Down to His Last $10: How an ADD Kid Built an Aerospace Welding Empire

From being told he would fail without college to welding pure gold for GE Aerospace and running a nation-wide fabrication business, Josh Wolfe’s story is a masterclass in blue-collar grit.  

In this episode of the Welding Business Owners Podcast, Josh Wolfe (host of the Speaking of Skilled Trades podcast) sits down with Kevin to share his journey from an ADD high schooler struggling to fit into standard classrooms to building a successful career in high-stakes TIG welding and metal fabrication.  

We dive deep into taking pay cuts to chase experience, surviving the absolute rock-bottom moments of business ownership, passing the trade down to his three kids, and a candid, unfiltered discussion on how AI, automation, and robotics are coming for small-town fab shops.  

If you are a welder, fabricator, trade student, or blue-collar business owner looking to scale, this conversation is packed with real-world advice you can't afford to miss.  

🔥 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

Finding Peace in Chaos: How struggling with ADD in traditional high school led Josh straight into career-technical education and welding.  

Experience Over Dollars: Why taking a $3/hr pay cut early on unlocked massive opportunities in aerospace TIG welding for GE.  

The $10 Turning Point: Putting his last $10 into his Ford Focus to beg for a job while struggling to heat his house.  

Passing the Torch: How Josh trained his kids to become aerospace welders making top-dollar right out of high school.  

The AI Threat to Fab Shops: A real debate on automation, $100k welding robots, and what small shop owners need to do to survive.  

📌 TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro & The Reality of Skilled Trades
1:30 - Struggling with ADD & Finding Welding in High School
6:42 - My First Production Job & "Chasing Experience, Not Dollars"
9:30 - Taking a $3 Pay Cut to Master TIG Welding
12:55 - Landing a GE Aerospace Welding Job (Welding Pure Gold)
17:41 - Stepping Out on My Own: Starting a Miscellaneous Steel Business
23:33 - Down to My Last $10: The Turning Point in Business
35:20 - Leaving Business to Become a Welding Instructor
45:35 - Flying Across the Country & Losing Passion for the Game
55:00 - Raising 3 Aerospace Welders & Reopening the Shop
1:17:40 - Has Social Media Helped or Hurt the Trades?
1:23:00 - AI & Robotics: Is Automation Coming for Your Fab Shop?
2:12:10 - The Value of Human Craftsmanship & Advice for Young Welders  

🔗 CONNECT WITH JOSH WOLFE:
Instagram & TikTok: @wolf_cte  
Podcast: Speaking of Skilled Trades (Available on Spotify)  📲 SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW THE SHOW:
Subscribe to the YouTube Channel for weekly welding business advice!
Listen on Apple Podcasts & Spotify: https://www.weldingbusinessownerspodcast.com/
Follow on Instagram: WeldingBusinessOwnersPodcast

#WeldingBusiness #SkilledTrades #Welder #Fabrication #TIGWelding #AerospaceWelding #BlueCollar #AIinTrades #BusinessOwner #CareerTechEd

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 3:16

You got ten dollars left to your name, a pregnant wife, a house with no heat, and doors slammed in your face. What do you do? You stick your foot in the door and tell them that you're starving for work. That's the story of today's guest, Josh Wolf, a guy who dropped out of the traditional school system because of his ADD, chose experience over a paycheck, and built a massive career in aerospace TIG welding and heavy fabrication. On today's episode, Josh opens up about the brutal lessons he's learned in entrepreneurship, passing the trade down to his own kids, and where blue-collar businesses are headed with AI. Without any further ado, let's get into the episode. Well, Josh, how you doing, buddy? Hey man, I'm better than I deserved. Kevin, how are you? I'm great, man. I'm great. Um, apparently the uh the social media algorithm said that we should be friends because uh you came up on my radar a little while ago um because you also have a podcast about skilled trades and you were looking for guests, and I was like, man, we should be friends. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense, right? So tell me a little bit about your podcast and uh what is that about?

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Yeah, so my podcast is speaking of skilled trades. Um right now it's only on Spotify because I can't figure out how to put it anywhere else. Um tried to Apple stuff and all this, I just need to spend more time doing it. But uh, so the idea behind speaking of skilled trades is to raise awareness to younger people or people who maybe haven't um given skilled trades a thought as a career field. Um, my idea behind it is to raise awareness to these different fields. And me being a welder, uh, you know, with with 25 plus years in the industry, it was it was kind of easy for me to go down that road, right? To go into the welding field. It's a super crowded field. And I just don't want to advocate for welding because welding might not be for everybody, obviously. I want to advocate for all skill trades because we'll get into my story here in a little bit, but you know, as a student in public education, I felt outsided by public education because I didn't learn the same as everybody else. I was riddled with ADD. Um, you know, I didn't learn from sitting in a plastic chair for 45 minutes. I couldn't listen to a teacher talk for 45 minutes, no matter how good the illustr, you know, her illustrations were on the deck on the chalkboard. I just couldn't do it. So I got into a lot of trouble. Um that that led to my principal in high school basically coming up to me and saying, Hey, you're not being successful here, you know. And I went to a pretty uh, it was an affluent school, but I lived on the outside of that, man. I was I was that farm kid that, you know, grew up on the outskirts that never really went into town or anything else. I was busy riding my dirt bikes, shooting guns, uh, building things, you know, doing the stuff that a kid does living out in the country. I really didn't fit into that model. Not only did I not fit into the everybody goes to college model, which I was not going. There was no way in the world I barely made it through high school, wasn't going to college. And uh I didn't fit into that model, and I also didn't fit into the like the social model that everybody had, you know, the in town, going to meeting at the park, playing basketball, stuff like it. I didn't have that. Uh, you know, I bought my first car from Bailing Hay over the summer. Um, completely different lifestyle. So when that principal said, I want you to go look at, you know, the local uh vocational schools, Warren County, Ohio, Warren County Career Center, he said, I want you to go look there and see if you can find something to give you a ticket out of high school. And that's the way I took it. I mean, it was, it was a it was a way out for me. It was an escape. I didn't take it as like an academic pursuit. I'm gonna go there and find something to be the best at it. There wasn't any of that in my head at the time. It was just, let's get out of school so I can tackle the world. I've been told that I won't be successful without college. Let's give it a shot. So uh when I went into that welding and metal fabrication program, and you know, of course, I don't know how career tech is in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania. I'm assuming it's the same. Uh kids have an option to migrate to a local vocational school, you know, their 10th and or their 11th and 12th grade. And so I spent the last two years in the welding program. I, you know, my dad was a tool and dye maker. I grew up with probably one of the most brilliant men as a father, and I didn't think like him. Dude, this guy, no joke, Kevin. Before he would rearrange the furniture in the living room, he would scale the living room onto graph paper. And then, dude, scale every single piece of furniture from the couch to the to the recliner, TV, everything. Scale it down, cut it out, and rearrange it all on paper before you ever move the first piece of furniture. That's the mind of a tool and dime maker, you know. And that wasn't for me. So I found welding, man, and the first time I struck the arc, it was like, wow. I don't know. I don't know how you know if you really remember that. Do you remember that moment? That first time you struck an arc?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah, I do. Actually, it was it was in it was in tech school in ninth grade. I've I do it was 10th, 10th grade, 10th grade. I've remembered that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

And I don't know how you felt, but man, I felt like I had the power of the world in my hands. Yeah. I watched that that molten metal, you know, take not so good shape. This is my first try, you know. Uh, there was no shape to it. But I saw bonding between these two pieces. I saw a swirling puddle, and I'm like, this is the chaos that I need to thrive in every single day. Again, riddled with ADD, I find peace and chaos. As many chipping hammers are chipping, as many loud things are happening, as many, you know, on construction sites, cranes swinging, things beeping. That's me, man. I find peace there. So, and that's what I found in welding. And, you know, it was one of those things where it became uh it became something completely different than school for me. When my hood dropped, the rest of the world just faded away. And I could focus on what I was doing, what I was learning. And that was education to me. That that is the way education should be for somebody like me. Yeah and I found my home there. And I also found a really good mentor in my welding instructor. He was awesome, dude. He was a retired iron worker, built one of the highest uh uh bridges in the state of Ohio. Um, he was a foreman on that. He was a tough, rugged dude, you know, six, five, three hundred plus pounds, about the same size as me. Uh, just had a lot of grit. And and uh I was intrigued by that because let's let's face it, you don't see a lot of that in public education, you know what I mean? You don't see a lot of those type of people, yeah. And so I was intrigued by that. And uh he was a really good mentor, taught me a lot, um, didn't really uh teach me much TIG welding. He was really good with everything else, and our senior welding instructor wasn't a very good TIG welder either. And so fast forward to I graduate, finally get out of high school. Uh, everybody, you know, in my family was doubting it. I wasn't a bad student. I was a you know, I was a sharp kid. I just didn't want to be there. I was checked out. But graduated, um, hit the ground running, and my first job was a really, really high volume production job welding basically uh O2 sensor ports onto exhaust systems for GE or for GM. And my gosh, it was seven days a week, 12 hours a day, better money than anybody else was paying around.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

And you know, I was trudging in every day with my instructor's uh voice in the background, like, hey man, chase chase the experience. Don't chase the dollars, chase the experience, you know? And I'm like, I am not getting any experience here. Yeah, so I moved uh to a to a company that did uh welding and metal fabrication for escalators and elevators, and uh I went through they were Japanese-owned, and man, Japanese companies really have some good training programs. And their company was staged in tech levels. So you started off as a tech one, you ran a saw. And then tech five was the welding fabrication, you know, position. So for the first you know, week or so I ran a saw. I took the opportunity to memorize a conversion chart on the front of that saw, you know, conversion fractions of decimals. Um, and then I moved up into running different equipment in that area and then laying things out is where you really get the the bulk of your of your experience, right? Layout, you know that. I mean, everything you do in your shop's based on layout, right? Yep. And that's where you get the really good experience. And uh so I spent some time on the layout table, moved over to another piece of equipment. Next thing you know, I was in a well booth that and wasn't too hard. I I'm not gonna really bash anybody, but it was a CWB cert. Uh so wasn't tough. You know what I mean? No, I'm just kidding. It was good experience. I um passed the test, got into the got into the booth, uh, and learned a lot. But I, you know, at the time I had a young family. Uh I had a well, I had a kid on the way. I married my high school sweetheart. Uh, we had a kid on the way, and this job, although it had good experience, uh beyond that, was really nothing. And it didn't have anything to offer. So I knew I needed to make some money. So I had heard in industry, you know, you hear about these people. I really wanted a Tig weld. I wanted to, I was intrigued by the aerospace industry. Um, and you know, again, my my instructor taught me how to, you know, I was I I had certified on open route 6010, uh, 7018, filling cap when I was um, you know, a junior in high school. This kid or this guy was just a phenomenal instructor with Stick and Mig. But again, TIG was lacking. So I wanted to be a TIG welder and I sucked at it, dude. I was terrible at it. So through, you know, through the grapevine, you hear this guy is the best TIG welder around, or you know, this person's really good at TIG welding. And the guy that kept coming up over and over again ended up having a shop that was only, you know, two two miles away from my mom and dad where I grew up. Excuse me. So I wanted a job. I wanted to work around this guy. That was the that was the only way I was going back to school. You know, that wasn't an option 25, 30 years ago. I just there wasn't a way. So went into a shop and I was like, hey, I want a job. He's like, nope, I'm a two, you know, two-car garage, one man band. I don't need anybody else. You know, he's looking at this 18, 19-year-old kid. And I'm like, look, man, I will help you sell work. I will help you, you know, I'll build, I'll help you facilitate one or two employees. We'll get the work volume built up for that. But, you know, in return, I want your undivided attention when it comes to TIG welding. And I'll give you a year of my time. That's my goal. I want to be on a GE in a year. And he and he, you know, reluctantly said, okay, I'll hire you. But uh, he hired me at $3 less on the hour than what I was making in my previous company. Yeah. Uh, and and that stung, man, because that time, you know, we were living in a small apartment. I'm the sole provider of my family. Uh, my wife has never worked. Um, and selling that to your wife, man, when you go home, you're like, hey, honey, I got a new job. And she's like, that's great. How much is it paying? How much does it pay? And you're like, well, there's a story behind that.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

I can do it a lot of overtime, babe.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

That's exactly right. Yeah. So so at that, you know, she she is very, she's an awesome, awesome lady, and basically, you know, said, I'll live under apart bench if I have to with you. Uh, just do what you gotta do and prepare yourself for for our future. So I took that pay cut, man, and it was the best decision I ever made. We started selling work. Uh, we by the time I left in a year, I had, you know, being at the mercy of the door in a small shop like that, I don't know that there's better learning experience. When you're at the mercy of whatever, you know, comes through the double doors and you're fixing whatever it is, anything from a an old lady that wants a mattress spring welded back together, and you have to break her heart and say, man, this is just not gonna work. Uh, you know, to to small to larger fabrications, you know, um, you know, uh customized ladder racks and stuff like that, as an 18-year-old kid drawing this stuff up on a napkin and then putting in production and getting that stuff fabbed up and sending it. I couldn't have asked for better training ground. Yeah. And the dude was a top-notch TIG welder, was perfect combination. And so in a year's time, we had built a really good relationship. His company, you know, again, we had taken it from a one-man band to there was now four people working there. Um, and and he was spending a lot of time at the sand dunes in Michigan on his rail. Uh, and I was basically overseeing the shop. But that year, that year Mark came and GE was hiring a Lano Corporation in in Dayton, Ohio. And that test was was one that 5% of the welders that test for that place pass. So I knew I had to be on my game. And I was ready, and I was dreading that conversation, man. That one of, you know, you know it's coming, right? And I was expecting the hammer to fall, like, dude, you built, you know, we got our business built up here now, and now you're leaving me. I never wanted this. And the first all these things are going through my head, and I was expecting every bit of it. And to my surprise, he had a brand new uh Jackson, or maybe it was a Huntsman. I don't know. Those two brands were huge in auto-darkening back then. And uh, I think he handed me, I think it was a Jackson, um, and had bought me a this new hood, and it was like a $400 hood back then. And he had had it, and knowing that I was leaving sometime soon, and that was my parting gift. And I'll never forget that, man. It was just an awesome moment for me that you know, when you felt like you were letting somebody down, that person had been cheering you on the whole time and was ready for you to make that move. That's awesome. And yeah, and so I walked into GE and I remember walking in, and it and they had a sign above the door when you walked in, and it said something to the effect of, and I can't remember it verbatim, but it said something to affect like through these doors walk the most talented uh craftsmen and women in the aerospace industry, or something to that effect. And I remember walking through those doors and seeing that sign and thinking, man, I'm still a young kid. And this is something that that you know, I know people that have tried this and and they've failed. And uh, by the grace of God, I had the skills to be able to pass their preliminary test. Um, it took me a week of my own time to go in from like four to six and work with their with their guys. Um, and then, you know, I once I passed that test, I quickly, man, I hit the ground running. I was like the the youngest out of 160 some welders there. Wow. And that world was mine. I was like, they're you know, they're starting to implement some target run times and stuff. And I'm I'm a young dude. I'm like, get that stopwatch behind me and time me. You know, I'll set the target run times for these projects. It's not gonna be pop, I'm not gonna be popular. No, no, no, these people are gonna want to keep it. You ain't win no friends with that. That's exactly right. But that's how I made money, and that was all I cared about at the time. I wasn't there to make friends. I had a family to provide for, and I was the only one doing it, and I had to make money. So with each time I moved to a different cell or a different department to start burning up some runtimes there, along came another dollar, you know. And you know, within a two years, I was making as much as guys that have been there 15, 20 years uh because I was working my butt off. And so after running most every piece of OEM, you know, uh air air manifold system, fuel cell uh fuel systems, uh tube manifold systems, anything that you can think of of an aircraft engine, basically the outer casing that keeps it cool or feeds it fuel, I had my hands in. I had uh cobalt, titanium, inconel, stainless, hastelloy, um, aluminum. I was certified to TIGWeld gold uh as a pure gold as a uh replacement for uh braze voids from back from vacuum furnaces. That was the only approved fix back then. Now I've heard they've got another alloy where you can run them through the fact or through the vac furnace twice. But back then the approved method of repair was gold. So you had to go to your tool crib and they would go to the safe and unlock it, and then it would bring out this TIG wire of gold, and they would measure it, and they would hand it off to you, and you had to get it measured when you brought it back to make sure that you know you're gonna get a little off there, yeah. Yeah, man. So six inches of uh weld didn't end up on a little bitty, you know, a quarter inch spot.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Um, yeah, and snip a little bit off and put in your pocket, but that was a cool experience, man. I I got to weld some really exotic materials in some really exotic settings on turntables where things were just spinning past your head and you have to duck them while you're still spinning. I mean, I got so much experience there, man, and sizing tubing. Uh, you know, sizing the tubing up, getting it to match, there is no mismatch, and blending it where you can't see that there was a weld there before. All this setting up for my future, I had no idea. Uh I really wanted to be a supervisor. And again, education was holding me back. Their policy was a two-year associate's degree in something. It could be a mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, whatever. But you need an associate's degree in something to be a supervisor. That didn't make any sense to me. And the other way to do that was to have seven years on-the-job experience.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

And I I was like two in, and I wasn't willing to wait.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

And uh, I was ambitious again. I was young, I had a family to feed, so I made the decision that anybody would do, and I started my own business in miscellaneous steel.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Screw this crap.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Go go from literally, you know, four thousandths of an inch flat flanges to I saw the bubble go by, nail it, let's roll. Um, that was, dude, that is just a culture shock, you know, for anybody. Yeah. And I'll tell you how I got into that. But uh, anything else you want to ask up to this point? I could, I could, I literally could talk the story forever. So if you want to interject anywhere, just feel free.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Hey guys, the Fabricator Olympics is only a couple weeks away. I know you've been putting off getting your tickets. You'll get it next week, you'll get on over to the website. But you know what? This is your final warning. Head on over to fabricatorolympics.com and book your spot now. Because once the competitor spots are full, they're full. This isn't just another welding event. You're going to be surrounded by welders and fabricators from all over the country putting their skills to the test, competing head to head in real-world-inspired challenges based on time and accuracy. But you don't have to compete to come out. Come hang out, meet other people in the industry, watch the metal art competition, check out the welding rig chuck show, and be there for the unveiling of the 9-11 memorial statue. Bring your crew, bring your family, come spend the day around people who actually understand what you do for a living. If you're an owner of a welding and fabrication business and you're serious about taking it to the next step, come a day early. The welding business summit is Friday, September 11th, the day before the Fabricator Olympics. It's a full day built specifically for small welding business owners who want to better their team, understand their numbers, sell more work, and run a more profitable business. So Friday, September 11th, the Welding Business Summit. Saturday, September 12th, the Fabricator Olympics. We're getting close. So don't let all the competitor spots fill up and wish you would have signed up. Go to Fabricator Olympics.com and get your tickets now for Saturday. And if you're ready to take your fabrication business to the next level, head on over to welding business summit.com and get your tickets for that as well. We'll see you in September. No, it it it's funny. So I relate with you on like verbatim, you said chase the experience, not the money.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I've been saying that for years, like years and years. And because that's unknowingly, that's what I did. Um, and now my son just turned 18 and I did not push him to go to the welding field. He was up between welding and baking for for tech school. And uh luckily he uh I'm like, look, man, the people who make really good money in baking and uh and culinary is very small compared to the the welding field. I'm like, I'm I'm gonna leave it at that. I said, do what makes you happy. He chose welding, luckily, and uh he went through tech school, and you know, when he was up for co-op, I helped him get a job with my buddy, who is um they're a small fab shop, uh, but they also do construction too. And so what some days he's welding on, you know, big steel baskets to put hydraulic fittings in. Uh, some days he's grinding stuff off the plasma table, and other days he's wiring up electrical outlets and taking down drop ceiling and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

And you can't better you can't ask for a better experience than that.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I see it as, you know, he should I'm I'm happy that he's learning stuff. And and and they're ball busters. They're like old school ball busters.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

But they're not jerks. You know what I mean? Like they're not gonna, they're not actually gonna piss in your wilding helmet, but they'll threaten it.

unknown 25:29

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 25:31

They'll tell you they're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

They're not gonna be checking that hood every time you're gonna put it on, huh?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Exactly. Exactly. And so his boss is actually a little bit younger than me, but uh his dad is also involved, and he scares like his dad scares the crap out of my son. And I'm like, that's a healthy, that's a healthy level of respect that you need for somebody who who you're working under.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

So um, but you know, he's not making much now. He like he he he just graduated this year. He's making uh like he's under 20 bucks an hour, but I'm like, look, man, don't chase the money yet. Like, chase the experience. He's like now he's working like 70 hours a week. Like I get texts from his boss, and he's like, hey man, I'm trying to throw everything I got at this kid that have that's broken most most uh adults who have come to work here. He's like this kid just won't break. I'm like, yeah, that's my kid.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

All right, you know, and that that is better than a phone call saying, hey, your kid's a good welder.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, it's better any day. Yeah, right. And and and you know what? I I want him to stay there for as long as he can because the uh the amount of concentrated um uh of experience that he'll learn at a place there is gonna be so diverse versus just you know going from one place, like going to make door frames over at this company or going to weld, you know, um like stainless steel hydraulic fittings over here or something like that. You know what I mean? Exactly. Like I want him to get his butt kicked every day, come home filthy and dirty after 12, 14 hours.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

And um, you know, I want him to learn. So it just I relate with you on that chase you experience and look at how many.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Yeah, exactly. And it there comes a point in time when when bills are paramount. I mean, that that supersedes everything. And hopefully by then you've you've gotten enough well-rounded experience from across the board to guide you in a certain direction that you like, yeah. You know, that you want to be in, that you're comfortable in, that you can see yourself excelling in. Um, I never took that option. I mean, I just kind of ended up, I just kind of flailed around, man, until exactly. I mean, it and I'll tell you, let's I'll tell you how I got into miscellaneous steel. So I quit my job with no plan of, you know, I didn't have a big nest egg. In fact, I didn't have any money at all, hardly. I just bought a house uh on 14 acres. It was the first time I was able to afford anything. I mean, as soon as I got hired on a GE, dude, my salary doubled. And, you know, so I'm I'm telling the wife, I'm like, find a house. And so she did. And I'm she's like, well, how's Lynchburg, Ohio? And I'm like, where the hell is Lynchburg, Ohio? That was perfect. We found a house and 14 acres that was extremely affordable for my family. Uh, they were able to do the same things I was doing as a kid. They're building things, riding dirt bikes, shooting guns out the back door, peeing off the front porch. I mean, those are the things that matter at this age, right? Yep. And I was given that for uh, you know, I was providing that for my kids until I wasn't. And that's when business got dark. Uh, was at the beginning of business. Again, I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a business plan. I didn't have money. I didn't have I had impeccable work ethic, is what I felt I had. I had superior work ethic to most people, right? Um, and I think that's I think that's the case for a lot of us tradesmen. Uh, we just we we excel in work ethic because that's who we are. And but sometimes we rely on it a little bit too much to be successful. There's a whole lot more that goes to it. So I've been beating the door down of this fabricator and um getting the word no every single time I'm beating the, you know, beating the door down. Money is extremely tight uh to the point where my wife was pregnant with my third kid, um, my daughter. It was uh the middle of winter. She was about seven months pregnant. I couldn't afford to put propane in the propane tank to keep my family warm. We were gathering around a small heater in the living room, you know, and kind of blocked that living room off to keep the heat in, and that's where we were staying until I could afford to get enough money uh to put it, put it in the propane tank. I was two months behind on my house payment. That had never happened before. They were calling to uh repossess my um, you know, or repossess, uh foreclose of my home. And so I literally took the last $10 to our name uh and put it in the gas, gas tank of a Ford Focus that we had because I couldn't afford $10 when it got me to the fabricator and back in my truck. So I put it in this little uh Ford Focus and I take it to the fabricator, and you know, the it was the same thing. I knocked on the door. I'm a three-knock guy, I'm a knock-knock-knock. I don't know if you've ever paid attention to how many times you knock on somebody's door. Yep. I got one and a half out in this, yeah, exactly. So I got one and a half knocks out on this dude, and he had already had the door open. He saw me coming through the, you know, when I got out of the car. He was waiting on me. And he had opened the door and he said, Josh, again, I don't have any work. And as soon as I I knew he was gonna say, I could tell by the way he said my name, what he was gonna say. And I had started inching my foot forward to where it was gonna be in the way of that door. So when he started to pull that door back to shut it, this guy, you would have to know him. He's extremely cut and dry. There's no middle ground, there's very rarely a smile. It is exactly what I say, and that's there's no variance in that. That's exactly what I mean. So he was simple. He was, I don't have any work, turned around to shut the door. The conversation was over until the door hit my foot. And he turned back around. And I remember him looking down at my foot, and he's the same height as me. Um, much better shape than I am, even though he's 10 years older than me, which makes me mad. But uh I remember him looking down at my foot, man, and then him looking up at my eyes. And he said, You're hungry, aren't you? And I said, Dude, I am starving. And at the time I was doing side work just for groceries, just for groceries for my kids. Not even money. You know, uh, I just needed food for my kids. And I said, I'm starving, dude. And he goes, You're right where I need you to be. He said, Don't ever forget the feeling that you have in your stomach right now and that hunger that you have, because it will drive you forever. And when it stops, so will your business. And I remember that to this day, man, and how profound that was. Because he knew I had nowhere else to go. He knew my only option was to come out swinging. He knew that was it, and that's where I was. And he knew, in his opinion, that I was right where I needed to be to be successful. So he looks at me and he goes, Go get your workers' compensation and your limited liability or your limited liability insurance, and we'll put you to put you to work in the field. That was a whole nother chore, man. I had to come up with another three grand real quick, you know. And so when I did, somehow I came up with it uh over time and and got to got to work. And um, you know, I started off in the Miss Metals installation business, um, just kind of cleaning up other erectors' stuff. If let's say an intermediate landing didn't line up well and the railings weren't lined up well, you know, some of the the guys that were setting those stairs before me, they were throwing in levels of stairs, and if they didn't line up, they're out. I mean, they got another, you know, 10-story building to put stairs in right after that. And yeah, you know as well as I do, stair installers are not a dime a dozen. So it's not like they're on every corner and you can just pick up the phone and find somebody that can install seven flights of stairs.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

Uh it's just not readily available. So all the stuff that was left over was my job. I had to clean all that stuff up. I had to make those intermediate rails look good and line up and stay within code. And I had to make modifications to the nose of the stringer to get that thing to fall into place so they can come back and finish panning the, you know, uh, we stick-built everything. I don't know if you guys unitize your stairs or not, but stringer, stringer, pan that thing up and go. That's the way we installed stairs. And uh I got I cut my teeth fixing other people's mistakes, whether it be the erector or the fabricator. And so from an early start in that business, man, I got to figure out how to avoid things that would make that job go wrong. You know, I would end up looking at it and say, okay, how did this not line up? This the shaft is is square.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Why isn't this intermediate landing not lining up? And, you know, being able to have the opportunity to, that was my job to fix that. And the whole time I'm fixing it, I'm processing it. Why, why did this happen?

SPEAKER_03 34:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

So the next, you know, the next gradual step is you start installing those stairs yourself. Well, hey, I'm going out there and I'm pulling a tape on all these points before you ever send the first piece of steel out. So I can look at that job, you know, superintendent, and say, hey, you need to fix this, this, and this, and then I'll be out before I set my stair. I was getting all that stuff, uh, that education really early, and and it really paid off. So the next step was installing stairs. And, you know, I went from a one-man band of going around and fixing people's stuff to hire a hand to help me. Um, I don't know about you, but early in business, I went through a lot of hands, a lot. Uh, some that couldn't, you know, some that couldn't help me carry a 20-foot rail 10 feet. Um, yeah. But they were there, and that's what I needed at the time. Then when I started setting stairs, man, I got some good guys. Um I got some guys that had, you know, that had been in the industry a little bit. And I also took a uh a buddy of mine who we had kind of parted ways, but I knew his work ethic was impeccable. But he was driving a 1-800 got junk got junk truck at the time. And I remember calling him up and I'm saying, hey man, you really want some skills, you really want me to teach you something that'll pay you for the rest of your life. Drop whatever you got. You can hate me, I hate you, whatever. Let's just make money together. And uh he ended up coming to work for me. The first job we were on, I remember looking at him and saying, Hey, I need a two-foot level. And he ran to the truck and back. And I'm like, that's the dude. That's the guy I need, somebody that's gonna run and get that tool because we're setting this stair. It's not something you could just put on hold. And this guy understands that, and that's what you need in a business like that. Yeah. And so I built a crew of people that were exactly that. And uh man, we were setting floors of stairs all over the Cincinnati area, and then 2011 hit. Uh, I think at the peak, Kevin, I think I had probably eight guys on payroll at the at my highest um point. And that would, we would typically break up in crews of two or three, uh, three if we had to, but try to keep twos. And I also hired, had some other people that were, you know, needed work at the time, and I had it going and they didn't work for me full time, paid them $10.99, uh, subcontracted through me. Um, they helped me out during those times. But, you know, it it got to the point in the missed medals, and I don't know if you were in the business at the time, uh, but it got to the point where the big steel guys were taking the entire packages. You know, they were they were taking it all, and they were buying them, sometimes at a loss just to keep their guys busy. And I couldn't compete with that. I was a small company, and I was in the business of making money. And, you know, so there came a point in time where I stopped my business, I quit quoting work. Um, I liquidated field assets that I knew I could get rid of now and still held on to core assets that I knew I could get back in a game later. Um, and I had to go get a job for the first time in 15 years or something like that. I mean, it was crazy. The last time I was looking for a job, I looked for it and was circling jobs in the classified ads, right? And now I'm looking for a job on Indeed, dude. Whole different world. Yeah. So, and it had been like uh again, over a decade since I had had a resume, you know? Yeah. So I had to sit down and create a resume. Um, I took and and while I was bouncing around on Indeed, I saw that a local aerospace company was hiring for a TIG welding position. So I printed off this resume. And uh again, at this point, man, there's a lot of emotions going on. I didn't really know what I was going to do. I just know I needed money right now. And that's my plan was uh, you know, I took that resume up to the place and found a guy walking out of the building in a suit at four o'clock in the afternoon. I was late getting there. And I didn't have an appointment. I was just going to take it there to get the work. And and uh, you know, I started off by shaking this guy's hand and said, Hey, my name's Josh Wolfe. I've been a small business owner for 10 years. Um, you know, I need work. I saw you guys are hiring welders. I'll go under the hood for you, you know, tomorrow. I'll pass your weld tests that day if you want me to, and I'll be productive for you the following day. You know, that's that's the kind of person I am. I've been in that industry before and I can do it again. I just need money. And the guy's like, you know, I'm not the guy you're you need to talk to, but I know him. I said, okay, great, hand it off to him, please. So after that, I put in some more applications, and um I didn't hear anything from them for like a week and a half. And then two weeks later, they call me back and they're like, hey, come in and and talk to us. So I did, and I got my hood in the hand and everything else. And um, you know, I'm dressed like a welder is dressed, going in for a weld, uh, weld test. And I walk in and there's suits around the table, and I'm like, which didn't scare me. I mean, I did business with suits all the time in the steel construction industry. Uh, but it wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting a weld supervisor, you know, somebody that looked like me to put me in a booth and give me a weld test. And they said, hey, uh, you know, we would love to have you under the hood, but we saw your resume, and we think that you would better serve us as the off-shift plant manager. And I'm like, wow, that wasn't what I was expecting. How many people are that? You know, how many people will I be overseeing? And it was over a hundred, I think. And so I took that job and it was a great salary, awesome people, dude. Um, phenomenal hometown people. You know, this place is in the middle of cornfields. And it's it's part of a company, you know, Standard Arrow is a national aerospace company. Uh, it's like a $2.6 billion company right now. I mean, it's huge. And it was in my backyard. And uh, you know, I started there, made relationships, you know, built relationships with these people, ended up finding out that some of the people working for me I had worked with at GE years prior. Um, and and man, it just became it was a really cool thing that we created a really good working environment. We increased production in just a short period of time, um, decreased rejects. We were doing really well. And I had filled out an application for uh a weld school, uh, you know, or a vocational school. And this place was called Great Oaks. And uh I filled out an application for the welding instructor's position at Laurel Oaks in Wilmington, Ohio. And I'd forgotten all about it. And so I'm living my life as a you know as an off-shift manager, and I get this phone call, and uh, and it's like, hey, this is so and so with Laurel Oaks. I'd like to like for you to come in and talk to us about this position. This was late in the summer, man. I mean, this is like July 20th or something. Wow. School year starts in a couple weeks, you know. So we're talking and we're negotiating over dollars, which if people are hesitant about becoming an instructor in career tech, I would just encourage you to check out you know the district because I don't, you know, I just wouldn't leave a position to lose money.

SPEAKER_03 41:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

And career tech matched me where I needed to be. Uh I make great money now. I work 185 days a year, you know. It's a great gig, man. It's the greatest gig on the planet. So anyway, um, yeah, remove that barrier if you're thinking about being a career tech teacher because we need them. We need a ton of career tech teachers right now. Uh, but so I long story short, I accepted that job. Uh the cool thing was the day I got my um the keys to my lab, my welding instructor was there uh to open my lab with me and to walk through the equipment with me. He told me I was always going to be an instructor, and I laughed at him because I hated school. Uh, but the reality was there, and I was finally an instructor. And um, so I started teaching. Uh, went to Ohio State because it was part of the licensure program to become a career tech teacher for three years. I hated every second of that. Yeah. Um, it was terrible, dude. And I was at the point, Kevin, I was at the point where uh, you know, I had taken that job because, man, I had spent so much time away from my kids in the past. Um, it got to the point in business where I just wasn't doing work in Cincy. I was doing work all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:56

And I was spending a lot of time away from them. So I took that teaching job to spend more time with them. And here I'm having to miss my son's high school baseball games and everything because of stupid classes at Ohio State to teach kids how to do something I've been doing my whole life. And not only that, for an educator to teach me how to do it, you know what I mean? It's like anyway. So how old are your kids now? So my oldest is 25. Okay. He just turned 25. My middle boy is nine, or no, I'm sorry, 21. And then my daughter is 19. And all three of them are aerospace TIG welders.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

So yeah, that's cool, man.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

That's cool, man.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

That's real cool.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

And they work for the company that I worked for 14 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Uh, which is awesome. And they make great money. You know, my oldest boy, he's out with a married and kid and lives on a house with six acres, uh, beautiful little starter home. Um, you know, my other two kids are making that move now. They've got more money in the bank than I do. Uh, they just got stockpiles, new cars, you know. Yeah. Uh they're doing great, man. It's it's it's awesome. But uh yeah, so about two about year two into my teaching career. What year was this? So this was 2000 and I started teaching in 2013. Okay. So in the in the steel business, and I were you in business back then?

SPEAKER_00 44:22

No. Uh I was so I I started w in a fab shop when I was 15, but I didn't go off onto my own until 2015.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Okay. So and this is a good lesson for for people that see economic downturns, especially in our field. My work was the tail end of most work, right? Of most job sites. Sometimes I'm one of the last people on the job site installing, especially if it's a stainless rail or something like that that they want to keep protected. It's their showpiece, maybe it's a monumental stair with some cable. They want to keep that thing nice. So I'm one of the last ones in to install this thing. So you got a bunch of people like electricians, plumbers, and everybody else that don't screw it up, right? Because they don't they don't know what things look like when they're nice. They don't have to. I'm just kidding. But anyway, sorry, sorry, plumbers, electricians. I didn't mean that. Uh but didn't fully didn't fully mean that.

unknown 45:22

Right. Completely.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Uh, but you know, um, I'm one of the last people on the site. So that work was plentiful. When when everybody else was struggling in 2009, I was I was trucking through 2011. That's when the brakes hit because I was at the tail end of every job. So once that money, you know, had to catch back up and that private money started flowing again, I was already hurting. And everybody else was kind of on a rebound. So it was secular. And this was 2014, it would have been my second year teaching. My phone wouldn't stop ringing. Uh, to the point where, you know, it hit lunch and I'd have to return phone calls. And it would be, you know, hey, I got this stare, so-and-so. I need you to quote this. And I would call them back and I'd say, hey, I'm not doing this anymore. What are you doing? I'm teaching. What the hell are you doing that for? And and I didn't really know how to respond, Kevin. I was just like, well, uh things sucked in business and I had to find a job, you know, and here I am. Um, but the the phone calls became so common that I didn't have a choice. I had to get something going again. I looked at it as an opportunity. I knew some guys that had worked for me before that um, you know, again, we had a good relationship. I was I was what I would consider a good boss. Um, I put my I literally put my guys before myself, and you would know um more than more than I care to share. So uh those guys always got paid way before I did.

unknown 46:53

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Um there was times where I wouldn't be getting paid for weeks, but they would, you know, and and I just put them before myself. Um I treated them the way I thought, you know, I would want to be treated. Um so anyway, I made some phone calls, and one of the phone calls that I made was a guy that had worked for me a long, you know, years, years and years ago, and he was teaching at the school that I went to high school in. And I'm like, man, I cannot see this. Dude, this guy can barely put together a coherent sentence. I can't see this guy teaching. You know what I mean? Good, good iron worker, good, good erector, but man, a teacher? Okay. So I called him up and I'm like, hey, do you like teaching? He goes, No, I hate it, dude. I hate every second of it. I was like, Well, I like it. You know, I like teaching. And honestly, man, I wanted to put the company back together. And if you want to quit teaching and come work for me, I'll give you a salary and I'll do all the quote and get everything going. We use my core equipment uh add-on as we go. You run field operations, I'll put you on salary, we'll build from there. And we did. Uh, we built back to where um we kind of got out of the stairs and just kind of niched into railing all over the United States. Um, I had one of the one of the customer, actually, the customer that got me into railing and into specialized railing, niche railing, was a company out of uh Washington, D.C. named uh gosh, what was the name of that company? Um, oh, it's right on the tip of my tongue. They're a huge, huge um ornamental type railing company, uh, just ornamental fab, Synergy. Synergy is the name of that company. They called me up one time and they said, Hey, we have a mall going up in Cincinnati, Ohio that's got some glass railing in it. You ever done glass? And I'm like, nope, and don't want to. And they said, Well, hold on. You know, let's talk about this because we get these packages and we got a lot of money into them. And I'm like, okay, well, let's talk. And man, I'm sitting here putting two-line rail in Cincinnati for like $18 a linear foot. And they start throwing around, you know, that $150, $250 linear foot number for this glass railing and stuff. And I'm thinking, damn, God, okay. This is this is the kind of work I want to get into. So a mall here in Cincinnati, the Liberty Center, was my first glass railing job, and it went off without a hitch. And that led to, man, we did the Nashville Cool Springs mall, complete demo and reinstallation. I don't know how many thousands of linear feet there, uh, but they had this old nasty steel railing. We completely went in and chopped all that railing up, demoed everything out of it, left two posts. That's it, just two posts standing, tapped and drilled every single post in that mall, uh, put some ghost clamps on the front of it, seamless, just a stainless steel top cap. And, you know, the cool thing about those projects, those mall projects is you got to do all that stuff on third shift, man. And every bit of it has to be buttoned up by the following morning. And now you're getting into a game where it's not like your backyard, uh, you know, your your um you know, like your dock stairs. You might have you might have a job with some cane rail and two dock stairs. Man, this is a job where there's liquidated damages now. Like if you don't get your, you don't hit your schedule, they're hitting you in the wallet. And I'm in a whole different world, you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:22

Uh, which was cool for me. I mean, it was it was all right, but it was just an adjustment. And I went from, you know, adding more and more guys. And then I acquired a company off the uh East Coast called SC Railing back in the day. And they were later acquired by Trex Commercial Products, who do all the outdoor, you know, boards and stuff like that. So when they acquired SC Railing, inherently I became an installer for Trex, and Trex Commercial Products is putting glass all over the place in every stadium from east to west coast, and I'm gobbling up as we're gobbling up as much as we can. And man, it was going great. Um, the last job that I did in the miscellaneous steel world was uh Seattle Mall. Um excuse me, uh downtown mall on 4th Street in Seattle. And the thing I like about podcasts, Kevin, is they're raw. And I'm an open book. Yeah, so I'm just gonna shoot straight. By this time, I was rolling in money that I had never seen before. Um and I I wasn't flying it, I've never been that kind of person ever. Uh, but I have been the kind of person to enjoy it, and I enjoyed that kind of money and I lost sight of one thing, one of the one of the biggest things. When the leader isn't in the field anymore, man, it's tough to manage. It's tough to manage everything. When it's your name on the end of the project and you're 2,000 miles away from the project, and the only time you get to see it is on the weekends when you go make the site visits and have, you know, job meetings. Um I lost sight of my guys. I lost sight of the jobs themselves, our performance on the job. Um, and quite honestly, we were already at the point where it was like getting guys to stay on the road, you know, that want to work on the road. Man, I was paying these guys, you know, $75,000 a year with all company vehicles and gas cars and everything else. And that was just baseline salary, you know, and they didn't have to pay it. And this was back in uh, you know, seven, ten years ago, or not not that long. It was probably no, seven, close to seven years ago. And so they were good wages, and and it would just wasn't enough, man. You can't replace being there with your family, yeah, no matter how much money you throw at them. And so um, you know, one thing led to another, and I was forced to just basically drag it up again because I had had a job, I was making really good money as a welding instructor. I still, you know, that was important to me. I had kids coming up, um, my own kids coming up through that I wanted to teach. And I just wasn't interested in trying to hang on anymore. I wasn't interested in trying to manage that um from a distance anymore. I wasn't in the I I wanted to be at that point, it was like either you're gonna dominate the niche market that you're in in business, or you're gonna be the best welding instructor that you can be, because there's no more room for in-between. Uh, you're doing decent at both, you know, and I was doing good as an instructor, don't get me wrong. But there was there was 100% of my focus on instructing? No. And I don't think any teacher 100% of their focus is on their teaching job, but yeah, you know, 100% of my focus wasn't on it. And I felt like if I'm gonna be charged with leading the next generation into the skilled trades, into their um field of study, into the workforce, that they deserved 100% of what I had. And so that was probably the toughest decision I ever made was to not try to resuscitate that after guys left because they didn't want to travel anymore, uh, because I became the boss that I wasn't before. Um, you know, before I was extremely attached to everything. I wasn't micromanaging, I didn't micromanage anything because I knew that I trained, I trained everybody there. I knew what they were capable of. But man, that figurehead's not in the field anymore. Yeah. You know, so the quality that they knew they could get away with that the that the architect or somebody else wouldn't put on a punch list, that's fine, but that's not my standards, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:53

My standards are Do you feel like you lost your love and your passion for that? Or was it just yeah?

SPEAKER_02 55:00

Yeah, a thousand percent, yeah. Yeah, yeah, man. I lost my passion for the game uh because I think that's one of the biggest things. I loved competing against people. That's that's me, man. I love competing. And I love throwing a number in there within a few hundred dollars of another erector. You know, that kind of stuff to me is just that's what get that's what grinded my gears back then, man. That's what that's what I lived for.

SPEAKER_03 55:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

And I really wasn't into that anymore. It became more of how much can I put on the plate? How much can we consume at a time? And where was the next job and what it what kind of permits and red tape did I have to go through to do work in that state? You know what I mean? Um, that's just basically what consumed my time. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't eating lunch with the boys anymore. Uh, it wasn't, hey, if anybody on this crew can outwork me today, I'll buy your lunch. You know, that kind of stuff wasn't there anymore. Um and again, I was in situations, Kevin, where I would pull up to a job site, and uh, you know, in my contract, it says that I have access to the footprint of this building. That's where I need to unload my steel, pull my steel truck up in downtown Cincinnati, and a guy comes out throwing a fit and is like, hey man, where are you parking? I'm unloading my steel. No, you got to park out there. We ended up getting this argument. And he's like, Turn around, I'm calling your boss. So he gets a number off the back of my shirt, my phone rings, and he looks at me like, damn it, you know, you couldn't tell me from my guys. Yeah. And that's what I think was what built my business and made us credible, made us uh reputable, and made us who we were. And when I wasn't an active part of that anymore, first of all, I didn't know how to be the other person because I'd always gotten everywhere I was with grit and determination, dirt and duct tape, man. Uh get it done. And now I was having to sit in these job trailers with these suits from Turner, from Whiting and Turner, Konsigley, the biggest names in the construction industry that you can think of. I'm having to sit in these job meetings with them. And not only just the construction managers themselves, but the fabricators I'm working for. I mean, Trek's commercial products, daggone. I'm flying to uh Minneapolis, um, you know, to Minnesota to their corporate headquarters to meet with them. I I'd never done anything like that before. And so I had to be somebody that I really wasn't. And yeah, so I lost sight of everything in the field. I lost a passion for what I did. I lost a passion for being with my guys. I lost, I lost actually, I lost detach. I became detached from the very people that I built my business with. You know what I mean? And who had given me everything they had. And they weren't getting that back from me. And again, this is an open book, man. I'm this is the first time I'm publicly, you know, coming out and saying and admitting my faults, and which I've that's something I've had to do as a man years prior to this. I've I got I've gotten over this a long time ago. Um, but first time ever publicly saying, you know, my mistakes and outlining because this is a welding business owners podcast. And man, that's that's a big thing. Making that transition to somebody leading, be going going from the guy in the field to the visionary is a tough thing, especially when that's not really your your niche. That's not who you are. And so, yeah, man, I lost, I lost passion for it, and it was really easy to let go. And that's that's I think was the was the worst part about it for me, uh, is when I realized how easy that was for me to let go. I felt that I had I felt that, I mean, you know, I've been been on some really high profile jobs and done some really amazing things. I mean, I installed at the people who own Hornady ammunition, I I installed their private residence. You know what I mean? It's not just that, but just the buildings that I've done all over the country in. And there's a great sense of pride in that. But, you know, at that point, I was just the name on the side of the truck. I was the name on all my gang boxes, and I wasn't anything more. I didn't get to experience the cool stuff, like all the, you know, the barbecues that the job superintendent would would put on for my guys because they did such an amazing job. I didn't get to go to that anymore. And so yeah, it was an easy thing to hang up, and and that's when I knew it was time to hang up because it was so easy. And so for the past, you know, five uh six years, I guess six years, I've been teaching. Uh, I've gotten the opportunity. My my oldest son came through my my welding program, and he graduated in 2019, which was the same year that I quit doing business, uh, which was funny because again, we were in Seattle. My guys were staying in Skycomish, which is northeast of Seattle. They came home, flew home late 2019. The first case of COVID was discovered in Skycomish, uh Skycomish, Washington. And then not long after that, we had it here in Ohio. So I'm not saying that my guys were responsible for bringing that back over across the country, but maybe. Maybe I could claim claim that. But yeah, so at that point we shut her down and uh, you know, I just focused on my kids. My middle son did not want to go to the career center. He did not want to take the welding program. He wanted to go to college. So he stayed at his home school and he played, you know, sports and stuff and hung out with his friends until he was a senior and figured out that he didn't want to go to college. And then um, you know, I could have put him to work at a lot of places. He's a very independent kid. He uh he was a hot carry for a short period of time, and then he figured out that sucks, especially when it's 98 degrees outside, right? So he comes up to me and he's like, Dad, I don't want to do this anymore. And I'm like, Well, bud, there you gotta pay for, you gotta, I mean, you gotta pay for your stuff somehow. Uh, what are you gonna do? He's like, I don't know. I said, Well, we need to have this conversation. We've had this conversation multiple times before you wanted to go to college, now you don't. Well, let's talk. And so it ended up being he he wanted to be, you know, he wanted to weld. So I set him up in my barn. Uh, and up to this point, my kids, I'd never pushed my kids, uh, you know, my career on my kids ever. My son grew up helping me uh because he was a phenomenal tig weld. He helped me install some rail locally during the summer and stuff like that. My middle boy never went close to a construction site, neither did my daughter. Um and he told me he wanted a weld. So I set him up in the barn on some, I don't know, 16 gauge stainless. And to my surprise, this was probably the most naturally talented kid that I've ever seen. Uh, because he just took it, man, and in three weeks was good enough to pass the entry-level test for an aerospace company. Dang. I was blown away. Kevin, I was blown away. Um three weeks. Three weeks, dude. And it was self-taught. It was he was doing that while I was at while I was at work. Wow. You know, I taught him some things. I would show him something, but he's got a phenomenal memory. Like he, it's a photographic for him. He it just replays in his head. And I would show him a few times and then let him practice. I would go back into the house and, you know, just burn it up. I would buy another sheet. And I've got a CNC plasma cutter here in the shop. I don't have a shear, which sucked. Uh, so you know, I'd cut him up some more coupons, clean him up for him, and just keep him running. And in three weeks, he had taught himself well enough and was that, you know, just natural talent that he got a job as a TIG welder. And so then my daughter came through and she graduated in 2025. Uh, she didn't really, she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, didn't really want to weld after that. She liked going to school with dad more than she did welding. You know, she wanted to, she wanted to be with me. We, my kids, we have a really close relationship. My wife and I are very close. We would rather do things together than hang out with friends or anything like that, you know. And so really tight-knit family. And uh she came up to me, you know, it's been a few months ago, and she's like, Dad, I I'm tired. She worked at um a dairy bar down the road, and she she ran like the ice cream place, uh the dairy bar at this local carryout. And she said she wants to weld. So again, I set her up in the barn, practiced some stuff, and lo and behold, you know, uh a few months ago she got hired on. And these kids are knocking on $30 an hour. Well, my other two are over it, and and she's knocking on it. It's her first, this first welding job ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:37

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

And I'm looking at this, I don't know about you, man. What was what was your first welding job?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

Uh, I worked at a fab shop when I was 15. My girlfriend at the time, her dad got me a job there as a test because the the the guy's name, his name was Bill. He uh he was synonymous for not keeping employees long at all. He was he he he was the kind of guy who would he'd get pissed, he'd scream and yell and throw shit. And that's what he did. And I just I just took it though. So I I stayed there for six years. But I tell you, I learned everything, like so much stuff from that guy in the in in in that six years. And I I mean I think I started at I I probably I was I was like just in high school. I I was probably making 10, 12 bucks an hour, I think there. That's exactly right. Yeah, I and I I eventually moved up to be like 25 bucks an hour. And uh after after I proved myself after six years, you know. But um, yeah, that was that was my first fab shop job.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:44

But we've never had what these kids do, and and they're getting top level, you know, top dollar. And I'm not saying thirty dollars an hour is top dollar, but for a kid right around high school.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

High school it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:54

Wow. I mean, I didn't I didn't have that opportunity. Um, and like I like I tell my students on a regular basis, I don't ever want my students to be average. I push them to be the best version of themselves that they can be every day. But in reality, that's all you gotta be in today's market is average. If you show up, you work, and you're average at what you do, you're gonna be successful. Unfortunately, that's the way it was. And it wasn't like that when I graduated high school. I was competing against grown men, you know, that have been in the game for 20 years that were wanting money, the same money I was wanting, but I'm 15 years younger than them, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

And those opportunities just to walk out and make really good money out of the gate without sweeping floors first didn't exist. And uh, so these kids have got it, man. They've got it. So anyway, the conversation here recently has turned into so my daughter graduated in 2025. Her boyfriend of three years uh is a phenomenal welder, a really smart kid. Uh, everybody in my family is. My two sons are extremely talented welders, phenomenal talented. I mean, but sharp, you know, uh, can look at prints and just fab whatever's off the top of off the top of their head from a, you know, off the top of their head or from a basic set of prints. It doesn't matter. Those kids will figure it out. And they have been twisting my arm for the longest time to start my business back up. So today on your podcast is the first time that I'm going to say that my shop door is open for light fabrication, production runs on TIG, and any other type of mobile welding that needs to be done in the uh South, I would say southern Ohio area for now. Um, I'll take I'll I'll take any type of jobs through the door, production runs again, like machine work, um, you know, weldaments, things like that to get going, get these guys foot wet or feet wet. But, you know, they're wanting to get in the game, they want to do something with with me. Uh, it's something that I've tried to avoid for a long time because the Miss Metals game, man, it's uh I don't know if that's really a business that I would want to do with my kids. We'll see. They want to because I've done it. Uh, but that's a tough game. That's a tough game, and that's a tough game to run a family business in. I mean, when I run a field crew, it's I don't know. There's not a it's not a whole lot of sugar coating, you know what I mean? And it's a it's a whole different person. I fired my son twice. And I had to hire him back because he was my only employee. Uh that's the kind of person I am. And and you know, it's it's one of those things where my son's an awesome kid. He's uh he takes things in stride. But I remember plain as day, there's ever since I've stopped doing business, my business still, my LL or my uh my S-corp still exists. Um and I take jobs here and there over summer. I didn't do any this year. I didn't do any last year because I've been so busy with this type of stuff. Uh, but before that, my oldest son, he would, he would travel with me and stay in hotels with me during the summer to put in, you know, a thousand-foot array somewhere, just he and I. And yeah, I I got heated one time because he didn't do he didn't think the way I thought he should have thought. Right? He wasn't reading my mind.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

And uh, you know, and and we strike. Take what's in uh in our mind and put it out to everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:32

And then if we look at that, you're exactly right. And then if we look at it and say, well, if everybody did that, my my competition would be pretty pretty steep, you know. Uh so I was just because and I man, I treated him completely different than any man who'd ever worked for me. It's like I inherently thought that he should know how to put in these, you know, these uh these dumpster gates. Like, what do you mean you don't know how to, you know, how to lift this thing up and and and put these barrel hinges on and and make this thing swing level when it's done? How do you how can you tell me you don't know how to do that? You're my son. Well, I've never taught him how to do that. You know what I mean? So it led to me firing. You never showed me. That's exactly right. So it led to me firing him and then uh the The next day he's um I'm calling him like where you at, dude. He's like, You fired me, dad. And I'm like, Yeah, but I I need you now. And he's like, You fired me. I was like, Okay, hired back. Let's go. Uh so they kind of know what they're getting into, man, a little bit. But yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited. I'm excited to get back into the game. I don't I want to take something different. I had a small fab shop when I first started. I rented a small space off my dad. Um that was another thing. You know, my dad was gonna help me. My dad was a business owner for 42 years uh and ran a large-scale uh small business. You know, he had um uh it was close to 100 employees at one point. Uh, just ran a big machine company. And I grew up in that shop, and part of my getting into business was saying, hey dad, if I get into business, and he's like, No, don't do it. You've seen what kind of stuff I've been through over the 40 years, don't do it. You know, just find somewhere that you can settle down and retire from. And I'm like, man, I'm not built that way. So I had just started that business, and he was, you know, he basically said that, okay, I don't like the idea that you're gonna do this, but man, you're my son, I'm gonna help you. And then I it wasn't maybe two weeks later, after I finally got the first, you know, the go-ahead, get your get your workers' comp liability insurance, and we'll get at it. I get a phone call from him, and he was in the emergency room and he was 50 years old. He had just had his 50th birthday. And he said, Hey, I got something to tell you. And I said, Okay. He goes, Man, I got leukemia. I said, What? And he said, uh at that time he had just he had just basically closed his business down in the the electric motors business, coil winding, um, had basically all gone to China. NAFTA had gone through in 1994. Everybody started putting plants in Mexico or China. A lot of that stuff was going to Mexico. My dad was kind of guys like, if I'm not manufacturing here, I'm not manufacturing anywhere. I've made my money in this business. It can go to Mexico and stay there. Uh so that's exactly what it did. And so we were just moving along in his shop and kind of liquidating it down as we went. Uh, and then he calls me and tells me he has leukemia when I'm starting mine. And uh he didn't come back out of that hospital for over a month and a half. Uh, he went into a coma, he had a frontal lobe bleed, and he came out. Uh, I would, if I had to guess, you know, maybe 35, 40% mental capacity as to what he was before. So he was in no shape to help me with my business. Um, you know, it was just grip and grin and get it off the ground like everybody else does. So that was a part that I that I forgot. That was a huge impact in me. And again, that whole struggle of getting off the ground that so many business owners go through. That was just another really key component.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:09

Uh, but you know, so so we're looking forward to starting that back up. I've just started getting ready to start my 14th year uh as the welding instructor. We doubled that lab. I ran it um when I first started there. They looked at me and said, okay, we don't have enough kids to give you a junior program. You've only got the leftover seniors from last year. Uh, you know, we can guarantee you a job for three years, but if you can't build this program in three three years, you're gonna have to find something else. Or we'll find you somewhere else in the district to put you. We're a huge district. And uh, man, it wasn't two years. We had all the seats in that field and then a waiting list. And then that waiting list just kept growing to the point where the CEO of our of our district's like, we need to double this. So hired a uh new um welding instructor uh last year, was his first year there. His name's Mark Willis, he's he's an awesome guy. He used to be used to work for uh Fronius um and some other places. He's been around Fab Tech and competitions, places that you would be frequent to. Uh you probably ran into him in the past. He used to handle um Mr. Flopman uh with Fronius. He was his handler for a while and knows knows Sean really well. Um great guy, by the way. If you guys don't know Sean Flop Flopman, Dabs Wellington, super cool dude. Um, but anyway, you know, uh he he worked out really well. He's doing great things with the program. Um, he just kind of gravitated towards it and kind of you know was a relief for me because trying to teach somebody else how to teach high school was a is a tough thing. Yeah, and he just gravitated towards it. So that's left me open to pursue this. Again, my speaking of sp uh speaking of skilled trades podcast. It's allowed me to put more time into it, more of my social media, um, and content creation. So, man, all things are good right now. Um, I got so much going on that I, you know, didn't intend to have. I never thought about starting a podcast um until I'll be honest with you, man. I don't know how you got started, but I got started by just creating content and I started reading so many different comments going down through there. It's like I don't know if they were telling me I'm ugly, but they were like, man, you got a good voice for a podcast. Kevin, to this day, I think it was just a really nice way of saying, dude, you're ugly. Get off of my screen and let's get on get on the radio. So that's when I started the podcast. So man, it's been going great.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

From another podcaster, I appreciate the good audio that you have because it sounds really great.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:47

Yeah, exactly. Likewise, likewise. It's it's much different than you know, interviewing somebody on their phone. Yeah. Uh yeah. So I don't know, man. My vision with this is just uh uh, you know, I I just spoke for the first time publicly um in front of 600 educators at at in Columbus, Ohio, um, at Career in Technical Education, All Ohio um ACTE conference last week. And and I spoke for an hour, basically told the story that I just told you, but in a much more detailed platform. And man, that was a trip. I don't know. Have you ever spoken in front of somebody like that?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:23

Uh not 600 people now. Smaller, smaller groups, like 30, 40, 50 people. Yeah. Like um, I facilitate, well, I I used to facilitate um a men's group at our church. So that's anywhere from 20 to 30 to 40 people. And then let me think, have I spoken? I don't think I've really spoken in front of a really large group. I don't think I have. Fabricator Olympics. Fabricator Olympics. Um, I like like hosting that. Um, but uh yeah, I got no problem with it. I actually kind of enjoy it, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:02

I I do too, but I'm gonna tell you something. When you get up on a stage, 600 people look way different than 600 people just standing in a room and you're sitting in the same room with them. You know, you're looking around, you're like, oh, that's 600 people. All right, I got this.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:18

When you step on a stage and you know, 1,200 eyeballs are staring at you. I hope I got that math right because this is recorded. I have a calculator out wrong. We we are welders. Disclaimer, we are welders. It doesn't matter. Uh but when you have all those eyes on you for an hour, yeah, man, that was a trip. And um, it it went off without a hitch. I think there's going to be more speaking opportunities that come out of that. And that's kind of where professionally I'm headed. I just want to advocate for career technical education and provide that segue from high school to the to career uh to skilled trades, man. Um, that's what I want to do. Not only do I want to educate through my podcast on, you know, having people like you and uh, you know, people like Dab Sarah Stork on there and just telling their story because a lot of what we have in the podcast world is technical, and you know, like Jason. Jason does an awesome job. I I think so much of Jason Becker. He has been a huge I mean, I'm not even gonna sit here and just say everything that he's done to help me, but man, from literally, he's everything that I'm doing as a podcaster right now has come from him. Uh he's he's told me everything, he's taught me everything. This dude is not a gatekeeper. Um, just an awesome guy with Arc Junkies podcast. If you haven't checked that out, please do. Um, but Jason has been responsible for for teaching me a lot of stuff, and um, it's just something I think through getting to hear people's raw story and not because you know, Jason does it, you do welding business owners podcast, which you're talking to welding business owners about what they do in business. Jason does a lot of AWS content with some really technical stuff, stuff that Jason can understand and I can't. Um, you know, he's transcended into that world of of higher uh education, in my opinion, with welding. Something that I've never been super interested in getting that deep into it. It's like it's a means of fastening some stuff together for me to build big things, you know. Yep. Um, but that there's an art to it, and I respect that side of it. I just haven't dove into the education side of that that much.

unknown 1:18:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:34

And he does an awesome job in that world. And I'm thinking, you know, my goal is to get young people involved in skilled trades. And I think a lot of what they see, you know, it's become a world where when you see guys like Dabs Wellington, you know, with all these followers, and he's doing his thing, it's like, well man, he's famous. I can't do that, you know. And then when you get to hear Dabs on my podcast, and it's like, this is a real dude.

unknown 1:19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

He started out the same way I did. He's been through some of the same struggles I have, you know, and then kids are like that world just opens up for them. Yeah. And when they, you know, when they get somebody on, when I get somebody on from, you know, that's a the a union electric, um, you know, electrical contractor of some sort, whether it's um and I'm not super high-end on the unions either. I don't know much about them because I was always an open shop guy. Um, but the more I'm learning, yeah, man, if you want to be an electrician, you probably should get into a union. You got a pension, you got, you know, uh, you're making great money, healthcare, there's a lot of great benefits, but I'm not well versed in that area. So when I get people on that are, that message gets to the youth, you know, and they say, okay, well, I want to be an electrical contractor, but you know, maybe my uncle was and didn't make much money. This guy's sitting here saying, if I go this route, so basically all I want to do is provide real education to people that are floundering and wondering, is this something that I should get involved in? Should I get into skilled trades? If you want to be an iron worker, listen to some of the guys I got on my podcast and see if those are the kind of dudes you want to work around for, you know, 40 plus hours a week. And if you are, hats off to you, man. You deserve that, you know, you deserve to be there. You know what you're getting into. That's exactly right. Listen to listen to some of the the pipe welders that have been on my uh podcast. And, you know, like I don't know if you've talked to um um Rob Weber, he owns Trade Fuel Coffee. Not only does he make some really, really good coffee, he's a pipe welder out of 597 uh out of Chicago. And, you know, he's telling, he's telling these stories about how he got into welding. And then so I'm hitting a whole nother market there because it's not just the kids that I'm used to getting into welding that are the farm kids that have always grown up around it and then you know, into my program. This dude's in Chicago, and he didn't have you know, he didn't have access to the schooling that I did in high school. So now you're learning how people carve their way outside of education and make their own way into, you know, how do you get into a union? How do you get into 597 if you know if your high school instructor didn't do it, or if your trade school instructor, you know, you went to Hobart or American Welding Academy. I'm gonna piss everybody off if I just keep naming names. But if you went to one of these schools and they didn't put you in contact, how do you do that? Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of young kids, man, you go in there on on that, on that, like with his with his interview and you look at the comments on it, and there's kids in there saying, Hey, how do I get that weld test? And you've got guys out of 597 telling them exactly how to do it. And then this kid comes back, you know, five weeks later is like, just took the test. I think I did great, waiting for the phone call. Man, that is phenomenal. When you see something like that transpire, and I'm hands off of it. I just was simply the conduit. That was all. I just provided a platform for the message to get across, and this kid's now into 597 because of it. And it's just to me, it's I don't know, man, it's surreal. It's it's just really, it's a really awesome opportunity. I love the space that I'm in with the podcast because I am a talker. I love to hear people's story, man. I love, you know, we can talk about business all day long, but who are you?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:22

And what have you been through? And how can you relate to the young people that are listening to this show? And how can you inspire them? How how natural can you be to get on their level? They might have seen, you know, they might have just got done watching 10 videos of you. They might have you on loop playing because, you know, you're teaching them something cool. Uh because that's the reality of it, man. I, you know, I've walked down the street in Chicago, which my first time at Fab Tech, and and somebody randomly yells my name out of a window, which was insane for me. It's like, how I don't understand that. And then you go to those people, and it's way higher than that. So now you've got almost a superstar status attached to these people, and it almost feels out of touch for the average person. And so hearing them be that average person, I think is is is a really it's a really good, I mean, it's just a great space for me to be in.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:15

Yeah, for sure. Do you think social media has helped or hurt the perception of the skilled trades? Because I feel like you can look at it one way where it's um, you know, it looks cool and it's sexy and everybody wants to get into it, but like um it's not as easy as everybody thinks. So what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:40

So I think social media has been huge and again promoting the trades, um, kind of bearing that old stigma of blue collar, uh, you know, hard work, no money. Uh, we're we're kind of showing the world that that's not the way this is. We can make as much money as we want.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:00

It's turning it around on everybody else, really.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:03

Exactly. And all those people that told you that your only way of being successful was through college are being proved wrong on a daily basis by the kid with a, you know, a rig rolling $300,000 a year.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:15

Um, that's lawyer money. And those guys went to school for eight years. You know, this kid went to a trade school for 11 months. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's done a phenomenal job at changing or at marketing and drawing people to the trades. Where it's hurt is giving them unrealistic uh expectations of the trades.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

You know, um, and and making it look like every job you're gonna have is buying you a new rig, buying you a new truck, you know, that you're just gonna go ahead and and and wipe your tears with a hundred dollar bills on uh, you know, every time you get sad because you're a pipe welder. Uh it's brought a lot of, and it's also brought, I'll tell you, I mean, you know, some of the people that are you've got to watch because a lot of people are very heavy social media and very uh very light on the actual can follow through with the work. I mean, they they make some good shots. I see guys welding from 20 feet away in overhead. Well, that's awesome. You can video your your you know your slag dropping. I want to see that weld. Chip that sucker and let's see it. You know, uh let's see what you've actually done there.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:23

But there's a lot of hours on that job, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:26

Yep, exactly. And there's a lot of people out there that are just making videos look good. And uh, you know, you got the guys that are actually out there doing the work. I think that is the biggest downfall of social media is bringing unrealistic expectations to the trades. And I think along with that, it brings an attitude uh with the younger people getting in trades. Like they think they're inherently because they're in, you know, if because they're a pipe owner, they're inherently entitled to X amount of dollars a year and nice house and everything else. Yeah, you know, they need to understand there's still those are there's a lot of work that those guys have done to get where they're at. Yeah. That didn't happen overnight. Yeah. Even these young guys, these young guys that are killing it on social media, look, those aren't your average young dudes. It's just that simple. Those aren't your yeah, they're average youngsters. So you either need to live up to that or surpass it to earn that, but don't just think because you've watched some videos online that you're, you know, you're a top hand now. That's that's not the way this works. And I think that's where you know social media has kind of put a lot of this. If you wear a Pearl Snap, which I love Johnny, uh Johnny Herrera with Pearl Snap pimps, man, he's one of my dudes. I love that guy. Uh, but and you know, I just say pearl snap just to say it. But if you wear a pearl snap some goofy glasses and say Tigrig a bunch of times, you're automatically supposed to make $250,000 a year. You know what I mean? And that's what people think. And uh that's just not the reality. I mean, you got these guys fighting for more money in West Texas oil fields. You know, the reality is that we're not living the luxurious life that a lot of uh auto-cut from uh, you know, cap cut makes it look. That's not the way it is. We're still normal people. You know, there's people that are successful in this industry, and there's people that do really well, and people that make a lot of money. Those people work really, really, really hard for it, and they're their goal every single day is to be better than the than the person beside them. Yeah, and if you're not one of those, this is just like every job.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:34

Absolutely. Um, as a business owner a few times over, um, have you dabbled with AI at all?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:47

I literally can't find a way to incorporate it into what I do or I would. I mean, as far as just keeping me on task, man, little basic things like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:57

You know, do you use it? Oh, I I definitely use AI. Um, I think it's it's one of the, you know, for me, um, I think I like to tinker with things. And I think this is uh a new thing that has has come out and it's really it's changed the game in a lot of ways. It's um it makes my workflows a little bit easier. Uh I like to balance ideas, you know, especially for the the Fabricator Olympics and the welding business summit. I need ideas, I need to cultivate things, I need to do research. And, you know, I've got pin projects and things like that, and it just helps me take what's in my mind. And, you know, I'm not the most eloquent speaker, and I don't, you know, I'm not good at social media and drafting up catchy campaigns and stuff like that. But you know what? It is, and it's really good at doing research on things, and I've played around a lot with um making my own apps for things that make my workflow go a little bit better with things.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:05

And um so are you using stuff like Codecs with that? Or what?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:10

Uh so I I I use uh cloud code for for for making things, and I, you know, there's things that in the welding business space that I think could be better. Um, especially like, you know, one app I made, it was for I am terrible, I'm just terrible social media. I really am. I uh you know, I'm busy doing the work and I always forget to take pictures or videos or things like that. And I'm getting better at it. Like, like, like I've been for the last year and a half, I've been videoing all of my actual interesting jobs. And um, I'm just building up a library of uh of that stuff. Um but it's um I made an app that will if I upload a picture to a Google Drive file, it will take it and it will analyze it, and it will come up, it'll see what's on the picture, and it'll come up with uh some sort of caption for it. And then it'll email me a draft of the captions, and I'll choose one of them, it'll say approved, and then it'll actually go ahead and use I think it's buffer to post it on all the social medias. Um and so it works, it's cool, it's got a nice interface, but then I realize it's just as much work as it is to as it is just to freaking do it. You know what I mean? Yeah, so that hasn't hasn't gone anywhere. I've got some some pretty good ideas on uh because I am in the welding business space, um ways to come up with products that would make my job with JMW easier. And we're working on, I'm working with the guy, Burton. He's uh he's probably six steps ahead of me on this. Um, and we're we're kind of spitballing, working back together, uh back and forth about coming up with, you know. A welding business specific uh project management tool because I use Job Tread now and it's good, but I only use 25% of what it actually can do. And it's kind of it's pretty pricey, man. It's 200 bucks a month plus 20 bucks a user. And you know, I'm I'm somewhere about 300 bucks a month for this. And I'm like, this is just too much for me. But it I'm what does it do for you? So I do my estimating, I do my invoicing through there. It has a library of all the material that I have and that I commonly use. Um and I Does it put a price point on that material for you? I put I manually put that in.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:59

Is there anything AI can do to gauge? Can see this is what I don't understand. Can AI say, say if I give uh an AI program five steel distributors, distributors, and I say, monitor on a uh 72-hour schedule the price of steel and report to me every amount of whatever that may be on the fluctuating prices. Can AI is A by AI capable of doing things like that?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:31

Uh at this moment, no. So yeah, yes and no. So it's not uh you can set it up on your so one thing I'm actually doing with our program is that every 30 days or 15 days or however you set it up, it will it'll take your library of materials. And in your library, it'll say where you get those materials from. And you'll have your sales rep from that company in your in your settings. And it'll take your material and it'll export it as a um Excel spreadsheet, and it'll automatically email that guy and say, Hey, reprice this. And then when he replies back to you, so it'll be a specific email that's set up that when he replies back to you with another Excel spreadsheet, it'll say, Okay, I'm gonna take that Excel spreadsheet, decipher what it says, I'm gonna re-upload it, and I'm gonna change all the pricing from what it was to what he just gave me. So and and and it like I want it to do that every every 30 days automatically. Now, will your sales guy reprice it every 30 days? Maybe. Um, you know, the place I I buy from, they have a crew of people who that's just what they do. They just sit there and they do pricing. So, yes, they will do that. Uh will they send it back to you in an Excel spreadsheet? Maybe, because the place that I buy most of my stuff from, I'm having trouble with them. Like they'll send me quotes from their system, but um, they won't change it, like they won't update my Excel spreadsheet because it's not easy for them.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:15

So Allegheny Steel is terrible at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:17

Yeah, so it's early stages of things like that. But as more companies adopt it, and you know, just give it a year or two, they're gonna set up something so that they can get rid of some of their people and take some of the responsibility off. Where when I send them a Excel spreadsheet, they're gonna have their AI say, okay, this is JMW fabrication. This is their their their rate. We're gonna they're the AI AI is gonna see, okay, this is the code number uh or the the item number that we give to them. We're gonna cross-reference it with our item number for the new pricing, it's gonna automatically update and send it back to them. So it's early stages of that because everybody doesn't play well together right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:05

So it's uh some of it is very like, hey, I'm doing what I can, but I need I need something in return. And a lot of people just aren't on that level yet. So I am playing around with it a lot. Um honestly, I just really like to hit I like to tinker. I like to build things. And this is, you know, I don't know code, I don't know how to do an app. Um, I'm very like I I've only been diving into this for about six or eight months now, and it's really just probably eight months. Um, and it's all new to me. So I'm a welder who's trying to learn an entirely different skill set.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:46

And to be quite honest with you, I don't even want to know how to code. I just want to know how to prompt so that the codes work. I talk to a lot of people, they're like, no, you probably need to learn how to code in order to make this happen. And I'm like, dang, I don't want to learn how to code. I just want to think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:02

Maybe basic functions.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:04

Maybe basic functions. I I from what I understand, there's a lot of stuff on the back end that like if you know, um you need to understand to make things work, and this, it's just, you know, it's a whole new, it's a whole new skill set for me. And I actually really enjoy it. I love it, and I'm excited where for where AI is gonna take us. Uh a lot of guys are pretty pessimistic and pretty um, they don't see the vision. They don't see the vision. Um I actually, so by the time that people hear this, my um are you familiar with Adam over at Hero Machine Company or Maker Table? No. No, so super smart dude. Super smart. And um, by the time that people hear this, they can go back and listen to my interview with him. So he is he started in his garage, what, probably 12, 14 years ago. He built his own CNC plasma table. Um, he started selling stuff on Etsy, he's one of the biggest metal science sellers on Etsy. And um got he still runs that business. He they do um ornamental ironwork down in Tennessee, and his newest venture is importing in uh CNC uh you know, laser welders and CNCL uh laser tube processors and flat sheet lasers and all sorts of uh machinery from China.

unknown 1:37:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:29

Um he started Hero Machine Company. That that that's who he's doing it through. And um he just got back from China at one of their big fairs in, I don't know, uh Beijing, China or something. And it was just incredible to understand where, like what you think that AI can do and what machinery can do automatically. We're not seeing it here, but it's happening over in China now.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:00

Like, as an example, he was saying uh uh if you go on YouTube and you search up Hero Machine Company, you can watch his his newest video where he went there and they've got just a beam that they put together, you know, like uh a fabrication fixture, we'll call it. And they they put the material in and this thing comes over and it scans. Like, so it scans what's there, and there's a couple ways that it it'll know what's there. You can either upload a drawing that says, hey, this is what it should look like, scan this and make sure it actually looks like that. If it's wrong, tell me where it's wrong. If it's out of square, if it's out of plum, if it's out of measurement, it'll scan it and say, hey, you're a little bit out compared to this drawing. Or you can actually have it scan it. And because they're feeding more information into it all the time, and it's digesting, like, oh, on these beams, do we put a weld here, here, and here? I think the AI thinks with we should put a quarter inch fillet weld here, here, and here. And then it proposes that to you and says, hey, should we go about doing that? And then it just takes it and it does it. Like it is That's awesome. Crazy. It is crazy, it's crazy awesome and a little bit scary. And a lot of people are like, you know, oh, it's never gonna take my job. Bro, just wait a couple years. I think it's coming for your job, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:31

Yeah. The well, the thing is too, I guess here's the one. It's only as good as the information you feed it. So absolutely. I could tell you how many times in in in erecting that I've looked at a print and like, yeah, it's not gonna work. Yeah. And they're like, why? Well, here's because, and you know, you run into code issues here or this and that. As long as the information that it's pulling from is 100% accurate, let's say that the drawing is created through AI and it's you know been evaluated through accuracy, then the rest of it can flow very well. But if you're just pulling off of this, this one detail, I couldn't tell you how many detailers have screwed up thousands of jobs that I've done. Yeah, you know, so it's only as good as that detailer or something like that. But I totally understand where you're coming from. I don't I know that humanoid bots and stuff like that are gonna be advantageous in the future. I'm not sure what their capabilities are gonna be of evaluating certain scenarios um uh in in real time. Like uh I had a guy on from he was um, what is it? Is it the IBEW? Uh, and he was an equipment operator, and he was basically saying, okay, yeah, you could you could send humanoid bots to our location, but are they gonna be able to feel in that piece of equipment uh sense the ground giveaway and and different parameters that they're gonna have to work in? And I'm like, not yet, but man, that equipment will probably be able to sense that in the future, you know, the same way you are as an operator. I drop pressure and things like that. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:05

It's all feeding into one computer.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:07

And here's one here's one thing that I want you to uh think of, man. I'm gonna throw this back to you. And my problem with AI, I'm super open to the possibilities of what it can do. As far as my space, uh is my space is concerned, what it can do for me. I'll take that back. I did use it for my speech. I put everything on paper. I wrote my entire speech myself, but I was having problems pacing. And I I put it, my AI use goes as far as Gemini, right? That is the only thing I even know how to do. And I used it to say, hey, take this speech and pace it out for me to make it a 60-minute speech. So it gave me benchmarks to go off of. So when I was re, you know, when I was looking back over it, I was hitting those benchmarks and I was coming out at like 58 minutes and 60 minutes, dead on. So it was super helpful in that situation. I would, I'm trying to think of ways beyond, you know, like in everyday business, how it would have helped me when I was in business. And if it were able to, you know, if I were able to throw or even talk into it and say, hey, I have 330 linear feet of two-line rail, six-inch cores, um, you know, a basic flat install. And it's already programmed at $23, $25 a linear foot, and it's able to spit out a price immediately. Awesome. If it's able to look at that job and tell me what equipment I need for that job, even better, right? If it's able to take that job, tell me what equipment I need and line that up through my salesman, and and I mean, I can see to where it'll remove a lot of the overhead in a business like that, which would give you more time. But again, what are you gonna do with more time if you don't have the labor to facilitate that work? And then how will you be able to offset that labor in the future is another question. Are you gonna have a crew full of humanoid robots? I don't know. Uh in the in the future, maybe. I don't know how that looks. But I can tell you one of the things that scares me about AI. And I'm gonna use this for an instance. Uh, let's say a basic machine shop who is, you know, they've got some, they've got some uh you know good CNC CNC machines, um you know, heavy tool changers, they got a lot of tool changers, they can process a lot, okay? But they're also competing in an environment that's tough to compete in in manufacturing right now. So the excess cash flow isn't readily available for business's growth. And AI, in my opinion, is gonna be a game of who has the most money to be able to make it fit their line of business, those people will prevail. What's stopping Coca-Cola from getting into fabrication and just gobbling up the share of it? If they own, you know, if they've got the money to be able to advance AI into any process, any manufacturing process, what's stopping large corporations from just and they're we're already seeing it in the service industry in HVAC. These large conglomerates are buying up small companies like crazy because they're they're removing so much overhead from their business that it frees up so much cash flow. When you're laying off 3,500 people because you've just reduced your overhead by 30% overnight, now you have all the time in the world and money to facilitate those advancements in AI that'll allow you to take over in an industry. And that that is scary to me because then it becomes the people with the most money uh rule the show. And that is literally if you can if I'm a small shop down the road, and let's just say I'm selling widgets for $2.50 a piece. And there's another shop down the road that's selling widgets for $2.50 a piece. Same thing pretty much with rates and industry, right? I'm you're not able to carry a shop rate that's you know way over somebody else's, unless you have the reputation for that. I mean, then that can get it. But you can't carry that. You can't you can't um disproportionately charge uh compared to your competitors. You can't do that right now. So you're stuck at kind of the same rate. We're both selling widgets for two dollars and fifty cents a piece. Yeah, now Company A has 10 million laying around that they can retrofit their facility with robots that are controlled by AI that can go from station to station and and eliminate, you know, jobs on the floor. And then they've implemented AI in the office, so they don't need this accounting department anymore. You don't need this estimation department anymore. You don't need a whole, you know, you don't need a whole staff of engineers anymore snapping lines in AutoCAD. That's not our reality anymore. So now that that company has the cash flow to implement this AI to reduce their overhead literally overnight. Now they're able to sell widgets for $1.75. There is no way for you to compete. None. You've maxed out your labor. You're already having a hard time finding that. You're competing with foreign companies in pricing. So you're having to compete with foreign labor, which is tanking your manufacturing. You don't have any meat on the bone. So you've got large companies with large cash flow implementing AI into small companies and gobbling market share out of the little people's hands, and that scares the hell out of me about AI.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:51

It does. And um, you know, there's like I think there's a lot of ways to go from there. Um I think we're already there. I mean, in the age of CNC machining, widget pieces have just gotten cheaper. Yeah. You know, you you used to have the guys who who were who were straight up craftsmen. They go out there manually go out there and start making pieces and cranking them out. Well, CNC put them out. They either adapted to learn how to use CNC or they just found found found an uh another spot to fill in that company. Yeah. Um I think you're already seeing that that um that takeover of big companies, even private equity companies coming in buying out companies that run really efficiently. They're owned by private equity. It's uh they're a finance company that deals in X. They're a finance company that deals in making bottles, they're a finance company that deals in making uh ADA railings and handicap ramps. They're a finance company that deals like we make uh we uh there's a company that we mix up for. Um, they openly say, we are a finance uh uh uh a finance company that deals in stairs and railings. Like that's just the product that they have. So we're already seeing that now. And the world is already going that way. The the bell curve of the haves and have nots is getting steeper and steeper every year. Um so I don't think there's ever uh that's the beauty and the downfall of capitalism is because uh is is is that is that you know the bell curve is getting steeper and steeper of the people who have and and the people who don't have. And we're all we're already down that. Like the the the there's there's if we don't adopt uh AI, it's not gonna stop that. There's because there's gonna be companies and people who do.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:01

So here's here's the thing I think is different in your comparison to CNC machinery. Um, CNC was the information about it was extremely clear and understandable to everybody in industry when it came out, right? Everybody understood it because it's basically you're just programming everything that a manual machinist would do. Now, not every manual machinist knew how to program, but once they learned the language, they did, then they're just adjusting speeds and feeds. So that was less of a curve than something that can literally change your company overnight with one purchase. And also with CNC equipment, you know, if you were a successful CNC, or if you were a successful um just say manual shop and you had one or two guys in there and you were you were doing really well and you had a a backlog, you could go to Haas and say, hey, I'm looking at this machine. What can you do to get me in that machine, get that machine in my shop?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:03

And they would work with you. But who do you do that with in AI? Like, who is that? Like, who can I partner with? You understand what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_03 1:50:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:12

We know that this is gonna change the game for everybody the same way that we did CNC machining. We knew that it was gonna change the game. We also knew who to talk to with that. It's like, how can I how can you hook me up with the latest and greatest machine? What can it do for me? How much more work can I take if I've got so many different tool changers than I did before? What does that mean for my company? But who do you reach out and talk to about that with AI? You don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:38

So that's the scary part. Um, so you know, th think of this as a as a graph. You've got the cost, and then you've also got the um so you you've got the cost to implement it, and you've got the like the cost of the actual problem. Um and the the the problems that cost the most money to fix are gonna be the ones most advantageous to implement AI on. So labor. Labor is absolutely one of them. Can you take AI and implement it? Uh is is the cross between the learning curve and the price um low enough that it's worth tackling to implement AI on. Um, you know, widget pieces, like pieces that are just put into a jig and just you you you weld around it. Easy, easy to do and not that expensive. Those are the first things that are are going to be knocked out by AI and are being knocked out AI. You know, I think with the C and C uh analogy, the path forward was clear. I think the path forward with AI, it you have it, it it's subjective with every task that you're looking for it to do. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, um how how hard is it? Like how expensive and hard is it to get an AI robot that will take a core drill out of the truck, walk over to the right spot on that ramp, put it there, and core drill a hole properly, safely, and two dimensions ever. That's that's a big problem. That's a big expensive problem. So that probably isn't gonna go away anytime soon. You know, I I think it's one of those things, it's it's baby steps. As you, you know, as you knock out like the problems of, you know, back to the widget thing, it's easy and and it's it's relatively cheap to figure out a solution to that problem with AI. So what does that look like for each niche in in the entire blue collar trade industry? You know, having a humanoid robot climb a ladder and run conduit for electricity, that's a hard problem. That's gonna be much cheaper to solve with a with a human being until you've gotten to the point where you've solved so many problems here. That's just the next step. That's just and so and so that that gap of bridge of bridging that gap from taking that humanoid robot. Well, guess what? Maybe in eight or ten years, it knows how to climb a ladder safe and efficiently, and it actually sets the ladder up itself. Check, check that box. Um, it knows how to read barcodes and it knows, you know, this machine robot put down the conduit over here. It knows that it can go over there, navigate the terrain because you've already navigated, you've already checked off that navigate terrain back here, lower down on the steps. And then as as you climb those steps of knocking out those problems, there's just a matter of time where it gets to, oh, well, having it run conduit for us and gluing it together is really not that big a deal because of all the steps that we've already that we've already solved down here. So, what does that look like for people?

unknown 1:54:13

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:14

You know, I think that's a good idea. That's the thing. What does it look like for business owners? That's that's what I'm intrigued by because, you know, uh, as you're saying that, and and from the manual labor standpoint that you just brought into that, that perspective, to me, that gave me some peace of mind, Kevin, because it sounded like there's almost a curve there that it's gonna have to follow. And then if you're privy to that information and you're keeping up with those trends, it's almost like hearing about those CNCs, you know, 40, 40 years ago. Uh, and you're able to keep up with it. What are they doing now? But the scary thing to me is the people that are looking at the problems that we're having in industry and saying, yeah, it takes a hell of a lot of time, and I don't know where core drilling is at. I mean, are they at $50 a hole yet for a three-inch, uh, six-inch hole, three-inch diameter, six-inch depth? I don't know what they were back in my day. These guys were charging $25 a hole. It's an expensive problem. And honestly, I would rather have my guys setting material uh and you know, finishing up projects than spending time on a cord drill. But my issue is it's the person who recognizes that problem and is in the AI loop to help build that technology that's gonna have access to it first. Yeah. And what kind of market share they're gonna be able to gobble up before anybody else gets the opportunity. That's that's what's scary to me because there's there seems to be, unlike anybody in in any other time in the past, and again, this is just my perception of things. It's I'm nowhere near being an expert in any of this, but it seems to me that um there is so much gatekeeping with this AI, you know, with the with the development of it. And of course, inherently it has to be because it's a global game changer. Uh, but to me, it just seems like a shrouded um mystery that if I'm not involved in ground zero to develop these things to fix my problems, then I'm stuck paying for that solution when somebody's already profiting off of their solution. And it's tough to gain that market share back after you. It's kind of like if you put it into perspective this way. So my father-in-law is the president CEO of a plastic conjection molding company. And recently I took a visit uh with my class, and I'm super proud of him. Man, uh I can't wait to get him on my podcast. You're talking about a guy who started working at a place at 17 years old in the tool room with no experience, no skill, learned how to be a tool maker, worked his way up, worked his way through college at like 30 some years old, and became the president CEO of this business. Uh, I mean, he's just the overall American success story, and he's uh he's an awesome dude. And I'm super proud of him. And and um, but I'm gonna use this as an example. You walk into his place, and there are presses from the 70s, you know, and they're chunking away, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. They're making knobs and they're competing in the knob market. And then I take a trip over to another place local to me with my students, and their goal is to be a lights out facility in five years. There's robots going from every station, pulling boxes from those stations, delivering them to another station automatically. Programs are being sent from the engineers in an office, and they automatically trigger and produce on their presses. Brand new presses, they communicate with every piece of technology in the facility. How much would it cost to retrofit my father-in-law's shop to be to be able to go to compete with AI? Yeah, dude, it's unreal. He can compete now, but once that's I mean, it's done, you know, and that's gonna be the demise of a lot of people. And it's not necessarily if they weren't able to keep up with the curve. Do they have access to it? That's my thing. It's like maybe, you know, if you can say, okay, well, CNC's have been out for 30 years and you just now bought one, yeah, that's the problem. That's why you're folding up your shop, you know. Yeah, you could have been you could have been keeping widgets producing while you're doing stuff on the side this whole time, but no, you're 30 years behind. But that that information was there, it was accessible, it was the your decision, like if you wanted to get in that game or not. Yeah, but I don't feel like it's that way with with AI. I don't feel like it's that way. I feel like it's well, who do you go to? Uh, you know, if you're a small business owner and you need to retrofit all of your presses in your in your business, who do you go to to retrofit all of your presses with new technology that'll talk with AI in the future when nobody really even knows what what that looks like?

unknown 1:59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:00

So the people that are in the front run, you know, that are that are in the driver's seat, and again, yeah, yeah, you're ex you're you're inspiring ingenuity. You're you're creating a whole new industry where people can find ways to make money, simply retrofitting companies to AI. I mean, I see the industries unfolding in my head, but I also see the man, the blue-collar dudes that are running shops out of their garage. I see them really taking a dive, and that hurts. I I hate to see that.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:29

Yeah. No, I um I think I think our generation, so I think you're it's hard to say because AI is moving so fast.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:41

So fast. Like, just think about what AI was two years ago. Those like disgusting looking, like, you know, picture things that you're just like like like you know, everybody's got six fingers. You know what I mean? Now I really believe Theo Vaughn is the preacher in a church. You know what? You can't tell the difference anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:59

You can't tell I was like, wait a minute. Did you did you know Theo Vaughn could sing? You know, and here's what it takes. It takes my son to look over my shoulder when I'm saying that, going, bad. That's AI. That's that's AI, dude. Yeah. But you're right. Two years ago, you could distinguish that pretty easily. Like that, that's obviously an AI image.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:19

What's it gonna look like in two years? And now and and like, you know, it's hard for me to say, um, it's like nobody knows the future, obviously. But it's it's you know, to your point, I think, um I think our generation is gonna be the generation where it's AI and implementing AI with whatever that looks like. Um, whether it's whether, you know, there's not gonna make there's not gonna be a ton of people out there figuring out the hard problems and being able to implement them into their shop without having somebody to hold their hand with. So like, you know, uh so obviously the people who figure out how to, you know, take that cobalt and scan it and have it come up and weld itself. Yes, those are gonna be the people who you're gonna have to go to to implement that. Um, I think what AI is gonna do for our generation is it's gonna take the one, two, three man shops and make them super efficient. If you adapt it, you're gonna be able to put out so much more. Yes, it's gonna be expensive. You know what I mean? You're you're you might have to have a hundred thousand dollar uh robot that comes and it's got a scanner and you can need training, but it's got a full bed with jigs on it that you can put things in and you know you can make railing. And and like, like kind of like with with my with JMW, the reason why we chose stairs and railings is because it's hyper-local. Like somebody on you in Ohio can't compete with me making rails over here in the Lehigh Valley. It's just not gonna work. Um, so the if you're able to figure out how to take AI and put it into a quote unquote hyperlocal business, you are gonna be um you're you're the next future of like doing really, really well in business. So instead of paying six guys, you've got two guys and doing the work of six to eight to ten guys. What is that?

SPEAKER_02 2:02:31

If you can make it through that first introductory stage, though. Yeah, that's if you can make it through that first stage. Correct. Because if you've got somebody that's already implemented it, me, if I cut 30% of my overhead right now, I can compete with you in your backyard. Yeah. In fact, I can beat you in your backyard.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:51

And there's gonna be and there's gonna be companies who who take that package and go to you and say, hey, um, I can save you 30% and you can just make this and ship it wherever you want in the country. And they're gonna take that and they're gonna package it and they're gonna sell it to every other welt shop who can afford to have it. And then you're gonna almost have regional territories that they sell you. Like the uh uh so if you're familiar with trucks, are you familiar with the Ultralox rail system where they like sell? I think Trucks owns it. Um I I've seen that at a Fab Tech. Basically, it's a 12-foot-high press that you buy these pre-made pickets and you put it in there and it presses together this aluminum railing, and you buy the press from them for a hundred grand, you buy their their uh a container full of either black, bronze, or white pickets and top rails and cap rails and posts and everything like that. And then they sell you a territory that you can sell, or you you have a territory that you can make it. You can sell it in in any market, but you have to uh you can only do it in like put your machine in eastern Pennsylvania. So like maybe that that maybe that's something that that that AI has. And you know, Trump comes in and says, hey, we've got these laser welders, we we'll sell you a laser welder on a robot arm with a 20-foot bed, with a press break and a tube-bender and roller all in one. You sign here, it's $700,000, or you know, with Trump is probably like five million, but um, you know, the you'll be able to put out with five people the amount of work that 50 people and you can compete with those 50-person shops who aren't doing this yet. You know what I mean? Like that's my vision of the future. Not that I love it, I don't love it, but looking through history of how things have happened and how things are going now, I can kind of see that being the future of like small welt shops, or you just have a bunch of Miller Maddox or Lincoln's in your shop, and you have you buy the old machinery, and you know, because everybody's going off and buying this new stuff, that machinery's pennies on the dollar, and you can still make a good living doing railing, and all you have to do is charge what they charge. You know, there's gonna be a whole genre of people who do that too.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:14

But you still have a ceiling over your head from somebody else. It would be like you working for one single fabricator and only one single fabricator only. I mean, do you do that now? No. That's scary. Yeah. I wouldn't want to put all my eggs in one basket. No, and especially, you know, if and in your own. And they jack the price up. Well, yeah, you can do that. But again, if you're not in control of that, they control your price. Yep. So if you're if if that market exists that you're talking about, then it's like, hey, whoa, uh, there's an economic recession. Well, everybody's gonna have to take a 17% cut across the board on all their pricing. There's not a thing you can say about it. Yep. Because in the end, you probably still owe a little bit of money on the piece of equipment and you know, whatever, and you're still obligated these same terms. It's just a scary man, anytime that's that we try to restrict, because if we look back into history and we say, okay, we look at the Andrew Carnegie's, we look at um, we look at people like um Rockefeller. You know, Rockefeller's need to get oil across the country led the pipelines, created a whole new industry. But Rockefeller didn't control the pipeline. I mean, yes, did he have heavy influence in it with dollars? Yes, absolutely. But that led to a multi-billion dollar industry where a lot of people had space to compete. That's where money started and said, I need to create these uh solutions for these problems. Here's a lot of money that I have, figure it out and make it happen, right? All those guys did that. Yeah. But the only one that really did, and then honestly, uh Carnegie got into the the, you know, got into, I think, if I'm not mistaken, like setting electric poles or something, had a business that was supposed to help develop the electrical grid and ended up selling the business before he set the first pole on the ground. He just set it, he just so he built the business and sold the business off the contracts he was able to get in his hand. And honestly, if we look at business from that standpoint, I think there's a lot of opportunity that way in like retrofitting uh facilities to run on robotics and things like that. And for fabricators, dude, if you can go in and have a vision, if a company says, I need to get from point A to point B with this robot and it needs to have this type of cabinetry on it, as a fabricator, that's a wide open market to be able to go in and retrofit things to solve problems if you're familiar with robotics and things like that. So the industries that are created as offspring of stuff like this, I don't feel like it's the same. I don't feel like it's the same because somebody eventually ultimately is gonna hold the power to all of those industries. So it's not like Rockefeller saying, damn it, I need to get standard oil from East Coast to West Coast, build me a pipeline, and here's the ton of money to do it.

SPEAKER_03 2:08:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:03

And then everybody comes together, all these different companies that feel like they have the opportunity to be able to build that pipeline. That's how the industry was built. Yeah. I don't think it's gonna be that same rollout with AI. I think it's gonna be more of the money controlling the technology and then allowing people to compete in certain markets.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:22

No, I agree. Like I'm I'm worried about um, you know, the the renting of everything.

unknown 2:08:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:32

Like like now, like, you know, uh like you know, who is that dude who said you you'll own nothing and be happy? Like, think about this. Um, you know, you don't own your music now. You got Spotify. You know what I mean? Like, if you you don't pay your Spotify, I mean, obviously, I think you can get have it free, like, you know, but um you don't own your music like you used to with CDs and DVDs, you don't own your T your TV stuff. Um you know, Fusion 360, you know, Fusion like I don't know how many years ago you they went to a subscription model and that's all you could have. And if you don't pay your subscription model for Fusion 360, you don't have Fusion 360 anymore. You know what I mean? Or or Autodesk products. Um you know, how about all the you know, what's to say, I don't I I actually don't know like about Trump for Amada. Like, do they have like I don't know if they have proprietary software that you have to pay a subscription for? Um, but like what's to say that you spend a million dollars on a press break and a laser, and then uh if you don't if you don't pay your $20,000 a year software bill, then it doesn't turn on, you know? Like like unfortunately, that is the reality of the way that the world is going. And um and and I, you know, to your point of the the the the narrowing down and the bigger the big companies are starting to own everything, man, I don't see it in the the small fabrication of uh of that we do in our lifetime, but um I can see it, you know. Look at all these private money hedge funds going in buying you know single family housing. That's why it's so freaking expensive because you're allowed to do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:21

Exactly. And and that's what I that's what worries me about businesses like yours. And that's what scares me because there are companies, Kevin, that compete with you. I mean, how much how much has multifamily railing picked up in your business over the past 10 years? Uh in my business, probably none. Okay. So, well, in commercial railing as a broad scope, huge. Multifamily railing is a huge industry right now. Um, where I've had people try to get me back into business just to do multifamily. Those guys are able to compete anywhere. You take synergy out of out of DC, man. They have, you know, they have systems that snap together. And you can't compete in multifamily uh in unless you have the same technology, unless you're uh, you know, another guy that had to do the exact same thing, uh guy named uh oh, I forget his last or his first name, Hansen. He had Hansen Architectural in or in uh Oregon for whatever uh for a long time. He had his own extruders, like so he was able to extrude his own aluminum. That was his competitive edge. So if you're not one of those, I just feel like it's man, I I don't know. I just feel like it's gonna be if you have the technology, I can compete with anybody in anybody's backyard, and it doesn't take long. You know, if I hit the Cincinnati area, if I just marketed South Southern Ohio, and if I were to able to cut somebody's prices, if I were to able to cut the railing and miscellaneous steel industry's price by 30% tomorrow in southern Ohio, I give a six-month timeline to where most maybe 90% fabricators in our area would be shot, they would be down with no hope of opening back up.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:13

None. So that's the kind of that's that's what we gotta look at. And we gotta say, you know, I don't know that there's any way to stop it, but you know, when you got people saying that, you know, you're not gonna like Elon Musk going on podcasts saying that money's not gonna be needed in 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:30

Universal basic high income.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:32

So what the hell are we doing breathing all these fumes for, man?

SPEAKER_00 2:12:37

We're the jokes on us, Kevin. Yeah, no, I you know, i it's funny, like I don't um for a long time I've heard about the universal basic income, and you know, I'm like, no, that's stupid, real against it, real against it. And I I'm still not for it. Um, but seeing just because I've played so much with this, with this AI stuff, and I have the vision there, like I'm I have the vision of a business builder with and I can see the technology, how it's going, but it's hard to envision um and because it's moving so fast, it's moving so fast that I I think we're gonna see so much change in the next 10 years of what business looks like that it's gonna be, you know, if you showed an iPhone to somebody uh from the 20s, they would think it's it's it's sorcery and witchcraft. And they they their mind could not even comprehend that something like that would happen. And I think, but that but that was a hundred, that was that was a hundred years ago. I think it's gonna happen to us in 10 years. We're gonna look back and say, oh my gosh, remember when when w we talked about this? Or remember when we had a bandsaw that was manual? Yeah. And now, now for for for $10,000 for $10,000 bandsaw, I can have a $10,000 robot that communicates with my fusion 3D software that it just picks the material off the rack and puts it in. Now, maybe that's not exactly what's gonna happen, but you know, that's not it's not that far off. And it's it's kind of scary for what that means for like my kids and your kids growing up. Yeah. What kind of what kind of in working environment are they gonna be in?

SPEAKER_02 2:14:44

If they are if they're in an in an in a working environment at all. Yeah, if they're working. That's the thing. So like if you're getting a base basic level income and and you know, with Elon's newest uh podcast, he's basically saying mon money's obsolete, what do you need money for? You need it for goods and services. And if those goods and services are being able, if they're available at a million times the rate of at they are now, you don't need money. Um, and then let's if you dive deeper into this, into the fabric of humanity. You you need to feel value. Yeah. People work their entire lives to hone crafts because they they crave value. And not only does it help you in life, it helps you achieve the things that you want to create that value. But it's everything that you are. I identify as a welder. It's been me my entire life, man. And you ask anybody in my area, that's who I am.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:46

What happens to that in 10 years? Who are you? You know what I mean? Uh I don't know. That that to me is the most dangerous part of it. When you look past economics, you look past business, you look past monopoly control over, you know, production of over honestly, of over occupation, period. End of story. It doesn't matter which way you want to go, whether it's stocking shelves or building 10 floors of stairs. At one point, if it carries on long enough, it has the opportunity to eliminate anything like that and and possibly, you know, replace manual labor from humans with all electronic labor. And then at that point, man, what makes you who you are? Jesus was a carpenter. You know, and God wouldn't have put that in the Bible, man. He wouldn't have told us that Christ was a carpenter if it wasn't important. And I'm not saying carpenters are Christ-like. That's not what's not the person I'm thinking, man. I don't value carpenters the same way I do Jesus. But I'm saying it was important enough to say not only is he Christ, but he's a carpenter. And that's the way Christians view their savior. He was a carpenter. Yeah. And it's like from there, man, where do you how do you put value on yourself? And and then how do you those things that uh that that we've preached to our kids for so long that that we've taken um ourselves of hard work and determination and making yourself better, what's the point? Yeah. Why? If everybody's the same and everybody's entitled to the same things, why be better? Why be a better person? You know what I mean? Because being a better person is subjective as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17:32

And then also in the future, if you want to look at it that way, depending on how you are as a person, if you if you got that CNC machine and you go online and you run your mouth about the government, hey, that m that CNC machine's locked down, or your car, you can't go, your spending's cut off if you say the wrong thing. You know, you can't take their order anymore. Yeah. Yes, sir. So it's, you know, you look at it and you say, from from a business owner standpoint, it's scary. There's things that are going on, like uh local 18 operators union. You know, uh, they have told me that they're taking every step they can to make sure that as new technology rolls out with AI, autonomous equipment, things like that, that their labor has to be the people operating that equipment. Well, that's great, but think about how many things aren't that way. Look at the teachers union. All they care about is going on strike uh and and for the next, you know, for the pu uh the political activism that they put. But nobody's talking about how do you protect a teacher's job. How do you protect a teacher from just becoming a facilitator of education? Right now they're educators in two years. Who has the authority over that content? It's gonna be AI because people ought to inherently think that AI is smarter than any teacher, which it will be. So AI has the authority over that education, not the teacher anymore. The teacher has simply become a conduit. That's it, and which they always have, but they always had to invest that personal learning, right? First. But now they're just a facilitator of that education. And what does that mean? So it might mean that, you know, in the next uh five years, uh huh, you only have to go to school for six to eight weeks to get a certificate of educational facility. You know, you you can become a facilitator of education in six weeks.

SPEAKER_03 2:19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:27

But that might only pay you 30,000 a year, or it might pay you X above your uh, you know, your universal um income.

unknown 2:19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:35

Right. So we're minimizing the value of people.

unknown 2:19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:41

And that scares me.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:42

Well, I I think that's gonna be almost like the currency and the cutting edge in the future when you when you've got uh things that are just doing everything for you and it's so cheap, like you know, people are gonna value the craftsmanship. Like, like there's always gonna be a certain amount of people who, even though I can get it done cheaper because it was robotically welded and everything like that. I want that, I want hands who built that railing for me and those stairs. And it's gonna become even more of a uh of a I guess you would call it a luxury in the future when everything does become like that. And same way with the teacher, you know, kids don't learn from a video just from sitting in front of a video screen. They need to have the dynamics of a teacher, of somebody live and in person. So I don't think that's ever actually going to go away. It's actually uh the having your course curriculum and everything already outlined might just help the teachers become more efficient. And unfortunately, you know, it also might also tell them what to teach too, which is a whole that's the scary part. It it's a whole that that's a whole nother that's a whole nother set of issues that we could go down. But um, you know, it it's like I don't know. I I think it's gonna be absolutely crazy when we look back in 10 or 20 years and see the progress that has, if you would even want to call it progress, uh what it looks like now to the future.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:21

I think I mean I think it has an opportunity to do exactly what you kind of laid out, and that's bring people back to the old way of doing things. Um, and that becomes the appeal, that becomes a new market. And I can see that actually, if I think about, let's put it in perspective of photography, right? I have a phone that's able to really do about anything I want it to taking a picture. But when I'm setting up my podcast studio, I don't know a thing about lighting, saturation, nothing. And this thing's not I can I can learn it. But where people have been put out of business as photographers, are there there's always going to be that market of people who enjoy the nostalgia behind it and want to learn shutter speed? What does that mean? And how do I adjust it manually on a on a on a uh camera? Saturation, how do I adjust that lighting? How do I, you know, what is the best lighting for? And so things like that, yeah. It's kind of the same way if we look at it now. Uh, you know, if there's people uh that have popped up forges all over the place and come to my forge and I'll show you how to forge a knife.

SPEAKER_03 2:22:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:30

Uh, you know, we've got classes every Thursday. Is it practical? No. Are we out there forging, you know, handles and stuff for doors anymore? Some people do, and they get paid high dollar to do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:41

And but also the the market created around it, the nostalgia of it is wanting to get in there and learn the way things were done before. So I I totally see your point, man. I just hope we're I hope we're able to find a balance to just still give people value because the four, you know, even the way I'm looking at it now is the people that stay in the game and are are leaders in the industries, they're gonna be okay. And they're gonna have value. But it's the people that, you know, that that aren't equipped to do that that still find that value, man, at going in and grinding those rails all day long, going back and hugging their wife, you know, covered in grinding dust, um, and looking at their kid, telling them, you know, that they're wanting them to do better than them uh when they grow up. And and it's just gonna take some of that away. I don't know, man. It's just gonna, it's weird. But I will put it in perspective like this. I'm old enough to remember, and a lot of these uh listeners probably aren't, but I'm old enough to remember the first time my phone made this weird ass noise. And I'm four stories up at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and we're putting in some of this brick lentil uh around this building, and I hear my phone make this weird noise, and I look down and there's this weird image on it. And I'm like, what the hell is this? And it was an envelope, and I looked at my guys and I'm like, what is this envelope on my phone? And they're like, I don't know, man. It looks like the same type of envelope that's on your laptop when you get email. I'm like, there's no way this is a damn email. That didn't just happen, you know? So I clicked the button and it opened my email on my phone. And I'm like, guys, sure as shit, that is an email on my phone. And they're and everybody's crowded around are like, oh my gosh, you really did get an email on your phone, didn't you? And I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't lie to you. It cost me like six dollars to retrieve that email because it was, you know, you're getting charged by the minute to use the internet or sell you. So it cost like $7 to get it. It was like $6.99. Pissed me off. But I got that email, and instantaneously I thought, you know what? I was so excited about it. And then I got my truck and everybody had left. Uh, you know, the rest of the crew pulled off. I just got done talking to the job superintendent, you know, about finishing up the rest of the job, and I hopped in my truck, man, and I'm driving down the highway, and I just thought, out of nowhere, my life literally just changed right then and there. Because no longer do the end of my emails say, Please give me 48 hours to respond, you know, all this stuff. Because we at that time in industry, that was acceptable. We we understood that you don't spend all your time at a laptop, uh, that it takes you a little bit to return uh an email, you know. But now, now people are gonna expect me to respond instantaneously because they know good and well I just got that email. You know what I mean? So it changed me in business literally overnight. Yeah. And so we're talking about that on a mass level.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:39

I know.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:40

There's a lot of adjustment to make, man. And and how we're gonna do it as a society and whether we can do it harmoniously, that's gonna be a trick, man. I don't know. Yeah, I agree, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:51

Yeah, it's deep. I don't know. Well, dude, this has been a super interesting talk with you, man. Right. Like, I really appreciate you taking the time. You got anything else that you want to add to this?

SPEAKER_02 2:26:07

No, I mean, uh, in in in uh my own uh just my own promotion, I I just want to, I always want to make it make it sure that I take the opportunity to to encourage young people. If you're in school, you're in high school, and you're in tenth grade, and you're looking at this saying, what am I gonna learn in the next two years that's going to change my life forever? I don't know how much more algebra you can learn that'll change your life forever. I don't know how many times you need to read Catcher in the Rye or anything else that's gonna change your life, great Gadsby, that's gonna change your life forever. Career in technical education has the opportunity to do that. It can change your life forever. It did for me. Uh I was the kid that wasn't gonna go to college, that didn't have uh, I wasn't studious, I needed an outlet to work with my hands, to retain information, to be good at something. Career in technical education gave me that. So if you're a if you're a high school student and you're listening to this podcast, you're interested in welding, you're interested in being a business owner in the welding industry at some point. Um please, you know, consider the right training at the right time. Don't waste your time in high school. Get involved early, take that step. I know it's a big change, it's a new school, new people, but I'm telling you it's totally worth it. And the skilled trades, guys, we're living in a time where Kevin, we're literally leading the next generation of millionaires. Um, and that, and I totally wholeheartedly feel that way. Whether we get to it by grit and determination like we did before, or we get to it through the use of technology and AI, one way or another, uh, it's on for us. And we're gonna, we, we have to show the world that we're there to tackle it. And we need a lot of people, we need a lot of welders. We need 400,000 of them right now. So get involved. And if you don't know how, let me know. Um, get a hold of Kevin. It sounds like you've got some great foundation contacts. Let's get involved in skilled trades, give it an option, and you know what? Let's treat it with the same respect that we do, the white-collar trades that require degrees. Um, it's our time. And and I want wages adjusted accordingly. I want us uh fairly um compensated for you know, breathing that smoke all day, every day. You know, the stuff that we do, the stuff that we go through, and the stuff and the the work that we put into separating ourselves from everybody else. Yeah, we need fair compensation for that. So skilled trades advocate, man. Uh, you know, I've got uh you can find me at uh wolf underscore c T E. That's Wolf with an E W O L F E underscore C T E. That's on Instagram and TikTok. I think it's just Josh Wolf on Facebook. Um, and of course, the speaking of skilled trades podcast on all those platforms. I'm not very good at keeping up with those on those platforms, um, but uh you can definitely find me there. Other than that, man, I have thoroughly enjoyed this time with you, Kevin, and I really appreciate you setting this up. And um, man, anytime you're looking for a guest to get some content out there, we could pick a topic and talk. Um, totally down for it. Oh, wow. Really enjoyed myself today. I think we got to do this again soon, man. For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:24

Let's do it. Awesome, buddy. I appreciate your time, man. Yeah, enjoy the rest of your day, Kevin. Talk to you soon. You too, buddy. Later, Rob. See ya.