Learnings and Missteps by Depth Builder

Keep the Flame Alive: Apprenticeships, Retention, and Building a Training Culture in the Trades (with Manja Horner)

• Jesse • Season 3

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Jesse hosts the Learnings and Missteps podcast and interviews Manja Horner, founder and CEO of Boost Learning Design, about solving skilled-trades workforce shortages driven by retirements and the long push toward college over trades. Manja introduces her book, “Pass the Torch: A Call to Rescue the Future of Trades,” and explains her “talent flywheel” for retention: strong onboarding, trained supervisors who give clear feedback, clear expectations and standards, and career pathways with training and advancement. They discuss why training succeeds only with leadership buy-in, clear business impact, and protected time, contrasting failed and successful rollout examples. Manja outlines a learning ecosystem (attitude, strategy, content/knowledge capture, trainers/technology, and skill practice with deliberate repetition). They cover apprenticeships as an industry responsibility, Manja’s path from violin teaching to trades training via her family’s restoration business, and close on thinking bigger.

Get the Book: https://www.boostld.com/pass-the-torch-book

Get the staff onboarding blueprint: https://www.boostld.com/onboarding-blueprint

00:00 Apprenticeship Wake Up Call

00:27 Meet Mana Horner

02:43 The Skilled Labor Cliff

05:52 Pass the Torch Book

06:54 Retention Talent Flywheel

13:10 Career Pathways That Work

17:38 Training Buy In Story

24:14 Learning Ecosystem Framework

32:19 Why Apprenticeships Matter

33:31 From Violin To Trades

39:29 Transferable Skills Mindset

41:10 Collecting Experiences Lesson

42:25 No Credentials Needed

43:20 Preboarding To Orientation

46:11 Role Onboarding Structure

47:25 AI And Constant Learning

48:29 Talent Choice And Culture

54:17 Let Kids Figure It Out

59:00 Skill Stacking Plan

01:03:35 School Mismatch Insights

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Meet Manya And The Trades Crisis

SPEAKER_00

But I do think it's our responsibility as an industry to take one for the team and bring on apprentices. We have no choice. We can't be the special favored golden child who doesn't take on apprentices because it's inconvenient. Sorry.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Not uh not appropriate. Then don't complain. Right. We all have to take on as many young people as we can, or we'll burn out.

SPEAKER_02

What is going on, LM family? Back again. This time, maybe not just this time, but we have a super awesome guest. She is the founder and CEO of Boost Learning Design. And the super magical, awesome thing, or maybe the connection between me, my heart, and our guest today is that she works with construction companies and trade unions that are growing faster than they keep up, which I do the same thing, but I'm not that clear about it. And the magical thing that she is doing that if you're out there in our industry, we absolutely need to do better, do gooder about is attracting people, training them, and then creating structures for sustainable retention. And that is her expertise. Her name is Mania Horner, and we're gonna get to learn all kinds of stuff from her. Now, if this is your first time here, you're listening to the Learnins and Missteps podcast, where you get to see amazing human beings just like you chart the path to how they are leaving this world better than they found it. My name's Jesse, your selfish servant, and we are about to get to know Miss Manya. Miss Manya, good morning. How are you?

SPEAKER_00

Hello, thank you for that warm welcome. And what a great bio. Did you write that or did I?

SPEAKER_02

I think it was a collaboration. You sent me some stuff, and then of course I gotta muddy it up. But I've got to like so I one, I want to reiterate your commitment, the work that you're doing to serve the construction industries and specifically the time that you're putting in with trades, is something I super, super appreciate. Some people have asked me, like, why do you interview people that are competitors? I'm like, bro, because I can't fix everything. We need a bunch of people out there to do this work, and you're out there doing it. So thank you so much for doing that. And I hope you continue to do it and grow and thrive because our industry needs it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we're a little fractured and we have to work together a lot more than we have been because we're in a bit of a pickle, and it's gonna take a lot of us working together to get through and out.

SPEAKER_02

So this pickle, are you talking about the massive exodus of baby boobers from our industry?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm talking about the one in four retirement. And I'm a Canadian, but I work with companies all around North America. So I'm seeing and researching and staying on top of everything going on in the US and in Canada as it pertains to skilled labor and the workforce in general. So we're yeah, we're in a, I call it my 15-year plan to help solve this challenge in the time that I have that I want to dedicate to the industry and to work before I maybe think about what's next in my life. But it it's a big job and we do have to work together on it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the interesting thing, I started my career in the trades back in 1995, right after I got out of high school. And the specific reason I said, oh, maybe I should stay here and make a career of this because I'm gonna make a lot of money in the future was because of the projections back then. Like just in the state of Texas, the average age of a journeyman plumber was like 46. And I'm in the apprenticeship program, like doing the orientation. I look around, 30 guys of my class, first year apprentices, they were all like 30-ish.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I was 18. I'm like, man, I'm gonna make some money. And so the back then the projections were it was just gonna get bleaker. Fast forward now, what are we 30 years later?

unknown

Don't tell it.

SPEAKER_00

30 years later, and it's even more bleak because apparently nobody's done anything about it or not enough, which I don't really quite understand why. And I have to say, I spent a bunch of time researching this because I've written a book and it comes out in a couple of weeks. And and I spent two chapters just going back into history and going, how did we get in this mess? What were the drivers? Okay. What were the social factors? What was going on culturally, politically, what was happening from the podiums? Yeah, and where was the money flowing? I'm like a follow-the-money sort of gal. So I looked into that, and everybody was getting pushed into more of the IT, the knowledge service worker. Like they were, they were saying, we want knowledge workers and we want everyone in tech. And they pushed everyone through college and university instead of highlighting the trades as also an appropriate and really needed career path and work stream for people. It comes from a variety of ways. You can read more in depth, like the research that I found in my book. I don't know. I think it's quite interesting, but it but we can't just keep blaming and complaining. We're actually at a point where it's quite critical that those of us in positions to do something, and that's anybody who's leading and owning a company or anybody who's leading in a union. These are the people that have the opportunity to do something because we're the hirers.

SPEAKER_02

The hirers. I love it. Oh my god. Okay. So first, before it gets lost, is it too early to announce the title of your book?

SPEAKER_00

Oh no, we can announce it. It's called Past the Torch: A Rallying Call to Rescue the Future of Trades.

SPEAKER_02

I love it.

SPEAKER_00

Put a lot of work into that title, and even the book cover itself is a torch. It's a flare, I should say. Oh, because a flare is a distress signal. So I wanted it a distress signal and call people through this rallying call to take some action.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So again, I'm gonna gush on you a little bit because what I love about the work you're doing is there's it just seems to have happened here in the last two or three years where all of a sudden, or maybe it's just the people I'm connected to on LinkedIn, whatever. But all of a sudden, the social feeds are all about attracting the next generation.

SPEAKER_00

It's your social feed, it's the people you're following for sure. But I'm noticing that too. And I'm glad that there's more conversation happening.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, I think it's valuable. However, most of those people have no idea of the next step or what it feels like, or how to, okay, let's get them in, but how the hell do we keep them? Because having been in the industry since, like I said, 1995, that is the biggest differentiator in the organizations that I serve. And I get to travel all over the US helping general contractors, subcontractors, et cetera. And the difference isn't attraction, they all have their little mechanisms and competitive salary and benefits. But it from my observation, the difference is how they treat their people and how they invest in their people, is what determines whether people stay with them. And so I'm wondering in your research, did that so obviously you have a business built on it, but in the research as it pertains to the book, did that pop up in a significant way?

Talent Flywheel For Keeping Great People

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. It definitely did. And what I've created is a framework around what does it take to keep people? And I called my talent flywheel. We use this with our clients. But the key to building a team, once you get people in, you're now building a team, building a crew. And so there's a few things that have to happen. It starts from day one on the job. So your onboarding really matters a lot. That actually statistically will retain people longer if you have a good onboarding experience. Okay. Second is the supervisors, managers, and leaders. You have to have well-trained, capable supervisors, managers, leaders because most people leave the leadership, not necessarily the company.

SPEAKER_02

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00

You need to have very clear expectations and standards and low tolerance for crap coming from the field, coming from supervisors. So as a leader, the guy running the company or the woman running the company, you have to set expectations, set the standards and hold people to it. Believe it or not, people actually do like boundaries.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Part of the supervisor skill set that has to be developed is also the ability to give great feedback. The next generation wants to hear what they're doing well and where they can do better. They're actually pretty open in a lot of ways to that kind of conversation. So giving your supervisors and developing the skill set to talk to people well, clearly and is important because the Gen Z or the Alpha, they're not interested in getting yelled at. They grew up a lot softer. And it's not a bad thing. No, not at all. Oh, I'm so tough, I get yelled at. I can handle it. That doesn't give you a badge. Good for you. So there are a few things when you're building a team, and I can take it a step further. If you really want to retain people long term, you have to provide training so they always feel like they're advancing. That's one of the boomer complaints about the young people is they don't like the fact that they're so hungry for running the company within three years. I'm like that as a sign that they actually care and give them the training, show them the career pathways, give them advancement. Yes. And hold a vision in your company that's big enough to hold their personal vision. Yeah. You know, nobody wants to stick around if they don't see an opportunity to grow and make a difference and be part of something that matters. And actually, that really matters to Gen Z workers. So my framework, and if I could show a visual, I mean, I have it, and we can always link it maybe. Yeah. But it's important because if you want to recruit, build, grow your team, and then really build your company brands. So you're the kind of company that people are clamoring to work for, you have to offer certain things. And at the hub of that is leadership. You have to make the kind of decisions that will impact your business in the way that you're creating these kind of frameworks and culture. So that was a bit of a lengthy description, but happy to share that image because I do believe it's and I break this down in the book as well. So I did include that image in all the description.

SPEAKER_02

I love it. So A, yes, let's make sure we have a link so people can go and download that thing. Because I know there's a lot of really forward-thinking leaders out there, people-centered leaders, that are working to figure it out. Because it's not easy, right? Sure. Onboarding, feedback, career pathways, leadership. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, those are all big projects.

SPEAKER_02

We're going to do the LM Family Member shout-out. And this one goes to Mr. Rusty Chambers, who took the time to leave a little review on the Google, because now I've got Google reviews, which is super fancy. Rusty says, good and energetic. It makes you think about how good you can be to everyone else if you spend a little time on you. Which Rusty, I'm super happy that message made it through. And folks, if you're wondering what he's talking about, he was one of the victims, recent victims, in the Time Management for Construction workshop, where we're trying to figure out how you can better prioritize yourself so that you can better serve the people you care about. Folks, you already know I love attention. The reviews, the shares, the thumbs up, the stars, all of the above. Please feed them to me because one, it makes me feel good, but two, it gives me an opportunity to shout you out in a future episode. Exactly. There's a whole lot, like behaviors, mental models, all these things that need nurturing and sustainability. So one thing, so I've got there's three things I want to get into now. We talked about onboarding, talked about feedback. You said a bunch of stuff, but the things that are pinging in my head is onboarding feedback and career pathways. So let me start with career pathways, if you don't mind.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And this is more me just sharing my opinion, and I want you to slap me if I'm wrong, or gauge the strength of your slap based on how wrong I am. How's that, Manya?

SPEAKER_00

Sure. Yeah, that sounds good. I'll try to get my virtual slap ready.

SPEAKER_02

I love it. So I've been on multiple teams with, and I get to see a lot like you got get to see behind the curtains when we go in and serve the people that we serve. And luckily, a lot of the folks that I work with do have career pathways, right? Like they have a map of this is step one, step two, step three, step four. That's in my head, that's pretty basic. And that's easy because you're just saying all you're giving job titles, right?

SPEAKER_00

You're giving rules.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. The next layer I've seen, not so much, is qualifications, CDQs, career qualification. Like these are the things that you, the skills that you need to build and excel at in order to prep you for the next role, or to say, I'm killing it here, I'm ready for more to take the next thing, right? Which is, I think, a lot better, right? Because it's not just subjective interpretation. It's no, these are the things now. Where I see the break at is okay, you got the pathway, you've got the CDQs. What are the behaviors and the systems that facilitate the development of those career-defining qualifications? So the question then is do you see that as a weak point, or maybe it's part of the services that you provide to help people? Okay, let's define it, map it. But now what are you going to do organizationally to facilitate your people actually walking the ladder?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the answer is yes. We do that as a service, but let's talk a little bit about the things that take it from a paper-based career path with some standards or some qualifications that are needed, and then what's the next level? So, one, let's just talk about the leadership support. Everything happens when leaders are on board. So that's for sure important. You need to have leaders who buy into the idea of career progression, and they need to be having career conversations annually, semi-annually. Hey, where do you see yourself going? What do you what would you love to be able to accomplish within our company? We see you and we think you're, you know, awesome. You show up, you do the things. What do you want? So that's when I mentioned you need to have a vision in your company that's big enough to hold the personal visions of the people who work for you. I've heard everything from I really want to be able to drop my kid off to school. Okay, how can we maybe delay your start time, but you're gonna be working later? Or can we work? Can we do four 12 hours instead of whatever? Okay, you get to now brainstorm some solutions to retain that great person and help facilitate the vision for their life. So that's just a small example. One may be I need to be able to earn an extra $15,000 this next year. What's that gonna look like? Let's look at some pathways for you. Maybe it's a new role with more responsibility, maybe it's overtime, maybe it's I don't know, whatever. Whatever, yeah. Maybe they're taking on some training because they're really awesome and you want to use them in some different ways on a Saturday to do training.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Get creative. But it starts with the conversation. So leaders need to have you need to provide your leaders with the structure so they can have those kind of conversations. And also the second piece of that is a mechanism for viewing and managing performance, not as a corny performance management tool, but as a really structured, hey, here's what you've done really well this year. Here's what I think we could see you improve on. And in that conversation, you get to look ahead at the year and go, here's how we're gonna help you develop the skills that are gonna take you to that next role. So it's a bit of a it's a bit of planning. Oh, yeah. Um, it's having the conversations, and then it's having the quarterly or semi-annual touch points so that you you didn't tell them something and then you forgot or never followed through.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So that's one system.

SPEAKER_02

I've done it wrong so many times, Manya.

SPEAKER_00

That's okay. We all have.

SPEAKER_02

Oh,

Career Pathways That People Can Follow

SPEAKER_02

okay. So I want to describe a leader, and I'd like to know if you give them one thumbs up, two thumbs up, or just thumbs down. Now, for a period of time, back when I had a real job, there was a period of time where I was training unofficially, like me and the guys would meet at the bar or at lunch or whatever, and I was showing them how I planned my work and how I interpreted the budget and whatever. Eventually that turned into my job, which was amazing. And so the first leader said, okay, because I was gonna leave the company, right? Similar to, I'm like, hey, look, I paid off all my debt. I was a superintendent at the time for mechanical contractor. And I'm like, man, I discovered that if I stayed in that job, sure the money was fantastic, but I was never gonna be able to serve the way I really wanted to serve and help my people, my team, my friends. And so I said, I need to find work that's more fulfilling because I was sick and tired of the meetings and the budgets and the arguments, because they were all the same all the time. Anyways, fast forward, they said, Okay, no, we don't want you to leave. I was gonna go take a job with the school district for 11 bucks. And what it was like a man, 80% pay cut, whatever it was. And they said, What are you doing? What if we just let you be a full-time trainer? And I said, Okay, what do you want me to train? They said, The thing that you're doing, just make it official. Okay, fine. So we blah, blah, blah. We start doing it. The leader at the time said, I'm gonna send an email to all the foreman superintendents and project managers. This was specifically for foreman. And you're gonna put a schedule together for the training, and I'm gonna make it mandatory. So he sent the email and said, Mandatory, foreman need to be in this, and we broke it up. So, two questions. That action of him sending the mandatory email. What do you what is your are you thumbs up, thumbs down on it? And the second question is, what do you think actually happened?

SPEAKER_00

Wow. Okay. I don't know. I think thumbs up is okay, depending on the culture already of what training like depending on the culture of training at the organization already. So when I say that, what is the leadership attitude towards training? Is everything really an authoritarian? Was there a lot of options for training and people were invited? I don't know the culture of training or the attitude towards it. I think that should impact my thumbs up or thumbs down. I hate to be wishy-washy, but if it was on a whim and it wasn't supporting all those foreman, either their performance or what the business needed to change, then it's not great. One thing that we often consider with our clients is what is the business impact to this training? Like, why are you trying to do it? You got to start with a reason. Yep. It can't just be a knee-jerk reaction. So, what are you trying to improve? What kind of skills are you trying to develop? Or are you trying to get everybody online aligned with a certain behavior or message or habit? And then in that case, that's your call as a leader. You're gonna say, hey, everybody, we're doing this training for this reason, and we're gonna pay you to be there, and we want everyone to be there and make it make it a thing. Um, nobody loves to have to do something by force. So you'll get better buy-in if you can establish the why, what's in it for them.

SPEAKER_02

Excellent answer. The what happened was Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I was gonna say that leads to the what happened. You probably did not have buy-in.

SPEAKER_02

We did not have buy-in, and attendance was sparse because the idea was for the foreman to leave the job early, a day or two a week, to be at the office to go through the training. It magically, every day we had training, we had emergencies on the job side and inspections and deliveries. And so the superintendents and the PMs were the ones telling the foreman, like, no, just go to the next one, just go to the next one. And so it was less than awesome. We'll just say that. The leader tried high five for trying, but it was leaks.

SPEAKER_00

It's okay. High five for trying, but if you've never rolled out a whole bunch of training initiatives, then you're gonna just do it a quick and dirty way.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes, totally. So then fast forward a year or two, new leader comes in. He says, All right, Jess, I know you've been doing this training thing. We're gonna make it official, we're gonna make it During the day on the clock, half a day for eight weeks. The guys are gonna get paid, they're gonna come off the job, and I'm laughing, like, yeah, that's cute, man. He's like, What do you? I said, Look, bro, here's we've this is how it's been going. And I gave him the scenario I just described. He's like, Oh, that's easy. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna roll this out and have my conversations with the general super, like, with the superintendents, with the project managers, and make it ultra clear the reason we're doing this, da da da da. So there was some runway of him having these conversations, helping people understand like this is why we're doing it. The margin loss that we're losing was uh largely due to a lack of planning and being in a hyper-reactive state. And so blah, blah, blah. He did the front end work, and then he said, Okay, now what I need from you, Jess, is I need a list of whoever misses your class. And I said, Man, I'm not gonna do that. Like, they're my friends, you know what I mean? I'm not gonna be tattled. He's saying, No, no, I don't care about the guy that didn't make it to class, I want the name of their superintendent and project manager. And I said, No. He said, Yeah, because I'm gonna go have a talk with them because they need to make them available for this training. And if they can't let go of a foreman for half a day and cover for half a day, either that foreman is underpaid, or those PM and superintendent are slacking and they need some different kind of attention.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, fair enough. Yeah. If everything falls apart because somebody's not there for four hours, that's not great.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. And guess what? It was amazing. People showed up at the end of the year, our financial performance was dramatically better. And of course, there were other things that happened, but the primary thing from my perspective was he got involved in the communication and made it super, super clear. Leaders, superintendent, project managers, this is not an option. You got to find a way to get your people in the training because those two parties were the ones complaining about the foreman being underskilled. It's like you're complaining about them, but you're not creating the conditions for them to upskill. Here's the deal.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. Yeah. No, that's great. I love that. And it is important. We talk about our learning ecosystem and the five components of the learning ecosystem that are important to note. Okay. I'm just pulling them up because my brain doesn't always I'm with you, sister. So the first is the attitude, what we just talked about. Like, what's the culture of learning or the attitude towards it? Is it like eh, there's a course, but just don't bother? So that's like the attitude that that's driven from the top. The second piece of the learning ecosystem is the course, is the training strategy. So, what is the overall strategy? Why are we doing it? What are we trying to train? What are what kind of levers are we trying to pull so that we can move this company in a certain direction? Because at the end of the day, training is there to support the goals of the business, not just the goals of the government or department of labor or health and safety compliance. It's

Learning Ecosystem And Capturing Field Knowledge

SPEAKER_00

there also to support everybody's growth so that you can operate better as a company as a whole and operate better together. So that's important, is like what is the overall strategy? Because you don't just want to start chucking random courses at people. You need to have a bit of a game plan. Yep. And then the next layer is your content and your courses. And that's where in my book I talk a lot about the knowledge capture because we are losing such a lot of deep expertise from these retiring people. And it's a shame. We don't want to actually lose all that. And if it hasn't been documented or videoed or captured, it's a labor-intensive process, but we recommend a bunch of different ways in our knowledge capture engine. Yeah. And that turns into information that you can then build training on.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So your content in courses is key. And that all ties into your training strategy, which ties into your career pathways. And then there's who are your trainers and what's your technology that's going to deliver this information to people? Because it can be done in video repositories, you can have checklists, you can have operating procedures and processes written down. You can have trainers that come in and your own trainers that deliver. There's lots of ways, and AI is just making that even more interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and then I include always another layer, which is the skill practice. I will stand on a soapbox forever and ever and say training is not knowledge dumping. Training, that's like a little piece, but the skill development, and we're in the skilled trades. So it's even more so important. And I'll give you a little background on why I stand so heavily on skill being the most crucial piece. I actually was a violin teacher in my early career. From about 16 to my early 30s, I taught violin and I have actually a music teaching degree as well. So I can teach in high school if I want and all those things. I never did, but I can.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So with music practice, you're actually just trying to develop skill in every student. So there's a lot that I take from developing musicians that I bring to the developing skilled trades and craftsmen because it's the same principles that apply. So there's a bunch about my methodology, which isn't it doesn't belong to me, but I call it deliberate practice.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

So when you're building training, you want to make opportunities for especially your young people to deliberately practice core skills in those first few years. And it's not just like giving them exposure once on the job and then three months later again and hoping they've recalled. It's actually tied to brain science. Like you've got to give repetition. So there's a whole bunch of rules around deliberate practice, but those five pieces are the elements of that learning ecosystem. And then your people are the beneficiaries and they're the participants in it. And so they matter a lot. You've got to make sure that everything is appropriate for your people, their age, their generation, whether they're on the job and you've made accommodations for them to step away to do the training. You've actually carved out time in their work week so that they can do the practice on the job in the corner on scraps before they come and do it on the other real materials. And there's a lot to it. And I get that what I'm saying is holy shit, Munya, we don't have time for this. I know. That's why you're all leaving it behind. So that's that's really, I think, the benefit of working with people like you, Jess Jesse, or like with our company, because we help take that stuff off your plate. You're not trying to do legal, you're not trying to do your bookkeeping, or I hope there's certain aspects of the business that at a certain size you got to start out. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's time. I've got one of my clients who happens to be the boss I was talking about earlier that came in and said, You're gonna do this four hours. I support him at the new company he's working at. And he's like, Yes, one of the things I love about you, and I'm thinking I'm gonna get a compliment. He's if revenue goes to the crapper, I could just cut you. I'm like, but I like business-wise, he doesn't have to carry me and my in terms of cost to the business. He doesn't have to carry my insurance and my benefits and all of that. When things tighten up, he can stop the spend and they can continue executing on their core work until things get better. And so I think it's an added benefit for two things. Like short, I'll say this short view is okay. I don't have to hire this dummy and put him on payroll. At whatever point we could just terminate the contract or terminate the services and let them move on. That's good. The other thing, like you said, is trying to build a learning and development team within the organization is very expensive.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that's more for when you're in the hundreds to thousand employees. Yes. When you're in the low, you know, low quantity, yeah, you're gonna patch things together and then you're gonna get to a point where it's hard to manage and you might want to outsource. And we have jumped on this bandwagon of calling ourselves fractional. That whole thing where you hire a fractional CMO or a fractional CFO. We're a fractional HR team. So we have several people in the company that do the fractional HR. So they help with the hiring and the recruiting and the interviewing and um the senior stuff, like how do we terminate well and document properly and compensation packages and all that HR stuff that you start to realize, oh, I actually don't know that. And I'm using my lawyer a little too frequently and it's costing me a lot. So the fractional HR side is cool and it's really smart if you're in that 25 employee to maybe 120 employee. And then you get to a point where you know you really should hire some internal HR. But then on the leader, the LD side, so the learning and development or your training department, that's the other cool thing is the fractional training is neat because we can help with the strategy and the what software should we use? And can you make us the courses? And you can you come on site and capture the video? Yes and yes, because I've got a team of six people that do all that stuff behind the scenes to get you a finished product. And it's a lot if you have to hire that yourself and piece all that together. It's oh yeah. Um, and we have seven apprenticeship program builds this year.

SPEAKER_02

Nice.

SPEAKER_00

That is a huge amount of bits and pieces. That's a lot of bits and pieces. My head is scrambled just thinking about it. Thankfully, I have good team and project managers because that's a lot of bits and pieces.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and there's a mountain of administrative work associated with maintaining a DOL approved, Department of Labor approved apprenticeship program that I thought we're gonna do this in-house. And then when I started digging into it, I'm like, ugh, no, we're not.

SPEAKER_00

This is too much work, like just the administrative part was like this is where I think companies are falling flat and where we have to keep encouraging and promoting because although it's a pain to have to handle apprenticeships, the paperwork, all of that stuff, and the what if I invest all this time and energy and then they leave? Yeah. Or what if I can only provide half of the skill set and training of the apprenticeship and then they have to go somewhere else? There's a lot of that, but I do think it's our responsibility as an industry to take one for the team and bring on apprentices. We have no choice, we can't be the special favored golden child who doesn't take on apprentices because it's inconvenient. Sorry. Yeah, not uh not appropriate, then don't complain. Right. We all have to take on as many young people as we can, or we'll burn out 100%.

SPEAKER_02

So you mentioned the violin, and I know you're serving the trades now, skilled trade. How did what's the connection? How did you go from violin, music, education to what you're doing now? Was it a pathway somebody, a career pathway somebody put in front of you that you said, that's what I'm gonna do?

SPEAKER_00

No, it's I think it's interesting. So I grew up in a family business of construction and restoration. So my dad started his company in 1990. He had learned carpentry and framing and custom home building. Nice, started his own business in 1990 because my older sister was sick. So he had to spend some time, probably about eight months with her in the hospital. And she's fine now. She's a mom kid, so she recovered, but that was a tough bit for our family. So he started his business, and I grew up at the dinner table hearing about all the clients and all the challenges with the government and all the regulations, the financial stuff. I heard all of that at

Her Journey From Violin To Trades

SPEAKER_00

the dinner table. He had, I'm one of five kids, so he had all of us working for him at different times. We were all in the shop from the time we could stand smelling the shavings and working with the tools and having our own little ear protection. I think we probably lost more hammers and saws than he would care to admit because we built everything as kids. We took all the stuff, built forts, and so we were always tinkering, dabbling. But then in our teens, we actually started being part of official crews. So I had a chance to work for about four to five summers. I was trying to, I was going back to recall all the projects I had done. Yeah, we did a lot of restoration work, so historic buildings, designated heritage sites. He ended up becoming recognized in Canada as a major wood consultant for heritage buildings. So I had a lot of that kind of exposure on the sites, learning alongside European craftsmen and really masters of the trade in restoration techniques. So I've done everything from glazing, hundreds of sash and case windows with old glass, cutting the glass, re-putty glazing, a lot of paint restoration, woodwork like spindle turning on the lathe and replica parts. I got to do a lot of really neat stuff in the restoration side. So I call myself I call myself a tradesperson because I can do a lot of cool shit.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it's quite specific. Well, this is the funny thing. Uh I was a girl and I was really smart in school. So my pathway was actually I had a full academic scholarship to my undergrad degree. So that was just the way that my career went. It was like, you are really good grades. I was a good student. Yes, I had all this cool stuff on the side, but it was never, hey, do you want to take over the family business?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

That wasn't even a thing. I also have two brothers. So one actually has taken over the business.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And then my other brother's an engineer. So they went more in that route. But yeah, I ended up in business degrees, education degrees. And so I had a professional career in curriculum development and um corporate training. So it was about nine years ago when I was walking with my dad down a street. We had just had lunch, and we were looking ahead, and there was this heritage building, a really prominent one, and there was just a cloud of red brick dust billowing everywhere.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So these guys were grinding the lead paint off of the brick. And I was like, what the actual F are these guys doing? Like you just knew it wasn't the right method for removing the paint. Right. And I said to my dad, okay, we gotta do something. We gotta do something about this because there's so many companies that have untrained workers. Yep, they don't know the methods that are appropriate. At this time, I was referring to heritage buildings specifically. And I was like, Dad, you're a you're the guy, you're one of the subject matter experts in the country on this. We should do something. That kind of started the ball rolling in trades-based training, and now uh that's all I do, and that's the mission that I'm working towards is capturing this knowledge from senior people before they go. Love it, transferring that knowledge to the next generation through the best training and helping companies grow by helping them recruit, retain, and train people so that they can all be efficient. Like I get what it takes to run a company of 25 people, how hard that can be, and the kind of mindset you need to have as that leader and owner. I've got a special, I think a really special seat at the table because I'm I get to to solve not only the company owner's growth goals, but also I get to help the next generation worker do their best. So I get to kill two really awesome birds with one stone. I love it.

SPEAKER_02

A hundred percent. I'm with you, and uh that's part of my struggle. One beautiful story. I love the connection and the weave of starting off with your dad and then you know, university, because of course it's what everybody's supposed to do. And then you're like, okay, I acquired, I had this skill set, I acquired this other skill set and insight. And then how about I mash them together?

SPEAKER_00

I know that's all and then the skill development piece from 15 or so years of music training and teaching. You learn how to become a great coach and trainer and skill person, right? Because you have to, you can't play the instrument for your students, you have to help them use that tool to create something great. And we're in the exact same position now, it's just different tools.

SPEAKER_02

100%. Oh my. So what I want the LM family member out there to take away is keep an open mind, right? Observe and watch what's going on because sometimes it feels or it could feel that the skill set you developed early on through university or whatever, you may not be using it. It may, you may, it may feel like it's pigeonholed into one sector or one area. But over years, decades, I'll say, you start discovering that, man, these skills are transferable. Like teaching, coaching somebody on how to play the violin, that skill set of getting people to the to elevate in their performance is a transferable skill. Like you just said it beautifully. The violin was a tool then, now we're using different tools. Same thing to education or curriculum design, like it all can be woven together to provide greater value to folks. And I say that, Manya, because I know some people that are like, yeah, but this is the degree I have, and this is all I really know. I'm like, okay, let's look at what else, what other circles you use.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, what else in your life or world or your experiences? Military experience, first responder, sports. Well, there's a lot of people who exit some of those careers because they're high burnout and kind of more for young. Right. And then you get to what's my next thing. I think it's a really awesome transition into skilled trades because you bring a lot of that team culture and you have to have each other's backs in the trades. You have to know you can rely on each other. So it's there's a lot of really cool synergies depending on where you come from. And I had a really neat, no, I had a a moment young. I was maybe in my early 20s, and I was listening to a guest speaker, and he was the head of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment in Toronto. They're the he runs the Maple Leafs. Wow. He runs all the concert venue, he runs the big, at the time it was called the Sky Dome, like with all of the sports, like tons of teams, the Raptors, the Maple, the Blue Jays, like tons of teams, right? So he was responsible for running this. He was the president of this organization. And I asked him a question. I said, and I was 22. I said, How did you become qualified for this job? Very naive question. And he said, That's such an excellent question. He said, Once I ran a restaurant, and once I owned a sports team, and once I ran a this and once I ran a that, and he said, and guess what? Now I run all of those at once. And I thought, thank you for being generous and not thinking I'm a total. But it's true, all and so I've always kept that thought in mind. Like you're just on a journey collecting experiences and skill sets that one day are all gonna mix together into something totally unique, and you have no idea how that will look, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I love that. One, the question, right? Like, how do you become qualified to do that? There's no credential for that. I get similar, like, how did you like what sort of what sort of certifications and trainings did you get to do the business you're doing now? If you didn't know this, they'll let any damn fool start a business and start a podcast. Like, you don't need a certificate.

SPEAKER_00

No, you get to just do it. And but you've got all these like ridiculous guys on YouTube. My favorite is like handyman riz. I just made that up. But you've got all these randos on YouTube making content. How about you? If you're such an expert in your thing, why don't you make content? How about you train the next gen easy? Like you need two cameras and a mic. Let's go. Simple. So why not you?

SPEAKER_02

I'm with you. There you go. Manya said, LM family member, why not you? We got to see that stuff coming out. Oh, I'm loving this conversation. Okay, I'm curious. Do you see this happen out there? What I see often, very high frequency, is when people, when organizations talk about onboarding, what they're really describing is how to get somebody into the company, give them their laptop and their hard hat and their PP, like just give them the things that they need that are relevant to being an employee with the company. It's almost never relative to their specific role. And in my head, there's two layers there's onboarding, like the corporate company onboarding. And then there's positional onboarding. Am I getting that wrong?

SPEAKER_00

You're right. So there's actually a few stages. So let's think about it as the pre-boarding. That's what we talked about. So, like from the you're hired, you signed a contract to your first day. That I would consider pre-boarding. So that's we've got your send me all of

Onboarding That Wins In A Talent War

SPEAKER_00

your health and safety certifications and send me all of your licenses. And oh, by the way, what size are you? Because we're going to have PPE for you. And don't forget your work boots. So it's it's your that's your pre-boarding. That's all the stuff that happens before they get to work. And then onboarding starts, I'd say orientation is a few days in that first week. And that's like, how great can you make their orientation? I challenge you to make it great because you know the first day when you go somewhere and you're showing up and you're a little bit nervous, you're a bit hesitant because everything's new. You don't know, is this the right door? Can I park here or is someone gonna yell at me? Where do I hang my shit up? Where's the bathroom? Do we make our own coffee or bring our own coffee? There's all these questions culturally that you don't want to get wrong because you don't want to look like an idiot.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

So that kind of stuff is actually you can set a lot of those expectations. So somebody's first day, they show up and feel really good.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Doesn't take a whole lot. You could make a video, you could have a checklist, like anything. You want them leaving that first day, going home to their significant other or their mom or whoever, and saying, they say, Hey, how was your first day? And they go, That was awesome. I'm really excited to work here. I think I made the right choice. Because don't forget, they have a lot of choice right now.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so you're not God's gift to them as much as you think you are. Right. Okay, there's choice. So that first week of orientation to this is the company, and hey, you're gonna be using this equipment, and here's your logins and keys and whatever, all that good stuff. That's all important. Here's your vision and mission of the company, and here's our policies. You got to sign off. So there's all that sort of stuff. But then there's the okay, here's your role. Here's your first 30 days, here's your first 60 days, here's your first 90 days, what we expect for things we want you to hit, milestones we want you to hit in those first three months. Um, here's how here's your mentor, here's who you're gonna be checking in with. We're gonna be meeting with you every you know, two weeks for a one-on-one, and we're gonna check in how things are going, give you feedback. Like you gotta have a structure for this.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

So I do have a little freebie if anyone wants, they can download on my website. We've got an onboarding checklist, um, and it's generic, but it's a good launching point if you don't have at least this stuff. Get that in place before you start making it super jazzy. But um you can go to my website and download that. It's on there's like a free resources section.

SPEAKER_02

Good. Then what's the website?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, good question. It's boost stands for boostlearningdesign.com.

SPEAKER_02

I love it. I love that you're just giving people tools to like, hey, yeah, there's lots of stuff there.

SPEAKER_00

Like, take it. You know, I'm firing it out as fast as we can package it up and make it look cute with a web page attached to it. That's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_02

I know so many skills I've had to learn starting my day business.

SPEAKER_00

Jeez, which none of my business degree prepared me for any of this running a business thing, especially with the online components. The online components is it's it's awesome, it's like a wonderland because I like to learn, but geez, it's a lot, and now AI is just throwing us all for a loop because we're like, oh no, agents and automation and oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, I'm still holding the line. Like I'm playing with AI, I'm enamored with agents, but it right now it's a question of like brain space.

SPEAKER_00

What I know like well, I'm sitting in a two-hour training this afternoon, so I can learn it. Like I'm every week on this stuff because hey, we've all got to stay current and learn. None of us can just hang up our hat and go, yep, I know it all. It's just not, it's just not gonna happen. And no, I don't know. I think that's the exciting thing about doing this work and running a business. I'm constantly learning.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah, totally. So you mentioned choice, which I'm gonna tie this to feedback, meaning employees have choice, and then if we scope it down to construction, yeah, like craft workers, construction professionals have a massive amount of choice. If they just wanted to stay within the industry, yeah. And I love the what you said earlier is like employer, you're not the answer, you're not as valuable, essential as you like to believe, or maybe more accurately, as you used to be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're all fishing for the same talent, you're all fishing for the best talent from a shrinking pond. Yeah, like the stocks getting depleted. And and actually, maybe the pond is actually growing, but the stock is depleting.

SPEAKER_02

That's the problem. No, I think you nailed it. The pond is it's growing, but the stock is thinning, like it's happening concurrently.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and you gotta put the shiniest freaking bait in there and you gotta satisfy that fish. Uh I don't know. Maybe we're maybe I'm taking the analogy too far, but no, I'm digging it.

SPEAKER_02

I smell what you're cooking. Now, the other thing that that ties into the newer generations is the choice isn't just working for a construction company. When I was coming up, the way to get a job was to go to a fast food restaurant or a company, ask for an application, fill out the application, and hope that they called me at my home phone, my landline, because I didn't have a cell phone back then. Fast forward to now, and we talked a little bit about AI. There's teenagers making million-dollar businesses using AI, right? I know. We can make money selling pictures of our feet on the internet from the house. So I may not make six figures, my feet may not be that attractive, but I'll tell you what, $40,000 a year sitting at home wearing whatever I want beats $60,000 a year working for somebody that isn't gonna give me feedback, isn't gonna help develop me, and is gonna scream and yell at me every chance they get. What do you am I too sensitive, Banya?

SPEAKER_00

No, and I've made a sound like shoot, because I don't know how we compete with the with that 100%. I think what we're competing for is just the really solid people who still appreciate a productive day's work. Sure. But you're right, we have to provide an environment that feels like fun and a team and engaging, and it's not all fun. I remember whole summer sweating my ass off in a Tyvek suit. Oh god, and just being like, this sucks. And then like other years where I would have no fingerprints at all on my hand and I couldn't have cute nails because I just was sanding right bleakly all summer, like the same thing. It's not always great, but I didn't stay there forever, and I learned enough to now have written a fucking book about it. That's cool. But like, how does that happen? So I'm hoping we can just create great workplaces where people feel like they're really glad to show up and it feels like a satisfying day's work. And to be honest, I think as fake as this world is getting, people are starting to crave more real reality, truthfully. Yes. I'm shocked that if you provide the opportunities for people, they will choose to go for a hike or a walk or go to the beach or paddleboard, learn how to sew or make something or create an item. There's there's a whole culture shifting where people are doing more tactical meditative activity. And I think I'm hoping that translates to work as well, because otherwise, we're gonna have to train the robots real fast.

SPEAKER_02

I'm not opposed to robots because there's a lot of work out there in the trades that damages our bodies severely, and we need to robotize all of that. But there's a lot of stuff like wait a minute, they don't need to do everything, let's just minimize the risk to the human being. Now, I'm with you. Like, I believe rather I credit my career as an installer, as a plumber coming up back in the 90s. That's where I built the skill set to build my business. Now, I'm not talking about reading PL statements and all of all of that, but what I'm talking about is as I was a first-year apprentice, I got a pile of inform, I got a pile of material, random parts, I had a piece of paper that kind of articulated what it was supposed to look like and how it was supposed to work, and then I had tools. And so I just had to figure out how to take the material and the information and assemble them in such a way that it was of utility. And those repetitions of just doing that, fake, like you said earlier, tinkering and figuring out how to make the connections and make something durable that was of utility. When I started my business, I had no idea what I just knew. I was like, I'm just gonna try to figure out how to start a business. And oh yeah, what do I need to learn?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it gives you like the kind of planning and repetition, resilience, and like building businesses is hard because you're always feeling like you're out of your element. Oh, and so you just have to keep going and figuring it out. And that idea of being able to tinker and figure out is just as important in the trades as it is in any business, actually. Yes. Um, oh man, I find it really hard right now. I'm parenting, I've got three kids 13, 11, and six. And there's so much where I'm just like, mom, help me. And I holler back, figure it out. And then they holler back, but I already tried. I'm like, not long enough. Keep going. Yeah. And I'm like, and then they're like, why? And I said, if I rescue you every two seconds, you're never gonna be able to figure out how to figure shit out. So oh my goodness. We have to. I think a lot of it actually the responsibility when I say the rallying call is for leaders in the trades, I think it's also for parents in general. Please, oh amen. Give your kids a chance to try and fall and fail. This morning I gave my son feedback. He does this sport called parkour. I don't know if you this. Oh, yeah. Okay, so he does parkour, and I like watching, I think it's fine. He's cool for five minutes, and I watch. So he's up in the ceiling, like walking along these pipes, and they're playing this game where they have to chuck these squishy blocks at their buddies and hit them, and that's part like some warm-up game.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So I don't mind watching him like walk on this pipe. He's basically tightrope walking, holding on to a super skinny amount of pipe. It's two inch pipe.

SPEAKER_01

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So he's going hand over hand and running along this pipe, hand over hand, and I'm just thinking, please keep one hand on there. There's no tie-offs. And he's seven years old, six years old. So then I see him circle back. He's got a block in his hand. So he's hand over handing with his wrist, like holding the block in his hand, so he can go out and then chuck the block at his buddy. So I'm watching on the side, going, Oh my goodness, this is not gonna feel good watching him fall. I'm gonna yeah, this is bad. So this morning I'm like, hey son, I gotta give you some feedback on your parkour. Can you just like only do that pipe thing if you've got two hands free? Mom, I'm fine. I'm like, no, just come on, just listen. Anyways, I don't know what the moral of that story was, but I think it's just give them a chance. Well, let them take the risks, correct when you need to, but like we gotta give young kids a chance to figure it out.

SPEAKER_02

100%. And I think I'm gonna tie that back. The we had this was back in the day, we launched an internship program that introduced high school kids, like we put them to work in the field. I had to go, I did all my homework, y'all. Don't judge me to make sure that we were in alignment with child labor laws and DOL and OSHA and all the things. And so they were under 18, but they were working on the job site with tools and everything.

SPEAKER_00

Like it's well, I did that too. I probably wasn't quite legally allowed, but we, you know, the 90s, things were different. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02

Right. The interesting thing was there were two situations. One, we had a young lady, she was phenomenal. She was 16 years old. It was her summer between her junior and senior year. And I paired her up with one one foreman, right? That we had to have a sponsor, and she was like he that person was responsible for guiding her, and blah, blah, blah. He didn't let her do anything. And she called me. She said, Hey Jesse, told me to call me if you call you if I'm having a problem. I'm like, Oh my god, please tell me the guys are not being disrespectful. And she says, No, it's fine, like they're fun, but they're not letting me work. And I said, What do you mean they're not like they're not letting me do anything? They're showing me and talking to me about it, but I want to do it and they don't let me. So I called the guys up. I said, What's going on, man? And it was interesting, it was a blind spot. What he says, Jess, I have a 16-year-old daughter, and I am terrified. All I could see is my little girl, and I'm worried about her getting hurt. And I was like, Ah, okay, we got to switch. But to your point, we have to give them the space to learn. Yeah. The argument I had all the time with some of the when we were thinking, launching the idea was I don't get paid to babysit, I know time to babysit. What if they get hurt? What if they cut their finger? And I'm like, man, we got 45-year-old dummies getting hurt and cutting their fingers like age thing.

SPEAKER_00

In fact, they're probably going to be more careful. And this is the aspect of retaining this young generation that matters.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Because they don't want, they're not going to be satisfied with pushing a broom for three years or carrying heavy stuff or pushing a wheelbarrow. Very used to being holding the controls and doing the thing, and that's what they want. Our biggest complaint is that they want to progress in their career too fast. Let's make the conditions so that they can progress fast. I actually have this method of skill development that I don't want to get into too much tactics, but I'll give you an example.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

It's for a company if they want to build skill in somebody new, apprentice or non, doesn't matter if they're a compulsory or non-compulsory. Let's just say we want them to become a framer.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right. In the first 50 weeks, so let's say you've got your employee for about 50 weeks, they're off two weeks vacation. I help them create a 50-week skill stacking plan. And so each week they're working on a base or next level skill. And this is not tied to a formal apprenticeship necessarily.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Although you could take a formal apprenticeship with the skill tracking log, and you could break that out into a week by week just so you don't miss anything. But it's actually a guide on site. So week one could be, let's just say, measuring accurately.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So you're going to give that the there might be three examples

Skill Stacking Through Deliberate Practice

SPEAKER_00

of exercises for that new person to just practice measuring. And it may sound really dorky, but if you can drill skills in a small time period, you'll actually get them to leap much faster. Yes. So I take it to music and we can take it to sports. If you want a student to be able to play a song, you don't make them play the song a million times. Isolate the six skills and you make them do those skills over and over until now all of a sudden the song gets learned in a really short amount of time. So it's take soccer, football, whatever you call. You're not going to just hope that they nail the corner kick. No, you're going to drill the corner kick until they're an awesome corner kicker. You're going to isolate the overhead throw and you're going to nail that. So it's no different in the trades. So I've got this 50-week skill stacking plan that the on-site coordinator, whoever they are, is going to help the newbies execute. All right, you got an hour. It's the end of the day. We're cleaning up or we're planning. You're just over there doing your skill development exercises and watch the skills stack. And young people freaking love stacking skills, love badges, they love gamification. We hit 10 skills and you cash in for a gift card. Frick, make it fun, man.

SPEAKER_02

Totally, totally. And so the feedback thing, right? And this is for the younglings out there that are maybe interested. I tell people when people ask me, like, what should I look for, especially with like educators that I'm connected with? I'm like, look, what I've seen work really well is students that are in extracurricular activities, because they got to be at school earlier and later than their friends, and they do it voluntarily. Also because they have to work with other people towards a common goal. Huge. The second thing I want is a student, I don't want the straight A students, because I've run that, it didn't work out, because they need to, they don't want to be wrong. So they need to be told precisely what right is, and if they don't, they won't make a decision. I need the kids that are a pain in the ass.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that are willing to take some risks and see what happens, and they're not afraid of yes, man, 100%.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And they're not afraid to figure things out and go down a path that that is at least common path. I need those kids, and the ones that have so much damn energy in the classroom that they seem like they don't care, but it's not that they don't care, it's just the classroom learning style is not good for them. Yeah. Now, how do I know that? Because I was one of those kids, mania. And when I got out on the job site, what kept me engaged was the feedback loop. It was instant feedback on whether I was getting better or not. I could see, am I performing average or am I doing better than the I could just look at the amount of pipe that I put up at somebody else, and oh, I'm beating them. Feedback loop. At lunchtime, I could turn around and look at what I installed, like the fruits of my labor. And it was that feedback loop and the conditions of being on a job site that absolutely captured my mind and my energy and everything else. And so that's I think that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00

I've never heard it spoken quite like that, but I think that's really you've dialed it in.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. It was so let's go another layer, right? My problem in school was the pace at which things went. I wanted to apply and do, and it was lecture, and then there was fill out the paper and be quiet and stand in line. I'm like, okay, I already got it. We don't, I'm not gonna do my homework. I'm not gonna practice something that I already know how to do. This is dumb. All of the behaviors that got me in trouble in school were a non-issue on the job site. I'm loud. Yeah, like it was nobody cared.

SPEAKER_00

And I actually had a bit of a weird education too. Like I remember I mentioned that my sister was sick. So because she was sick, she had cancer, she was in the hospital for like almost a year. My mom homeschooled a few of the rest of us. Uh huh. So we started homeschooling back when like only really weirdos and hate was homeschooled. Like it was not the trend like it is now.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

So I had this opportunity to homeschool initially and I loved it. Yeah. When I went to public school, I was like, this is weird and boring. And then I homeschooled again, did some private. Yep. Grades seven and eight. So middle school, I homeschooled, and I got to do it at my own pace. So I actually helped my dad set up his business on QuickBooks. Nice. That was one of my big projects. Set up a construction company on QuickBooks and I did loads of data entry.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

And I also got my Royal Conservatory. That's like the standard for music here in Canada. I got my grade eight. So that allowed me to teach music.

SPEAKER_01

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

So I did that in my middle school. And I did some books, like I did curriculum books, but it was all at my own pace. So then I went to public high school and I went, what the heck? I was so far ahead. And I thought, we have to sit here for six hours and do this bullshit. So I was the actually like a great, like a super top earning student with marks.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But I skipped like all the smokers. Like I was the worst. I got, you know, how the like vice principal comes to the door and it's all the skippers from the day before.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'd be called with all the pot smokers. And everybody looks at me like, you're getting in trouble. And I'd walk out. And it's funny because I did musical theater with the vice principal. So she'd be like, Why were you out? And I'm like, student government volunteering. She's fine, but please get a note. You're embarrassing me. But yeah. Like I just couldn't handle the fact that I'm sitting there for hours on end doing random stuff. Anyways, I wasn't, I was like a top mark student, but I was actually a really shitty student. It wasn't until I got out of that and did what I wanted to study in university that I gave a crap. But oh man, it was hard doing high school, really hard.

SPEAKER_02

And I think that is not said enough. Maybe I need to do a better job of helping like parents and educators understand if your student, if this classroom's not going fast enough for them, I know traditional thinking is you need to put them in an AP class or interbaccalureate classes. No, you're missing the point. It's the conditions in which the traditional education, academia, has designed for learning does not suit everybody.

SPEAKER_00

No, and we could do a whole session on that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because one of my degrees is actually a high school teacher. I have a high school music and accounting degree. Never wanted to teach in high school, but I think the old high school model is gonna change. Oh, it's I don't think it's gonna be around over the next 10 years, honestly. Yes, we can't sustain it, and like they're not keeping up with AI, they're not keeping up with the trades needed. It's like, why are they sitting there? It's such a waste of time. That's a whole other and very opinionated piece. So you may not want

Fixing The Education And Career Mismatch

SPEAKER_00

to highlight that because I can get very well.

SPEAKER_02

I'm fine with it. People have asked me, like, why are you against university and college? I'm not. What I'm against is forcing kids down a path that does not serve them.

SPEAKER_00

I'm against mismatch. Yes, mismatch, perfectly said. My daughter, my middle one, wants to be a veterinarian. So I'm like, okay, girl, we're gonna aim you towards get through high school, do your science basic thing that you have to get at a cheap school, get some experience talking with people. She already does apprenticeship because my sister's a vet, so she's already out every summer from the age of 11, putting down horses and holding them while they're getting their teeth done. Like she's already out there seeing the job and knowing she likes it. So I'm not worried about her. Actually, she'll do a great job in vet school because she's had so many years of exposure.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Then my other one, I'm like, yeah, you don't need to do university, it's not the path you want to do. So waste your time.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. No, a hundred I applaud you for having that perspective. And for the parents and educators out there, if you got a kid, I'll just say this we all learn in different under different conditions. The job site for me, the noise, the physicality, the competition, the camaraderie were the conditions that I didn't know that I learned. That's where I thrive. Sitting down, keeping my hands to myself and staying quiet is the it that is the worst torture you can ever put me in. So if you got that kid, construction or the trades is probably a good spot to experiment with. I'm not saying they're gonna like it, but they may find out like, whoa, okay, I need more of this. And it's I think healthier. When we're not trying to, when we're not in the mismatch, like you said, when we're not in the mismatch, I think we're we're set up to become better versions of ourselves, period. And so at I'm gonna avoid the risk of going into the other podcast episode about education and the design. So I'm gonna are you ready for the final grand slam question, Miss Mania?

SPEAKER_00

Lay it on me. I'm ready.

SPEAKER_02

I'm excited because about what your answer is going to be, because the breadth of experience you have, it's highly evident that your processing power is super high level. Playing violin, teaching violin, and and helping me not sound like a dummy with your very thoughtful and rich responses. I'm like, oh man, this is good. So I think your question is gonna be pretty deep. Your answer is gonna be pretty deep. So here's the question What is the promise you are intended to be?

SPEAKER_00

What is the promise?

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know if I understand your question. So Drive in, what is the promise that I'm intended to be? I don't know. I don't know what you mean.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, I'll give you some context.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, please.

SPEAKER_02

I was in rehab the last time I was in rehab, and one of the counselors there said, Jesse, you don't have a problem admitting

Becoming The Promise You Are Meant

SPEAKER_02

that you're an addict or an alcoholic. He said, Your problem is you haven't accepted. And I said, What are we doing playing freaking word games here? And he said, No, no. He said, What you haven't accepted is that if you don't, if you continue to live life the way you're living it, you will never become the promise you are intended to be. And that's it. And in that moment, I knew exactly what he was talking about, right? All the potential, the ideas, the aspirations that I had that I suppressed and put away because I wasn't good enough, because I wasn't ready, all the disappointment that I saw in the eyes of the people that I cared about was me missing, like deviating from that promise. Does that help?

SPEAKER_00

It does. Thank you for that. I love your example. Wow. I am not sure. I know that I'm meant for big things, but I think what I've always hesitated to do is label it because I feel like I would cap my potential. So I have been really working hard at, and like this is literally through therapy and things, just think way freaking bigger than I ever thought before. And I'm starting to see God respond and open doors that I'm like, I always thought that would be cool, but I never really knew what that would look like. And now I'm getting phone calls from people who want to make that thing happen. And I'm like, OMG. Like I was just explaining to my husband the other day some new thing, and it's a group of partners, and we're going and doing this big project. And he's like, What? And I'm like, that's always been an idea, a vision, but I didn't know how to make it happen. And now this is a God moment. So I don't even know exactly how far what my legacy will be, but I certainly know it's going to be in in helping people be the best versions of themselves. And I hope that's not corny or cliche. I'm always pushing people around me to say, you can do more, you can do bigger, like you're thinking too small. And it's because there's other people who've said that to me. You're thinking too small. And so I'm always appreciative of that. But I think a lot of the legacy too, like obviously I've mentioned God, I am a very spiritual person. And I think there's it's limitless. Yeah. So who knows what this planet's gonna look like in 30 years? But I know that I'm I just wanna be a guiding light for people if I can. And I like to look back behind me in my journey and pull people along and hopefully accelerate them a little faster. Goodness gracious, it's a big question, but I just I'm excited because all of a sudden I feel like I've freed my brain up to think bigger. And this book is it's intimidating to write a book and put it out there. I have to tell you. I had to do some deep work to actually feel comfortable with having a book out there because it exposes you to criticism the same people start reading it. And man, that can be hard, especially I think as a performing musician and you know, a good A student. Like that can be put you in a position where you're not so good with criticism. Yes. I've had auditions that fell flat and people commenting, and you just think, oh no, that was my best, and it wasn't good enough. So you can just feel inadequate a lot. So that doesn't go away just because you get older. I had to really pull my shit together and go, hey, this is a book that's a voice that's needed. It's one opinion in a sea of opinions, and I'm really curious now to hear what people think. But be nice when you leave me a review. And I want to hear from you. So connect on LinkedIn. That's where I'm growing my community. I don't know. I'm not trying to wrap it up, but just yeah, connect. I want to hear from your listeners and see what they think.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. We'll make sure, we'll make sure your profile is in the show notes and once we get it released, the clips and everything else. Amazing. Did you have fun?

SPEAKER_00

I had fun. I'm so appreciative that you and I were able to meet through LinkedIn, have a great chat, do this recording. This is just the start.

SPEAKER_02

Agreed. Before you go, I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. Your time and attention mean a ton. And it's because of listeners like you that this podcast even exists. If you enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the Learnins and Missteps podcast so you never miss an episode and you get extra credit if you share it with your friends. Also, if you want even more insights on leadership, personal growth, communication, you know, all those fancy magical things, you can sign up for my newsletter on LinkedIn because I got a newsletter that goes out every single Monday. All the resources I share there are designed to help you put yourself first so that you can leave this world better than you found it. There's also a digital copy of my book, Becoming the Promise You're Intended to Be. And it's sitting there waiting for you on my website. All you gotta do is do the click and do the download and you get the free PDF. And if you want even more bonus points, share that PDF with somebody you know or the family of somebody you know that is currently

Closing Thoughts And Ways To Engage

SPEAKER_02

struggling with self-destructive behavior. That would be the ultimate gift for me. While you're there, do some exploring of the trainings, workshops, and services that are designed to enhance your performance at home and at work. Just click the link in the show notes to check it out. Thanks again for listening. Take care of yourself, and I'll see you on the next episode. Peace.