Blue Collar Business Podcast
Welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast with Sy Kirby. Dive deep into the world of hands-on entrepreneurship and the gritty side of making things happen. Join us for actionable tips on scaling your blue-collar business, managing teams, and staying ahead in an ever-evolving market. We'll also discuss the latest industry trends and innovations that could impact your bottom line. If you're passionate about the blue-collar world and eager to learn from those who've thrived in it, this podcast is a must-listen. Stay tuned for engaging conversations and real-world advice that can take your blue-collar business to new heights.
Blue Collar Business Podcast
Ep. 54 - Why Your Next Career Insurance Policy Should Be Manual Skills
The skills gap in America didn't happen by accident. It was engineered through decades of educational policies that systematically dismantled vocational training in favor of college preparation. Zachary Hanson, author of The Trade Gap and host of The Okayest Trapper Podcast, joins us to share his remarkable journey from corporate executive to skilled tradesman.
After climbing the corporate ladder in the AI industry, Zach experienced firsthand how precarious white-collar careers can be when he lost his executive position and faced extended unemployment. What saved him financially wasn't his impressive resume but the practical skills he'd developed on the side—trapping, welding, and electrical work. Now he's on a mission to close the trade gap by encouraging both young people and established professionals to develop manual skills as career insurance.
The conversation takes us through the historical decline of shop classes in American schools, the current acceleration of AI replacing knowledge work, and the growing demand for skilled trades in our economy. Zach provides a unique perspective as someone who's thrived in both worlds and offers practical advice for upskilling without abandoning your current career path.
What's particularly compelling is Zach's honesty about the challenges of learning trades later in life. From the emasculating experience of asking someone to change his oil at 29 to the discipline required for night welding school while maintaining a day job, he doesn't sugarcoat the journey. Yet the confidence and security that comes from knowing you have marketable skills beyond your keyboard make the effort worthwhile.
Whether you're a young person weighing educational options, a professional concerned about technological disruption, or a tradesperson looking to better understand the larger economic forces at work, this episode offers valuable insights into building a resilient career in uncertain times.
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Hey guys, welcome to the Blue Collar Business Podcast, where we discuss the realest, rawest, most relevant stories and strategies behind building every corner of a blue collar business. I'm your host, cy Kirby, and I want to help you in what it took me trial and error and a whole lot of money to learn the information that no one in this industry is willing to share, whether you're under that shade tree or have your hard hat on, let's expand your toolbox, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Business Podcast, brought to you and sponsored by our brand new sponsor, thumbtack. Guys, tired of spending all your time searching through the week Week leads instead of getting actual work done, thumbtack brings you work you're ready to win. You get visibility, automation to run your business without headaches, plus the flexibility to scale across crews and different markets. You'll always know where your money's going and what it can deliver. The success of pros on Thumbtack says it. All Want to grow smarter. Visit thumbtackcom backslash pro today to book your one-on-one strategy session. Use blue collar 10 to tell them that you're coming.
Speaker 1:Guys, today I have got such a cool individual to bring to the show who has been in corporate America and seen the very tippy top of that world. Let's put it that way it can be a good world, it can be a bad world, and he's seen both sides of it, so I'm interesting to dive off in there. But he's also wrote some unbelievable books, and number one, that's very interesting to the show here, guys, and if you're watching on screen on YouTube or Spotify, I really appreciate you guys. But the trade gap break the rules. He sent me a signed copy.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be steadily working my way through that, um, but he's also he's an avid hunter, guys, and he's got another book called a turning feral, and I'm really going to have to pick that one up too. But this gentleman knows everything that is there to know about the American dream and diving off and literally the white collar world kind of wrecked him, jumped off in the trades, figured it out, picked up work and I'm going to let him kind of take it from there. But introducing the one and only, thank you so much for joining me. Zach Hansen, the man, the myth, the legend I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Cy, what a great introduction. You know I love getting to go on podcasts and intros are always quite varied, but that's definitely the most glowing. I'll be accurate, I don't know, we'll let viewers decide afterwards, but I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Well, I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything, but a little bit about what we're going to be talking about today. Guys, before we get too far off, this gentleman has spent some time in the AI world, so if, if that interests you, we're probably going to be jumping off into a little bit of hunting, hunting stories through this story I could only imagine. But, uh, other than that, brother, kind of take us from number one. I I guess you can tell us when the books came about in the intro story here, brother, but take us through the whole gambit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll try to do my most concise version so we can kind of go off into whatever tangent we want. But you got all day, brother. Well, good, good, you know I was born late 80s. Like a lot of people, full on millennial, grew up in what I call perfectly middle class southern Georgia. You know, neighborhood Parents both worked, you know, in their 30s, 40s now, which is scary. I had college pushed down my rope. I can remember specifically early 90s. I felt like everything was just great, right, I remember getting like birthday money from grandmom. That was like more than I get now as an adult, right, uh, but like I remember getting these things. Man, this is just easy.
Speaker 2:And I kept getting coached, even from as early as I can remember elementary, middle school. Well, if you just go to college, doesn't matter what you actually study, you are going to be better off for it and you're going to come out with a job. That's what was coached all through high school. Same thing. You know we had technical schools where I was at in south carolina, where I graduated high school. But as we kind of talked in the pre-show, similarly, whether it was true or not, we were coached that the dumb kids went to the technical schools, like if you did not have some sort of academic penchant to you, you had to go to the technical school. So you know one of those things where I had a god it wasn't an economics teacher, um, maybe it was I had a high school teacher who on her desk had a hard hat and a fake college application and in a bold letters under it she had just the words you choose again like painting, that dichotomy of like one bad one, good, you know where you're going now, mind you, I was not a great student, I wasn't okay. I was a wrestler, I was just. I just wanted to do athletics, all that stuff. But but it was college, robust, and that's what we came up on.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to jump from there, which is I went to college, I did my three and a half four years, got out, worked for the government for a little while, realized that's not what I wanted to do. So I went back to school. And then I went back to school again. Why? Because when I had graduated, it was right during the recession. So all that gold, that pot of gold at the end of that college rainbow I was promised just didn't exist. Period, poof, gone, nothing.
Speaker 2:I was scrambling, fighting, gnawing whatever to try to get a job and I couldn't Not an entry level job level job. So like other people, I just kept adding on the debt, got master's degrees, did the whole nine, and then eventually, seven, eight years after graduating high school now with a great pile of debt I was able to finally land a job at IBM, which was great, but for like 40K a year. I knew guys in high school who had graduated, went straight into the trades and were making like 70K year one and then they did that for seven years. So I felt behind. But you know, that's the shortest version of like this whole story and how it kind of started, and I think it's one that a lot of people resonate with lot of people resonate with.
Speaker 1:Literally man we've had I I can think of three or four right off the tippy the top of my head here that have been in white collar america. One that sticks out me to me right off the bat, jumped all the way down to landscaping and, uh, previous episode, he was sitting here talking about how he ended up mowing for the guy that fired him in corporate America his neighbor. That doesn't necessarily resonate with me as much because I literally just straight up said no to college because, dude, I felt the same exact way From eighth grade on. It was, and so I'm a little different. I didn't get to the country, obviously, until seventh grade.
Speaker 1:Half of the semester of sixth grade I was just trying to figure out what this world was down here. But seventh grade is kind of when I really started. But every single day I didn't even know what college was. We called it university and then I figured out there was a difference anyways, but it was just pound this college bound mentality into your head and if you didn't get it, you it wasn't. They were calling you dumb or stupid, they were just insinuating that you were, and at that time. So I graduated high school in 09. So I was coming out at the exact same time into the world where, oh, there should be a plethora amount of jobs and there was development sitting still, and so I was kind of fighting the same fight and I ended up landing at a municipality after doing some various end jobs. But, dude, that little millennial gap was pretty rough that people don't even remember was pretty rough that people don't even remember. But how was did I couldn't even. What was your degree in number one?
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I don't know if you highlighted that I mean it was, you know, a hyper valuable degree in political science understood, understood.
Speaker 1:and I'm like, uh, I was, I was everybody coming out with a business degree or yeah, there's, there's still work, still utilization in the marketplace for that. But it's just, yes, it's stated and needed on there. But if there's also experience that can outweigh that education, eventually you get up in exec world that you've got to have an education. I totally get it. I'm wanted to go hang out on the weekends and so to not even offer that group of kids shop class number one, like by the time I got into high school I was so excited.
Speaker 1:I've heard, you know, from every grandpa, uncle around here that I got introduced. Oh, shop class, you know, shop class, you've heard about it. And by the time I got there I'm like where's this shop class, what's it called? And it wasn't there. I mean FFA, I was in. They wouldn't let us put a greenhouse. That's all changed since now, but it was. It was pretty rough to see. I was just trying to get some type of involvement other than college because I wasn't going to kind of do what they told me involvement other than college because I wasn't going to kind of do what they told me.
Speaker 2:Well, exactly I mean. So you came at it from the angle that you had your mind made up and you wished you'd had exposure to, say, woodworking class or metal shop. Similarly, I had no shops in my class either and we were kind of like a rural urban school in South Carolina. But there was not. They don't exist anymore. So I'm not saying that had that been there, that might have changed my mind, like I feel like I was too far down the path of having it shoved down my throat, but maybe I still had no exposure to it. And you know, to tie it back to part of the book, um, the trade gap. So it's kind of broken up into a couple of sections, but the very beginning of it is all about the vocational education in the US, starting from 1917 up until when you and I were graduating high school, and the arc is, you know, we start off very much investing in, initially, agricultural education, right, and then, as the Industrial Revolution took off, we started to invest more in people learning trades, welding, whatever, and we built America.
Speaker 2:It peaked in 1960, where, if you talk to anybody who was a Gen X or a boomer. All of them had woodworking. All of them had shop class. You talk to my dad, you talk to my granddad, who was in his 90s. They were working in high school. They were actually learning how to do stuff and build stuff, and that was part of the curriculum Because there was an expectation that, whether they went white collar or not, they needed to keep up with their homes, they needed to, like, provide for their family.
Speaker 2:Just basic self reliance was what they were teaching. And then in 1983, this is an interesting thing there was a paper called the Nation at Risk, written by the Education Commission of something or other in the US, which was pretty much saying China is going to beat us because they're investing in all the STEM activities of math, science, computers, whatnot. And so by the time that paper hit, you know the federally they started, started to redirect you know uh funds for vocation vocational education towards stem. So by the time I was entering my elementary school in the early 90s, there was no shop, but we did have computer class, which was great. Like we learned computer literacy, you know, we got to play uh oregon trail and learn what dysentery was.
Speaker 2:Hey come on Shout out yeah, but we all have that experience and so many high schools just eventually. By the time the no Child Left Behind Act came in in the early 2000s, teachers were incentivized by SAT and college acceptance rates. So shop class, woodworking class gone class gone overall, like you talked to some people.
Speaker 1:And there were pockets in rural areas that kept them, of course, but overall they disappeared from the us education system and that's when you and I came about it just didn't exist period which was it's kind of man, what I know now and I preach it all the time on this show at least go spend a summer with a plumber or an electrician and get out there on the job and talk to those guys and you'll look at them and you'll be like how did these guys, you know, get a job done? And then you work around them all day and you're like, wow, dude, we just wired an entire whole house and put the panel together. And it's kind of crazy, like what did I do all day, you know. But I encourage, just straight out of high school or even during high school, spend the summer. If you know the company's insurance allows. That can always be a thing.
Speaker 1:But man, apprenticeships and those internships I guess they would call them, before you start your apprenticeship, find out a trade that you're at least curious about. And the other thing I say is, like man, you may not love a certain trade but you may be really good at that trade and you can elevate yourself into a position of salary or managerial. I mean, you can manage people very quickly if you become very skilled at that trade. But always I reference back to the plumbing and electrical worlds because they have that apprentice journeyman's in that two-year slot and then you can have a master's license. If you really buckle down and focus in four years like that's major money anywhere at any, any place in the country, like that, to have that, like what you're fixing to get into.
Speaker 1:I would love to talk about number one how you got into AI. But literally when you were looking for a job, after having all this experience and the degree and all the accolades, you ended up coming back to the trades and then picking that up and boom, you can go anywhere in the country and make money with that. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:The way that I think about it, it's a bit of a hedge right. It's a hedge against what's coming. And you know the book has two arguments, just to kind of set this up a little bit. One I would love for it to be impactful for young high school students to kind of think about college. It's kind of like a cautionary tale because it's a lot of history, but it's also kind of rooted around my own experience, which again, I don't want to misrepresent.
Speaker 2:I became very successful in the white collar world and made a lot of money and it was great. But it was tooth and nail fighting to get that role on the heels of a lot of debt that I had to pay off in order to get there. So that's one. But I want it to be a position for kids to think about. There are other opportunities out there and it's not the dumb kids that go into the trips. And the second piece is existing white collar workers. Like you know, you hear a lot go learn a trade, get in the trades. But like the reality is like, with the money that I make right now in my white collar job, I will not step away. It makes no logical sense for me to step away and be an electrician apprentice. It doesn't For my family. I just can't afford to do that. However, you can start to build skills, and that's the argument. We should all be building some level of base skills.
Speaker 2:Give you an example when I did lose my job and we can talk about that in a little bit too I did lose my white collar job. At one point I had an extended period of unemployment. I was very fortunate that in that time that I was unemployed I had built some skills on the side. I had become a trapper so I was able to do government trapping. I was trapping wolves. I was doing live Martin studies. I was doing a bunch of wild stuff to pay our mortgages and taxidermy. My view of trades is actually quite wider than plumber, electrician, welder it of course includes those, but that could be drone pilot, knitting sweaters and selling them, it could be trapping, it could be whatever you want it to be. That is a skill that has some market tied to it. It might not be the most lucrative market. Trust me, selling fur is not the most lucrative market in the world but it can pay bills and I luckily had those things when that time came.
Speaker 2:So my argument for the people who are employed in this knowledge working sphere, that is I'm not even going to say inevitably it is being impacted by AI. It is impacting the need for people to be in certain roles, punching keys on a keyboard. You've got AI that can do that and do it better than a lot of businesses. So it is to learn skills on the side, which is a hard thing, like go to night welding school and pick up a cert, and, worst case, you build a smoker for yourself. Best case, you have something to fall back on.
Speaker 2:Same with, like I'm getting my journeyman's license now In Idaho. That's a four-year process, four years of school, four years of full-time apprenticeship. So for me that timetable is extended. I'm doing my night school on top of my day job and I'm getting hours here and there, which means it'll probably take me eight years to do it. But that's okay, I can take that long road and it's again. It's a hedge and worst case, now I can fix stuff in my house, you know, and I don't have to call somebody every time.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you do, but you know you're learning things. So those are the two arguments. Setting up in the book is for the young kids and for knowledge workers to just start learning skills Like you don't have to be a full-time tradesman, hopefully graduating seniors, maybe in college yourself. Right now, the time to learn and be an apprentice is when you're trying to figure out life and you don't have a mortgage, you don't have the family. It's really hard to make that career change and respect to anybody that has at any point in your life. It can be done.
Speaker 1:But when you're first coming out of high school, man, you, by the time you're 22, 25 years old, you can be making some serious jack from any type of skill that you acquire by going and working at a company that already does said skill. They will teach you you know what I mean Without acquiring any debt, and you're already starting to stack. So but to commend you, man, like, as soon as I heard AI and how long you've been involved in it, I'm like man who, who better to know about what is coming? You know I privy on this show all the time, like the existing white collar worker. Like, start learning skills now.
Speaker 1:And if you haven't been, you're kind of behind because I'd love you to touch on AI and kind of what you have seen already. Because, man, like I said, I gave you my knowledge base. I'm trying to challenge myself every single day to hop on, challenge, chat, gpt or grok in not just a build this Excel, like really challenged my base and myself to embrace it a little bit. Because, as I said before before, yeah, there's guys out there that are like nah, dude, that's you know whatever excuse they want to give you about not wanting to embrace it, but like the guys that don't, they're already going to be behind by the time we get there. So I'm trying to challenge myself. We're not really utilizing it within the company yet anywhere, but I'd say that on my, on our CRM. But, man, talk a little bit about your knowledge base on AI and kind of what you think for that white collar existing worker.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting. So, you know, from a mathematical perspective, ai has been around really at the forefront since the 1930s. Like, the understanding of the math behind it is not new, is not novel. To run an algorithm to produce a result with AI has been only really recently cultivated in a way that is economical sort of and fast enough. So the math has been there for a long time. There's actually a great book called Weapons of Math Destruction which talks a lot about AI and kind of the future of it, and it's one that I always recommend to people who are interested in ai and kind of where it's going and where well, really, where it's been and started and where it is now. Um, also great title and the uh, you know, the net is like.
Speaker 2:I got into it in mid 2000s. I kind of fell into it, right, I had my general education degree, I ended up finally bullying my way into a non AI related role at IBM, kind of found out about AI and talk to some people there working on it and similarly, I'm just like a dog with a bone and a lot of instances, and I worked my way into a role there and that's when the you know the veil came back and you know, frankly, a lot of it's duct tape and paperclips, like anything else. You know there's a lot of smart people doing a lot of really cool things but, like the business application side of it which is what I was working on for a long time was, you know the ROI wasn't there. You know it was either really expensive to run, you know finding the right applications for it were difficult, and then you fast forward to like two, three years ago with OpenAI starting to build out ChatGPT and some of these large language models. You know it's impressive how fast things have moved in the last three years. And I am definitely not the Paul Revere of the singularity saying you know, hey, william, get your cabin on NIDA, even though I have that. You know, get ready because it's coming. But it's just been this slow march for a long time. That is now on a hyper speed scale and what I'm now seeing is all those business applications we thought would be great for AI are now economically viable and are happening, which means a lot of the people that were doing a lot of database administration.
Speaker 2:That is something that can be automated. A lot of you hear about legal and law. A lot of that is, research of very big volumes of documentation, great use case for AI. That is stuff that can be kind of pushed off to a computer system. Similarly, even in my day job working in AI as a product manager, a lot of what we're doing is building requirements documents for software applications. A lot of what we're doing is building requirements documents for software applications. That's pretty easy to hop off to like chat, gpt, grok, claude or any of these LLMs to get pretty close to the pin Right.
Speaker 2:And what I'm seeing now is there are so many organizations who have roles and I won't name like specific roles, but you can think about what they might be to have hundreds of people to do this stuff. And now, if you look at it objectively, you know you can maybe do it with quarter of the amount of people that you're doing with the. You know, when you let your people use these tools, they become way more efficient. They become way more efficient, they become way more productive.
Speaker 2:Frankly, and with that, if you look at it from like an objective board member perspective or a CEO's perspective, it's like, okay, do we keep people on the payroll for charity or do we give a smaller subset of really high performers those tools and let them do the work of the other 80%, and you know where the answer is going to eventually fall. And that's where my stance is Like it's coming and it's happening and we're seeing it. Meta, all the big thing companies Amazon, google, like you see layoffs all the time and a lot of it's now like eating into, like software engineers. You know, like you have these AI code assistants now where you can hire junior devs and they can do as good a job as a senior developer in a lot of instances not always, but it's just reshaping in front of our eyes the way that we think of organizational buildup in a company, whether that's a software company, hardware company or even construction. It's just changing the way that we do things administratively dude, spot on, and that's so crazy to hear that.
Speaker 1:Um that we've had the math to do it, but it's the the language models like getting off into that. That's the absolute 30 000 foot airplane over my head.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean I'll put it this way too to tie it back into trade. So, like where we're at in idaho, we have a lot of desert below us. We are building so many data centers that require welders, high level electricians, like you know. We have, like we have micron here in boise building chips, and they can't hire enough trace people to keep up with the demand, because the energy consumption of these machines to run these models is insane. And I have to remember the stat I need to, like tattoo it on my forearm so I don't forget, because I always do. But for every like chat, gpt, prompt that you run, you know you're on your phone. You talked about, like starting to use it daily. Every time you press that little arrow button and say, hey, you know, build me a great breakfast this morning, chad, gpt, I have eggs, some cereal or whatever, and you know it's gonna whip you up something fantastic like I don't know how many kilowatts of energy that consumes, but it's an absurd amount really, yeah, I mean, we've seen the giant data centers.
Speaker 1:Obviously everybody has and my brain doesn't. I don't understand why it takes so much power or so much data. Obviously that's that's probably beyond my compensation of my mind, but at the same, like I'm seeing it just on you know YouTube shorts and reels you're seeing these massive data centers, that they're moving massive amounts of material to stand up these ginormous structures, and very rapidly. And that's the other thing that I was going to get into is that you know, yeah, we've had this math for this very long, you know forever. But now we've really opened it up with open AI.
Speaker 1:But the last three years, I'm watching it just on the outside and I don't know anything, and it looks like it's going way faster than everybody thought it was going to, faster than everybody thought it was going to. And from some of the large retailers we have around here, um, you know they're, they have a lot of administrative base in the area and I'm hearing that they're training a lot of ai models and I'm like, oh gosh, this is so scary. These people, you know, have worked here a coming. You know what I mean. But I don't think anybody, even probably the guys that have been in the field for a decade, probably thought it was going to go this fast.
Speaker 2:No, no, you're right, it was. It is happening way faster than people think. Now I do have a theory personally, where I do think there might be a little bit of a slowdown, but it's from an economic perspective. So right now these companies like OpenAI, claude, google, a lot of them are heavily subsidized by private equity companies, meaning that right now it's cheap. Like you pay what? $20 a month for your chat GPT license, yes, sir, similar to these big companies who are now letting their actual workers leverage chat GPT, they're paying maybe $50 a license per person per month. That's not a lot of money for the productivity gains that they're getting.
Speaker 2:So, if you remember, back when Uber started, uber was highly subsidized by private equity, meaning the private equity companies were buying into Uber, investing millions and millions of dollars maybe a billion, I don't know how many, but a lot of money so that they could operate at almost zero cost to the user. Why it's like? It's like selling drugs. So I, when uber came out, like I don't know if you remember, but you could get a ride across town to like the airport or wherever for three bucks and you're like okay, this is worth it, I'll download this thing. There's no upfront cost three bucks for a ride. And then what's happened over the years? Well, eventually those private equity companies want their money out of it. So then what happens to the pricing model? It goes up All of a sudden. You're paying five bucks a ride and you're like, that's not that bad, I'll sell my car, even because now I'm in a city, I don't need my car, I've got Uber. But now, if you're like me, like when I am in Boise and I have to go to the airport and we live, mind you, seven miles away, 15 minute drive, no less than 35 bucks to get there, right, and then you don't factor in the surge pricing, or you think of a giant metropolitan area. It's absurdly expensive.
Speaker 2:So my theory the same is going to happen with chat, gpt. So these licenses that are now only costing a company 50 bucks a month, per person, per seat, whatever that is, what do you think they're going to do? They're going to start looking at that and saying, okay, well, if we just replace somebody who's making 150 grand salary for 50 bucks a month grand salary for 50 bucks a month I think we should be charging a hundred thousand dollars for that license. And then, you know, you net that 30 or whatever that productivity is. So my guess is that price to actually leverage these tools, just like uber, is going to incrementally grow.
Speaker 2:But you know one size gotten pretty addicted to his chad's potato, I put his breakfast up. You know how far are you going to start climbing that ladder, paying that extra monthly thing? You'll probably do it up to a point. But you know the vcs and the equity people are going to our private equity people are going to want their money out eventually and the cost is going to go up because they're subsidizing it right now man, they just uh, for you guys out there, you know that may be sitting at that desk and listening to this podcast and going hmm, you know, I've thought about jumping off into the trades.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe talk a little bit about that nightly welding school. Just a little bit if you don't mind. And did you do that out in idaho when you got out there? Yeah, and and and kind of give us a little background. I mean, you've been in the boardrooms it sounds like many a time, but now you're in a much different environment and the book is a lot of basis points is about being self-reliant and being self, you know, self-sufficient, and kind of take us off. I'm excited to hear a little bit about trapping wolves, honestly, so, um, yeah, I'll dive in.
Speaker 2:So I my background. Like I mentioned, I went to college, did all the things, bullied my way into a white collar job, finally started succeeding at that white collar job, kind of growing in my different roles within AI space, started to build out with my now ex-wife what I call the white picket fence life. She is an ex-FBI special agent. So we were in Louisiana, of all places, and I was flying in and out of New Orleans to DC, to New York, almost on a weekly basis. So we had built this nice house, we had the cars, we had all the things that we could want. All right, and it was success. But I felt like a dog who had caught up to a parked car he was chasing. I was like shit, what now? This is it. And I remember sitting on a plane and I was watching Jeremiah Johnson and I was like this is one of my 5 am flights to Washington DC or New York, I don't remember. And I was like what am I doing here? What am I doing? And so at that point I'd say I got hunt curious. And so at that point I'd say I got hunt curious, like I was. I didn't grow up in a hunting family. You know, I grew up in the south so I was like adjacent to it, like, but it just never kind of grabbed me. Um, and my ex-wife and I were very into still like jujitsu and you know, wrestling, so we were like very much into sports. So we kind of went from this angle of nutrition. So I was like, well, how can we optimize our nutrition? Her parents were from middle tennessee, they all hunted and I was like, well, let's get some venison. And of course we went back to her family one time for like a christmas break and I started kind of talking about it. My father-in-law all the time. He's a great guy, he's like you know, I've got like a freezer full of that out there. Like you know, we take a couple deer every year. I like this is not some mystery, like you can go shoot a deer. So of course we took a bunch of meat back with us and it was really good.
Speaker 2:And I picked up a hand me down bow from a friend and kind of like started this track down to like wanting to bow hunt and built a range in my like backyard and hooked an arrow in my neighbor's roof, did all the terrible things that you would expect somebody new to hunting to do that didn't have a lot of like mentorship and guidance and, you know, started down that path, then went through an unexpected divorce and I was at this crossroads. I was like you know what, never really been out to the rockies. I've been all over the world. I'm getting my car grabbed, my bow, grabbed the few things that I had in my name, and drove to idaho and ended up buying a cabin down an 80 mile dirt road. You know, I was like I was determined to go full. Jeremiah johnson, I'm like I'm gonna learn to do all this stuff. So I started hunting elk antelope we have every critter you can trap out your back door and I learned everything the hard way, which is like the story in turning feral, um, but starting to pick up skills. But it was a utter. You know, I don't know being accustomed to show, but, uh, sure, bud, it was a bitch slap because I had no skills.
Speaker 2:I went out to live in the woods in this cabin and I really didn't even know how to change the oil in my car, like it was just absurd that I'd been so guarded. I grew up in that world where I went to hunt at the grocery store. My expectation is, if I went there there's going to be food there and I can get it. I can just trade these little green things for food and life's easy. But out there I'm 100 miles away from a Home Depot or grocery store. I had to start preparing Stuff in my cabin is breaking all the time and I had to start learning and thankfully YouTube was amazing. It's such a benefit. Chat, gpt too now. But you just learn the hard way. I'd break a trailer, I had to fix it and that kind of started me on the slow trickle towards building some skills. Like still had my white collar day job, I was using zoom, all that, but I was building some skills. I was learning the hard way.
Speaker 2:Now, fast forward, and you know I was the head of an ai company out of boston, still living in idaho, and I got laid off and it was the first I thought I was in this little gilded like protected circle. But as we talked about it's, this is not true. You know these things happen, layoffs happen, these restructures happen. You know taking jobs happens. And ultimately I was sitting there like, okay, I've got my little white picket fence manifest destiny. Everyone said keep six months of savings that'll get you through anything. Six months went by. Couldn't find another job. Seven months, eight months went by. So I'm not one to sit on my ass and I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to cwi college of western idaho, go two nights a week welding school, just learn how to do stick welding right, just get like a structural welding cert.
Speaker 2:Did it, loved it, and also started my electrical journeyman's license at the same time while I was trapping uh, pretty much full time time to pay our bills and just started diving in and we kind of talked a little bit in the show earlier.
Speaker 2:But there were two guys that I knew from two separate jobs that were all kind of in like the database administration, very kind of specific tech job, that ended up committing suicide. They weren't from my company or caught up in the same layoff, but they were in a series of layoffs in 23 that happened and two of them put a gun in their mouth with family kids because they couldn't find a job and they didn't have anything to fall back on. They didn't have any other skills. For whatever reason. They felt up against the wall that they couldn't reskill. They couldn't go back and learn to do something else despite being very physically capable men, and I think a lot of people get caught in that trap.
Speaker 2:But that's the story. I went through this layoff and I was like I need to double down on something that is not going to be replaced by AI, that even if I go back into a day job which I have since then it's a skill that doesn't deteriorate. It takes continued effort and practice, but it won't go away. And now, if I'm up against another layoff or an inevitable demise of a lot of the space that I'm working in, I have the confidence that I have some level of skill that will fetch some dollar amount on the free market that will be valuable and ultimately put food in my kids' mouths.
Speaker 1:I mean worst case scenario. You got a journeyman's license, you could definitely hop ontackcom backslash pro and probably register on Thumbtack and get you a few ceiling fans to replace and a few things to buy the time. But that's exactly what we're talking about here, guys.
Speaker 1:Not to shamelessly plug that, but honestly, it's exactly what we're talking about. I truly hope you know this show is a resource for individuals in the blue-collar working space and the entrepreneurial space, but it is also exactly for our guest today. Zach, I really appreciate you sharing the realism there because it is real. You sharing the realism there because it is real. You spent 15 years up this career chain ladder at this one corporate place and you believe that's where you're going to be the rest of your life and they're going to take care of you. And then, all of a sudden, bam, here comes a new full level of C-suites full restructure, rebrand and you're not a part of it. And what do you do? You were living your life dedicated to this company. And don't get me wrong, be loyal, be dedicated, but at the same time, you've got to be able to have a set of skills with your hands or your back or whatever it takes, whether it's set in tile. Maybe you enjoy that. My wife loves to set tile and I hate to set tile and I am terrible in my hands, like I can't hit a hammer and a nail together, but I can pick Copenhagen out of your teeth with a dadgum excavator. You know what I mean. So, like, just just it's encouragement is what I'm trying to get at.
Speaker 1:If you're sitting there at your desk, listen to this pod and you're like, man, dude, why can't I do that? You absolutely can. But don't quit your day job immediately. Pick up a nightly school. There's so many Votek schools out there now Nightly. I mean, I know of one here. I'm actually involved with some high school programs and but there's adult education after hours specifically made for you guys. I need to get. I need to probably get a few now that I'm sitting here, having this I need to bring you've made me a little bit passionate about this subject specifically just for those two individuals, man, but literally I need to, especially to you guys in the corporate world wondering you know, what is this trade gap that we're speaking of?
Speaker 1:Well, to kind of throw this another course here, man, there is a large gap coming between those Gen X and the boomers that we were talking about and statistically, thank God, I have an oldest son, but honestly, is he really going to want to be a dirt and utility pipe guy the rest of his life by the time he's able to run it, et cetera? Maybe his sisters will, who knows? But statistically, right now we're seeing in the Gen X and the boomers, there's nobody there that they thought was going to take over. They've gone, you know, the tech route or they've got like the actual technology route, not the vo-tech tech like we were just referencing, and they've made a name for themselves and they don't want to come back and take care of Larry's handyman business. But Larry built this, you know, in his cruise for his son to take over, and so son feels like, oh, I need to come back and help Larry, and you know it's just a detrimental situation. Eventually it's going to pop.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying, man, it's cool, we have got to bring more awareness. Man, it's cool, we have got to bring more awareness. And so thank you so much for taking the time to put together a hopefully. Where can we get the books? Number one obviously Amazon. I know that. But is there? Are you in airports? Cause this needs to be in every stinking airport in the country?
Speaker 2:No, we're going to work that way. That's the, that's the hope, right? So? But you can get it at Barnes Noble online. You can really get it at any retailer online. You can look it up on walmartcom. But you walk into your Walmart you're not going to see it. So we got to sell a lot more copies before. I kind of talk about an antiquated industry, just the publishing industry in general. You don't have a built-in audience. It's a difficult thing, but eventually, hopefully, we'll get there where you can walk in your Barnes Noble or wherever and find the book or walk through the airport and see it at one of the Hudson bookstores. But until then, amazon, barnes Noble, walmartcom wherever you can kind of buy a book, you should be able to find it.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, I wanted to give. And hey, if you guys are in the trapping space, you kept saying I learned the hard way. Man, I talk about it on this show all the time. That's literally why I do this show is to talk about the hardships and the experiences we went through to get to where we're at, and I and I bring folks like Zach on this show to share his experience, to hopefully be encouragement as a resource that I couldn't go find a couple of years ago. And obviously there, every little bit of awareness we can bring on about.
Speaker 1:Hey, what happens when the Gen X and boomers can't find anybody to give their business to? They're just going to throw up the towel. We're going to have less plumbers. We're going to have less trappers. We're going to have less all of these skills that have been you know, I guess you know just completely cut away from natural society out past your high school. And I was like you man, I didn't. I didn't come from a family of hunters. I did. They went and hunted moose way up in Canada. That's one thing, but it wasn't like a South Georgia where it was deer season. I mean, you got the day off of school, I would assume for opening deer season. And South Arkansas is the same way. Not so much here, but it's a big dang deal. So you grow up around it, you want to be a part of it, you want to share those stories. So you find your way in and you hard nose your way in and you did the same thing with trapping.
Speaker 1:But that's the blue collar way. That's exactly what we're talking about, guys. It's not like some thing you've got to acquire. You literally just need to show up with a smile. You can either go jump in some actual trade schools nightly as you keep that steady income protecting the family.
Speaker 1:I'm not telling anybody to just quit. You can, you absolutely can. But you probably got responsibilities to tend to. So just heed that warning. But you can absolutely start acquiring skills now. To make a maneuver, you can maybe spend some time in an after an hour school and maybe not make the jump to an electrician outfit as an apprentice. Maybe you can acquire your journeyman's license. You're eventually going to need some on-the-job training.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's a totally different subject, but you know exactly where I was going. But, man, I commend you so much. The immediate switch in your life and to just pick it up and start bringing awareness with these books is oh and I haven't shout this out, I think I did in the intro but host of the OK-est Trapper podcast. I don't know if I highlighted that off the bat, brother, apologies there, but man, I kind of finish out every show with one question and the guy that has wrote a self resilient book and your mindset I was going to go off a little earlier about you know, the mindset going to Idaho and maybe you know you speak on that a little bit to the resiliency because you, you, you talk about it so well in this book.
Speaker 1:Yes, I haven't read all of it, but I have read bits and pieces and the heavy points of the book and just talk about the self-resiliency you've had through your walk because I'd like, I have a feeling this is going to help a lot of folks in your shoes is going to help a lot of folks in your shoes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'll touch on what you just spoke about prior to kind of diving into this question, because I think it is pertinent. Right, you mentioned that you don't have to quit your job, especially if you're a knowledge worker. You know you want to protect your family, but you can build skills. You can go to night school, but that is not easy. That requires a discipline, dedication and a desire to do that, and I am not. As I've gotten older, I've realized that not everybody has that. So if you are not that person with a high ambition, if you are not that person with desire, you're not going to do it. You're not going to do it. But if you see the writing on the wall, whatever industry you're in and you want to upskill and that could be you forcing yourself to use Chad GPT every day it's not swinging a hammer, but it's still discipline to learn something new. Same with people who want to learn skills because they're not going to have a plumber to call. You know you have to do it. It is not going to be easy. It is going to be extra time away from you, your family, and it's going to suck and it's going to suck, but there's an upside, there's a hedge, there's an ability to gain intellectual stimulation from learning something new. I learned more striking an arc and laying a bead than I did studying Kant in a philosophy class in college, or at least as much Truly, and you can pick those things up.
Speaker 2:So, to answer your question about like self-reliance, I was lucky in that I was in sports. I got my self-reliance, or I got my mindset, through sports, specifically wrestling high school, and I've done competitive jujitsu for a long time, always worked out. We work out every day. I was at jujitsu earlier today and you eat humble pie every day. You just get beat up. No matter how great you are, how long you've done it, there's going to be someone better than you that just rubs your face in a mat and just makes your day crap until you get up and you're done. You're like okay, that wasn't that bad, but building that kind of mindset of just like, get it done. You know I write books. I'm making tens of dollars off these books. You know, little plug there. You don't make a lot of money on these things, but you still have to get up, you have to write them, you have to go through the whole experience to publish a book and it's hard. But all all these things start to accumulate. If you learn one little skill and you dedicate yourself to it, you're going to want to learn another little skill and you start to pile up these little wins and you build this resilience to start trying things and not being afraid of failure.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you the number of things that I failed miserably at and it's every single thing that I'm now decent at I have failed at, and I think that fear of failure holds so many people back, especially when you might be a soft palmed white collar worker and just like jujitsu or anything else like, there's a stigma about those people that are doing it. If you're a 40 year old man walking into a jujitsu gym for the first time in your life and you've never been in a fight, I commend you because you walk in there. You see grizzled people with our cauliflower ear you're ready to grab you. Like it's scary and same.
Speaker 2:When I first met my welding teacher I felt so inadequate. I'm like I literally have no idea how any of this works. It's emasculating. The first time I had to ask someone to help me change my oil as a 29-year-old, emasculating. But you have to do it, you have to not have that fear in order to build that self-reliance muscle. And that's what it boils down to and thankfully I had it in sports and it kind of wrote it out, but it took practice and failure and being okay with failing at every single thing you do.
Speaker 1:Literally. And on that note, dude, you know my new skill, you know you. You may be looking at me and going, well, cy, what, what are you doing guys? I'm a dirt and pipe guy. I didn't plan on being a podcast host, I didn't plan on having this YouTube and I make tens of dollars. I'm with you, buddy, like we don't do this, you know one day, yeah, of course we're getting there, but we're just investing in ourselves, right, and investing in our teams and what we believe is a resource along the way, and that's what I think is so cool.
Speaker 1:But it was terrifying uploading YouTube videos that I put together. But I knew I had to start somewhere and the largest project we ever landed I had 79 subscribers and it was because of our YouTube channel. That was someone so close to our family that passed our shop every day, had control of that contract, like. All I had to do was put myself out there. And so of course I, you know, had a little bit of quick success with with the podcast and and the YouTube subscribers, and we felt, we felt the love and I'm like, man, let's, let's keep this thing going. But man, as you know, sir, it gets grindy very quickly and those quick hits of success. Um, it's. It's almost like gambling, because you want, you want to keep it going. You want to keep it going, but you're like you're gambling with your energy, your own body's energy. You have this other thing that supports your family. It keeps it going. But you have this, you know, new skill you're trying to acquire.
Speaker 1:For me, guys, it's stepping into this digital space. You know, derf to digital is kind of what I say. You know, I didn't think I would end up being a podcast host. It started in my kitchen, interviewing a couple of folks around town to bring awareness about number one, our industry issues, and that nobody wants to talk about as the boomers and Gen Xers are phasing out. Like, we've got to start bringing this stuff up or we're just going to acquire the same crappy industry standards. So somebody's got to do it. So then, you know, I've had a lot of encouragement along the way Thank, thankful for sponsors like Thumbtack, but at the same time, man, it's an absolute grind.
Speaker 1:No algorithm likes you if you're inconsistent. You've got to be consistent in videos or posts, or videos within those posts, or whatever kind of platform you're on. So it's been super unnatural for me to climb behind this camera, speak to a guest that I probably never met before other than some email exchange and maybe a 10 minute phone call beforehand. Like it's completely unnatural now for me to go dig 3000 foot water line and I could put earbuds in and nobody would ever have to hear from me again. Like I, I'm good guys, you know what I mean. But I knew if I wanted to bring the right set of eyeballs into my space, I've got to go out there and show them what I'm capable of, and the only way I could do that was through this digital space. I was terrified, brother. I still am. I still get the butterflies. I get butterflies, and you know I have.
Speaker 1:Of course, anything with the internet comes with hate, right, but it kind of fuels me a little bit at this point. Like why are you hating? Because we're doing something, we're affecting people and you know the good outweighs the bad every single time. But no, the grind of learning that skill where I was taking all of this guys. But it is an incredible emotional mental battle during that working your 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Whether you're an entrepreneur, you work in 70, 80. 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Whether you're an entrepreneur. You work in 70, 80. And then you know I get this question all the time Well, sorry, how do you have time?
Speaker 1:Well, you don't you just freaking. Make it, you get up early. Yeah, yeah, you know you've got a family at home too, so you've got to make some non-negotiable time there for them. So, zach, with if you don't have that ambition to be better or wanting to take another route, there's nobody that's going to come and save you, like you've got to want it to do it for yourself. And it is going to be brutal, it's going to suck, you're going to be hungry because you skipped lunch or you skipped dinner just to make a class, or or or make it to that second job. I mean a lot of these electrician guys. They'll. They'll pick you up for an afternoon if you get off at three o'clock, if they've got three hours worth of work, run and row or or whoever, plumbers or whatever.
Speaker 1:It is now probably not in the middle of summer and in south georgia or south arkansas or anywhere over here in the southeastern United States, we try to be back in the van and gone home by one or two o'clock before it hits 120. But I just encourage you guys from Zach's story man, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you putting things out there into the world to bring awareness and just consideration of. Oh man, maybe the trades could be the thing. And the thing about what I love about the show is that we get to bring two total opposite ends of the spectrum perspectives to this. Sit here and have a conversation about the same you know tradie thing and we're like man, like we have so much in common but we came from two completely opposite ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 2:So I like to think of it real quick. It's like a Venn diagram, right, you know. It's like you have two circles and there's a overlap, and right now you've got people on one side who were just born to swing a hammer. They're never going to want to like, do the business side, they're never going to want to do the social side like you're doing. The other end of that spectrum you've got some like really, yeah, we'll say a dorky PhD types who will never swing a hammer.
Speaker 2:But then if you look at the overlap, you know you, you know in the trades, but you are ambitious and you recognize that there's value in AI. You recognize there's value in expanding the story to close that gap that we're seeing with the boomers and Gen Xers that are leading the trades and this huge gap that we've talked about. And then you're up leveling. Similarly, there's people like me in there that are knowledge workers, that are also in that overlap, who are saying I can actually learn some skills. And I think when those things start to marry in that kind of center part of that Venn diagram, we're going to see a lot of really interesting businesses come out of that.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's a thought I didn't even think of. But no, that is a great picture, visual picture for you. I mean, you're absolutely right and we need more people willing to step from the right side and the left side into the middle. But we also, as employers and upper level management, we also have to understand that we're not training the same generations right, so we've got to be adaptable. Video training does go a long way. I'm literally a dirt and pipe guy and we've got 10, 15 videos now that, hey, these are the 10, 15 videos on this private playlist that you need to watch before you step foot into a truck and into the job. Because of the experiences we've had, I can go off on a whole different sector there.
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Speaker 1:Thanks guys, literally, man, the time has been valuable. I got one last question and I don't think there's a better guest to ask man. But I ask everybody on the show what's that takeaway for the, now that you've had some major blue collar experience? But for that blue collar worker who is just sick and tired of being stuck in the mud? My guy, mentally, emotionally, physically, as you know, it takes a toll on your body literally getting up and doing these 12, 14, 16 hour days around the clock. Man, what's your answer, brother?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I have a straight answer, but find a great support system. Like everything revolves around the spouse for me, man. Like you talked about non-negotiables. You know my wife is my biggest support system. Like whether you're tired of being stuck in the mud and you want to take a little bit of time to do an online course at night to learn about chat, gpt fantastic. But it's going to take the support of your wife and your family and your support system to do it, and it goes both ways for the knowledge worker to think about getting in the dirt. You're going to need a support system. So have those conversations with your significant other early and often Express that you either have discontent or you have an ambition, that you think there's something more out there, because if you just keep it to yourself and then you start taking action, things are going to fall apart. Bring your spouse along for the journey. That's my only real piece of advice, brother.
Speaker 1:That's right in line with what we just came off of. We did this four-part miniseries with me and my wonderful wife. We sat down and we talked about some hard subjects. My gosh, you put me in the hot seat, dude. I wasn't quite ready for a lot of that stuff. But we need to bring awareness to the support level, because you know, she claps so hard and loud for me I really don't hear anybody else clapping, you know, and that's this it's all about yeah, great man, great woman, but there's a great woman always beside that great man propping him up when he needs propped up. And when we get completely checked out all three categories she's the one that goes hey, you got this, this is why we started and this is where we're going. And that little reminder. But you're absolutely right, she has to deal with those sacrifices too. Keep that in mind. Or vice versa, ladies, you're trying to learn a new skill.
Speaker 1:I'm not discounting you guys. You know, husband needs to just talk with each other man, just like your point. Just open up. Hey, I think there's more to life than this. Or hey, I'm thinking about this. They may be already sitting there thinking about, but you guys are so busy just freaking, trying to survive and do life together, that God forbid you let each other down in some way or another, just to have a moment of vulnerability and go. I know this sounds crazy, but what if it works? So, um, guys, please go check out the trade gap. I have got me a wonderful copy. If you guys, um, don't follow me on LinkedIn, I will be getting a LinkedIn post where I'm done with this and get you guys a full review Because, as you guys know, unbelievably passionate about what we speak about on this show all the time, where can, where can they come find you, zach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so LinkedIn as well. Zachary Hansen, but you but I also have an Instagram. It's at LetMeDieLearning. That's where you can kind of follow stuff for the OKS Trapper podcast. You can see some of my hunting, trapping content, see stuff about the trade gaps, see turning ferro stuff. So LetMeDieLearning on Instagram and then Zach Hansen on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:And, of course, the OKS podcast. Is there a website for that or is it on normal everywhere you?
Speaker 2:can find it on Spotify. So it is the OKS Trapper. It's part of the OKS Hunter Network out of Wisconsin. There's a bunch of great podcasts kind of under that same network. I run the trapping one. Yeah, Spotify, YouTube, the whole nine.
Speaker 1:Man, if you guys have loved this, I really appreciate your time spent with us this afternoon, learning just another key insight. Every single time I sit down on this show, I get to sit here and learn another insight of another perspective that I didn't know. And just, man, I appreciate you being willing to bring awareness to this subject and continually challenging yourself to learn and be better. Man, you're inspiring and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing with our wonderful audience. Guys, till next time. Go find Zach on LinkedIn or Let Me Die Learning on Instagram. Go check out his books on Amazon. And until next time, guys, y'all be safe. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to give it a like, share it with the fellers. Check out our website to send us any questions and comments about your experience in the blue collar business. Who do you want to hear from? Send them our way and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. Till next time, guys.