Business Innovators Radio - Episode 37: Recruiting and Inspiring the Next Wave of Tradespeople with Jason Krantz

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Part of the Construction Executives Live Series Recruiting and Inspiring the Next Wave of TradespeopleWith the construction industry facing a critical workforce shortage and shrinking talent pipeline, we explore practical strategies to attract young talent to the trades. Join us as we discuss how local organizations and industry leaders can partner with schools and communities to showcase the promising career opportunities in trades. Learn actionable solutions for educating students and parents about the rewarding paths available in skilled trades, and discover how collaborative efforts can help build a stronger future for the industry.In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-37-recruiting-and-inspiring-the-next-wave-of-tradespeople-with-jason-krantz

Welcome to In The Zone and Construction Executives Live, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here's your host, Jeremy Owens. Let me try that again. Welcome back to Construction Executives Live. I'm your host, Jeremy Owens, owner and founder of U.S. Construction Zone and three generations improvements out in northern California. are going to have some rain for the next week. And it's hilarious to see our news talk about Stormwatch 2024, especially with what you guys have dealt with in the Midwest and back east. So I apologize for our news. But yes, we are going to have rain. But with today's show, I'm really thinking a lot about different problems people have in their industry. And we have a big one in terms of our labor shortage. And we're going to get into that content today, which I'm really looking forward to. But this particular problem is unique in that it's going to take all

hands on deck. It is not something that one person can solve or legislation can solve. These are deep rooted conversations. And one of the things I'm most curious about is, is why do people not want to join this industry to begin with? So we got to not only fix our labor shortage problem, but we also got to fix why people, new people are not coming to our industry. So we're going to really dive into that today. We are sponsored by our great team at build12.com. You know, take a look at bill12.com. Talk to Les over there, tell them that Jeremy at U.S. Construction Zone sent you there. He'll give you a free demo. He'll take care of you. I've been using that CRM system for the last year and loving every second of it. So take a look at build12.com.

Our show today is titled Recruiting and Inspiring the Next Wave of Trades People. With the construction industry facing a critical workforce shortage and shrinking talent pipeline, we explore practical strategies to attract young talent to the trades. We will discuss how local organizations and industry leaders can partner with schools and communities to showcase the promising career opportunities in the trades. We're going to learn actionable solutions for educating students and parents about the rewarding paths available in skilled trades and discover how collaborative efforts can help build stronger future in this wonderful industry. And we are going to be joined by Jason Krantz, who has 20 years of

experience in analytics operations and strategy across public and private equity-owned companies. Throughout his career, he has helped generate over $300 million on revenue impact and $75 million in EBITDA impact. He is the founder of Labor Titan. a labor market pay and site selection analytics firm. They help industry, education, and government better understand local workforce and pay dynamics. He's also a partner of the Seismic Group, an end-to-end solutions provider for the procurement, operations, packaging, supply chain capital, and equipment financing needs. And my favorite part, MBA at University of Notre Dame, and he was competed as a Division I sprinter at the University of Oregon. and please help me welcome. Jason Grants, Jason, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me, man. Great to be here. Yeah, awesome. So my listeners, no one fascinated by high-level athletes, and you were one of those. So tell me a little bit about your experience at the University of Oregon and you being a sprinter. What event did you do? And then how did it prepare you for the business world? Yeah, sure. So I did a lot of sports in high school. Track and Field was one of them. Junior year, I just decided. I usually did. the distance. I'm going to go do the sprints. I did the 100 meter grand state qualifying time. 400 meter ran state qualifying time. The 200 meter ran state qualifying time. Coaches like Jason,

what the hell? Why don't you tell me you could do this? I'm like, I didn't know I could do this. My distance career is over. I went ahead, a good year, quit all sports, focused on track. I was number one in the state in 100, 200, 400, unfortunately broke my back. Genetic abnormality early, was it like April? Oregon still wanted me to run there. I went and ran and the funny thing was, I think the life lesson from that was, oh, you think you're good, go compete against the best that are out there. You can find out really quick chances are you're not that good. You know, as a mid-tier D-1 athlete, nothing bad about that, but, you know,

the guys I was running against were Olympic caliber. Right. I think there was a life lesson that I learned from that was when you, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know, being a young kid. And then I went and I got to train with the best and be coached by literally the best in the world, Trektown USA, Oregon. And the thing was,

is what I learned is that sometimes when you think you know everything, getting a different perspective will make you realize, I still got a lot to learn. That's actually a perspective that I bring into business now,

like in these types of conversations, I am not from the construction industry. People do this all day and all night. And what I typically say is that there's actually a lot of value and not knowing a lot about that because I'm not constrained by your biases or what you think the industry should do.

It's a different set of optics. So it's not saying it's better or worse, it's just different, and especially in situations like this, different is a good thing because what worked in the past is not going to work on forward. Yeah, no, no doubt, no doubt. I've heard that you'd be described as a Category 5 hurricane in the data analytics world. Tell us a little bit about your career and how you got to where you're at Labor Titan. Sure, yeah. So prior to start in Labor Titan, my job has really helped big global multibillion-dollar companies build out

greenfield data and analytics capabilities. So digital transformation. And they're always like, well, we want to implement data analytics to make better, faster, and more confident decisions. Well, how do we do that? And a lot of times where people go is, they go to tech. But as I have learned, tech's easy part. Getting the systems, getting the ERP, getting the CRM into place is pretty easy relative to

the cultural change that needs to take place, to getting people to embrace the change, to say, we're going to go from here to here, but we can't do it without you. So a lot of times like SAP was one that I did a lot where people were fearful. They're like, oh, well, this is going to take my job. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. This is not going to take your job. What's going to do? It's going to take you away from all these menial tasks that you're doing and free you

have to do higher value stuff. We still need you. We're going to repurpose your skills. So you're creating higher value. And then with like that simple example, it would get people on board with the process. And this was very similar for any technological transformation. But what I found is that it was my business knowledge, social skills, communication skills, and the ability to get people on board with this change.

That's a big thing, getting them to buy into it. That one, there's a need for it, and two, we can do it together and just found a lot of success. Just kept going up in the ranks. Well, that's fundamentally the same playbook I'm running here with Labor Titan, right? And the construction industry, you got a big problem that's staring your right in face. Yeah. You got a lot of change that's going to have to happen. It's hard to do that, drive that.

change with an industry that's used to operating a certain way. So this is where, as we were talking before, working in conjunction with educational institutions and others saying, first, let's acknowledge a change, just like the tech. We got to make a change. We got to go from here to here. Right. If we can't agree on that, what do we need to do? And then how do you, what role do you play? So as I look at this is really, you know, in the corporate world, it was data and analytics and all that stuff was simply a tool or resource to help drive improvement in different ways. It's really the same way I look at what we're trying to do with labor tight and across

industries, but in construction specifically saying, listen, we're just a tool in the toolbox. Yeah. Valuable tool and here's why and here's how we use it. Here's how we work together to get from here to here. Right, right. Yeah, I wanted to mention to it. If anybody has any questions for our guest speaker here, you can throw it in the comments and I'll try to bring them up later on.

I just want to let you guys know. So I think we should just start from the beginning in the construction industry. Where, when did this problem start? I mean, obviously it wasn't a pivotal moment. It's obviously things over time. But tell me a little bit about where this started. Yeah, no, I will preface my answer by as somebody from the outside looking in, right? So somebody in the industry is going to have a different take.

But looking at the macroeconomic trends, demographic, trans workforce, trends in general, you have the baby boomer situation, which is nothing new. Everybody knows about that. There's like 20,000 leaving a day or something, right? So you've got this down-sulp available people that are doing this work. But then you pair that with kind of the macro change that we've had over time in terms of the educational system, talking about certain jobs. I've got to go to a four-year career. And as a four-year or four-year college degree guy myself, I readily say, I am not convinced that the ROI is there.

You know, you think about it. And my parents' generation, that was an economic. economic differentiator in terms of earning potential. My career, even when I went, I would say yes, but right now with the cost of these four-year institutions, just so rapidly outpacing inflation, it's really hard to make a case for that, especially when you pair it with many of the jobs that you get coming out of there are white collar in nature. This AI stuff is real.

I'm the biggest naysayer. I'm the one like, yeah, show me. Things that I have seen, I'm like, this is legitimate. At times I get concerned, like, am I going to be. relevant. And so the thing is, is that that paints, when you look at it through that lens, that paints a very challenging college ROI situation. So you've got kind of these two forces, the workforce, the educational component of that and the investment that's needed it. But then I think also the third part is the optics of just legacy optics of that. These are poor paying jobs.

They're just they're not, they're not good. They're not good. They're not glamorous. And that is false. And this is how I got into this. Because when I started looking at the numbers, I was one of those people. I'm like, these jobs suck. Like they're just, they don't pay well, whatever. And then I saw the numbers. I was like, whoa, right? I did concrete.

I did flat work and forms work myself hard. And it's one of these things, though, that the numbers don't lie. Right. So to get back to wrap it up is, is, it's the idea that these legacy optics, you're not going to change them by saying like, hey, the trades pay great. You've got to quantify it for people in their local market. What can you make as an electrician? What can you make as an H-Vector?

Whatever it is. Once they see the numbers, they're going to see, I thought it was this. And it's actually this. Right. Yeah, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had. I'm with you. I'm a four-year guy. I think we're similar generations.

So it was definitely pushed, but our parents' generation didn't necessarily go. It wasn't necessary. So it was like it really was a force of nature where no, everyone's going. This is what you got to do. And I'm not discounting that for people who have it. But because I kind of had this inkling of staying in the construction industry, I always was upset about it. You know what I mean? I was always like kind of going like, what, you know, what am I doing here in the business school and going like, hey, I know what's going on in the business world. And it just didn't jive for me. So I was kind of, I was kind of jaded. And I wish I didn't have that experience. But I did. I just kind of was like, crap, I don't know what I'm doing here. I'll get the piece of paper and then move on. And but I mean, I think the conversation, like you said, it started with the conversation at the kitchen table with your kids and not being able to give.

them data or like, hey, what do you like to do? You know, like start with that and then help them get to that career. Yep, absolutely. And I think it's also important, too, that people recalibrate, you know, what they thought they can make in these white-collar jobs and what they thought they could make in these blue or gray, whatever it is that you're looking at. In many instances, that Delta has gotten a lot smaller, and it's only going to go out because of these macro on the reduction of people that are willing to do this,

then you apply basic economic principles, supply and demand, which is we're going to continue to grow faster in this particular workforce segment than they will for white-collar jobs because in many instances, AI will be able to relieve a lot of that pressure. And again, that's really important long-term macro stuff that we need to be thinking about. Because, you know, when parents are talking about this, you know, if my kid wanted to go into software engineering right now, tell them, I'm also sure that's a good idea.

Right. I'm a former like pseudo-software engineer myself. That's the space I live in, but I like see what the stuff can do. Before, that's like the gold mine, right? It's, you know, quarter million and a half million dollar of your jobs. They're not going to be many of those there. So yeah, you go chase that dream, but likelihood of you getting there is not very realistic. Meanwhile, you've got all these opportunities right here where you can go crush it.

Right, right, no doubt. So how severe is the talent pipeline? problem and what is the most immediate consequences that we're going to we're going to see here. Yeah. So when I'm looking at this, the thing that I look at is how many kids are in high school, right? Because that's the pipeline to the pipeline. The pipeline is college or trade schools, community colleges, whatever it is. You have to look at your high school population. And I believe through 2032, I think it is, population is projected to decrease by 7%.

I'll get the formal numbers so we can do as a follow-up. But that high school population is supposed to decrease by 7%. So now you've got a shrinking high school base paired with a reduction in people are currently doing this work on the boomer side. and the problem there is that typically you're going to get much higher productivity or just general effectiveness from these more experienced individuals. So maybe for every person that rolls out at the experience level, you might need a person and a half or two. I'm just using that for most of the purposes. So when you pair of these two, you're kind of getting burning the candle on both ends.

The reason why that's important though is because this is a U.S. level challenge. It's a demographic challenge that we have. So what that means is that the construction slice of the pie is getting smaller, even if they keep the same share of kids, I don't know what the numbers are, but say that 1% of all high school students go into the construction industry in some way, shape, or form. Okay. Well, even if you keep that 1%, your slice is going to get smaller because the population coming in is getting smaller. So in order to just maintain the current construction workforce, you're going to have to increase your slice of the pie. Now, therein lies like the macro challenge here is because the legacy way of doing things, of recruiting, is not going to work to increase that slice of the pie. And this is one of the things that we are trying to help institutions, high schools, colleges, everybody that's in the,

this particular industry help them with this problem is because my thesis is others can feel free to disagree. But one of the fundamental inflection points on if parents support a child's objective to go into a particular industry is the earning potential. What are you going to make doing this job? Right. They might love art. Nothing against art. You're not going to probably make, you know, a lot of money doing art. So maybe that's a passion project. So by giving parents, students, all those that are considering his career path, the information, instead of this, it's this in earning potential. Maybe the parent now is saying, you know what? I can get behind. That's pretty good. What are the other options that are available? Oh, you can, electrician here,

you know, a white collar job here, white collar job here, accountant here. I'm making that up. Right. But you're giving them information to make an informed decision and to bring it back full circle. That's what my entire life in corporate America and with data and analytics. is about. It's like, I'm not going to tell you what the answer is. I can't, I can't do that. Right. You get the information that you need so that you can make an informed decision within the context of your world. And shouldn't there be classes in high school for this? Because it just seems like we're getting kids so late, right? So, I mean, my kids, you know, we haven't, we haven't had

woodshop in decades where we live. So that, I had it when I was growing up, but like, you know, we had, we had, you know, auto mechanic, we had, you know, wood shop, we had all these kind of trade paths there. And, you know, obviously they would talk about what that career path would look like in those classes, but they just need to have a general class of like, you know, here's, here are the jobs and here's how you would get that job, you know, so if you want to be a therapist, great, but you, here, here's your track. Here are some schools that work with that. If you want to do that like it's just it that that's a class and that is like and you can even bring some some money sense into that class too i that's to me seems like such an easy way to start

let me ask you just for your take here why did they take those away they had them before why why they get rid of i don't know it the encouragement of the four-year degree and the business side of it really feels dirty to me like why would you why would you take those away yeah Why is it four year or military? That was kind of where it. Like, okay, so like, if you're not going to do a four year, then what are you going to do? So it just, I don't know why they took those away. I mean, they said it was funding.

Like when they take a, when they take a class away, whatever that class is, they say they don't have the funding. But why? And then why? And then why didn't the construction industry fund it? You know, if we needed the woodshop. You know, we didn't have the foresight of going like, okay, we got to keep the woodchap, you know, we didn't do that at all. So I don't know. It feels kind of dirty to me.

I'd like to know why that happened. That's interesting. I'm going to look into that. I'm just curious now. It didn't mean take us off track, but I'm very curious about them. Yeah, no. Yeah, please do. I'd like to know a little bit, too, about the data.

So what specific data points illustrate the current workforce shortage in construction trades? Do you have any data points out there? Yeah, yeah. You know, you look at a lot of the census information that's out there. And these are all independent data points, but they all confirm the same thing where you can see, like, by different occupations, where is the crunch happening by different areas? The main thing I look at is wages, because wages is kind of like, I don't want to say the proxy, it's like the result of workforce constraints in many instances, right?

If you have more people that are able to do a certain type of job, you don't have to drive wages up as much. And this is one of the macro things where where I look at is the acceleration of wages up across experience levels. And so, you know, in construction in general, you know, one of the major things I'm paying attention to is the infrastructure bills. And where they're going to start deploying that money because then what we do is we triangulate it back to, okay, well, you're going to do, I'm just making something, a highway revamp in the Chicago area. I'm just using that because this is my home. how many people are there to do the work? What's their current capacity look like? What's the project pipeline?

You know, you're looking like dodging Cox and Dodge reports in general, Dodge Analytics. They'll give you optics to construction pipeline. These are the different things that we look at. And so this is a politician's way of not answering your question, which is saying it depends because the answer will vary depending upon what you do and where you're at and what is that workforce that you need. And then the other thing is, is like, okay, if you're, if you need, if you need people to do a certain type of work and they're not all readily right there, are you importing them, which is expensive.

If you're importing them, where are they coming from? Right. Things like that. So, so that's a very non-answer. But, but it's hard to answer in just one number because it doesn't really tell the whole story. Right. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

No, totally. this question from Dina says could Woodshop be gone due to lack of skilled teachers? I mean, that could be too. I mean, I remember our wood shop teachers were ex-contractors, right? They were like kind of older guys

that were like done. Some of them were missing a finger. You know, stuff. But like, you know, it's kind of crazy when you look back and not necessarily that we need to look back and find those errors because we need to really focus on the solution at this point. But it does seem, it seems kind of suspect.

Why did we not have forethought that we need these other trades? We need skilled labor in order to just live. You know, like we were talking about before the show started. Hey, people are going to get pissed when they call because their toilets don't work or their, you know, their electrical systems are out and it's a month to get somebody. And that's when they're going to go, well, crap, what happened here? Well, we've been talking about it for decades, but that's where it's going to, that's where it could go, right? And then those people are going to have emergency.

Hey, I can get there in two days. It's going to cost you $1,500 for me to just get there. You know what I mean? And people are going to go, wow, seriously? Well, and to that point, it's like, you know, what people look at is like, how can I get into a career that's like, stable that I know I'm going to have work. Right. And this is what I tell people.

My own son, I'm giving him this advice where I'm like, if you want to go this path, I support it, man, because you're always going to have a job. And the pay is going to probably pretty darn good and it's going to grow faster than what you'll get in other places. And you really mitigate a lot of your tech risk in many instances. You still need until we have, you know, Skynet robots running around doing this. work for us, you know, we're in pretty good shape at which, at which point we have a totally different problem, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that the question and the

arguments I have with family members who are more on that for your side of the fence is they don't understand the job security. They just don't get it. I'm like, when you're in it, you know it. Like, you feel it. You're like, shit, my network's giant. There's people, if something happened to my business and it just poof and gone, I'm okay because there's so many people who know me and there's so much need for what we do. So it does feel like you're kind of like, you're living a little bit differently. And like, you know, like I talk about Mike Roe a lot. Mike Roe works as he has a foundation and he's always been a champion of the trades. And he did a show called Dirty Jobs for many years. And so he really talked a lot about how happy people were. Like when you go home and you're done

with your work and you just you're content and people think that a plumber is miserable and he said no actually it's complete opposite they they're happy you know and it's just like okay so that's the other component that people maybe parents don't realize is that you don't need to have that sexy job to be happy and in fact a lot of time that doesn't make you happy either agreed yeah cool love it so um i kind of like that severe thing that we were talking about how how long can we go if we're if we're kind of going down the same path and we're still having this conversation in five, 10 years and nothing's changed,

you know, when do we hit that severe thing that we just talked about where it's like a month to get, get service? How far do we got? If this is the numbers and, yeah, no, I want to say like five,

five years. Wow. I mean, you're, you're, your tone of line real close. And here's the reason why is that it's the rate of retirement. that really, really, really putting a lot of pressure on the system.

Right. Just sheer numbers, but then also that productivity and just the physical ability to do the needed work. Right. So I would say five years is a realistic, I'd say that's not fear mongering in the slightest. I think we're already seeing that. And, you know, 10 years, if the trajectory doesn't change, you're going to almost certainly be in that situation you described. Yeah, that's not a lot of time.

It's not a lot of time. Yeah, but you see the data. I mean, I think the problem that I have seen with the baby boomers and the guys that are about to retire is they're not always the best trainers. And I've seen it on job sites where it's like they have so much in their brain and they just do things naturally, just, you know, they do it in their sleep. But they're not always best at, like, training those young guys. And there's, like, a battle that the old guys have with the young guys are ready.

So the old guys think the young guys are lazy. The young guys think the, you know, the old guys are asshole. It's just, like, a complete divide. They can't communicate. But, like, that sucks because they retire and they don't pass it on very well. Like you said, we might need one and a half to two bodies to replace that guy who's been doing it for 14. of years and does a lot of things without thinking he doesn't go to youtube for that he he does it right well i think you bring up something's really interesting too is because the way that the kids learn today

that that's that's how they learn they a lot of them learn or they'll emulate things that they see so i'm not saying that's right that's where they default to uh and one of the things that we talked about the wood shop you know situation in education in general is is there a way to incentivize those people that are retired to help drive in their local community. Can you financially incentivize them to go teach at the school, right? Were you talking about federal, local, state governments, incentivizing these people be like, hey, if you come in and do X per week to help us develop this criteria, to your point, maybe they're not the best qualified to set up the criteria. But if you get them in a good environment, maybe they can figure that out. And maybe that helps multiple people. It helps them

stay busy. It gives them an income source. It helps the next generation learn from these people that have been doing it. And then because they can focus on just the teaching aspect, they understand that maybe that causes a mindset shift of like, I don't have to be right on this, right? Because I've seen that too. It's like, I'm right. You're wrong. And it's like, yeah, but when you're teaching, right is a little bit more subjective. You've got to be a little bit more gentle in your approach. But the reason why I share that idea is because I don't know if that's the right answer, but you've got to get creative in solving this problem. You're not going to solve it using these legacy ways.

And so maybe that's an example of something that ideas that can bring, you can bring to the table to start to solve it. Because it's not going to be, as we talked about before, it's not going to be one play that solves this. You're going to have to run a bunch of plays in parallel to solve this problem. And that's just one I just struck me as we're talking here. Yeah. I mean, I think the big one is kind of on your side of the fence.

And I know that there are trade organizations that are actively working on this. is just the data. It's just let's get the data in the hands of parents and then parents to their students. And then if they have the data of, okay, here's how much a four year is. There's how long it's going to take you to pay it off because, you know, we have X amount saved for you. You know, most people don't have enough save for their kid at all, maybe a semester. So like, they need to know, okay, here's your debt. If you go this path, you know, very little debt, if any.

and you have trade schools and then you're quickly make an X amount and here's your growth potential. Do you want to be a business owner? Here's where you could go. But like they need to have like this data right in front of them so that they can have that conversation. To what you just described, I'm actually actively developing this right now. It's college ROI calculator. It is exactly what it does. He says, give us the different jobs that you're thinking about doing or the career paths.

And so it models saying like, pick things. the school you want to go to, pick the degree you want to go after. Here's the time. Here's the investment. So I'm just going to use this. You go to a four-year institution. You come out after four years with $160,000 in debt. Here's in your local market using our data. Here's what you're likely to make over the first five years of a practical progression. So you've got your investment and how much you'll make. And then we compare that to a community college, like an HVAC. I just did one the other day for my buddy. It's HVAC. It was like a $15,000. program. She spent 15 versus 160. And that's after two years. And then coming out, the HVAC program

will probably make on average $15,000 to $20,000 more. And the rate of wage growth will be exponentially faster in those first couple years. So as you look at the ROI on that educational and time investment, right, quantifying it's not subjective, it's hard numbers. Right. Matt, this is the thing I love about math. Math doesn't lie. I mean, you can feed you, but it doesn't really lie. And so with that knowledge now is saying, like, what would you rather have after four years, 160 grand in debt? Or would you have that, you know, you'd be net above and already earning money? Right. Not only that, but it's not like you top out early in many of these jobs. The trajectory continues on the same rate as a white collar. So that gap you get there, that gain that you get in the beginning, you

maintain it through your career. What this does, this is, this is the, this is the big, like psychological principle of it. It's almost like restating in your head what is possible. Because, again, this gets to legacy perceptions. Legacy perceptions are people are like, there's no way that that's reality. I'm guilty of it. I did it. Yeah.

And that's when I did the math. I was like, holy crap, we got to tell everybody, everybody about this. Right. So that they know, again, having the information to make an informed decision. Right. When you get that calculator done, let me know. I would like to have you back and we could just do a deep dive on that subject alone because I've struggled finding the resources.

I have one daughter in college, one's a senior in high school. So I'm in the thick of this right now. And then I have a son who's 13. He's the one that wants to get in the trade. You know, there's a battle. Okay. So I just need the data because I know it. And I know my kids are all different.

they want different things. And I just want to be the dad that, okay, I'll show you how to get there and what you can do. And it's not always going to be a four year. It might be, you know, this path with a, you know, with an internship or whatever it may be. It's just they're all different. And I think that that's the responsibility a parent needs to have with their kids is that let's just stop pushing them to go figure it out or four year. Because a lot of times they don't figure it out. And then they get into a job that really they hate.

and they've never even done an internship or done a, you know, ride along or whatever it may be. And then they're in that career and go, oh, shit. Oopsies. Yeah. You know? Well, you know, the thing is, is, you know, the educational debt load, when you get saddled with six figures of debt coming out of the gate, that slows you down in all of the areas of life, too. The ability to move out of the house, the ability to get out on your own, the ability to buy a house or rent or rent or least whatever it is that you want to buy a car. It really puts you behind the April.

Right. And the thing is, is that, again, it just, it comes to, by just having these conversations at the local level. And that's the other key thing is, is at the local level, because these dynamics are different. This is one of my biggest beefs with the industry and the way that they market the earning potential of these jobs. As I said like, oh, as I said before, the earning potential is great, great, how great, tell me, what is the number? And then they throw some national level number out because it's easy. I get it. They'll be like, oh, electricians make $60,000 a year median pay.

That's crap in Chicago. That's actually false in Chicago. The median pay is actually $110,000. Right. You see, if you're leaving $50,000 on the table in this conversation, that's going to significantly sway my perspective. And so this is where, as I say, most of the resources that are out there are this high level. They're not equipping people to have the local conversations.

That's where we step in. That's where we come in. We say, listen, tell us what you're looking for. You're looking for electricians in this area. Here's what they make entry, media, expert. So now you've got the tool to have an actual conversation that's valid with valid information with these people. That's what's going to persuade them. If you're like, you know, somebody did this to me.

They threw these numbers in front of me. These are junk. This does nothing to persuade me. Right. People feel good. They're like, oh, we're doing all this marketing to talk about our greater industry. It's the wrong marketing, man. Yeah.

I can tell you that's the exact problem I've had in this conversation with my family members is that alone, the national figures. And I'm in California. And we're asked backwards in everything. And our college is asked by everything's higher. Every single thing is higher. And that includes our wages too. So yeah, don't give me that $50,000 because that's just going to make them go, yeah, $50,000. That's cute.

That's like, that's a one-bedroom apartment here. I mean like right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, to have the local data would be would be huge. And especially with, I don't know what's going on with the college in life now, but it's way more business than it is providing education for our kids. And it continues to climb. They continue to build these fancy buildings. And you're just kind of going, wow, you know, I don't know where this is headed, but it doesn't seem like it's headed the right way. I'd love to provide free education. But when they're making it a business, we're kind of backwards. We're. We're just. We're just going, we got to fix that before we give it to people for free, you know. Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to kind of get into, you know, this younger generation, they're different, right? We're talking about millennials and Gen Zs and, you know, I've done a podcast on the different generations and why we are the way we are.

And it's real. It's real stuff. And it's nothing's wrong. Every generation has merit. And I do protect the younger kids often because we made. them the way they are. So, you know, so like take some personal responsibility that social media and the what we've created with these kids, we did that to them because we let them do it. So let's take a pause and say that that's not, that's on us. And now we've got to figure out a way

to appeal to these generations. And how do we do that? Yeah. So it's funny. I have two kids, 12 and 9. And they live on YouTube, TikTok. That's, that's where like everything comes from for them. Right. As ridiculous as it sounds to me,

that is the reality of their world, right? I can try to cut it off. Digital natives, they find a way to get to this stuff. And so in my mind, that's where it really does come down to, you know, or major influence of this could be like people talking about, you'll see this on like TikTok and other things like that, but people talking about what can you make? What do you do? What does it look like? So like the thing that

Mike Rowe do with dirty jobs, instead of being like a long form, you know, really kind of a slog through it, which is great. I loved it. That's how I consumed media growing up. These kids need like the fast hit. Here's the numbers. Make it flashy. That's what they're, you need. So this is actually an idea. I want to pitch to Mike and be like, Mike, if you could take that stuff, right, hell, I'll do it. I don't care. Yeah. And I'll add in our actual numbers to be like, here's the numbers. Here's how it compares to other things that are probably top of mind for you. Right. But I think that in terms of getting attention, because attention is currency, right? I do a ton on social media, LinkedIn. If you don't follow me, follow me. Follow me there. I love

posting there and stuff. Attention is currency. And for these kids, these are the mediums that they go to to, to consume and they're so heavily influenced by, you know, if you put a 20-minute video in front of them, they're probably not going to watch it. And I know my kids won't. And so it's like, how do you meet them where they're at? Again, we might disagree with it, but how do you meet them where they're at? Because that's a fundamental part of the persuasion, but they're even going to consider, huh, this looks kind of cool. Like, you know, when Sunday loves watching building videos, Legos, all that stuff, loved it for eons. He loves building stuff and you might want to go into engineering or something like that. I don't know. But he just,

watches this content. And it's like kind of like kindergarten level stuff for the bigger topics. You know what I mean? Right. Right. No, and I think that as they're watching and consuming that content, they need to visualize themselves and doing that. So they need to look like them and talk like them and be like them.

If you're a little black boy in America and you only see old white guys with hard hats, you're going to kind of go like, I don't think that's meant for me. or a woman or a girl, like, you have to have all of those cross-s, if we're going to make this thing sustainable, we need everyone of all different looks and feels and everything. We need them all. And we need them because they're different too. And I think that we've lacked that.

I mean, I know that I was a kid, I never saw one woman. I, you know, it was very much the exact same imagery. All of the imagery when they're selling the construction industry. was an old white guy in a hard hat. That was it. That was all we had. So, like, we got to change that imagery as well. I think you really quick on your point on the women.

I think the women's, women, major opportunity to be very well cut out for certain types of work there. It's a totally under, under accessed segment of the population. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And like, and what they offer is something so different. Like, their organization. skills and obviously we're generalizing but things that they can do to an office things that they

can do to culture things that they can do to a business is it's amazing i've seen it i've seen it happen in my own businesses so it's like uh you know we've we've completely um lacked that talent and we're going to need them 100% if we're going to make this thing work yeah yeah cool uh what have you seen um what models of collaboration between industry schools and community organizations have kind of proven effective. What have you seen out there? Yeah, this is one where I'm getting a little bit earlier in the journey on this because we are getting with like community colleges and then local companies like how do we pair really like in a lot of instances with the grade schools or the high schools exactly like we covered before

to get kids to start thinking about maybe this is a career I want to pursue. You know, we've all seen it where it's like you don't try something and then you try new food or something. like, well, I actually kind of like this. It's pretty good. Yeah. Same concept. And the thing is, is that, you know, it benefits everybody involved. I mean, really, it's a potent engine for the local economy, clearly.

It supports the growth of local businesses. But it's getting like, you know, working with those educational institutions, which can be challenging because they're so accustomed to a certain way of doing things. Right. And for the educational institutions, if you're having enrollment challenges, for different programs. I mean, there's been quite a few number of college closures just due to, you know, lack of enrollment or, you know, people choosing to pursue other paths. For these institutions, you know, there can be a really sizable opportunity to fill the gap in other

areas that they might have. And then typically industry has great insights as to like, hey, here's what we actually need you to focus on developing. And in that partnership in and of itself, that should be happening anyway. But that's kind of an ideal situation. Sometimes it's harder to do because companies are typically so busy that they're not making a priority to work with them. And it's kind of ironic because the very fact that they're busy is because they don't have the workforce.

And if they don't make the time to work with the schools, you're creating this self-referential problem, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I can feel that in my own business. Like you get so bogged down to the day to day and you're putting out fires. You're doing the best you can for your team. you know that this problem's on the horizon.

And I think most people live their life this way. They live very much in the moment. They don't really look too much in the future. And a lot of people actually look in the past too when they're doing their day-to-day. So I think that's the biggest struggle that I, you know, one of the biggest questions I have for you is like, how the guy like me or guys that are just day-to-day? They run successful businesses.

but they don't know what to do. Like, we know the problem exists and they're like, okay, what do we do? Yeah, this is something, this is a problem I'm working on with a number of other entities will say to try to figure out what does the playbook look like? Yeah. Because if you're trying to, if you're trying to make it locally, it's going to be a dumpster fire because you're trying to get a bunch of people that don't normally talk to each other probably to work together to solve a problem.

That's really, really, really hard. If you're all in the same company, it's hard, right? So that change management piece at the beginning. If you're trying to bring different companies together, oh, my Lord, it's damn near impossible because a lot of times your incentives aren't aligned, your priorities aren't aligned. So this is one where I don't really know yet. We're in the process of researching what does kind of like an ideal situation or practical situation look like where you can deploy this on a local basis.

is who quarterbacks that effort? Who do you have to pull in? You think of the racy chart, you know, responsible, accountable, whatever the other two are. Applying that same concept saying, like, is it a workforce development board that quarterbacks this? Then they work in conjunction with education and industry. And then what do those gatherings look like?

What are the problems you're looking to solve? Because what I've realized is a lot of these areas, these workforce areas, just communities are trying to solve this. but nobody's really working together on it. And this is just, again, me as an observer. Yeah. I see you've got like thousands of communities trying to figure this out. And what I'm saying is, what if we like put together like at least a theoretical playbook

or a case study, if we will, we don't actually test it to see if this works quickly by getting buying for people. Here's the, here's why we're doing this. Here's why it's worth solving. Get that feedback. And then if you find something that works, you almost open source it. You make it available to every way. You still got to go execute on it.

But, you know, it's one of those where that's, again, my long-winded politicians answer to get to. I don't know. And this is the other thing is that, you know, I don't put a lot of faith on politicians actually saw this on a local basis because they'll talk. Very little action typically. And this is, they're out over their skis if they're addressing this. So this is more of where it's like, we've got to get creative. And this is just kind of the brainstorming that we've been doing. And how do we do this?

because left of the own devices, this is just to your point, you're too busy. Everybody's too busy to kind of do it on their own. Yeah, and I think, you know, there are trade organizations. We have tons of them. In fact, we have thousands of contractor-related trade organizations. But to your point, they all are doing little things, and it seems like they think they have the answer for their organization or they're going to solve it.

But in reality, we need to have, like, everybody, come together and say, hey, look, you know, there's a lot of ways we could go, but let's just go with this plan. And it's a 10-point plan and here's what we're going to do. And then if we have that in place, then you're doing a nationwide pitch and saying, hey, here's how you can get involved. A, you can give money because we can get the trade schools. We can get the wood shop. We can do this. Or maybe you're retired. Maybe you want to be a woodshop teacher or, you know, So it's like, we need the action plan. And I think that's where we're struggling is that we're just kind of lost.

And we're like, all right, I guess. Even somebody else to figure out, which is great. Well, sorry to cut you off. I apologize. This is just a philosophical issue that I have. But I find that private sector, like more my mindset, tends to move much quicker and be much more creative than a governmental. And so in my mind, if you wait for government, to solve this year, your years away, at which point that tsunami wave has engulfed you and you're

not going to solve the problem in any meaningful manner. You know, where I come from private equity own businesses, you know, you got it. You move quick. You do your due diligence. You downs the risks and all this other stuff. In my mind, the biggest risk is not doing something that that's virtually guaranteed results. So it'd be like, okay, what are we going to do to get this flywheel going? And then let's go like, let's not talk and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Let's get down to action. because time is of the essence in the situation. And again, that's just me talking, but anybody can independently go and look at the numbers.

You're probably coming to the same conclusion. Yeah. And so that's where my point in all of that, rambling, is to get to, if you wait for the government to solve this, it's not going to happen. You don't on a local basis. It's not going to happen. You need to go to them probably for funding in some capacity.

If you're going armed with a plan and be like, listen, we got this problem. You got funding available for this. We got a plan. If you give us the money, we can help solve this. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I totally hear you there.

You know, what financial incentives or career progression pass can we make, how can we make the trades more attractive? You know, obviously we talked about the financial ROI piece and having, you know, local, you know, career numbers and things like that. But what can we do incentivizing? How can we incentivize the younger generations to get in? Yeah, when I talk to kids, I just come down to outside of the investment pieces. Here's what you can probably make in the first five years of this job.

because it's a very simple metric that they can get their arms around. Accessibility, right? And then the other thing I talk about is then I bring in interviews. I interview a lot of people about what they actually make. So we've got the model numbers, what we think the market's at. Then we interview and then I plot it. And we use these interviews. So it's more quantitative and then a qualitative component.

So I've got two different things that you're bringing to people. But what I find is a lot of times for kids, that's what they're interested in. What am I going to make? What can I do with that? That's what resonates with them. You go any more, you go any of even deeper than that. And then typically I don't care.

You talk about benefits, 401K, any of those stuff. Very big benefits, right? Those are significant. But they're like, I'm healthy. I don't need that stuff.

I don't care about it. I want money in my pocket. So typically with that is like, I'll say like, okay, these numbers are like 40 hours a week. If you want to go and do 60 hours a week, here's probably what you can make. Like add this onto it.

And then you see their eyes light up. They're like, that's a big number. Yeah, it is a good number. That's feasible. You got to work. You got to do the work to get there. So that's what I found typically works the best.

No more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. So let's talk a little bit about the technology piece. You know, what emerging technologies, you know, are kind of entering. Obviously, this is kind of the era of technology in construction. So it's coming at us fast and furious. But how can we, you know, use that to our advantage? to also entice these younger generation of workers.

Yeah, this is a really fascinating thing that I found is that, like, a lot of times kids don't, they don't care as much about, like, kind of like, how does this save me time or whatever? Because they have no reference point. They just like using tech because they think it's cool. So, you know, it's like one of these things where College of DuPage here by me, you showed some kids, even though I know it's not really terribly relevant here, but like a CNC machine.

And they were like, their minds were melted by this stuff. Right. Like, I didn't even know that this stuff existed. Right. And it's like, you know, well, here's, here's the way that it applies in the construction sense, machinery or, you know, different equipment that you can use or whatever it is. But it's showing them that this stuff can be actually really cool. There's still a manual labor component to it in many instances. But there is definitely a lot more tech.

Like I was showing this one, I saw this thing where on a construction site somebody was used. using like a drone for like quality inspection or something like that. They they thought it was the coolest thing. I mean, paid to fly a drone. Right. Right. I mean,

there's more to it than that. But, you know, so I think for these kids, it's just showing them what is used there. That can be really enticing to them because they don't know and their parents aren't talking about it. Yeah,

I think everyone just has their own thought, right? It's the plumber crack, you know, plumber crack's got to be top of the line there. I mean, it's just, there's nothing really fun about it the way we're communicating. So I think you're right. I think if we bring that tech, because we are using tech now. And maybe we talk a little bit about how we're going to be using AI in our businesses and how we're, you know, we're constructing a lot of things offsite now.

And, like, there's a lot of automation that's coming at us. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it. It's not just a construction swing and a hammer that we need. It's all of it. It's from the manufacturing facilities all the way to swing and the hammer. So it's a sizzle. Give it that sizzle. Give it some sizzle.

That's right. So tell us a little bit about labor tight. Now I want to kind of find out what problems are you solving for the industry. I know you're heavily in the data, but I like to kind of learn about not only what you're doing now, but kind of what you're planning on doing in the future. Yeah, sure. So in a nutshell, we basically help industry, education, government, understand. your local workforce. And what does that workforce get paid? Because from any of the industries that we focus on, the labor pool needs to be physically present. You can't put up a

wall remotely. You can't make a widget remotely. You got to be physically present. So what that does is then you get a labor shed. So here's my 45 minute drive time. If that's it, that's what we do a lot in like industrial. And they'll need to come in. So how many people that do this job are in this area? For the people that do a firm electrician, how many are there? But then what do they get paid over experience levels in this broader market. And so it's just, and then the other thing that's really, really important, a lot of your data sources out there that say that they're currents, they typically typically be anywhere from 18 to 24 months old.

Right. And with the wages in this market moving so quickly for these particular types of jobs, that can be anywhere from a, you know, a 10 to 20 percent pay delta. So you think you're paying competitive wages because you're using. two years old data. And in reality, the market's 15% higher than what you're paying and you can't figure out why you can't attract or, you know, attract anybody or are having challenges retaining people. So we update our data every month. Really granular. You know, we use a lot of the government data and then we gross it up. So it's very credible. You can trace it back and be like,

Jason, I think your number's crazy. Okay, well, here's the original data source. Go check it out yourself. So it's a good independent third-party check, but really it gets back to the central theme of giving a construction industry executive, a project manager, whatever it is, the information to understand what's really going on in the labor market, because I'm not a construction expert, but if I was guessing, labor is probably the biggest project cost, even more so than material, depending on what you're doing. And so if you are forecasting the labor costs incorrectly, You either have a poor understanding of what the market's currently paying or you're forecasting cross wrong, depending upon the margin profile that you operate at. You can be facing a very difficult situation upon time to do that work and or project completion.

So this is where the information is power and we try our best to help mitigate that labor risk. So it's an educational institution in the recruiting. It's giving that information for parents as we talked about. But then also for the actual organizations themselves, specifically. in construction, where are those costs likely to go over the next year? And we're the only company anywhere that does that. And so, yeah, yeah. That's really cool.

It's unique, but it's so needed. Like the data, ah, you know, like you said, math doesn't lie. I mean, unless people are doing the one plus one is four or whatever crap they use, you know, those people are liars. But in theory, math doesn't lie. So I love having the data and you leading with that is going to be a huge help to our industry. So I appreciate what you're doing. The market wage report that we kind of discussed when we're promoting this event.

Tell us a little bit about that. For anybody who wants it, wants to grab that. How do they go ahead and do that? For sure. So the first thing I'll say is my email, J.crance at labortighten.com. We'll do as a follow-up here too. What I want you to do is there's occupation code. If you go to a place called O-Net, it's really easy to look up.

It's just literally O, letter O, net. And you can search for an occupation. Search for whatever occupation you want, one occupation code. And then also pick a metro area that you're interested in. If you email me the occupation code in the metro, I will send you back a current market pay report for that particular occupation metro combo. It's limited to one. We frequently get, we do sell more. If you want more, more than happy to do that.

They're very, very, very reasonably priced, I think, and we've been told. but the idea there is to give you insights as to what are those macro level market labor and pay trends that are unfolding. Okay. And the idea is then with that, again, you can make more informed decisions. But yeah, it takes us a couple minutes to get this together for you. And I hope people get value out of it, you know? Yeah, no, definitely.

I think we have some future conversations. I know, you have a lot of work in front of you and you've got kind of a, you kind of like me, you're spinning a lot of place. There's a lot of things going on in your world. So I appreciate what you're doing. Let's connect back when you've got a couple more cool tools. And I'm going to probably be calling you about my kids here, not too. Not too.

Do it. Well, thanks for being here. And we'll see you again soon. Definitely. Thank to everybody for your time, too. I appreciate it. I know time is valuable. So thank you.

Awesome. Thank you. All right. That has been another episode of Construction Executives Live. That was a great one. again, if you want to get in touch with Jason, Jason Krantz, J-R-A-N-T-Z at Labortitan.com. So give him an email. If you have anything for me, Jeremy at U.S.

ConstructionZone.com. I appreciate you being here. Like Jason said, time is valuable. We appreciate you tuning in. We look forward to future events. Happy holidays. Happy Thanksgiving. We're going to have another show.

show next month before Christmas. But hey, safe travels everybody. You know, we got some weather and some things happening around our world. Just take care of each other. Be nice to each other. Love each other. Time is valuable. So thank you so much for being here. Bye. You've been listening to In The Zone and Construction Executives Live with Jeremy Owens. Be sure to subscribe to In The Zone and stay in the know with the best minds in the construction industry. To nominate an innovator or changemaker in the construction industry, connect with your management peers, and stay up to date with construction industry news. Be sure to visit usconstructionzone.com.