that he liked
to make stuff around the house. But part of it is I am a mechanical
engineer. I went to school for that. But I was very interested
in the solar and H Vac side of things at the time
energy crisis. When I was in high school, we were waiting in line at gas
stations. So I thought, well, we could do something with energy. And I kind of
fell in love with that. But I ended up loving the H vac side and
(12:44):
I went to work for a contractor. I also played softball in college. So I
really not somebody who wanted to sit at a desk. So I wanted to go
somewhere where I could at least be. I didn't want to work for a consultant.
I wanted to work for a contractor where I could go out to a job
site and I could see what they're doing. But I had a lot to learn.
I still don't do well super well with a lot of the different tools.
I can make a few things. I mean, I did take welding in college. I
(13:05):
was terrible at it. So I have an appreciation of it
anyhow, but so I just fell in love with it. And team is a big
aspect for me because of the sports that I've played. And team
is important part of construction. I learned that right away as a project manager.
Your team was really important for you to do well. And the team on the
job site, not just your company, but the entire team, the general contractor and the
(13:28):
subs. So that to me was what I. How I fell in love with
construction was we built a team, we built a project, we built a
building, we did a lot of life sciences and biotech where we
built buildings that helped research, that helped solve world's issues.
So I really fell in love with that. And that's just how it came.
I stayed at one company for 35 years, so started
(13:50):
as one year out of college as a young project manager and just kind of
grew up in the company. So many parents, and I see this
too, some of them push back in the trades. It could just be
misinformation or old adages of what they think the
trades is all about, and some of them think that the
wages are not there. Did you get pushback when you
(14:11):
went into this side of, you know, the trades? Did
your family push back and say, hey, look, maybe you should try something else? Or
are they very supportive of your journey?
My family was very supportive, but partially. I was the mechanical engineer, so I was
on the office side of it. But my dad was very interested in.
He understood that what we do is very important. But it is interesting
(14:33):
because I remember even talking to my dad recently and he was talking about
putting money aside for his grandkids for them to go to college. And
I said, well, dad, you know, is it fair that one grandkid decides to go
into the trades and not go to college and that he doesn't get any of
your money? And he said, oh, you got a real good point there. He said,
maybe I should just put aside money to help them and let them choose
(14:55):
what they want to do with it. And I said, I think you should, because
maybe somebody chooses to go. I mean, I was amazed that all of our plumbers
in the Bay Area, they owned houses by the time they were 27.
And most of us that were getting out of college had enough debt that we
were not even done with our debt by the time we're 27. And these guys
are starting to buy houses in the Bay Area. So I have two sons and
(15:16):
one's a journalist and a sports editor, so he's not in the trades. But the
other one actually worked at Western Allied, where I worked for a while. But he
even said to me, he went to college as a industrial technology. He was a
manufacturing kind of guy. But he said, why didn't you have me go to college?
I could have done the trades. And I said, well, you could have, but you
would have missed your college experience. He goes, I would have. But he's very supportive
(15:36):
of my camps and he loves this idea. He actually was doing some
tutoring with the East Palo Alto kids to try to help them with passing that
union test to get them into the apprenticeship. So it's not for
everybody. And college is for a lot of people. There's such an opportunity
for people in the trades, in the apprenticeships. Currently, their
average age of somebody entering our apprenticeships is 27 years old.
(15:59):
So that means they've roamed around, they went to junior
college. They might have worked at In N Out. They might have gone, you know,
I'm not sure what they're doing. But they finally get into the trades at 27.
My goal is to get those kids into the trades at 19 years old. What
a great career they'll have. They'll be getting journeyperson wages by the time they are
24 years old. And that's the sweet spot. I'm just thinking of
(16:19):
my extended family member who wants to be an
electrician. Now he is 36, so he's on the
slightly older side, but he was in corporate world and he
just didn't like it. It's not for me. He felt a burning desire working
with his hands. And just the electrical side is really what
gives him, you know, juices start flowing when you start talking about electricity
(16:42):
with him. But he's got a family, he's got two small kids,
and literally he's starting over and trying to get into the union.
So it's difficult when you're a little bit older and
you're a little bit further ahead in life versus somebody who's younger, who's just
starting out. And you were talking about the college versus sort of
the trades path. And I. I light up every time I hear this argument back
(17:04):
and forth because I went to college for four years to the University of
Rhode island and came out more confused out of school than I was in school.
And I wasn't given a choice. I was just told to go
to school because people would ask me all the time, well, what college are you
going to? The guidance counselor say, what college are you going to? So every time
that a young individual is going through high school,
(17:26):
a lot of times when they're sitting down with the guidance counselor, it's just college,
college, college, college. Where is the trades path for
somebody who's got that technical spark or that mechanical
ability? And a lot of times I feel that person gets passed over
and somehow gets pushed into college and then takes on all this
debt, like you said, and it's just constantly not
(17:48):
getting the return that they should really get. And maybe should have thought about
a trades path, but it wasn't really discussed with them. And I think we
need to do a better job at that. And I can tell you a story,
actually. Year two of our camps, we had a summer camp in
Pomona, California, and there happened to be three kids from
what they call the La Verne School district, which was an adjacent school district that
(18:09):
had gotten into the camp. How they found out about it was probably just through
the recruiting that the contractor did. Well, that summer, of those three
kids, I think one of them was a superintendent of school's daughter
and she loved the camp. So then the superintendent of schools, as she was
superintendent of schools for La Verne School District. So she called one of her counselors
at La Verne School District and said, listen, this camp was amazing. We need to
(18:29):
get more kids into this camp. So the counselor called me and
asked me more about the camp. We started talking about it. I said to her,
I mean, you guys as counselors are sometimes my problem. You guys
are the ones who are pushing every kid to college, and not every kid's meant
to go to college. And she said, you know, you're right. And so we started
talking a bit. She started educating herself. The next thing you know, she set
(18:51):
up what they call SoCal Trades Day. She organized a group
to go around to all the high schools to talk about the trades. She's bringing
the trades in. Superintendent of schools then made her a new
position. She does no longer counsels for college. She's a
counselor for those that. I don't know if they call it. I don't think they
call it alternate careers. But she's a counselor that's not counseling for college.
(19:12):
She's counselor counseling for other careers. I mean, just a little step.
Luckily, that daughter liked it so much, the superintendent told her about it. And then
the next thing you know, this counselor did a great job and started realizing that
maybe I'm helping the world a bit by showing kids another alternate
to what they can do. I wish we had more counselors and more school districts
that would look at that. I was thinking about a story too. Somebody who was
(19:34):
on the podcast, Angela, I think it was Caldwell up
in Canada, and she was a teacher. And I think
one of the students came up to her and mentioned that I believe it
was an electrician. And she looked at him sideways like she wasn't
informed at that time. But after that conversation, she Went
sort of down the whole path of what the possibilities are with working their
(19:57):
hands. Changed everything that she did. She's no longer working at the school, but
she formed a program to give back to kids in the
trades and teach. Like she wasn't informed about it. It was
interesting. Like just thinking about how many times that happens when
somebody is in school and a kid who's interested working with their
hands. How many times a teacher says, are you sure
(20:19):
maybe you want to go to college? I think it's better today.
I think it's gotten better with all the information out there on social media
and all the people in welding, people electrical, like they're showing
A Day in the Life. So kids are more exposed to it and teachers are
more exposed to sort of what the trades are all about. But that conversation
seems to come up quite often. So I
(20:41):
think we all have a story surrounding something like that. Like you said,
they had that Million Dollar plumber article about how the plumbers are making a million
dollars a year. And I think that got some people's attention, which is great. And
they need to do that more often if they can. So that would be to
be able to share that. I think that's great and I'm thrilled when you hear
those kind of stories. I joke about it and I say we
(21:01):
need to change a perception of what construction's like. People think back and
they think of it as a butt crack industry. I hope I can say that.
But that's what they think of it. They think of the plumber with his pants
half down and they're digging a ditch or doing something like that. And there's so
much more to the construction industry and the skilled trades are
so important and there's so much technology being used nowadays that
(21:23):
you very well could end up being the BIM designer for the project. And you're
working at a computer all day. You're making great money and you're doing all kinds
of technology. You're not even outside digging a ditch at all. So again,
there's so many options of where you can go with what you do in construction
and that's. We try to tell the kids in our camps. We just try to
give them a little taste of everything. We hope that we can get them interested.
(21:45):
We're finding it's hard to track them if they haven't graduated. Each
camp probably has. About a quarter of the kids have graduated high school. Like that
was their senior year and they just did the camp right afterwards. And. And we're
finding of those kids that we're getting close to 70% of
them are getting jobs in construction of the ones that have graduated high school.
That's how much they enjoyed it, and they really are trying it.
(22:06):
Are they retaining in there? I hope so, but that's the challenge also. There's a
little bit of a retention challenge in construction as well, and that's where we need
to work on that as well. I like that you can start off in the
field and then work your way up and then maybe
own your own business if you're entrepreneur. Obviously, that's a different skill set.
Some of people who start off in the trades, that's what they want at the
(22:28):
end of the day. And I've spoken to many people who have sort of made
that journey, and some of them are extremely,
extremely successful. I mean, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs kind of put
it on the map years ago with his show to show blue
collar and, you know, all these different industries that people just
never really heard of in blue collar. And they do extremely, extremely well.
(22:49):
I remember a friend came up to me, I think, earlier this year and
said something about, like, he grew up with somebody who was in the plumbing
world and he had a really big house. He's like, do they do well?
I'm like, dude, they do do well. They
do well. Because he's in finance in a whole different world. But
people just don't realize. And I get this too, especially
(23:11):
on social media, because I'm heavily active on TikTok and I put out a lot
of content, so I get a lot of feedback from people. But a
lot of kids do say, I don't make any money.
At first. I'm looking at apprentice wages
and I'm making 18 to $20 an hour. But I'm also looking
at working at McDonald's or Chipotle, and it's 22, $23
(23:33):
an hour. I don't have to be in the field, and then I have
all these individuals push back who are in the trades and
saying, you level up. You don't just stay at 18 to
$20. You're working way up, and they're getting. Trained
in the same time and they're getting education. So in the long
run, when you graduate, I mean, in the Bay Area particularly, I think we are
(23:55):
the highest unions in the Bay Area. But when you graduate your apprenticeship, when you're
done with four or five years of apprenticeship, you're making six figures with no
hesitation at all. And with construction the way it is, sometimes you're working a lot
of overtime. So you're making really good money if you're willing to work the overtime.
Yeah. Some of the numbers that people come back with on social media
and the people that they include overtime, I'm like, that's a lot of money. Yes,
(24:16):
it's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of money. It's what you
put in is what you get out. I just want to swing back to your
camp for a second. What is the number one trade that kids
want to get into that you've seen? We focus on
mep, so mechanical electrical, plumbing trades. We haven't had
as much electrical lately. I mean, we're finally going to have our first all electrical
(24:37):
camp this summer. I have a feeling when our union electrical contractors get involved in
this and we start getting more of that, we might find that being very popular.
But I think piping and plumbing, they seem to be very interested
in the welding and the fire side of that. We teach all three of them
and they seem to be. We kind of have a mix. You know, some will
go into the sheet metal side. I think it just kind of depends. Now, I
(24:57):
know in sheet metal, I was a SMACNA as a sheet metal contractors and air
conditioning national association and I was national president of
SMACNA about the time I started the camp because I started finding out how
every contractor across the country is sheet metal contractor. Was complaining about
not having enough people. And that's when I said, you know what we need to
figure out? We need to stop complaining and get some skin in the game and
(25:18):
do something about it. So when I had this camp, we wrote a
playbook after we did the first camp, and I basically started sharing it across
the nations and kind of holding contractors accountable, saying,
stop complaining about it. Do something about it. Host a camp. Because we
rely on hosts. We need to find a host to host a camp. We will
help them host a camp. We give them tons of resources, but I've got
(25:40):
to have somebody step up. About 65% of the sheet metal contractors
across the nation are owned by people that started in the trades.
So they're not owned by engineers, they're not owned by contractors. They're people that
started their trades, their career in the trades, they worked their way up and now
they own the company. So we tell these kids, you can do what you
want to do. And I was a young man in one of our videos is
(26:01):
online. He's like, no, I think I'm interested in plumbing. Yeah, I like plumbing.
He goes, I want to own my own plumbing company. And I'm like, well, good.
You go through the trades and you're going to. You're going to be able to
own your own plumbing company. So I think it's awesome. I love it when they
have that desire, because get a base in the trades, you know, five,
six, seven years, and then work on owning your own company. That's sort of the
goal, to showcase what the possibilities are
(26:24):
and what that ladder of success looks like for kids. And
these individuals who own their own company are the ones that
you can say, oh, yeah, in a handful of years, it's possible that I can
get there. It's interesting, you bring them up that the ones that are complaining that
they can't find enough people, is there pushback
on why they won't do a camp? Is it an investment
(26:46):
thing? Like, is it time? Probably more time than money. I mean, I.
It does cost them a little money, too, but it's really probably more time. And
what we try to say to them is, listen, we're making it as easy as
possible. We're giving you the recipe, we're giving you. We call it the easy button.
We're giving you everything you need, forms and suggestions. You just
need to be able to give us the time. Because they have to recruit for
(27:07):
the kids in their areas. I mean, I mean, I can't because they're all over
the nation and we have four in Canada as well. They have to go recruit
the kids in their area. But I have a camp this summer, and he's brand
new camp. Never run a camp before. And usually the first summer is a challenge
to recruit the kids. And he's in DeKalb, Illinois. I'm not sure I'm saying that
right, but it's a relatively small town. He's working with the Chamber of
(27:27):
Commerce. He had 120 kids apply. He wanted
25 kids. Now he's going to do 31 kids. But the Chamber of commerce
in that town got very involved and started putting it out there and helped him
with recruiting and really need to involve the city like he did and
involve some nonprofits and encourage the kids. So it'll be interesting
to see how his camp goes. But this guy went all in. He said, you
(27:50):
know what? I'm going to run a camp. And you know what? He's probably going
to have more kids than he can hire. So he's going to have to bring
in other contractors to say, hey, or hire these kids. They're really good. So I
keep challenging these guys and saying, listen, it's your turn to step up and do
something about it. You can't just. And I will tell them, their
employees that work for them now, they love it. I mean, that
(28:10):
generation of employees that are working for most of these contractors now want to give
back, and they love giving back. And I think sometimes they
don't realize that side benefit that the companies that are running these, that the
employees love it and they share it. The ones that are teaching, I mean, the
union folks that are teaching the classes just love it because they're
sharing their knowledge with the next generation. And you can't sit on the
(28:31):
sidelines if there's a shortage out there. You're not getting the right people.
This is a good way to get them in. And I assume it creates
stickiness for the kids that go through because they get to
witness firsthand. And working with that particular
company, seeing the culture and seeing what the possibilities
are, I would assume there's a good percentage of kids
(28:53):
that are the right fit for that organization, as opposed to
somebody who's not doing anything and just complaining and sitting on the sidelines saying,
there's a short. And that's what it is. There's a couple things we have. Some
of the kids are going back to high school, right? Because they're not out of
high school yet. So they're telling their friends about what they did this past summer
and how great it was. So that's awesome. The other thing we're finding is that
(29:13):
even the kids that are applying and graduated and trying to get into the
apprenticeship, they're enjoying it so much that the next thing you know,
because what we're hearing is to get in the apprenticeship, it's a lot of word
of mouth. Well, word of mouth. When you now are in an
underserved area and an area hadn't been before, all of a sudden
there's the brother, older brother and the neighbor are also applying
(29:34):
because their friend has told them or their brother has told them what a great
situation this is. So we're finding that we're getting more kids into the
trades than we even planned on that didn't even go to our camp. But because
of word of mouth and the kids or the neighborhood and that type of thing,
which is what we want. Because if we can work with areas,
underserved, areas like that, then we can change the look of construction a little bit
(29:54):
too. So if I am a company who wants to get
involved in the camp, walk us through what that looks like.
So if somebody's listening right now and says, wow, this is a really Good idea.
What do they need to do and what's given to them so they're set up
for success. Yeah. So they would reach out to us at Heavy Metal Summer
experience, which we're hmse.org
(30:16):
or just Google Heavy Metal Summer Experience and you'll find us and reach out to
us and we would work with you to explain to you. You are going to
have some costs to run the camp. Every kid gets to go for free and
it costs about $2,000 per kid to put them through the camp.
But about half of that is my costs. The Heavy Metal Summer, meaning the
boots, the tools, which again are kind of costs. They're in kind
(30:38):
costs. We get donated. But there's many things like that. But part of that costs
are you. Cause you're going to. You as the host camp are going to have
graduation and you're going to host their. You might have to pay your instructors depending
on the timeframe that you're running it. Some of the camps are run in the
afternoons after work is done and they get volunteers. So it just depends on your
situation. Reach out to us and we will provide you if you
want to run a camp. We have a huge amount of resources. We'll give you
(31:01):
a login to those and you'll be able to go in there. You'll have permission
slips and marketing material to help you recruit the kids. We give
you release forms. We share all of those with them.
We share graduation certificates and just pretty much try to make
it, like I said, the easy button. So I usually assign a liaison.
We have a couple guys that are retired and volunteering to be my
(31:23):
liaisons. And so either myself or a couple of these guys will volunteer
and I'll call them up during the time that they're setting. Like, how you doing?
Have you made your schedule yet? How's recruiting going? And I have a
social media group that like a couple areas right now are struggling to find kids
right now. In a few areas, I mean we're. We're struggling, we're a little low
on kids. So we're going to start a social media blast in those areas and
(31:43):
see if we can get kids to go. And again, a lot of it depends
on the person out there recruiting the kids. So I mean, that's a good blueprint
for somebody who's thinking about doing this. It's not just like go start a camp.
There's an actual blueprint that you've put together from the beginning to
the end. And there is an investment in of course. But think about it.
You know, long term of if you invite X
(32:04):
amount of kids but you get a good percentage of them or they tell somebody
else about your company, you're going to be leaps and
bounds past some of the other local companies that are not
doing that. And you get to the shining stars as well. I mean, there might
be a couple gems in that group of kids and, and if they're graduated, they
want to work. You're the one who hosted the camp, so you're going to say,
(32:25):
I definitely going to offer this one and this one a job. You know, if
you don't have enough jobs for everybody, then you can say, oh, there's a few
other kids for the other contractors. But you get the gems in the room because
you're the one who put the time into it. And I tell the story about
my purchasing lady at Western Allied when the first year she worked there, she
didn't think she was qualified to help. We get volunteers for the camp, project
managers, purchasing engineers to kind of more
(32:47):
eyes on the kids. But the third year of our camp and her second year
there, the young man running the camp kind of for us encouraged her and said,
come on, Justine, you can do this, you can do this. Just come volunteer. And
she said, okay, fine, I'll just volunteer. She called me that night on her way
home and she said, angie, today was the best day of work I've ever had
in my life. She goes, it was so much fun volunteering and watching these kids
(33:08):
and seeing the light in their eyes. She goes, I just had a great time.
It's not just good for the kids, it's good for the employees as well. So
it really made me realize that there's more benefits than just helping the kids
and you're helping our industry, but you're helping your employees as well and. Building
a culture and just making an impact overall.
Do these camps, is it a one time thing or they
(33:30):
do it every single year? Some of these companies, Every time we've. Had
companies run a camp, they do it again the next year. We pretty much, other
than we have two companies this year that are remodeling their shops. So they took
the summer off because they don't have a shop to do it in the summer,
but everyone else is 100% return. That's why we've grown so much. I
mean, literally we went from two camps to 11 camps to
(33:52):
32 camps to now 50 camps. I mean, something like that. I
think I missed one in there, but we really went from 28 kids to 125
kids to 325 kids to 500 kids to this summer, 900
kids. So I'm a little scared where we're going next summer. So
I knew how to run a for profit company when I worked as a mechanical
contractor and now I got to learn how to run a nonprofit company. So yeah,
(34:14):
a little bit different, but super exciting what you're
doing. And you know, just going back to anybody who's listening, you know,
definitely reach out to Angie. You guys are doing some amazing stuff and
that's really how you curb this shortage is being the forefront of
like doing these camps and showcasing what you can
do with your hands that, you know, the shortage of
(34:36):
40% of men and women that are retiring over the next five or ten years,
maybe we can start to pull that number down with these type of
camps and you know, these type of opportunities
now. The tools of the trade. Angie,
this has been an amazing conversation, but in every episode
(34:56):
we always ask our guests a tools of
the trade. What's one lesson,
mindset or piece of advice you can give a young person
stepping into the trades for the first time? The number one for
me is you can do anything you want to do. And to see
like me talking about the young women that are great welders, if you
(35:19):
want to do something and you enjoy it, go for it. You can do anything
you want to do. And I think don't be afraid of it. And I never
minded being a woman. If you think about it. I've been in the construction industry
for over 40 years, so I've seen a lot in the construction industry over 40
years and I love the industry. So I would tell them, you can do
anything you want to do. Just don't let anybody say you can't. And that's important,
(35:40):
particularly for those of us that are not the majority in the
construction industry. Don't be afraid. Just do what you need to do. That's great
advice and it's just, you gotta just start especially you know, women
with 25% who are coming through your camps. It's just
amazing to hear that, to see that, that they're
interested in working with their hands. Cause we desperately need women. We deem people in
(36:03):
the trades and these camps are doing some amazing things. So keep up the great
work. If people want to go down the rabbit hole and find out more, where
do they find you? Yeah, we are on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook,
Instagram. Check out our website, which has a ton of great videos
and a lot of information on our website. So that's
www.hmse.org
(36:24):
that stands for heavymetalsummerexperience.org and that's where you'll
find all kinds of information about our camps and all of our locations. We
have a map of the United States and Canada on there that shows every location.
There's a lot of states I'm not in yet, and I'd like to get in
some of those states. So excited that we are in a few in the South.
We're in Nashville this summer for the first time ever, so. But we are
(36:45):
missing some big states. We don't have anybody in Florida. I mean, there's a lot
of big states we're missing. So I'm hoping to find a few more hosts for
next summer. Well, maybe next time we check in, that number will be
5,000. Angie, it's been a blast having you here. Keep up the great
work. Thank you, Andrew. I really appreciate you having me on. And thank you
to our listeners. If today's episode got you thinking about the trades, take the
(37:05):
next step and grab your free copy of the no BS Guide to Careers
in the Skilled Trades@Andrew Brown.net. it's packed with
real steps, real stories, and everything you need to start a career
that pays. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never
miss another episode. We'll see you next time.
(37:26):
Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Lost Art. Of the Skilled Trades. Visit
us@AndrewBrown.net for more resources and tips.
Join us next time for real stories and meaningful initiatives
as we celebrate our. Men and women in the skilled trades. And shape
the future together.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!