May 6, 2025 • 51 mins
Host Andrew Brown sits down with This Old House host Kevin O’Connor to explore the state of the skilled trades career path in today’s economy. They dive deep into the construction labor shortage, discuss real-world apprenticeship opportunities, and reflect on the impact of places like Williamson College of the Trades.
They also confront outdated assumptions around the trade school vs college debate — and what needs to happen for the next generation to see the skilled trades not as a fallback, but as a first choice.
IN THIS EPISODE:
[00:01] – Kevin’s path from finance to This Old House
[08:45] – How trades-focused TV really gets made
[18:22] – Inside Williamson College of the Trades
[31:40] – Trade school vs college: fixing the PR problem
[45:10] – Addressing the construction labor shortage
[59:00] – Building better apprenticeship opportunities
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Williamson College of the Trades is a tuition-free trade school creating career-ready graduates with multiple job offers, and no debt.
The construction labor shortage is real, but solvable if we invest in training, technology, and awareness.
Apprenticeship opportunities are the fastest, most effective way to launch a skilled trades career path and companies should promote them.
The trade school vs college decision should be based on ROI and lifestyle, not outdated assumptions or prestige.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Kevin O’Connor is the host of This Old House, a legendary PBS series now in its fifth decade. With roots in finance and family construction, Kevin brings a unique lens to the skilled trades industry, combining storytelling with advocacy. He’s a champion for institutions like Williamson College of the Trades and a vocal supporter of closing the construction labor shortage through smarter training and increased apprenticeship opportunities.
KEYWORDS:
Skilled trades career path, construction labor shortage, apprenticeship opportunities, Williamson College of the Trades, trade school vs college, Skilled Trades, Trades Industry, Andrew Brown, Kevin Oconnor, This Old House, Toolfetch, Carpentry, HVAC, Electricians, Plumbers, Millwrights, Construction, Craftsmanship, Problem-solving, Creativity, Tradespeople, Advocacy, Trades Careers, Industry Experts, Contractors, Education, Skilled Trades Advisory Council
RESOURCE LINKS:
Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinoconnortoh/
Website: https://officialkevinoconnor.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
providing them training? Are we providing them access
(00:21):
to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
progression?
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost star of the Skilled Trades
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
(00:45):
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
Today we have a special guest, Kevin O'Connor, host
of this Old House. Welcome, Kevin, to the show.
Very good to be here, Andrew. Nice to see you again. Likewise.
(01:08):
Everyone at some point has a fork in the road
with their journey in life. For me, it was 9
11, finding survivors and working back to back with
tradespeople on ground zero. And that sent me down a
different path to start a business named Tool Fetch to
provide tools equipment for tradespeople to get their jobs
(01:29):
done. And interesting enough, your journey really started out in
finance. But fate sort of stepped in after your wife
wrote a letter to a show this old house and
fixing up your house. How did that play out? It was
dumb luck. No doubt about it. You're right about the finance
career. I was in corporate banking. My wife was in finance as well.
(01:52):
Although I grew up around construction because of my dad's company and his
work and brothers that are in the business and all of that. So when Kathleen
and I bought our first house, we bought a fixer upper two
family. Kitchen didn't work, bathrooms didn't work, and did it
mostly because I grew up as a fan of this old house, watching the show
and then enjoyed the working with my dad and brothers
(02:14):
doing the kind of sideline construction stuff, part time stuff and mostly labor
type of things. But anyway, we set about to fix the house up.
Like a lot of people were immediately in over our heads. We're like, oh my
God, how do we do all this stuff? So we were
trying to replicate a historical detail on our 1893 Queen Anne
Victorian and didn't know really where to turn. I don't know
(02:37):
why we did it, but we wrote a letter to the magazine the sole house.
And at the time, unbeknownst to us and to anybody, they
Were in the first year of production of what is now our sister show Ask
the Soul House. And the basic idea there is the same
tradespeople who do the season long grand renovation
of an entire home were now going to the mailbag,
(02:59):
answering homeowner questions and showing up for half a day and fixing their frozen
sinks or whatever may be afflicting them. They didn't have a
mailbag for the show because it wasn't on tv. So they went to the magazine,
found our letter sent Tom Silva and our painting contractor
out filmed an episode which we were thrilled. I was the
fanboy on the porch when it was all said and done saying, hey Tommy, don't
(03:21):
leave. Can we take a picture with you and show to the friends and family.
The next day, completely unbeknownst to me, they are on the look out for
a host. They called me back three weeks later,
pretty much on that phone call and one quick lunch meeting, asked if I
wanted to be the host of both shows. This Old House and Ask this Old
House, which was insane. Wasn't looking for a job in television,
(03:41):
never thought about it, didn't really want it. But that's the one show that I
was like, huh, pretty cool. So I hung up the blue suit and put away
the wingtips and joined Tommy and Roger and Norm and
Richard and the rest of the crew on the show. And that's 20 some odd
years ago. It's amazing how these opportunities come out of nowhere.
You're not even looking. I caught fate, only that it kind of sent
(04:03):
you down a road that really that's where you should be.
That's where your, your specialty is, being a host of the show
and guiding people through different stories and people's journeys
and fixing up people's houses. And I had the opportunity to meet
you on one of the sets over the summer
in Westford, Massachusetts. And I'll have to get an update from you
(04:25):
of how that is going. And you know, I watched you
do a scene 20 times over and over
again and you didn't even miss a beat because you went right into
the. Whatever you were talking about or something didn't work right. And you went into
this particular piece of it and I was just in awe of how much
production and how much redoing things. It was really
(04:48):
just interesting how that all worked and played out. Yeah, you call it interesting,
I call it laborious. I don't enjoy the TV part of
my TV job, you know, like I really like being on the job site as
do all the other folks who I'm on camera with. We like doing the work.
I think people know this who watch the show. But for those who don't,
everyone on our cast, if you will, everyone
(05:11):
on the television show is a professional contractor who still has their
professional contracting company, whether it be landscaping, painting, general
contracting, plumbing and such like that. I'm the only person
generally on camera, other than our homeowners, who isn't
a pro. So that sensibility, they all just want
to work. And the television cameras show up and are a bit of a
(05:33):
distraction. I'm kind of with them. I'm just like, oh, my God, we got to
do it again. But we do, because at the end of the day, we're trying
to put out, you know, high quality content. It served us well
47 years later after it started. But as you saw,
it can be tedious to get it right from a television perspective.
The easy part is getting it right from a content perspective, because everyone we deal
(05:53):
with are professionals, top of the trade, know the stuff inside and
out. Their knowledge is what actually produces the scenes.
And just watching that and just watching it, and I forget his name. Who does
the camera work. And he was on the lift. He was. Realistically, it was
only about one camera that was really doing most of the work, and
they were doing different angles. But you would think it would be
(06:15):
more cameras, more people, but it really wasn't. It was a
small crew getting all that done. That's part of our DNA,
and it's by design. You know, the show goes back to
1979. And the way they made television back then was
completely different. I tell these stories when I speak publicly. You
know, big cameras that were tethered
(06:37):
by hardwire to, if you were lucky, a
portable truck as opposed to a studio revolutionary. You know, at the time,
to take television cameras out of the studio and into the field, but
they still had to be tethered by cable. We still needed a portable truck.
The terms that we use in editing, you know, which is cut and
splice, they come from the old days when
(06:59):
this stuff was done on tape and it was physically
cut with scissors and taped back together. And the
legendary story is that the founder of our show and basically
creator of Modern how to Television, Russ Morash, who
started this Old House, but also the New Yankee
Workshop, the French Chef with Julia Child and a whole other list of things that
(07:20):
were the first ones out there. He despised the editing process
so much, which increases exponentially as you add
cameras. As now you have multiple rolls of tape that
could come into play. He Despised that process so much, he pushed us back
to a single camera operation and said, you know, if we can stay in a
scene for 8 continuous minutes or 10 continuous minutes, then there's no edits
(07:42):
necessary. And that was how the show was filmed early on. I worked
with him as the director of the show for a couple years early on, and
I learned how to do it that way and I enjoy it. That's my preference.
It's efficient. It doesn't quite fit with television genre
right now, which is snap cuts and real fast moving and all that kind of
stuff. It still keeps us in a one camera
(08:04):
world for the most part. And that's what you were seeing.
The iteration of what we were doing was so that Dino could do the wide
on his camera and we do the scene and then he'd move into a medium
and we'd do the scene again and him to move it in on tight, we'd
do the scene again. So it comes with a little bit of downside.
It's a vestige of our DNA going back to the very early days. It's part
(08:25):
of what makes our show distinctive. It still looks a little, you
know, one take ish, meandering, walk and talk type stuff. Yeah, it's
interesting the evolution of the show, you know, especially obviously Bob
Villa and then Steve Thomas and then you. And it's just how it's
evolved over the last handful years. And I, I always remember watching the show as
a young kid. I always remember my father watching the show, my brother watching. It
(08:46):
was just like baked in as part of the shows that we
watched, especially on Home Improvement. But again, it was all
inspiring just to see it in person and how it really gets broken down. Because
when it's on tv, obviously it's edited and. But there's a lot
of work that goes into behind the scenes and the
homeowners and the design rights and getting everything together, the
(09:08):
materials and getting everything in sequence. It's a
lot of work. So you had this growing up. Your dad was
in, you said construction. He was commercial construction. So a
little different. He's a civil engineer, so he built high rises and steel
mills and football stadiums and all that kind of stuff. And so my
exposure to his job sites was as a union laborer,
(09:30):
you know, because boss man dad could, you know, tell the, the shop
steward. I got a couple kids over summer break coming down and
so I would work on his job sites because the pay was triple what it
was, you know, washing dishes that I used to do at the restaurant. And we
could work overtime and he could plug us in and out. So I was fortunate
in that regard. But it was strictly laborer work
(09:51):
and mostly, you know, cleanup type work. But I was around it, you know, I
was around the DNA. And then when we were at home,
the seven of us, five boys, myself included, it was the
time and age when you did a lot of stuff on your own. So we
built tree houses and go karts and he was always bringing home extra plywood and
two by fours for supplies. And we were, you know, hammer them into trees
(10:12):
and stuff like that. So it's just what we like to do. But
you know, my older brother went and construction, you know, the twins who were
below them. One does finance for construction, you know, one does
project management, utility, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of seeped into our,
our DNA a of it. And you get familiar with that job site
feel. You get a little sense of the smell and the taste of it. And
(10:33):
I've always really enjoyed it. And even when I went down the
finance route, I did it in my spare time because I missed
it. And like that's what Jord was to buy that fixer upper that I thought
I was going to be able to do it my own two hands. Now it
all makes sense of why you bought a fixer upper in the 1800s and you
beat me because my house is 1958. I'm only the second
(10:54):
owner of this house. And we were looking for a while. We settled
up here in Chapqua, New York, and we looked for quite a while. And I
remember looking at a bunch of houses and this house popped up and I said
to my wife, this is the house. She's like, you're crazy. It's not the house.
I said, this is the house. And on a Monday night, my son was
a couple years old and I drag her out here all the way up from
(11:14):
the city. She's screaming at me. She's like, why are we going up here? It's
Monday night. My son is screaming in the background. We get here, she's like,
oh, I get it now. But the biggest characteristic,
which I don't know, it's kind of an eyesore, was a big green kitchen from
1983. The whole thing is green. It's like, why would the
homeowners put a green kitchen in and say, wow, that's
(11:36):
really nice. So I said to my wife, we're going to redo it. But it
took seven years to redo that kitchen, tear
down a wall, and to make it into something that we really wanted
because it was separated from the house. And I also remember
walking with the inspector when we inspect the house and he's like,
your roof is a 30 year timberline roof and it's
(11:58):
almost at that 30 year mark and your boiler is going to go. And
I'm thinking like all the dollar signs and the kitchen, I was like,
all right, let me do it. And eight, nine years later, we're
happy with where we are. But it's funny, you look at
the house like, how am I going to fix it up? How are you going
to do it? And you do it slowly. But yeah, I'm always ambitious too, that
(12:19):
I want to do projects, but there's only so much that I can do where
I need to call on a person in the trades. I mean, your story, my
story, it's played out, you know, by hundreds of thousands of people who do
that, who, you know, buy their first home that, you know, they can only buy
what they can afford. And it needs a lot of work and some people live
with it, some people hire out and other people get to it and do it
(12:40):
themselves or a combination thereof. And so it's a very, very familiar
story. It's why we're still on the air, quite frankly, because, you know,
people ask me why we're on the air. My short, snarky answers is because
people keep buying crappy old houses, they need expert advice on how to fix
them up. Our renovation of that two family, Queen Anne took about nine
years as well. Yeah. And we did every room, you know,
(13:02):
all throughout, added dormers to finish off an unfinished
attic. I mean, every bit of that project, you know, house was done over.
And it's great. I mean, I love the experience. We still have it. We
eventually moved out of it when the second and third children came because my
wife came home from the hospital with two kids in a bucket and was
walking up to the second floor and said, guess what we're not doing anymore. He's
(13:24):
carrying these kids up to the second and third floor of this house. And we
didn't have a backyard to speak of. We did move to a single family,
but we kept it. And it's been a great investment. We still have a very
sort of warm, endearing spot in our heart for it. We kind of love the
house as our first spot. It's hard to pick up and go and to find
something else, especially when you have memories in your first house. But, you know,
(13:45):
you don't have enough room, you don't have enough space. You gotta, you Gotta move
on and find something else and make memories somewhere else. That's the American way.
We're less so now, but we're transient. You know, people move around a lot in
this country. Sadly, not quite as much as we used to, which is probably
part of the housing crisis. But that's a whole nother podcast. But, yeah, people
buy a small place and they move to a medium place, and then they move
(14:05):
to a bigger place or they move for a job or schools or whatever. It's
nice to have that ability to move around. So I have to thank you because
I was listening to a podcast about a year, year and a half ago,
and it was the micro podcast, and it was titled Apple Juice and
Saltines. And I remember the. I remember the podcast because, remember Mike Rowe? I
think, like, he cut himself shaving. He was bleeding or something. And then he named
(14:28):
it, you know, this name for this podcast. And you were talking about,
obviously, this old house. And then he's like, somehow it came up
Williamson College of the Trades. And you put it on the
map that it's a trade school where kids go. It's
about 300 or so students. They learn a trade, it's
tuition free, and they come from tough backgrounds. I'm like,
(14:49):
whoa, what's that all about? And I'll talk about President
Rounds, and I got to go down there myself. But how did you find
that school? So I do hope we get to talk about it. I mean, I
know you interviewed Mike, and so you're viewers and listeners can go tune
that in because he's phenomenal. But the story for me is I had a high
school soccer coach who I am very close with
(15:10):
Remain. So Rick Jacobs and I
went to a very unique high school in Newark, New Jersey, that also
serves, you know, a population of kids who don't often
get a lot of opportunities and are facing hard situations. And it does a
remarkable job of turning those young people
into men. It's now co ed. When I was there, it was all guys. Now
(15:32):
it's, you know, guys and girls. But anyway, Rick, who lives
near Williamson, actually was on a. On a business call with Mike
Rounds. Rick was thinking, when he saw Williamson College of the Trades, he
said, boy, this is the only place I've ever seen that operates with the
sensibility and the values of St. Benedict's Prep, where he was
soccer coach for decades and where I graduated from. And
(15:54):
he immediately thought about me and saying that I
needed to know about it because of what I do on television. At the same
time, it turned out that Mike Rounds, as president of the college,
had his eye on St. Benedict's Prep because the school had a very flattering
expose on 60 Minutes that went national. And Mike was intrigued by
how they pulled it off. And in particular, the headmaster, who has been long term
(16:17):
headmaster for 30 years. And so Rick became the sort of,
let's put the two, you know, three things together. Invited me down to see
Williamson. We called the headmaster, who's also a friend, and he came down and
Mike, myself, Rick, father Edwin from St. Benedict's all got together. And as
soon as I saw it and heard their story, I knew that it was something
that was very much in the DNA of this old house.
(16:39):
We were in the middle of our Generation Next initiative, which was just
calling attention to people into the trades. And that it was a good career path
and these types of things. And so that led us to
bring a production crew and a camera crew back to do what has now
been three different visits to the school to
show them off on our television show and make it known, hopefully to
(17:01):
the wire public, that it exists and places like that exist. So it was
fortuitous. But it was that connection to my high school and these
very influential mentors in my life, soccer coach, headmaster, that brought
me to a place that is full of mentors like President Rounds and those young
mentors, men who go through that program. And as you now know, it is
spectacular. It is one of the greatest stories in this, you know,
(17:23):
field that is out there. It's just tremendous. And I remember going up
there, obviously you did the commencement speech for graduation.
And I believe it was like 80 plus kids that graduated around that
amount. Just watching their faces. They're starting off with no
debt. They're getting three or four offers from 150
different companies that come down their senior year and they're
(17:45):
making 50, 60, $70,000 right out of the
gate. They're respectable. You know, kids that are coming out
of this school that like you said, came from tough backgrounds, they have to wear
a suit, they got to wear a tie, they got to make their bed, do
the flag and everything. And I remember going there
originally and meeting. I forget his name offhand, but
(18:06):
he was in the carpentry side. But he took me around, he came
over, he shook my hand and he almost broke my hand because I can grab
my hand, like really strong grip. And he looked me in the eye. He
was really good. He wanted to own his own construction business. And every time
I met somebody from the different
departments, it was the same thing. Look in the eye shook my
(18:28):
hand, firm handshake. And they all had
aspirations of being successful in the traits. And that's what
that school teaches kids. And when I sat down with
President Rounds, he gets emotional. It's no bullshit. Like, he is,
like, in it and just watching him and what they do there.
And they said it was like a hundred thousand dollars a kid if they had
(18:49):
to pay tuition. And I Wish they had 10 more schools like that. When I
gave that commencement speech, aside from a terrible case of imposter
syndrome, like, I remember a couple of the stories that I told from the
stage. I at one point started talking to the parents
of the people, of the graduates there, you know, and just
pointing out that they deserve some recognition for
(19:12):
finding this path for their sons, for choosing it, having
the courage to kind of take a different path than
society says is acceptable right now. But then I had this line about and making
a wise decision of your kids graduating with no debt. And that was the
applause line. That was the one when the crowd started cheering and chanting.
They, as parents and as benefactors of these young men, were, you know,
(19:34):
acutely aware of what a gift that was and how important it is for their
success to come out, not just with, you know, an
education and a skill and job opportunities,
but not to have those things be weighed down by excessive
debt, which is right now probably one of the greatest scandals going on in our
country is that the, you know, the trillion dollars of college debt that's hanging on
(19:56):
out there, that's just sand in the gears of our country,
is terrible. And I was not expecting that to be the applause line.
I had a couple jokes that I thought would go over better, but it was
that one that got the applause. And in hindsight, rightfully so.
You know, it's always funny. It's. You always think that you put in a certain
joke, a line you think that's going to get the most attention, but it's some
obscure thing that you say. You're like, how did that hit? I don't even understand
(20:19):
that. I see that with video and stuff that I do, and I'm sure you
do. Why did that hit? You never know. It's a remarkable place, though.
It's a great, nice thing for me personally, to have
discovered that and become friends with Mike who. He and I go back and
forth all the time on stuff, and I really enjoyed telling that story to Mike
Rowe and hope that someday he goes down there. But I could tell that Mike
(20:40):
Rowe was intrigued by it as well, because it shares the values that I think
he does a very good job of espousing with his foundation, with his work
fellowships. There's nothing really that exists out there like
that. It's unique in its own way. I'm glad that you brought it up
and I'm glad that it was brought up on the show that others can share
that. So if you definitely want to find out about the Williams from College of
(21:01):
Trades, definitely take a look at it and look up President Rounds. I have a
podcast on that. And he is just deeply in touch with that and
just emotional when he talks about the kids. And impressive, right? I mean, he's a
West Point graduate, he served in the military, he taught back at West
Point. And he and his wife are all in with Williamson. Absolutely all
in. Perfect people to be associated with that school. I remember you asked
(21:24):
me a question when we met and you said about the trades. Are we at
the tipping point? Where are things sort of changing with the
trades? Are things getting better? Because obviously we have a massive
shortage, about 40% retiring over the next five or 10 years. And I could rattle
off statistics and welding, carpentry and others, but I think
it's is over the last handful
(21:45):
years, especially recently with the Wall Street Journal,
the tool belt generation trade school being up about
16% in about 2023, the trades are in a
much different light than they once were, although it still
has PR problems and people assume and still
think that it's less than or option B
(22:08):
for kids who are just not doing well in school. So you can go into
the trades, but what's happening and what I see is that kids are coming out
of school not knowing how to swing a hammer or even read a tape
measure. Just the basic, basic stuff. And they're
bypassing. A lot of these kids are just kind of bypassing, even though that they
have a technical spark or they good with their hands. A lot
(22:29):
of times they get forced and pushed into college, you know, spending
hundreds of thousand dollars in getting into debt and getting jobs coming out of
school. There's no real return on investment right away. But I
think over the last couple years it's starting to
shift. Are you seeing that or are you seeing something
different? No, I think I agree. I feel the
(22:50):
sentiment shifting for sure. I
feel the public perception improving.
I see more people talking about this
in the mainstream, which is all good. I think
sadly, part of it is because it had gotten so
bad, you know, that the pendulum had swung so far in the wrong
(23:12):
direction that there was really nowhere else to go. But I
am encouraged by the shift in momentum, I'm still a little
discouraged because the hole that I think we have to dig out of
is still very deep. And I do think that we are
structurally still sort of misaligned for what
we need going forward, even though the sensibility is
(23:34):
changing. What I mean by that is I think most people
understand that over and over and over again, you
kind of get out what you put in. If you work hard at
whatever you do, you're probably gonna find some success.
And if you goof off and you don't work hard, you're probably
gonna find yourself in trouble. That type of thing. The situation that we've had for
(23:57):
the past, let's call it 50 to 70 years, where we
overvalued a higher education over a lesser
degree and manual work and that type of stuff, that's a battleship
that's going to have to be turned slowly and redirected.
We are still supporting higher
education on an annual basis in this country. The numbers I've
(24:20):
heard are 500 billion of
support for tuition assistance,
loans, funding, direct grants, subsidies,
these types of things. And it's a gigantic number.
I'm not suggesting that all of it is misdirected, but it's a gigantic
number. And to put it in perspective, if you look at what the country supports
(24:42):
in terms of apprenticeships, that number is about 400
million. So for every dollar that we push in the
direction of apprenticeships, which is the marker for going into
a trade, working with your hands, we spend a thousand dollars to support
higher education. You're going to get out what you put in.
So those big structural things, while
(25:04):
changing, are going to take a long time. So
I think we're going to live with this deficit and this perception problem for years
to come. I'm glad it's moving in the right direction, but I do think we've
got a long way to go. We do. And I'm just thinking what people are
doing out there. I have a foundation called the Skilled Trades Advisory Counselor.
And I have about eight other members. Seven of them are women. And there's
(25:26):
one organization called Explore the Trades. Kate Cemento and
her organization sends out these poster kits. You can't see them off
camera here, but they're posters that go out to guidance counselors and about.
I think out of all schools, about 20, 25% of all schools have these posters
where kids can go in and see paths of what
you can be in H Vac, what you can be in electrical at least sparks
(25:48):
their interest. When you see college, college, college, college, College. Oh wa. What's this
trades thing? Organizations like that are trying to kind of
push back and fight against, you know, for kids that are just don't want to
go to school because it's not built for everybody to go down that path.
I went to University of Rhode island for four years and came out more confused
out of school than I was in school. And I was a freaking programmer. I
(26:10):
was a programmer. I minored in finance and I went into it and then I
went into industrial distribution because of 9 11. Like I
zigzagged around and no one helped me. And if I would go back in time
and get him to my DeLorean, I would probably take a different
route. Only that my parents just said go to college. I'm like,
okay. But it didn't help me today because I
(26:32):
had to figure it out myself. It needs to change and as I said, I
think it is changing, but it's going to take a long time. The system is
wired in a particular way that favors one over the other
and that wiring is a mess and it has to be, you know, rewired in
a different way. The other thing too. I'm not sure if we spoke about this
in a time together, but I've heard you talk about it. I
(26:53):
certainly believe it. Young people make pretty rational decisions.
They are self interested in many cases and thinking about
their opportunities and their future. And the reason I say that is
because the trades as a whole needs to clean up its act as
well. When you are a young person, you know,
in your teens, and you're thinking about leaving the house and going into
(27:15):
a career or a job or whatever, you start thinking about important
things like how much am I going to get paid? And for better or for
worse, on average, the skilled trades pay
less than other jobs. Now that's not the only reason to take a job, but
it's a pretty rational reason. So you can see why people say I want to
go to Google and get paid a ton of money and not, you know, make
(27:36):
even 75,000 or $100,000 in a trades because they can make 150 or
two, you know, somewhere else. People
generally avoid very heavy hard
manual labor. Some of us love working with our hands, but it doesn't mean that
we love breaking our backs and breaking our knees either. And the
trade still is a very manual, you know, by hand
(27:57):
type of thing. And the more that changes, the better. And that's not
to say to get the skill out, I'm just saying to get the brute force
out. So these Decisions that these kids
have made have been steered in some part by the
incentives put out there. Support for college education to the tune of
a thousand to one over apprenticeships and whatever. But they're also rational decisions
(28:19):
because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
providing them training? Are we providing them access
(28:41):
to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
progression? Are we finding ways to make our companies bigger
and more profitable so that we can share those profits
with these jobs and make them competitive with the other
opportunities that are out there? That's one of the pushbacks. Online
especially, I have a very active TikTok account and I always pose
(29:03):
these questions to people out there about the trades and wages come up all the
time about, well, as an apprentice only making X amount of
dollars, I can't afford my lifestyle but I can go work at
a fast food Chipotle something make X amount of
dollars. There's this pushback back and forth and there's the older generation
that comes in or people been in the industry who are Union. I make
(29:25):
$175,000 and obviously it's over time and I do extremely
well. And then there's pushback that some people just don't do well. And then there's
pushback where people, I don't want to work with my hands. It's all over the
place. I do think that we have to at least
inform the younger generation of what the possibilities
are that in the beginning stages you're not going to make a lot of money.
(29:46):
Look, my relative is going to be an electrician. He's
36, he's in California, he's got two kids and he was in corporate
America and now he's starting all over again. But he's happy in what he's
doing. He's trying to get into the union. Yeah. Is he not going to make
a lot of money right away? No, but he will. And especially with
the demand for electricians, that we need 80,000 electricians every single year up to
(30:07):
2030. There's a ton of demand out there, but I think it's rewiring
people's mind about thinking about working with their hands.
And I need to read Apprentices Nation where you told me about Ryan
Craig. I need to read that the general public, to some degree, is not given
all the right information. And when you're going through school, you're not given the
right information and you're pushed into, you know, a four year college degree that
(30:29):
may or may not be right for you. That's to some degree. Today you don't
even need a degree. I do think the opportunities exist. I do
think the chance to make, you know, those Sally levels
exists. And I do think we need sort of an information PR campaign
to get the word out there. I'm still sticking with, you know, the
other premise too, which is we as an industry need
(30:52):
to continually make these jobs better, you know, in the interest of
a little bit of pushback and stirring it up. If you look at productivity growth
rates in this country, construction has
consistently lagged behind in terms of productivity. If you
compare us to manufacturing, to farming, even
retail, you know, they outperform us by magnitudes that are
(31:13):
three, four, five times. And small increases in
productivity over long periods of time make a huge
difference. And why is that important? Well, you
know, productivity growth is what makes your company
stronger, bigger, more profitable. It allows it to grow and attract people
into those things. And stagnant productivity growth is what
(31:35):
keeps you small and uncompetitive. I think you just can't ignore
the fact that on whole, construction has lagged when it comes
to productivity. So not only do we need to get the story out
there for the wider public that there's opportunity
and good choices and good compensation within the
trades, but I think we need to get the trades and these construction companies,
(31:58):
home services companies, to understand that there's huge upside too. If they
focus on productivity, that can help them grow, be more
profitable, improve the jobs. I've had this argument with
buddies of mine. I love this guy who told me about how, you know, when
he got into construction, the old timer who you work for,
you know, made him install the shingles on the roof, the
(32:19):
asphalt shingles, you know, with a hammer and nail, and not to use a nail
gun to learn how to pound the nails and all that kind of stuff. And
it sounds kind of romantic and it does sort of sound, you know, like trial
by fire. But on the other hand, you look back and you're like, oh my
God, that's just ridiculous. That is not a skill that you necessarily need
or we should be promoting when we've got, you know, more advanced ways of doing
it. What we should be talking about is how do we install the best roof,
(32:42):
you know, in the most Cost effective way that has the highest performance
and takes the least amount of time. Like, that's productivity and that's going to free
it up so that that laborer or that roofer can do it in a different
way. I do really, really think we need things you mentioned, but
not to the exclusion of looking inward and improving the
industry as a whole for its benefit. I'm thinking about another article in the
(33:04):
Wall Street Journal about smaller H Vac companies, plumbing companies.
There are private equity companies buying up these smaller companies,
you know, these three, $4 million companies that
opportunities there. I mean, they obviously, private equity sees that if
you're running this organization and you're sort of at the point where, you know, you're
thinking about retirement, that it could be sold to private equity. But
(33:27):
my fear is that example would be the one guy.
He's the guy in our area that fixes the dryers. He fixes
all that type of stuff, all the appliances. He's the type of guy, he comes
in and he can listen. He's like, I know what that is. And we sat
down, we talked. He's about 66, 67. He said to me, Andrew, he's like, I
have no debt. I don't work that hard. I make good money, but no one
(33:49):
wants to take my job. And I'm like, well, what happens? He's like, it's over,
it's done. So who do I go to? Who. Who's going to fix xyz?
That's what I'm afraid of. And also the quality of work. My
boiler, My H Vac guy was talking to him. He's like, we can't find
anybody to replace, and the people that we're bringing in are not as qualified.
I called my plumber. We talked about when the cameras were unrolling about
(34:11):
my sink that froze again now for the third time. And I called the
plumber just to ask him, and he's like, if I come down,
it's 200 an hour. I'm like, 200 an hour. I'm like, good
for you, man. He's like, yeah, we don't really have a lot of competition around
here, but that's what it is. So I'm like, okay, I'll try to fix it
myself. I'll put heat on it and I'll do it myself. But the opportunities
(34:33):
are there in certain markets, going back to the same thing with
wages. The money is there if you want to. It's just a matter of how
much time, effort you want to put into it, level up your skills and get
to a place where you're the person to be called
for that problem. That is the message. If you're a young
person, if you ever aspire to run your own company.
(34:55):
I mean, I joke, they were never going to let me run the bank. I
wasn't going to be the owner of the bank. But if you're a young person
and you aspire to own your own company, the trades is probably the shortest,
most direct line that you can draw to getting there. You know,
one person becomes two, becomes five, becomes 15, and you've got a
viable business. I was, you know, chatting up with one of our H VAC contractors.
(35:16):
I was pitching him on an idea with software to work as backroom
operation. And I was trying to figure out how big his company was in terms
of people. So I said, how big is your company? He misunderstood the question and
he shot back, oh, 13 million. Because he's doing $13 million worth of
gross. And you started the company from scratch 15, 17 years
ago. That is a huge opportunity to be your own boss, to
(35:37):
run your own company, to be an entrepreneur, to provide an
incredible resource for your community, both in terms of the
service, but also to be an employer for the people who want to do
this kind of stuff. What's difficult, making that transition, because a lot of people
start off as technicians in the trade doing the
work, but the transition over to business owner is completely
(35:59):
different set of skills. And I find some people in the trades have that
difficulty because they don't have that knowledge base. Once you step in those shoes and
you have employees, you gotta pay taxes and you gotta do payroll and all that
stuff, and it becomes a challenge for that person. And you're kind of
getting away from your love of working in the field. Like you're not going
to be doing that as much as an owner, but you could get back in
(36:20):
the field if you have to. If somebody's out or somebody gets let go or
somebody leaves, you need to walk in those shoes before you
run that business. I'm not here to tell anybody that they should, you know,
put the tools down and pick up the management side and grow the company. If
that's not for them. That's not for me to say. Certainly not on a. On
an individual basis. But on a macro basis, if you want to talk about it,
(36:42):
let's say theoretically, your dryer repair
guy, the dryer whisperer, had he develops
a couple people underneath him for the last 15 or 20 years and
took them, you know, as an apprentice and, you know, Grew into a mentor
role. He'd have somebody to fill in behind him and you know,
he chose a different path, which was to do it himself for a very long
(37:04):
time. And it worked for him. He enjoyed it. He probably loved the independence and
not being a boss and having a boss and all that kind of stuff. You
know, you reap what you sow. Now it's 60 some odd. He's got no one
that he's taken on as an apprentice, no one that he has
mentored for that business. And that's not a criticism, it's just
an observation that that's why there's not somebody to take his
(37:25):
place. It is partially his fault and probably could have done a
better job trying to mold somebody. There's a lot of those people out
there that just did it themselves and they didn't really train the person
underneath them or have somebody, a helper of some sort. And
now it kind of goes away. But I think today, especially business
owners and I spoke about this recently, is that you have to be on
(37:48):
social media, especially if you're in the trades, if you want to
get your name out there. It's all about having a brand, a personal
brand. There's a ton of tradespeople, influencers,
from women who are in their 20 something to guys who are in their
60s something. And they're getting a ton of business because
of the social media, because of putting themselves out there and being an ambassador there
(38:11):
themselves, that it's grown their business exponentially.
That's where the audience is, that's where the customers are. If you're good at it,
it is incredibly powerful. Construction is very
local. Two thirds of construction companies in this country
serve one, maybe two geographic regions. You know,
so a mass marketing approach doesn't really work. You know,
(38:33):
the television commercial for your services, unless it's,
you know, hyperlocal, it doesn't really work. Whereas social media can be targeted to be
hyper local all the time. It's also in addition
to a great way to advertise, if you will. It's a
phenomenal way to recruit. We work with several
people on our crew and I'm friends with other people who run their construction
(38:55):
companies. On three or four occasions, they
tell me that in excess of 90% of the new
hires came to them via social media because their
social media platform was not just showing
off what they did, but it was
projecting their values. You know, when they on
(39:18):
their social media showed that they really care
about the trade, about the skill, when they showed
off, not what they were doing. But what their employees were doing
and the projects that the boss man was able to get so that the
carpenters could do some really high end custom work and those types of
things. They ended up recruiting
(39:40):
just through those stories, all of their new
hires because they were able to express their
culture to prospective hires.
Opportunity, paths of progression through the
job. And it's remarkable to think that you can get customers,
but also that you can get the hardest thing that you could find out there
(40:00):
right now. And that's employees. I used to, you know, do it a ton. I
try to not anymore because we've got smarter people than me. They're
helping the company do it and I don't have to do it. So I kind
of despise it personally. But that's just because I just don't want to spend my
time on the phone. It is the most powerful resource for these small
companies right now. Not just for customers, but also for recruitment. The perfect
(40:21):
example of this is Roger Wakefield. He's a
plumber out in Texas. He's got a huge YouTube channel, about
650,000 subs. And I was on his
podcast about a year, year and a half ago. Literally you type in
plumbing into YouTube. He's the first result. He's
built it up to a point. So he ran his own plumbing company. All he
(40:43):
wanted to do was make the phone ring. And he sat in a seminar
somewhere and someone said, do you know that YouTube is the
second largest search engine? He's like, really? He was 55
years old, put it all down on YouTube. And now X amount of years
later, he's almost become celebrity based for plumbing.
He was able to sell his business and it's opened up so many different
(41:06):
doors. Just talking. It's funny, he gets up because he speaks loud. He's like, I'm
just a plumber. He's got a white mustache, he's got a bald head, he's got
a red shirt on that says Roger Wakefield. And he's living his dream. He's
like, I'm living my dream. That's an extreme case, but that's
sometimes what owners need to do in these smaller companies. Just kind of put
yourself out there a little bit because you never know what the opportunities and doors
(41:27):
are going to open up. Yeah, we were working with a great general contractor
in New Jersey, Zach Detmore. He was always
very active on social media, you know, before we started working with them.
Just in doing more with him as we put him on television and running
two of our job sites over the last two years. You know, what's remarkable about
what he does is he's very deft at the social media, but he's
(41:49):
also very genuine. He turns the phone
onto his guys who are doing the work a lot of the times.
And when I film scenes with Zach, if we want to talk about a particular
thing that he's done for us in a kitchen or a rebuild of a stair
or something like that, the first thing he says is, well, one of my
guys, Kaelin, did most of this, so he's gotta be on camera
(42:12):
too. It's just sort of speaks to what kind of person Zach is,
that he wants to be honest and genuine and he wants to make sure that
the person who does the work is the person who gets to talk about the
work. And that's very much within our TOH DNA. But you can do that on
social. You know, that's the great thing about it. And that's, I think, one of
the reasons why people who I know that have been successful and not just promoted
themselves, but recruiting employees is that's what they've done. They've shown that their
(42:34):
culture is to support the people who work with their hands in the company,
to find them good work, to promote what they do, to respect what they
do. And social media is a great, great way to do that.
When people say they're self made, but not really self made, because there's people around
them that got you to that place and you're highlighting people in
your company that they did that work and you're not taking all the full credit
(42:57):
for it, that's what people want to see, culture.
You take care of your employees, it's well operated
and you can make a good living. People are more apt to
want to work for you in this day and age, that's what you need to
do. And if you're not out there, if you were just doing ads
and doing billboards or doing the basic stuff
(43:18):
that years prior brought in leads and brought in
customers, it doesn't work anymore. And you just need to evolve
and just need to stay what's trending out there. And you really need to be
out, you know, on TikTok or YouTube and just showing day in life. And I
was just. My father just told me about someone on Long island who does plumbing.
I forget his name offhand, but he's like. I tune in because he's going and
(43:40):
he's fixing things around the house and he's telling about common problems and
he's now got a big business all from his social media and
Just being real. That sentiment that you're expressing. Andrew, if I
may step back up on my soapbox again, I agree 100%. And what you're saying
is that these people need to embrace what the new technology is.
We're talking about it in terms of awareness with social media.
(44:03):
But that sort of sentiment, that sort of
admonishing people to say you've got to keep up with the times, you've got to
embrace the new that goes across the entire
industry, you know, this is one of the things that construction has not
done well, which is why they lag in productivity. They have not
embraced technology as quickly and as early as other
(44:25):
industries. They have not figured out how to turn
manual work into mental work when it's appropriate. They have
not embraced off site productivity and
production. You know, the farming industry, which I generally
think, you know, is a good proxy for the construction industry because it's
very dispersed. It typically starts with family organizations and small
(44:47):
ones. I know that there's agribusiness out there, but they're kind of like the national
home builders. A lot of it is small family type things, small companies
for them to invest in machinery and self driving
tractors to increase their yields from an acre
of land because they're using GPS to
maximize the tilling or the harvesting and that type of stuff
(45:08):
that is embracing what is out there. And if we can tell
with good humor and from the right place that these companies should embrace social
media as a powerful tool that can help them, we should also
tell them that they should be embracing technological things, that they should be embracing
some form of off site production, that they should be making these jobs less
laborious. You saw us up on the roof, right? It
(45:31):
was a hot day and you're up on a metal roof, like that's
uncomfortable. You know, when you're young and a cowboy, it's great to rope
the cattle, but not 25 years later. It's hard to do
that. And that's why we get a lot of people who turn away from this
industry. I think it is incumbent upon us to make these
jobs more rewarding, more profitable, less physical.
(45:52):
I'll stand down off that soapbox. But if we can tell them to embrace social
media, we could certainly tell them that they should probably embrace technology,
efficiency, productivity as well. Look, it's an uphill battle and just,
you know, one last point about technology and I'm thinking about the welding
industry and cobot welding can't find welders. It's very difficult to
find welders. And running these machines These cobot welders, what's good about it
(46:14):
is that it runs off of almost like an iPad. So kids
today who are more technologically driven, who is looking for
that, they can actually go into cobalt welding and work on
these machines, but in more of a game environment that they're
used to, it just, it's different. It's just the technology is changing
where kids are getting more interested in it. But I completely agree with you across
(46:36):
the board. You know, if you're standing on a hot roof and I, I know
a bunch of roofers and it's dangerous too, being on that roof at a certain
pitch and I give him all the credit in the world. You know, I once
saw a robot doing shingles and was like, is that
going to replace roofers? And I was like, I don't know if that's going to
happen. But I don't think AI is going to really breach
(46:57):
the blue collar skill trades. I think it will help it. I don't think robots
tomorrow are going to take over the blue collar skilled trades. Yes,
maybe on more white collar jobs, but I think you are more
secure in a blue collar skilled trade. As long
as you provide value, as long as you provide quality
work and you keep upscaling your ability
(47:19):
and you can climb that ladder of success, I think it's really possible. The
headline is the future's bright. As the pendulum swings back, good jobs,
good pay, good opportunity, we're finding out that the alternative
isn't always as glamorous as it was made out to be.
Now the tools of the trade. Well,
(47:39):
Kevin, this has been an amazing conversation, but in every episode
we always ask our guests tools of the trade.
For someone considering a career in the trades, what is
the best way to explore different options and
find the right trade for them? Well, I think it depends on
how young you are. If you're very young and you're,
(48:01):
you know, high school, college age, the opportunities I think are sort of
boundless because entry level positions are
abundant. You can go find work with
a lot of different contractors in a lot of different
professions, whether it's the plumbing, the general contractor, the carpenter, what it
is, you're going to have to right, size your expectations, you know,
(48:23):
because you're going to be starting on the bottom, but you'll have an exposure to
it. If you're older, I think it's a little bit more difficult,
but I think you also have the ability to sort of match some
of your skills that you might have as a 30 or 40 year old,
you know, which might be a little bit more wisdom and management type thing. These
companies all are in search of people,
(48:43):
the friends that I have who do it and who run successful companies. They're looking
for talented craftspeople, but they're also looking
for project managers, supervisors, marketing people who
understand and are willing to do this type of work. The opportunities
are abundant. It's still probably in a
nutshell, requires making the move and trying it out. But the good
(49:06):
news is there's a lot of demand. There's a lot of
opportunity to try it out. I'm not quite sure you could try out being
an AI programmer at Google very easily,
but you can in these companies. I think the
opportunity is there. I do think the opportunity is there to learn a trade,
to work with your hands. Even if you don't go into the trades,
(49:27):
you learn a few things or you take a class or a shop class of
some sort. These are lifelong skills. Shit breaks around
the house. If you can fix it, obviously you save yourself
a lot of headache and also a lot of money. Obviously if you can't
fix it, you bring people in the trades. But I do think the opportunity is
there. I do think that in some trades it's going to be one to $200
(49:49):
an hour. I told you about the plumber who wanted $200 an hour. It's
there. It's possible over the next handful of years with all the people
retiring, it's always needed shit breaks around your
house. Things need to be fixed. Even if in a recession, if
projects slow down and people are not doing a kitchen, your plumbing goes, or
your H vac or your boiler or your hot water heater, all those
(50:11):
things can give you sort of more job security. So I do think the
trades is a great route. Kevin, where do people
find more about you on social and obviously this old
house. Well, certainly the first stop is this old house. You know, we've got the
website, we've got the TV show. You can watch it, you know, wherever you want.
In terms of the more personal stuff, I've got social
(50:33):
media and my handle is Kevin O'Connor. T o h on
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, these types of things. But don't go there
and expect a lot of activity. It's not really my thing. I
periodically post, but mostly those are counts. I've turned over to this old house
people and they can post stuff about it. So you can find me on TV
and on podcasts and on streaming. Wherever this old house is,
(50:55):
it's been. A blast having you on the show and learn about your journey. Thanks
so much for being on the show today, Andrew. Always a pleasure. Nice to speak
with you again and hope I see in person on a not blistering hot
day. And thank you to our listeners. If you're looking for a dynamic keynote
speaker to elevate your next event, head over to andrewbrown.net and
review some of my speaking topics, trades awareness, career
(51:16):
exploration, advocacy, and addressing the trade shortage. Don't
forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode.
We'll see you next time.
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
(51:40):
as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape
the future together.
Because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
providing them training? Are we providing them access
(00:21):
to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
progression?
Hi, I'm Andrew Brown. You're listening to the Lost star of the Skilled Trades
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
(00:45):
economy that keep us running. And without them, our world
would cease to exist.
Today we have a special guest, Kevin O'Connor, host
of this Old House. Welcome, Kevin, to the show.
Very good to be here, Andrew. Nice to see you again. Likewise.
(01:08):
Everyone at some point has a fork in the road
with their journey in life. For me, it was 9
11, finding survivors and working back to back with
tradespeople on ground zero. And that sent me down a
different path to start a business named Tool Fetch to
provide tools equipment for tradespeople to get their jobs
(01:29):
done. And interesting enough, your journey really started out in
finance. But fate sort of stepped in after your wife
wrote a letter to a show this old house and
fixing up your house. How did that play out? It was
dumb luck. No doubt about it. You're right about the finance
career. I was in corporate banking. My wife was in finance as well.
(01:52):
Although I grew up around construction because of my dad's company and his
work and brothers that are in the business and all of that. So when Kathleen
and I bought our first house, we bought a fixer upper two
family. Kitchen didn't work, bathrooms didn't work, and did it
mostly because I grew up as a fan of this old house, watching the show
and then enjoyed the working with my dad and brothers
(02:14):
doing the kind of sideline construction stuff, part time stuff and mostly labor
type of things. But anyway, we set about to fix the house up.
Like a lot of people were immediately in over our heads. We're like, oh my
God, how do we do all this stuff? So we were
trying to replicate a historical detail on our 1893 Queen Anne
Victorian and didn't know really where to turn. I don't know
(02:37):
why we did it, but we wrote a letter to the magazine the sole house.
And at the time, unbeknownst to us and to anybody, they
Were in the first year of production of what is now our sister show Ask
the Soul House. And the basic idea there is the same
tradespeople who do the season long grand renovation
of an entire home were now going to the mailbag,
(02:59):
answering homeowner questions and showing up for half a day and fixing their frozen
sinks or whatever may be afflicting them. They didn't have a
mailbag for the show because it wasn't on tv. So they went to the magazine,
found our letter sent Tom Silva and our painting contractor
out filmed an episode which we were thrilled. I was the
fanboy on the porch when it was all said and done saying, hey Tommy, don't
(03:21):
leave. Can we take a picture with you and show to the friends and family.
The next day, completely unbeknownst to me, they are on the look out for
a host. They called me back three weeks later,
pretty much on that phone call and one quick lunch meeting, asked if I
wanted to be the host of both shows. This Old House and Ask this Old
House, which was insane. Wasn't looking for a job in television,
(03:41):
never thought about it, didn't really want it. But that's the one show that I
was like, huh, pretty cool. So I hung up the blue suit and put away
the wingtips and joined Tommy and Roger and Norm and
Richard and the rest of the crew on the show. And that's 20 some odd
years ago. It's amazing how these opportunities come out of nowhere.
You're not even looking. I caught fate, only that it kind of sent
(04:03):
you down a road that really that's where you should be.
That's where your, your specialty is, being a host of the show
and guiding people through different stories and people's journeys
and fixing up people's houses. And I had the opportunity to meet
you on one of the sets over the summer
in Westford, Massachusetts. And I'll have to get an update from you
(04:25):
of how that is going. And you know, I watched you
do a scene 20 times over and over
again and you didn't even miss a beat because you went right into
the. Whatever you were talking about or something didn't work right. And you went into
this particular piece of it and I was just in awe of how much
production and how much redoing things. It was really
(04:48):
just interesting how that all worked and played out. Yeah, you call it interesting,
I call it laborious. I don't enjoy the TV part of
my TV job, you know, like I really like being on the job site as
do all the other folks who I'm on camera with. We like doing the work.
I think people know this who watch the show. But for those who don't,
everyone on our cast, if you will, everyone
(05:11):
on the television show is a professional contractor who still has their
professional contracting company, whether it be landscaping, painting, general
contracting, plumbing and such like that. I'm the only person
generally on camera, other than our homeowners, who isn't
a pro. So that sensibility, they all just want
to work. And the television cameras show up and are a bit of a
(05:33):
distraction. I'm kind of with them. I'm just like, oh, my God, we got to
do it again. But we do, because at the end of the day, we're trying
to put out, you know, high quality content. It served us well
47 years later after it started. But as you saw,
it can be tedious to get it right from a television perspective.
The easy part is getting it right from a content perspective, because everyone we deal
(05:53):
with are professionals, top of the trade, know the stuff inside and
out. Their knowledge is what actually produces the scenes.
And just watching that and just watching it, and I forget his name. Who does
the camera work. And he was on the lift. He was. Realistically, it was
only about one camera that was really doing most of the work, and
they were doing different angles. But you would think it would be
(06:15):
more cameras, more people, but it really wasn't. It was a
small crew getting all that done. That's part of our DNA,
and it's by design. You know, the show goes back to
1979. And the way they made television back then was
completely different. I tell these stories when I speak publicly. You
know, big cameras that were tethered
(06:37):
by hardwire to, if you were lucky, a
portable truck as opposed to a studio revolutionary. You know, at the time,
to take television cameras out of the studio and into the field, but
they still had to be tethered by cable. We still needed a portable truck.
The terms that we use in editing, you know, which is cut and
splice, they come from the old days when
(06:59):
this stuff was done on tape and it was physically
cut with scissors and taped back together. And the
legendary story is that the founder of our show and basically
creator of Modern how to Television, Russ Morash, who
started this Old House, but also the New Yankee
Workshop, the French Chef with Julia Child and a whole other list of things that
(07:20):
were the first ones out there. He despised the editing process
so much, which increases exponentially as you add
cameras. As now you have multiple rolls of tape that
could come into play. He Despised that process so much, he pushed us back
to a single camera operation and said, you know, if we can stay in a
scene for 8 continuous minutes or 10 continuous minutes, then there's no edits
(07:42):
necessary. And that was how the show was filmed early on. I worked
with him as the director of the show for a couple years early on, and
I learned how to do it that way and I enjoy it. That's my preference.
It's efficient. It doesn't quite fit with television genre
right now, which is snap cuts and real fast moving and all that kind of
stuff. It still keeps us in a one camera
(08:04):
world for the most part. And that's what you were seeing.
The iteration of what we were doing was so that Dino could do the wide
on his camera and we do the scene and then he'd move into a medium
and we'd do the scene again and him to move it in on tight, we'd
do the scene again. So it comes with a little bit of downside.
It's a vestige of our DNA going back to the very early days. It's part
(08:25):
of what makes our show distinctive. It still looks a little, you
know, one take ish, meandering, walk and talk type stuff. Yeah, it's
interesting the evolution of the show, you know, especially obviously Bob
Villa and then Steve Thomas and then you. And it's just how it's
evolved over the last handful years. And I, I always remember watching the show as
a young kid. I always remember my father watching the show, my brother watching. It
(08:46):
was just like baked in as part of the shows that we
watched, especially on Home Improvement. But again, it was all
inspiring just to see it in person and how it really gets broken down. Because
when it's on tv, obviously it's edited and. But there's a lot
of work that goes into behind the scenes and the
homeowners and the design rights and getting everything together, the
(09:08):
materials and getting everything in sequence. It's a
lot of work. So you had this growing up. Your dad was
in, you said construction. He was commercial construction. So a
little different. He's a civil engineer, so he built high rises and steel
mills and football stadiums and all that kind of stuff. And so my
exposure to his job sites was as a union laborer,
(09:30):
you know, because boss man dad could, you know, tell the, the shop
steward. I got a couple kids over summer break coming down and
so I would work on his job sites because the pay was triple what it
was, you know, washing dishes that I used to do at the restaurant. And we
could work overtime and he could plug us in and out. So I was fortunate
in that regard. But it was strictly laborer work
(09:51):
and mostly, you know, cleanup type work. But I was around it, you know, I
was around the DNA. And then when we were at home,
the seven of us, five boys, myself included, it was the
time and age when you did a lot of stuff on your own. So we
built tree houses and go karts and he was always bringing home extra plywood and
two by fours for supplies. And we were, you know, hammer them into trees
(10:12):
and stuff like that. So it's just what we like to do. But
you know, my older brother went and construction, you know, the twins who were
below them. One does finance for construction, you know, one does
project management, utility, all that kind of stuff. So it kind of seeped into our,
our DNA a of it. And you get familiar with that job site
feel. You get a little sense of the smell and the taste of it. And
(10:33):
I've always really enjoyed it. And even when I went down the
finance route, I did it in my spare time because I missed
it. And like that's what Jord was to buy that fixer upper that I thought
I was going to be able to do it my own two hands. Now it
all makes sense of why you bought a fixer upper in the 1800s and you
beat me because my house is 1958. I'm only the second
(10:54):
owner of this house. And we were looking for a while. We settled
up here in Chapqua, New York, and we looked for quite a while. And I
remember looking at a bunch of houses and this house popped up and I said
to my wife, this is the house. She's like, you're crazy. It's not the house.
I said, this is the house. And on a Monday night, my son was
a couple years old and I drag her out here all the way up from
(11:14):
the city. She's screaming at me. She's like, why are we going up here? It's
Monday night. My son is screaming in the background. We get here, she's like,
oh, I get it now. But the biggest characteristic,
which I don't know, it's kind of an eyesore, was a big green kitchen from
1983. The whole thing is green. It's like, why would the
homeowners put a green kitchen in and say, wow, that's
(11:36):
really nice. So I said to my wife, we're going to redo it. But it
took seven years to redo that kitchen, tear
down a wall, and to make it into something that we really wanted
because it was separated from the house. And I also remember
walking with the inspector when we inspect the house and he's like,
your roof is a 30 year timberline roof and it's
(11:58):
almost at that 30 year mark and your boiler is going to go. And
I'm thinking like all the dollar signs and the kitchen, I was like,
all right, let me do it. And eight, nine years later, we're
happy with where we are. But it's funny, you look at
the house like, how am I going to fix it up? How are you going
to do it? And you do it slowly. But yeah, I'm always ambitious too, that
(12:19):
I want to do projects, but there's only so much that I can do where
I need to call on a person in the trades. I mean, your story, my
story, it's played out, you know, by hundreds of thousands of people who do
that, who, you know, buy their first home that, you know, they can only buy
what they can afford. And it needs a lot of work and some people live
with it, some people hire out and other people get to it and do it
(12:40):
themselves or a combination thereof. And so it's a very, very familiar
story. It's why we're still on the air, quite frankly, because, you know,
people ask me why we're on the air. My short, snarky answers is because
people keep buying crappy old houses, they need expert advice on how to fix
them up. Our renovation of that two family, Queen Anne took about nine
years as well. Yeah. And we did every room, you know,
(13:02):
all throughout, added dormers to finish off an unfinished
attic. I mean, every bit of that project, you know, house was done over.
And it's great. I mean, I love the experience. We still have it. We
eventually moved out of it when the second and third children came because my
wife came home from the hospital with two kids in a bucket and was
walking up to the second floor and said, guess what we're not doing anymore. He's
(13:24):
carrying these kids up to the second and third floor of this house. And we
didn't have a backyard to speak of. We did move to a single family,
but we kept it. And it's been a great investment. We still have a very
sort of warm, endearing spot in our heart for it. We kind of love the
house as our first spot. It's hard to pick up and go and to find
something else, especially when you have memories in your first house. But, you know,
(13:45):
you don't have enough room, you don't have enough space. You gotta, you Gotta move
on and find something else and make memories somewhere else. That's the American way.
We're less so now, but we're transient. You know, people move around a lot in
this country. Sadly, not quite as much as we used to, which is probably
part of the housing crisis. But that's a whole nother podcast. But, yeah, people
buy a small place and they move to a medium place, and then they move
(14:05):
to a bigger place or they move for a job or schools or whatever. It's
nice to have that ability to move around. So I have to thank you because
I was listening to a podcast about a year, year and a half ago,
and it was the micro podcast, and it was titled Apple Juice and
Saltines. And I remember the. I remember the podcast because, remember Mike Rowe? I
think, like, he cut himself shaving. He was bleeding or something. And then he named
(14:28):
it, you know, this name for this podcast. And you were talking about,
obviously, this old house. And then he's like, somehow it came up
Williamson College of the Trades. And you put it on the
map that it's a trade school where kids go. It's
about 300 or so students. They learn a trade, it's
tuition free, and they come from tough backgrounds. I'm like,
(14:49):
whoa, what's that all about? And I'll talk about President
Rounds, and I got to go down there myself. But how did you find
that school? So I do hope we get to talk about it. I mean, I
know you interviewed Mike, and so you're viewers and listeners can go tune
that in because he's phenomenal. But the story for me is I had a high
school soccer coach who I am very close with
(15:10):
Remain. So Rick Jacobs and I
went to a very unique high school in Newark, New Jersey, that also
serves, you know, a population of kids who don't often
get a lot of opportunities and are facing hard situations. And it does a
remarkable job of turning those young people
into men. It's now co ed. When I was there, it was all guys. Now
(15:32):
it's, you know, guys and girls. But anyway, Rick, who lives
near Williamson, actually was on a. On a business call with Mike
Rounds. Rick was thinking, when he saw Williamson College of the Trades, he
said, boy, this is the only place I've ever seen that operates with the
sensibility and the values of St. Benedict's Prep, where he was
soccer coach for decades and where I graduated from. And
(15:54):
he immediately thought about me and saying that I
needed to know about it because of what I do on television. At the same
time, it turned out that Mike Rounds, as president of the college,
had his eye on St. Benedict's Prep because the school had a very flattering
expose on 60 Minutes that went national. And Mike was intrigued by
how they pulled it off. And in particular, the headmaster, who has been long term
(16:17):
headmaster for 30 years. And so Rick became the sort of,
let's put the two, you know, three things together. Invited me down to see
Williamson. We called the headmaster, who's also a friend, and he came down and
Mike, myself, Rick, father Edwin from St. Benedict's all got together. And as
soon as I saw it and heard their story, I knew that it was something
that was very much in the DNA of this old house.
(16:39):
We were in the middle of our Generation Next initiative, which was just
calling attention to people into the trades. And that it was a good career path
and these types of things. And so that led us to
bring a production crew and a camera crew back to do what has now
been three different visits to the school to
show them off on our television show and make it known, hopefully to
(17:01):
the wire public, that it exists and places like that exist. So it was
fortuitous. But it was that connection to my high school and these
very influential mentors in my life, soccer coach, headmaster, that brought
me to a place that is full of mentors like President Rounds and those young
mentors, men who go through that program. And as you now know, it is
spectacular. It is one of the greatest stories in this, you know,
(17:23):
field that is out there. It's just tremendous. And I remember going up
there, obviously you did the commencement speech for graduation.
And I believe it was like 80 plus kids that graduated around that
amount. Just watching their faces. They're starting off with no
debt. They're getting three or four offers from 150
different companies that come down their senior year and they're
(17:45):
making 50, 60, $70,000 right out of the
gate. They're respectable. You know, kids that are coming out
of this school that like you said, came from tough backgrounds, they have to wear
a suit, they got to wear a tie, they got to make their bed, do
the flag and everything. And I remember going there
originally and meeting. I forget his name offhand, but
(18:06):
he was in the carpentry side. But he took me around, he came
over, he shook my hand and he almost broke my hand because I can grab
my hand, like really strong grip. And he looked me in the eye. He
was really good. He wanted to own his own construction business. And every time
I met somebody from the different
departments, it was the same thing. Look in the eye shook my
(18:28):
hand, firm handshake. And they all had
aspirations of being successful in the traits. And that's what
that school teaches kids. And when I sat down with
President Rounds, he gets emotional. It's no bullshit. Like, he is,
like, in it and just watching him and what they do there.
And they said it was like a hundred thousand dollars a kid if they had
(18:49):
to pay tuition. And I Wish they had 10 more schools like that. When I
gave that commencement speech, aside from a terrible case of imposter
syndrome, like, I remember a couple of the stories that I told from the
stage. I at one point started talking to the parents
of the people, of the graduates there, you know, and just
pointing out that they deserve some recognition for
(19:12):
finding this path for their sons, for choosing it, having
the courage to kind of take a different path than
society says is acceptable right now. But then I had this line about and making
a wise decision of your kids graduating with no debt. And that was the
applause line. That was the one when the crowd started cheering and chanting.
They, as parents and as benefactors of these young men, were, you know,
(19:34):
acutely aware of what a gift that was and how important it is for their
success to come out, not just with, you know, an
education and a skill and job opportunities,
but not to have those things be weighed down by excessive
debt, which is right now probably one of the greatest scandals going on in our
country is that the, you know, the trillion dollars of college debt that's hanging on
(19:56):
out there, that's just sand in the gears of our country,
is terrible. And I was not expecting that to be the applause line.
I had a couple jokes that I thought would go over better, but it was
that one that got the applause. And in hindsight, rightfully so.
You know, it's always funny. It's. You always think that you put in a certain
joke, a line you think that's going to get the most attention, but it's some
obscure thing that you say. You're like, how did that hit? I don't even understand
(20:19):
that. I see that with video and stuff that I do, and I'm sure you
do. Why did that hit? You never know. It's a remarkable place, though.
It's a great, nice thing for me personally, to have
discovered that and become friends with Mike who. He and I go back and
forth all the time on stuff, and I really enjoyed telling that story to Mike
Rowe and hope that someday he goes down there. But I could tell that Mike
(20:40):
Rowe was intrigued by it as well, because it shares the values that I think
he does a very good job of espousing with his foundation, with his work
fellowships. There's nothing really that exists out there like
that. It's unique in its own way. I'm glad that you brought it up
and I'm glad that it was brought up on the show that others can share
that. So if you definitely want to find out about the Williams from College of
(21:01):
Trades, definitely take a look at it and look up President Rounds. I have a
podcast on that. And he is just deeply in touch with that and
just emotional when he talks about the kids. And impressive, right? I mean, he's a
West Point graduate, he served in the military, he taught back at West
Point. And he and his wife are all in with Williamson. Absolutely all
in. Perfect people to be associated with that school. I remember you asked
(21:24):
me a question when we met and you said about the trades. Are we at
the tipping point? Where are things sort of changing with the
trades? Are things getting better? Because obviously we have a massive
shortage, about 40% retiring over the next five or 10 years. And I could rattle
off statistics and welding, carpentry and others, but I think
it's is over the last handful
(21:45):
years, especially recently with the Wall Street Journal,
the tool belt generation trade school being up about
16% in about 2023, the trades are in a
much different light than they once were, although it still
has PR problems and people assume and still
think that it's less than or option B
(22:08):
for kids who are just not doing well in school. So you can go into
the trades, but what's happening and what I see is that kids are coming out
of school not knowing how to swing a hammer or even read a tape
measure. Just the basic, basic stuff. And they're
bypassing. A lot of these kids are just kind of bypassing, even though that they
have a technical spark or they good with their hands. A lot
(22:29):
of times they get forced and pushed into college, you know, spending
hundreds of thousand dollars in getting into debt and getting jobs coming out of
school. There's no real return on investment right away. But I
think over the last couple years it's starting to
shift. Are you seeing that or are you seeing something
different? No, I think I agree. I feel the
(22:50):
sentiment shifting for sure. I
feel the public perception improving.
I see more people talking about this
in the mainstream, which is all good. I think
sadly, part of it is because it had gotten so
bad, you know, that the pendulum had swung so far in the wrong
(23:12):
direction that there was really nowhere else to go. But I
am encouraged by the shift in momentum, I'm still a little
discouraged because the hole that I think we have to dig out of
is still very deep. And I do think that we are
structurally still sort of misaligned for what
we need going forward, even though the sensibility is
(23:34):
changing. What I mean by that is I think most people
understand that over and over and over again, you
kind of get out what you put in. If you work hard at
whatever you do, you're probably gonna find some success.
And if you goof off and you don't work hard, you're probably
gonna find yourself in trouble. That type of thing. The situation that we've had for
(23:57):
the past, let's call it 50 to 70 years, where we
overvalued a higher education over a lesser
degree and manual work and that type of stuff, that's a battleship
that's going to have to be turned slowly and redirected.
We are still supporting higher
education on an annual basis in this country. The numbers I've
(24:20):
heard are 500 billion of
support for tuition assistance,
loans, funding, direct grants, subsidies,
these types of things. And it's a gigantic number.
I'm not suggesting that all of it is misdirected, but it's a gigantic
number. And to put it in perspective, if you look at what the country supports
(24:42):
in terms of apprenticeships, that number is about 400
million. So for every dollar that we push in the
direction of apprenticeships, which is the marker for going into
a trade, working with your hands, we spend a thousand dollars to support
higher education. You're going to get out what you put in.
So those big structural things, while
(25:04):
changing, are going to take a long time. So
I think we're going to live with this deficit and this perception problem for years
to come. I'm glad it's moving in the right direction, but I do think we've
got a long way to go. We do. And I'm just thinking what people are
doing out there. I have a foundation called the Skilled Trades Advisory Counselor.
And I have about eight other members. Seven of them are women. And there's
(25:26):
one organization called Explore the Trades. Kate Cemento and
her organization sends out these poster kits. You can't see them off
camera here, but they're posters that go out to guidance counselors and about.
I think out of all schools, about 20, 25% of all schools have these posters
where kids can go in and see paths of what
you can be in H Vac, what you can be in electrical at least sparks
(25:48):
their interest. When you see college, college, college, college, College. Oh wa. What's this
trades thing? Organizations like that are trying to kind of
push back and fight against, you know, for kids that are just don't want to
go to school because it's not built for everybody to go down that path.
I went to University of Rhode island for four years and came out more confused
out of school than I was in school. And I was a freaking programmer. I
(26:10):
was a programmer. I minored in finance and I went into it and then I
went into industrial distribution because of 9 11. Like I
zigzagged around and no one helped me. And if I would go back in time
and get him to my DeLorean, I would probably take a different
route. Only that my parents just said go to college. I'm like,
okay. But it didn't help me today because I
(26:32):
had to figure it out myself. It needs to change and as I said, I
think it is changing, but it's going to take a long time. The system is
wired in a particular way that favors one over the other
and that wiring is a mess and it has to be, you know, rewired in
a different way. The other thing too. I'm not sure if we spoke about this
in a time together, but I've heard you talk about it. I
(26:53):
certainly believe it. Young people make pretty rational decisions.
They are self interested in many cases and thinking about
their opportunities and their future. And the reason I say that is
because the trades as a whole needs to clean up its act as
well. When you are a young person, you know,
in your teens, and you're thinking about leaving the house and going into
(27:15):
a career or a job or whatever, you start thinking about important
things like how much am I going to get paid? And for better or for
worse, on average, the skilled trades pay
less than other jobs. Now that's not the only reason to take a job, but
it's a pretty rational reason. So you can see why people say I want to
go to Google and get paid a ton of money and not, you know, make
(27:36):
even 75,000 or $100,000 in a trades because they can make 150 or
two, you know, somewhere else. People
generally avoid very heavy hard
manual labor. Some of us love working with our hands, but it doesn't mean that
we love breaking our backs and breaking our knees either. And the
trade still is a very manual, you know, by hand
(27:57):
type of thing. And the more that changes, the better. And that's not
to say to get the skill out, I'm just saying to get the brute force
out. So these Decisions that these kids
have made have been steered in some part by the
incentives put out there. Support for college education to the tune of
a thousand to one over apprenticeships and whatever. But they're also rational decisions
(28:19):
because they look at what we do in the trades and they say, you know,
maybe it's not as glamorous as nice and we can make it better. We should
change the battleship's direction, but we should also look
inward and think about how we can make these jobs that
we ask these young people to do, how we can make them better. Are we
providing them training? Are we providing them access
(28:41):
to technology? Are we showing them that there's a path to
progression? Are we finding ways to make our companies bigger
and more profitable so that we can share those profits
with these jobs and make them competitive with the other
opportunities that are out there? That's one of the pushbacks. Online
especially, I have a very active TikTok account and I always pose
(29:03):
these questions to people out there about the trades and wages come up all the
time about, well, as an apprentice only making X amount of
dollars, I can't afford my lifestyle but I can go work at
a fast food Chipotle something make X amount of
dollars. There's this pushback back and forth and there's the older generation
that comes in or people been in the industry who are Union. I make
(29:25):
$175,000 and obviously it's over time and I do extremely
well. And then there's pushback that some people just don't do well. And then there's
pushback where people, I don't want to work with my hands. It's all over the
place. I do think that we have to at least
inform the younger generation of what the possibilities
are that in the beginning stages you're not going to make a lot of money.
(29:46):
Look, my relative is going to be an electrician. He's
36, he's in California, he's got two kids and he was in corporate
America and now he's starting all over again. But he's happy in what he's
doing. He's trying to get into the union. Yeah. Is he not going to make
a lot of money right away? No, but he will. And especially with
the demand for electricians, that we need 80,000 electricians every single year up to
(30:07):
2030. There's a ton of demand out there, but I think it's rewiring
people's mind about thinking about working with their hands.
And I need to read Apprentices Nation where you told me about Ryan
Craig. I need to read that the general public, to some degree, is not given
all the right information. And when you're going through school, you're not given the
right information and you're pushed into, you know, a four year college degree that
(30:29):
may or may not be right for you. That's to some degree. Today you don't
even need a degree. I do think the opportunities exist. I do
think the chance to make, you know, those Sally levels
exists. And I do think we need sort of an information PR campaign
to get the word out there. I'm still sticking with, you know, the
other premise too, which is we as an industry need
(30:52):
to continually make these jobs better, you know, in the interest of
a little bit of pushback and stirring it up. If you look at productivity growth
rates in this country, construction has
consistently lagged behind in terms of productivity. If you
compare us to manufacturing, to farming, even
retail, you know, they outperform us by magnitudes that are
(31:13):
three, four, five times. And small increases in
productivity over long periods of time make a huge
difference. And why is that important? Well, you
know, productivity growth is what makes your company
stronger, bigger, more profitable. It allows it to grow and attract people
into those things. And stagnant productivity growth is what
(31:35):
keeps you small and uncompetitive. I think you just can't ignore
the fact that on whole, construction has lagged when it comes
to productivity. So not only do we need to get the story out
there for the wider public that there's opportunity
and good choices and good compensation within the
trades, but I think we need to get the trades and these construction companies,
(31:58):
home services companies, to understand that there's huge upside too. If they
focus on productivity, that can help them grow, be more
profitable, improve the jobs. I've had this argument with
buddies of mine. I love this guy who told me about how, you know, when
he got into construction, the old timer who you work for,
you know, made him install the shingles on the roof, the
(32:19):
asphalt shingles, you know, with a hammer and nail, and not to use a nail
gun to learn how to pound the nails and all that kind of stuff. And
it sounds kind of romantic and it does sort of sound, you know, like trial
by fire. But on the other hand, you look back and you're like, oh my
God, that's just ridiculous. That is not a skill that you necessarily need
or we should be promoting when we've got, you know, more advanced ways of doing
it. What we should be talking about is how do we install the best roof,
(32:42):
you know, in the most Cost effective way that has the highest performance
and takes the least amount of time. Like, that's productivity and that's going to free
it up so that that laborer or that roofer can do it in a different
way. I do really, really think we need things you mentioned, but
not to the exclusion of looking inward and improving the
industry as a whole for its benefit. I'm thinking about another article in the
(33:04):
Wall Street Journal about smaller H Vac companies, plumbing companies.
There are private equity companies buying up these smaller companies,
you know, these three, $4 million companies that
opportunities there. I mean, they obviously, private equity sees that if
you're running this organization and you're sort of at the point where, you know, you're
thinking about retirement, that it could be sold to private equity. But
(33:27):
my fear is that example would be the one guy.
He's the guy in our area that fixes the dryers. He fixes
all that type of stuff, all the appliances. He's the type of guy, he comes
in and he can listen. He's like, I know what that is. And we sat
down, we talked. He's about 66, 67. He said to me, Andrew, he's like, I
have no debt. I don't work that hard. I make good money, but no one
(33:49):
wants to take my job. And I'm like, well, what happens? He's like, it's over,
it's done. So who do I go to? Who. Who's going to fix xyz?
That's what I'm afraid of. And also the quality of work. My
boiler, My H Vac guy was talking to him. He's like, we can't find
anybody to replace, and the people that we're bringing in are not as qualified.
I called my plumber. We talked about when the cameras were unrolling about
(34:11):
my sink that froze again now for the third time. And I called the
plumber just to ask him, and he's like, if I come down,
it's 200 an hour. I'm like, 200 an hour. I'm like, good
for you, man. He's like, yeah, we don't really have a lot of competition around
here, but that's what it is. So I'm like, okay, I'll try to fix it
myself. I'll put heat on it and I'll do it myself. But the opportunities
(34:33):
are there in certain markets, going back to the same thing with
wages. The money is there if you want to. It's just a matter of how
much time, effort you want to put into it, level up your skills and get
to a place where you're the person to be called
for that problem. That is the message. If you're a young
person, if you ever aspire to run your own company.
(34:55):
I mean, I joke, they were never going to let me run the bank. I
wasn't going to be the owner of the bank. But if you're a young person
and you aspire to own your own company, the trades is probably the shortest,
most direct line that you can draw to getting there. You know,
one person becomes two, becomes five, becomes 15, and you've got a
viable business. I was, you know, chatting up with one of our H VAC contractors.
(35:16):
I was pitching him on an idea with software to work as backroom
operation. And I was trying to figure out how big his company was in terms
of people. So I said, how big is your company? He misunderstood the question and
he shot back, oh, 13 million. Because he's doing $13 million worth of
gross. And you started the company from scratch 15, 17 years
ago. That is a huge opportunity to be your own boss, to
(35:37):
run your own company, to be an entrepreneur, to provide an
incredible resource for your community, both in terms of the
service, but also to be an employer for the people who want to do
this kind of stuff. What's difficult, making that transition, because a lot of people
start off as technicians in the trade doing the
work, but the transition over to business owner is completely
(35:59):
different set of skills. And I find some people in the trades have that
difficulty because they don't have that knowledge base. Once you step in those shoes and
you have employees, you gotta pay taxes and you gotta do payroll and all that
stuff, and it becomes a challenge for that person. And you're kind of
getting away from your love of working in the field. Like you're not going
to be doing that as much as an owner, but you could get back in
(36:20):
the field if you have to. If somebody's out or somebody gets let go or
somebody leaves, you need to walk in those shoes before you
run that business. I'm not here to tell anybody that they should, you know,
put the tools down and pick up the management side and grow the company. If
that's not for them. That's not for me to say. Certainly not on a. On
an individual basis. But on a macro basis, if you want to talk about it,
(36:42):
let's say theoretically, your dryer repair
guy, the dryer whisperer, had he develops
a couple people underneath him for the last 15 or 20 years and
took them, you know, as an apprentice and, you know, Grew into a mentor
role. He'd have somebody to fill in behind him and you know,
he chose a different path, which was to do it himself for a very long
(37:04):
time. And it worked for him. He enjoyed it. He probably loved the independence and
not being a boss and having a boss and all that kind of stuff. You
know, you reap what you sow. Now it's 60 some odd. He's got no one
that he's taken on as an apprentice, no one that he has
mentored for that business. And that's not a criticism, it's just
an observation that that's why there's not somebody to take his
(37:25):
place. It is partially his fault and probably could have done a
better job trying to mold somebody. There's a lot of those people out
there that just did it themselves and they didn't really train the person
underneath them or have somebody, a helper of some sort. And
now it kind of goes away. But I think today, especially business
owners and I spoke about this recently, is that you have to be on
(37:48):
social media, especially if you're in the trades, if you want to
get your name out there. It's all about having a brand, a personal
brand. There's a ton of tradespeople, influencers,
from women who are in their 20 something to guys who are in their
60s something. And they're getting a ton of business because
of the social media, because of putting themselves out there and being an ambassador there
(38:11):
themselves, that it's grown their business exponentially.
That's where the audience is, that's where the customers are. If you're good at it,
it is incredibly powerful. Construction is very
local. Two thirds of construction companies in this country
serve one, maybe two geographic regions. You know,
so a mass marketing approach doesn't really work. You know,
(38:33):
the television commercial for your services, unless it's,
you know, hyperlocal, it doesn't really work. Whereas social media can be targeted to be
hyper local all the time. It's also in addition
to a great way to advertise, if you will. It's a
phenomenal way to recruit. We work with several
people on our crew and I'm friends with other people who run their construction
(38:55):
companies. On three or four occasions, they
tell me that in excess of 90% of the new
hires came to them via social media because their
social media platform was not just showing
off what they did, but it was
projecting their values. You know, when they on
(39:18):
their social media showed that they really care
about the trade, about the skill, when they showed
off, not what they were doing. But what their employees were doing
and the projects that the boss man was able to get so that the
carpenters could do some really high end custom work and those types of
things. They ended up recruiting
(39:40):
just through those stories, all of their new
hires because they were able to express their
culture to prospective hires.
Opportunity, paths of progression through the
job. And it's remarkable to think that you can get customers,
but also that you can get the hardest thing that you could find out there
(40:00):
right now. And that's employees. I used to, you know, do it a ton. I
try to not anymore because we've got smarter people than me. They're
helping the company do it and I don't have to do it. So I kind
of despise it personally. But that's just because I just don't want to spend my
time on the phone. It is the most powerful resource for these small
companies right now. Not just for customers, but also for recruitment. The perfect
(40:21):
example of this is Roger Wakefield. He's a
plumber out in Texas. He's got a huge YouTube channel, about
650,000 subs. And I was on his
podcast about a year, year and a half ago. Literally you type in
plumbing into YouTube. He's the first result. He's
built it up to a point. So he ran his own plumbing company. All he
(40:43):
wanted to do was make the phone ring. And he sat in a seminar
somewhere and someone said, do you know that YouTube is the
second largest search engine? He's like, really? He was 55
years old, put it all down on YouTube. And now X amount of years
later, he's almost become celebrity based for plumbing.
He was able to sell his business and it's opened up so many different
(41:06):
doors. Just talking. It's funny, he gets up because he speaks loud. He's like, I'm
just a plumber. He's got a white mustache, he's got a bald head, he's got
a red shirt on that says Roger Wakefield. And he's living his dream. He's
like, I'm living my dream. That's an extreme case, but that's
sometimes what owners need to do in these smaller companies. Just kind of put
yourself out there a little bit because you never know what the opportunities and doors
(41:27):
are going to open up. Yeah, we were working with a great general contractor
in New Jersey, Zach Detmore. He was always
very active on social media, you know, before we started working with them.
Just in doing more with him as we put him on television and running
two of our job sites over the last two years. You know, what's remarkable about
what he does is he's very deft at the social media, but he's
(41:49):
also very genuine. He turns the phone
onto his guys who are doing the work a lot of the times.
And when I film scenes with Zach, if we want to talk about a particular
thing that he's done for us in a kitchen or a rebuild of a stair
or something like that, the first thing he says is, well, one of my
guys, Kaelin, did most of this, so he's gotta be on camera
(42:12):
too. It's just sort of speaks to what kind of person Zach is,
that he wants to be honest and genuine and he wants to make sure that
the person who does the work is the person who gets to talk about the
work. And that's very much within our TOH DNA. But you can do that on
social. You know, that's the great thing about it. And that's, I think, one of
the reasons why people who I know that have been successful and not just promoted
themselves, but recruiting employees is that's what they've done. They've shown that their
(42:34):
culture is to support the people who work with their hands in the company,
to find them good work, to promote what they do, to respect what they
do. And social media is a great, great way to do that.
When people say they're self made, but not really self made, because there's people around
them that got you to that place and you're highlighting people in
your company that they did that work and you're not taking all the full credit
(42:57):
for it, that's what people want to see, culture.
You take care of your employees, it's well operated
and you can make a good living. People are more apt to
want to work for you in this day and age, that's what you need to
do. And if you're not out there, if you were just doing ads
and doing billboards or doing the basic stuff
(43:18):
that years prior brought in leads and brought in
customers, it doesn't work anymore. And you just need to evolve
and just need to stay what's trending out there. And you really need to be
out, you know, on TikTok or YouTube and just showing day in life. And I
was just. My father just told me about someone on Long island who does plumbing.
I forget his name offhand, but he's like. I tune in because he's going and
(43:40):
he's fixing things around the house and he's telling about common problems and
he's now got a big business all from his social media and
Just being real. That sentiment that you're expressing. Andrew, if I
may step back up on my soapbox again, I agree 100%. And what you're saying
is that these people need to embrace what the new technology is.
We're talking about it in terms of awareness with social media.
(44:03):
But that sort of sentiment, that sort of
admonishing people to say you've got to keep up with the times, you've got to
embrace the new that goes across the entire
industry, you know, this is one of the things that construction has not
done well, which is why they lag in productivity. They have not
embraced technology as quickly and as early as other
(44:25):
industries. They have not figured out how to turn
manual work into mental work when it's appropriate. They have
not embraced off site productivity and
production. You know, the farming industry, which I generally
think, you know, is a good proxy for the construction industry because it's
very dispersed. It typically starts with family organizations and small
(44:47):
ones. I know that there's agribusiness out there, but they're kind of like the national
home builders. A lot of it is small family type things, small companies
for them to invest in machinery and self driving
tractors to increase their yields from an acre
of land because they're using GPS to
maximize the tilling or the harvesting and that type of stuff
(45:08):
that is embracing what is out there. And if we can tell
with good humor and from the right place that these companies should embrace social
media as a powerful tool that can help them, we should also
tell them that they should be embracing technological things, that they should be embracing
some form of off site production, that they should be making these jobs less
laborious. You saw us up on the roof, right? It
(45:31):
was a hot day and you're up on a metal roof, like that's
uncomfortable. You know, when you're young and a cowboy, it's great to rope
the cattle, but not 25 years later. It's hard to do
that. And that's why we get a lot of people who turn away from this
industry. I think it is incumbent upon us to make these
jobs more rewarding, more profitable, less physical.
(45:52):
I'll stand down off that soapbox. But if we can tell them to embrace social
media, we could certainly tell them that they should probably embrace technology,
efficiency, productivity as well. Look, it's an uphill battle and just,
you know, one last point about technology and I'm thinking about the welding
industry and cobot welding can't find welders. It's very difficult to
find welders. And running these machines These cobot welders, what's good about it
(46:14):
is that it runs off of almost like an iPad. So kids
today who are more technologically driven, who is looking for
that, they can actually go into cobalt welding and work on
these machines, but in more of a game environment that they're
used to, it just, it's different. It's just the technology is changing
where kids are getting more interested in it. But I completely agree with you across
(46:36):
the board. You know, if you're standing on a hot roof and I, I know
a bunch of roofers and it's dangerous too, being on that roof at a certain
pitch and I give him all the credit in the world. You know, I once
saw a robot doing shingles and was like, is that
going to replace roofers? And I was like, I don't know if that's going to
happen. But I don't think AI is going to really breach
(46:57):
the blue collar skill trades. I think it will help it. I don't think robots
tomorrow are going to take over the blue collar skilled trades. Yes,
maybe on more white collar jobs, but I think you are more
secure in a blue collar skilled trade. As long
as you provide value, as long as you provide quality
work and you keep upscaling your ability
(47:19):
and you can climb that ladder of success, I think it's really possible. The
headline is the future's bright. As the pendulum swings back, good jobs,
good pay, good opportunity, we're finding out that the alternative
isn't always as glamorous as it was made out to be.
Now the tools of the trade. Well,
(47:39):
Kevin, this has been an amazing conversation, but in every episode
we always ask our guests tools of the trade.
For someone considering a career in the trades, what is
the best way to explore different options and
find the right trade for them? Well, I think it depends on
how young you are. If you're very young and you're,
(48:01):
you know, high school, college age, the opportunities I think are sort of
boundless because entry level positions are
abundant. You can go find work with
a lot of different contractors in a lot of different
professions, whether it's the plumbing, the general contractor, the carpenter, what it
is, you're going to have to right, size your expectations, you know,
(48:23):
because you're going to be starting on the bottom, but you'll have an exposure to
it. If you're older, I think it's a little bit more difficult,
but I think you also have the ability to sort of match some
of your skills that you might have as a 30 or 40 year old,
you know, which might be a little bit more wisdom and management type thing. These
companies all are in search of people,
(48:43):
the friends that I have who do it and who run successful companies. They're looking
for talented craftspeople, but they're also looking
for project managers, supervisors, marketing people who
understand and are willing to do this type of work. The opportunities
are abundant. It's still probably in a
nutshell, requires making the move and trying it out. But the good
(49:06):
news is there's a lot of demand. There's a lot of
opportunity to try it out. I'm not quite sure you could try out being
an AI programmer at Google very easily,
but you can in these companies. I think the
opportunity is there. I do think the opportunity is there to learn a trade,
to work with your hands. Even if you don't go into the trades,
(49:27):
you learn a few things or you take a class or a shop class of
some sort. These are lifelong skills. Shit breaks around
the house. If you can fix it, obviously you save yourself
a lot of headache and also a lot of money. Obviously if you can't
fix it, you bring people in the trades. But I do think the opportunity is
there. I do think that in some trades it's going to be one to $200
(49:49):
an hour. I told you about the plumber who wanted $200 an hour. It's
there. It's possible over the next handful of years with all the people
retiring, it's always needed shit breaks around your
house. Things need to be fixed. Even if in a recession, if
projects slow down and people are not doing a kitchen, your plumbing goes, or
your H vac or your boiler or your hot water heater, all those
(50:11):
things can give you sort of more job security. So I do think the
trades is a great route. Kevin, where do people
find more about you on social and obviously this old
house. Well, certainly the first stop is this old house. You know, we've got the
website, we've got the TV show. You can watch it, you know, wherever you want.
In terms of the more personal stuff, I've got social
(50:33):
media and my handle is Kevin O'Connor. T o h on
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, these types of things. But don't go there
and expect a lot of activity. It's not really my thing. I
periodically post, but mostly those are counts. I've turned over to this old house
people and they can post stuff about it. So you can find me on TV
and on podcasts and on streaming. Wherever this old house is,
(50:55):
it's been. A blast having you on the show and learn about your journey. Thanks
so much for being on the show today, Andrew. Always a pleasure. Nice to speak
with you again and hope I see in person on a not blistering hot
day. And thank you to our listeners. If you're looking for a dynamic keynote
speaker to elevate your next event, head over to andrewbrown.net and
review some of my speaking topics, trades awareness, career
(51:16):
exploration, advocacy, and addressing the trade shortage. Don't
forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss another episode.
We'll see you next time.
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
(51:40):
as we celebrate our men and women in the skilled trades and shape
the future together.
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