EntreLeadership - Could Gen Z Revolutionize the Trades? (with Mike Rowe)

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Today we’ll hear about: A business owner looking to find the next generation of tradespeople How to build grit and resilience with new team members How to avoid a workplace culture of “good enough” How to determine the value of new technology A business owner looking to attract great talent Mike Rowe's experience with how higher education looked down on the trades and how that shaped his love of blue-collar careers Next Steps 🛠️Apply for the work ethic scholarship: mikeroweworks.org   🗳️ Submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://ter.li/askus 👣 Find out what Stage of Business You’re In: https://ter.li/axd39b ✉️ Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://ter.li/y8qdo7   🏢 Attend EntreLeadership Summit: https://ter.li/fcazl2   🎤 Attend EntreLeadership Master Series: https://ter.li/wcjhpu ☎️ Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: https://ter.li/ycznhl 💵 Learn more about Ramsey SmartDollar: https://ter.li/4imot0   🗳️ Help us make the show better! Please fill out the quick survey form. https://bit.ly/3O8fRvh   Offers from Today's Sponsors NetSuite: https://ter.li/x1t20q BELAY:  https://ter.li/yohiu6 Payority:  https://ter.li/fh2oau Trainual:  https://ter.li/a8zexl Found:  https://ter.li/ggwmrv Listen to more from Ramsey Network 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/compa… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Live from the Summit stage in Dallas, Texas, this is the Entry Leadership Podcast, where I take questions from leaders like you about what it takes to win at any stage of business. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches, right alongside people just like you. Today is a special live episode

that we're recording at Entree Leadership Summit with my friend Mike Rowe. Mike is, of course, famous for Dirty Jobs. He's a writer, a narrator, a producer, has an incredible podcast that I've been on a couple times as a guest, and very, very popular. And so best known as the Dirtiest Man on TV, oh, but a moment, yeah, there we go.

And, hey, so if you've got a question to ask on the show, fill out the form at entreleadership.com slash ask any day. Obviously, you're late for this one. You're not going to be on it, but we'd love to have you, and you can call and leave a voicemail with us at 8449-4-1070, because this is a call-in show, and that's how we conduct this podcast to give you real-world information.

If you're looking for a think tank or someone with a Ph.D., you're in the wrong place because I'm, like, a practical guy who actually made payroll Friday. I'm not a finance professor who's never made payroll. So there you go.

I'm that guy. So, Mike, welcome, my friend. I just love the fact that you bailed out of my introduction halfway through. It's like you got, you were reading it, you were doing great. New York Times, bestselling author, CEO, blah, blah, blah, blah. You had like three more sentences here, really. Go ahead and finish it for me properly.

Well, Mike is best known as the dirtiest man on TV. And his role as a perpetual prentice, Mike has highlighted hundreds of workers and dozens of essential industries, Dave. His foundation is awarded over $9 million in work ethic scholarships to nearly 1,500 million men and women. His commitment, reinvigorating trace. unrivaled. I mean, it's some of this is in bold,

some of it's been underlined, some of it's in italics. He ignored it all. Unbelievable. You know, that's the problem with actually knowing people. I just didn't care. It's such a fine line, friends, between apathy and incompetence.

You've probably seen this in your own businesses. You don't quite know. when it's been crossed, but the minute it is crossed, well, then it becomes the Rubicon. Then you know. And then I lose control of my entire personal podcast. And the ratings go up. You're welcome. That's right.

Anytime. Well, that's what happens when we have real rock stars on here, real celebrities. That's what happens. I'll let you know when that happens, okay? But yeah, that's good, yeah. Gonna be like that. Well, you started this. So, all right, folks.

So what we're going to do is take questions from those of you here. in our platinum and preferred experience. And come on up to the microphone. You got a question for Mike Rowe. And based on the way we started, I'll probably add some color commentary. So there we go. All right, Tom's up first.

Hey Tom, how are you? I'm doing great, how you doing? Better than I deserve. Perfect. Hey Mike, I wanted to start by saying, thank you for being an advocate for the trades and a reasoned advocate. That's a privilege.

You're welcome. Thank you. I live in San Antonio, but my business is in Los Angeles. We've been to business 24 years, about 3 million in sales. And most of my technicians are 15 years or... What kind of business? A service company for commercial water heaters and boilers. Okay.

So obviously gas is going out of business in California, so we'll have to tax from there. But my question had to do with generational. We have a very good group of guys, but we seem to have trouble bringing in a next generation to work with us and to continue it. And how best we would get those two groups to work together and become one cohesive group. Yeah, so I mean, if there's any comfort in knowing that you're not alone,

well, get comfortable. There's not. I mean, this is, okay. Well, you should still appreciate the scope of, the problem that you're talking about. It's not unique to your industry. It's not unique to your state. It's not unique to your zip code.

It's, I mean, every single day for the last 16 years, we've been pushing this rock up the hill. And on the one hand, I feel like we're making progress because more people have become aware of the challenge you're talking about. On the other hand, it's difficult to get your mind around it. For instance, I started working with an entity that I didn't know existed about a month ago.

They're called the American submarine industrial base. They approached me because they're tasked with building three or four nuclear-powered submarines over the next 10 years. This is not a modest undertaking. Submarines are the most important element of our military defense by far, and the speed with which we can get this thing built is nothing short of an issue of national defense and national security. They approached me because they need to hire some technicians.

There are 15,000 individual companies in the American submarine industrial base. The number of technicians that they need to hire in the next 10 years is a little north of 100,000. Wow. One entity that I had never heard of consisting of 15,000 companies, now tasked with hiring 100,000 skilled tradespeople. You might have seen ads. Once you start looking for a thing, Dave, right? You tend to find it.

So you'll see ads for the American submarine base. You'll see them on TV. And they're doing what they can to try and get this out there. But I just mention it to put a point on the massiveness of what you're struggling with. Every year, for the last 20, for every five skilled tradespeople who retire to replace them. The math, I think, Dave, the word you would use is unsustainable.

We're just going to run out, right? So that's what you're dealing with, right? So the basic problem of recruitment is real. Your problem, it sounds, is a little bit more insular. You're trying to get your older guys to mesh with your younger ones. And, you know, there's no playbook. for that. You're obviously on the same team. And have you asked them? You know, I mean, just sit down and just say, look, really, what chaps your butt with this group? And vice versa. And maybe do it over a

frosty beverage and see what they say. You got it. You got it. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, very good. Mike, you and I have been talking about this for, I guess, two years off and on on your podcast, my podcast, we did a live stream together about work and work ethic and all that, and we've been talking about the shortage of trades. In the last couple of months, I'm starting to see one, what I think is a positive reaction to the student loan crisis and the disgust, the utter disgust with higher ed, and, you know, charging 80,000 bucks to get a degree in left-handed puppetry. And so if you're going to study for four years, at least study something useful, hello, you and I, we've hit this drum a lot.

With respect to puppets. But the, yeah, that's true. And we're left-handed particularly, but they're a problem. But the, but the, I'm starting to hear Gen Z, this youngest generation coming in, having a violent reaction to college. And I keep hearing rumblings that they're going into the trades like no other group has. Yeah. And it's almost as if the college thing created.

that. You know, this is a reaction to, okay, I can be a diesel mechanic and make 110, or I can get a master's degree in sociology and make 38K working for the state, which is just, you know, bass backwards. Yeah. So the, are you seeing any of those rumblings? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and again, you find what you look for, and I've been looking for them. So, I mean, it's, it's not all gloom and doom. The challenge is, is real. And I don't think you, I don't think you can overstate it. But there was a big article in the Wall Street Journal maybe two weeks ago. And I think the headline was Gen Z, the Generation Tool Belt. Okay.

Right? And it's to your point, exactly. Some data finally came in. It was actually pretty encouraging. The number of people enrolling in four-year schools was down markedly. The number of young people enrolling in trade school was up 16, 18 percent significantly. So the evidence demands a verdict, right? Title of a great book.

Josh McDowell wrote that 40 years ago, I guess. But in my world, when I look around, the evidence is clearly there. It's just clouded by stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions and a whole lot of ideas that people have that have affirmatively discouraged the last generation, really the last two generations,

from giving the trades an honest look. And this came mostly as a result, I believe, of pushing one path of education as though it was the best path for the most people. Now, to be fair, there was a time when we were, I guess it was mid-70s, where we needed more engineers, we needed more doctors,

we needed more people in vocations that required a four-year degree, and so a mighty push emerged to make that happen in our schools. And we all can remember it. It happened around the same time shop class was pulled out of high school. So it was a double whammy. On the one hand, we got rid of all the optical proof of all of the other vocations that give us a balanced workforce.

At the same time, we told a whole generation of kids that they were essentially screwed if they didn't take the most expensive path. So when you talk about the cost of college, people often say, God, how did it get that crazy? Well, my answer is, how could it not? Yeah, one unlimited supply of money called student loans, yeah. Bottomless money with incredible pressure

on a 17-8-year-old kid to sign on the dotted line and assume a debt that they're not going to be. to be able to shake, right? At least, I mean, unless it's... No, they can't. Right. So, so it's just an amazing parade of horribles lined up to create this perfect storm. But the good news today is this generation, even though we give them a lot of flak, snowflakes, and so forth, by the way, we're the clouds from which the snowflakes fell. All right. Like we did this, we set the table. Helicopters create snowflakes.

That's right. And blows them everywhere. I know it. I've seen it happen. But we're seeing a real cohort in that generation now say, look, I can add a column of numbers. And I'm not going to start my career with a millstone around my neck. Not when I can make 120 grand welding. Not going to do it.

Gina, up next. Hi, Gina. How are you? Better than I deserve. Where are you from? I am from Ardmore, Oklahoma. We have a counseling clinic that also has inpatient units, 360 employees operating budget of about 43 million. Good for you.

A hundred of those employees were added in the last year. Whoa. So our question is less about recruitment and more about development of staff. So how can we help those in both of the categories that we have? So we have degreed, highly trained counselors. And then also we, the other 50% are people with lived experience of recovery. how do we develop both of those so that they have more tenacity, grit, and adaptability so that we have more thoroughbreds?

The resilience question. How do we turn them into resilient? I don't know that there's a magic formula personally that I can think of. I think it's amazing what people can do when they believe there's a chance. you know, the great movie line. So you're saying there's a chance, right? So dumb and dumber, right? So you're saying there's a chance.

Burnout usually occurs when I feel like I can't get there. It's amazing how many hours I can work and I'm just tired. I'm not burn out. But I can work a lot less hours and get, quote, burn out, unquote. And I think that has to do with a hope variable. And if there's a level of hope that what I'm doing is going to get me there, then yeah, I can do it. I can see a finish line over there.

Then I can find the energy to get that last little bit done. But, you know, I think it's the hopelessness factor. If that kicks in, then it's very difficult to persevere. It's very difficult to sustain. I call it burnout. But really, I don't know if it's real burnout or not. I mean, I had one guy come in and say he was burnout,

and I'm like, that's impossible. You were never on fire. So, you know, that, so. You know, how do you add grit, Mike? Well, that's the word you used. And since we're dredging up movie references, the film was true grit. I love that title because it's a great juxtaposition, right?

Grit is this thing that I guess we're free to define it, but when you proceed it with a word like true, it really makes you go, well, what is grit? I mean, and are you born with it? And if you're not, how do you get it? And, you know, I think the other point you made is great. You have to know where the finish line is, and you have to have some hope,

but in many cases, the only way you can believe is to see somebody else do it first. You know, I think about, oh, you know, the guy, Roger Bannister, right? Yeah. Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes at a time when really no one believed it was possible. Very few did. And there were actually doctors out in the world saying,

if the human body is pushed to the point where it runs a mile in less than four minutes, the heart will explode, the lungs will collapse, and something very unpleasant is going to happen vis-a-vis the lower GI tract, right? I mean, it was an awful. I mean, smart doctors were saying, your body will shut down if you do this.

So Roger Bannister does it. And within a couple of years, 50 other people had done it. We need to see, in many cases, somebody do the thing that we were told can't be done. And look, this is Dirty Jobs 101. The grit in that show wasn't a thing that the people we profiled endured. It was a thing they learned to love. And that's the trick. I know it's not much of an answer, but it's not enough to be willing.

to leave your comfort zone. The people I know who have succeeded, whether it's mental health or putting in boilers, they find a way to enthusiastically embrace the worst part of their day. Find a way to look at the food they don't want to eat that somehow got on their plate and eat it first with a smile.

I don't know how to encourage that other than to lead by example and show people what it looks like to do it. Yeah, I think the other thing is the payoff has to be very clear. And so it can be that if all you're looking at is you're, you know, what's in front of you instead of how far you've come, you don't recognize the payoff is there. I mean, when I think about some of the stuff that, you know,

right today on one of our podcasts or something, where I have someone asking the same question and we're doing it again, why wouldn't we burn out? Because we've got hundreds of millions now, literally, of people who have done the stuff we teach. And so now I'm looking at this person, I'm going, yeah, you too. You see this grit, like we said at the very top,

when you start to look for it, you'll find it. And I remember in one of the first seasons, it wasn't Dirty Jobs, it was another show I work on called Deadliest Catch about the Crab Fishing. up in the Bering Sea. The first year I was up there, it was 2004. Big weather, big waves, unpleasant. It's very hard to be enthusiastic when you're vomiting through your nose, right?

On camera, and that's what was happening with me. And at some point, I watched the captain come out of the wheelhouse. It's blown sideways, probably 30 miles an hour, we're in 15-foot seas. and he starts hauling pots with his men. Now, there's nothing to say in a moment like that. But when you see a leader, and since this is on trade leadership, it's a point worth making,

when you see a captain come right down with a greenhorn and work in the same exact, snotty conditions, that leaves a mark in your memory. Yeah, I mean, the guy on the front of the line, and the white horse with a sword held out, he's the first one they shoot at. And so the leader's got to lead, by definition,

they've got to be off front. Simon Sinek's book, Leaders are out front. You know, I mean, it's the same thing. So, yeah, I think when they observe your grit would be the point, then they're there. So, yeah, it's easy around our place. I don't have any trouble with work ethic around Ramsey because I have one.

And so just keep up with the old man, if you can. and if you can do what I do, then you're probably, you can probably do anything you want to do. But, you know, it's not like, well, they can say, well, you're kicking back, Dave. And so, you know, I don't give them permission. So I don't give them permission to burn out

because I'm not burn out. I don't give them permission to have no grit because I've got, because I'm not going to stop and I'm not going to, you know, just, you know, and if there's not a good fight, I'll just go pick one. So, you know, it's just something else to do, right? So, hey, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. good question. Right in question, Mike. This is a good one. And this is, um, in your generation, my generation growing up, you and I have been doing a great job of lifting the trades and putting them out front. The guy working, the gal working with their hands, getting a little grease on them, a little dirt on the fingernails. Um, you know, we've, we've honored them and lift them up, but I also remember a certain percentage of those. people in my generation when we were coming into the workplace they took those jobs because it's where they could mail it in where they could not work hard because they could hide there

and then a quote unquote white collar job you know they the spotlight would be on them and but you could you know the whole group is down there going well let's take it easy and they meant it you know i mean it was like so how do we the question is how do we battle a company culture of good enough oh that is good question so c plus right? C plus, C, C minus. Boy, well, I think you start with what you just said. You have to know what success looks like. You have to know what's, you have to see the difference between A minus and C plus.

Like you really practically have to understand. And if that means showing employees next to one another and demonstrating that, you know, I mean, can you do that today in HR? Is this frowned on? I mean, it seems like it might be. The problem is, if you put donkeys and thoroughbreds in the same stable, it exposes donkiness. Just the very presence of a thoroughbred exposes the donkey's donkiness.

Yeah. You don't even have to say anything. It's just like, look at the difference. Everybody walks by, goes, those two ain't the same. Right. And you know, you just put them in the same stall. Everybody's like, there's a donkey and there's a thoroughbred. And the donkey knows it.

The thoroughbred knows it. That's it. Everybody else knows it. Yeah. You don't have to say a dead. word. And then you can have a donkeyectomy. That sounds painful. You can remove the donkey. Yeah. Yeah. Next thing you know, you have a jackass.

Or maybe a mule. Now we're getting technical. Well, it gets confusing. But look, it's back to the evidence demands a verdict. The evidence is your people. You've got rock stars. You've got A plus. You got A minus. You got C plus. And, you know, if you're in a culture or a company where you're allowed, to present the evidence in a way where it is self-evident, then do that. Do that thing.

Look, dirty jobs. I got a lot of credit for some things I didn't do on purpose, but I think really I could draw a pretty straight line. I'm sitting here because 21 years ago, we pointed our cameras at a thing that people hadn't pointed their cameras at before. In other words, we would go into a sewer. not simply to show you that, oh, yeah, this is what a sewer looks like,

but to spend hours with a sewer inspector. And not in a perfunctory way, not in a scripted way, we didn't always know what we were going to get, but we treated that sewer inspector the way Access Hollywood would treat Brad Pitt, right? In fact, we paid more attention. We had four, sometimes five cameras in these impossibly weird places.

And I would have honest conversations with anonymous people living in towns you can't find on a map doing a job that you didn't think needed to be done, but paying a level of attention to it that was unprecedented in my industry. And when I saw the results of that on TV, that's when it became obvious to me.

We all get to choose what we point our, cameras at, both metaphorical and real. And by the way, since we all have one of these, we all have real cameras. We can document the business of work at our location. And we can share that evidence in whatever way we want. So, yeah, when you see A plus behavior, document it. You see D-minus behavior, document it.

And, you know, it's, and reward it. I mean, all you got to do is get one. just hold it up and go, this is what it looks like. And, oh, by the way, here's some money, and here's some recognition, and, you know, he just won a vacation to Disney and with his family, and she did. And then the other guys go, oh, wait a minute,

good enough isn't good enough anymore. And so that's the one side of it, is lifted up and trumpeted it and say, this is the standard, this is who we are, this is the definition of being a we, if you want to be on our team, we do it this way, and then start just removing the others. You're either going to aspire and start making moves in that direction, or, you know, we're going to have an uncomfortable conversation about you not being here.

Well, and that's what's happening. I think in a lot of companies and all across the country, the whole notion of employee of the week, employee of the month, that's been with us for a long, long time. And I think in our generation anyway, it's been baked into our head that the elevation and the celebration of virtue is a fundamentally good thing. But those expressions are also under attack today. They trigger people. They upset people. And there's a lot of pressure that I've seen.

Yeah, but honestly, people that like me that run businesses and people listening to this and watching this, they don't care. Yeah, but there's nobody like you. If you get triggered, who is like you? Triggered is a horse. I mean, I'm not going to get triggered. Yeah, but Roger's horse. You open the door to thoroughbreds and donkeys. So, of course you're triggered.

Yeah, of course you're triggered. Okay, good. Then you don't need to be on my team. You know, I'll give you a safe space. Go somewhere else. There's your safe space. You know. I love it so much.

Of course that's true. Of course. Hey, look, while we're on the subject, let me just say, I'm going to thank you publicly for something that you did. you did this work ethic symposium with me about a year ago. We sat on a stage and we talked about these triggering ideas, right? And one of them was work ethic. And my foundation has been awarding work ethic scholarships now for years.

And we do it precisely because it's triggering. Because today when you talk about the importance of work ethic, you hear from a lot of other people. about why it's not really fair to focus on that and why blah blah blah you guys know the story. Fares where the tilter whirl is in the cotton candy. Good enough but as a result of our conversation I got a call that basically allowed me to take our work ethic curriculum which is a companion to our scholarship that I'd never been able to get into a school before. Now it's in a school in Clark County,

Nevada called Western High. 750 kids are going to go through a work ethic curriculum. And the top 50, the top 50 are going to get a free ride scholarship to any trade school in the country. So for the first time in my foundation's history, we've been able to get our curriculum tied to a $5 million pledge to. fund the training of those kids who best embody not the C plus, but the A plus. Amen. So when it comes to work ethic, we did find a way to connect those dots. And it starts with two guys talking about old movies and questionable metaphors and donkeys and thoroughbreds and questions. You just never know where a question's going to take you. Well, that was a great event. A very event.

that we were part of, and I'm glad that someone watching out there, you know, got the memo and turned it into a great donation that causes us to happen. That's pretty cool. All right. Up next, Dylan, how are you? Good. How are you? Doing good. Where are you from? Like the York, Lancaster, Pennsylvania area? Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, so we're a family-owned business. We're an electrical contractor. We do anything from new bills, renaos, demos, and service, and commercial, industrial, residential. Cool. How many 10 members? There's 19 of us. Wonderful. My question is more related to technology. A lot of times we're looking at capital assets or anything we're going to spend resources on. We can do a calculation and figure out what kind of money

is it going to save me or what kind of revenue is it going to generate with me. But technology, I feel, is like more abstract. You don't really know ahead of time the value you're going to get as a calculatable form. You almost have to just kind of figure it out. How do you guys approach new technology and determine whether or not it's worth the cost? Well, some of it is very simple, and it is like a capital asset that you can actually calculate and go, okay, this piece of software or this piece of hardware is going to do this amount of work, and it's going to generate this ROI. So some of it, you still, even though it is, quote, in the bucket of technology, you still

can run it out like a capital asset and tell whether it's mathematically going to work out for you. I don't think that's what you're asking about. that's kind of obvious. I mean, obvious would be if you get a computer, you can use an accounting software and how many hours of human work is that going to save you versus someone with a little glass and, you know, filling out accounting sheets, you know, from the 1950s. So that's an obvious thing. So the other technologies are the ones that they're not proven to do that yet. We're getting into the edge of it and we're saying, okay, if we, if we, if we, bought this piece of hardware, we're not positive what it'll do. We're not, or we have this piece of software, or we write this piece of code and install it

into our system and, you know, change the, change, create a digital product, if you will, is that, you know, how are we going to get an ROI there? And what we're doing there is just like anything else that's brand new. We're going to try to find a way to put our toe in the water rather than just leaping off the diving board. We're going to try to find a way to test it and let it prove itself and create a proof text in the market that says, okay, we put this out there at a one and it paid back a two, so now we can put it out there at a three and see if it'll pay back a six, and then we'll move,

but we don't go from zero to ten. We don't just turn the dial all the way up. We shoot the musket balls, as Jim Collin says, and test it, and we want to see that it's there. We do that when we launch on the broadcast on a platform that's different. You know, when we moved and started a podcast a thousand years ago, we were one of the first. podcast companies out there. You know, we didn't know if that was going to work, but we also didn't bet the farm on it. You know, we just put it out there, and then over time it's become a thing, obviously. YouTube's become a thing, obviously.

But then, you know, somebody comes up with a new technology, you know, how far do we step into that? But we don't just jump in it just because it's new and fun. We're going to test it, test it, test it. I want to see it click. I want to click at a notch and see it move up. Click at another notch or two, see if it moves up. and weighed into it. If it requires that I do a huge investment for me to even play with it,

then I'm probably going to stand back and watch other people mess with it for a little bit. I'm not an early adopter in that regard, but I don't mind being an early adopter if I can test it at a low volume and scale up. So we're always out there in the fringes and the mist playing with all technologies and all platforms because we're platform agnostic. We don't care where the stupid content lands. I mean, we print books and we do cutting-edge TikTok videos, the other end of the spectrum. And so why do we, you know, because we're messing with everything all the time, because we never

know exactly what's moving and what's not. There's opinions and ideas, but we want to see actual monetization, actual dollars coming back for the dollars going out. But if it requires we drop something in there that is going to leave a scar if it doesn't work, then we'll just wait a minute. Does that make any sense? It does. Okay.

You're basically betting on yourself. You'll always bet on yourself. 100%. If there's content, like if the new tech will allow you to deliver the thing that you can control, you'll wait in. Yeah. Right? I remember talking to a technician over a Caterpillar.

It was probably 15 years ago, or whatever it was the iPad came out. And they were telling me that they were trying to convince their, their boss to get everybody an iPad, to literally go into their toolbox. And it was the same thing. They were like, well, these things are kind of expensive and how exactly is it going to work and should we do it? I mean, Caterpillar is not your company, right? They could afford it, but somewhere somebody doesn't want to make a dumb decision

because it's, you know, $20,000 to get everybody hooked up with one. So they gave one guy, the iPad, and next thing you know, he's out on the high planes. underneath a big piece of heavy equipment. You can't take a bulldozer into the dealer, right, to get it fixed. You've got to do all this in the field. And there he is, underneath the thing, taking photos, streaming back to headquarters, learning in real time exactly what the, diagnosing the whole thing on his back in the high planes with a new tool that at the time people couldn't figure out is this, what do you do with this thing?

We play a game on it. You know, what do I find my soulmate? What am I going to do with this thing? Well, as it turns out, you're going to facilitate some fairly complicated repairs in sub-zero temperatures on the high plains. So to your point, crawl, walk, run. Two weeks later, everybody's got one. Today, it's smaller, it's better, it's faster, and way leads on to weigh.

Exactly. That's exactly how it works. So, just proof-tech stuff into the market. But I did so much in my early days when we were little. Everything was just all in. I just fired off the cannon rather than checking it with a musketball first. And I hit some stuff. That's why I'm here.

But some other stuff just missed. And it was painful. How many millions of dollars my stupidity? Because I didn't crawl, walk, run. Well, sometimes, you know, sometimes it makes sense to shoot with a shotgun. You're not going to kill anything, but you're going to hit a lot. And when you figure out what the target really is, well, then you want your rifle, right? There's the plan.

That's exactly it. Get it narrowed in, get it narrowed in. Very good stuff. All right, Michelle's up next. Hi, Michelle. How are you? I'm terrific. Good, good.

So where are you from? I am from Sacramento, California. Cool. What kind of business? We help businesses, entrepreneurial businesses increase their profits by offering fractional CFO services and strategic planning. Oh, cool. Good for you. That's cool. How many team members? Got 25 team members. And then lots of fractional people you put out as 1099s. No, we are all employees because of our belief system and our core values. We've got to pass that

onto the other entrepreneurial business. And so we keep a really tight rain on that. And the other thing, you know, California doesn't think very highly of 1099 workers. Love it. Okay. I've heard the rumor, yeah. So how can we help? So one of the industries that we work really closely with is the trades. And they have the demand for their services, and they could grow, but they cannot find workers, like we've been talking about. So my question is, what foundational elements do these entrepreneurial business owners need to have in place to truly attract those workers? I hate to say it again, but it comes down to PR.

You just have to show your people what matters most to you. And when I say show them, I mean, I really mean show them. Telling's not enough. We can talk about it, you can write about it. You have to find a way. I would take the last question. I'd take the technology at your disposal, and I would create, at a minimum, a hub.

on your website that articulates a visual love letter to the work that you do getting done. And I would update it every week or every month. And I would make sure your people can see that. And then, you know, I would talk about, can you incorporate your passion for the trades into whatever marketing you're working on? It's going to become, I think,

every single company right now who advertises in a traditional way is going to wind up in the next couple of years incorporating this ethos, this philosophy into their single-minded propositions. It's going to become a key component of who you are because of the industrial submarine base and so many other entities who are desperate to hire not 15 or 20, but tens of people. thousands of people. We're going to see, I believe, a seismic shift in the conversation that the country is having, and it's going to impact the way you guys think about your marketing, your branding, and your identity. There's just no way around it. What you just kind of glossed over in California is so true. The gig economy, the freelancer, the number of men and women I've met over the years who

built a decent business that started with a combination of freelancing, entrepreneurship, and the mastery of a skill that was in demand, that's the stuff that made our country great. And when you look at bills like AB5, and when you look at the Pro Act, which just got passed in a way, it's chilling. There is a full-on war against freelancers in California. CIU and the government, they do not want freelancers, period. So that's a conversation too. And that kind of thing is coming to a state near you. So, you know, it's a big hairball, Dave.

It's all connected. And there's reason to be alarmed. But I don't want to alarm you. I just want to tell you that if you've got a tight family over there and you're faced with recruiting challenge, let the world know that you're a tight family. And what you value most is the willingness to get the job done with a sense of humor, with a sense of grit, right? Elevate the things that matter. Make sure the world knows it. The, I don't know, the representation of what occurred of putting the trades down and lifting

higher education up was the poster. Talk about the poster and what it meant. The poster that I made or the, yeah. No, no, no, the one that they put up in the schools. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, that was a reaction to the first one. Dave's talking about when I was in a, I was a senior, I took whatever tests you're supposed to take, and I guess I did well on him and my guidance counselor, Mr. Dunbar, called me to his office to talk about my future. And I only share this because it happened to millions of other kids. And he said, look, you did good on your tests. You here's some paperwork you should look at, sit down with your folks, James Madison, University of Pennsylvania, University of Maryland. These were all options. They were all expensive. This was 1980, and the only four-letter word

in my family that was truly off-limits was dead. So there was no way I was going to borrow money to do this. But to your point, Mr. Dunbar, I said to him, look, I don't know what I'm going to do, and I don't want to borrow money to go in this direction. So I'm going to go to Essex Community College. It's two miles up the road. I'm going to major in everything. I'm going to get out of my comfort zone, and I'm going to try and figure out if I have any interest at all in any skill. Because right now, if the answer is, yeah, I don't know what it is. And he looked at me and he shook his head and he said, you're wasting your time. Let me show you something. And the poster he pointed to was divided right down the middle. There were two guys on it. One guy was wearing a cap,

gown, mortar board, the whole thing. He had just graduated. The institution was behind him and the sun was rising behind him. The whole world was in front of him. On the other side of the poster was a tradesman in a dark and dingy place, head lowered, holding a wrench, looking very much as if he had just won some vocational consolation prize, right? And underneath the bottom of the poster was a slogan that we've all seen a thousand times. This is the first time I saw it. And by the way, remember, this is a recruiting poster for higher ed.

Thus, the caption on this thing says, work smart, not hard. That was the message my guidance counselor told me, reinforced with a visual aid. And implicit in that moment was, look, if you're not careful, you're going to wind up like that guy. Well, that guy on the right-hand side of the poster looked an awful lot like my grandfather, who built the house I was born in without a blueprint, an electrician, a steam fitter,

a pipe fitter, a plumber, my hero. And here he was being essentially, epitomized by a loser next to the embodiment of hope, success, and academic achievement. That's how we laid it out. Those posters were all over the country. Well, they represented a mentality. Yes. This aristocratic, nose in the air mentality that higher ed was the way to further society, and it was the only way to further society. And what they were trying to do was positive in the sense. but what they were doing was standing on the bodies of the tradesmen.

Do it. It goes to Michelle's question. How do you elevate in your company? You do the opposite of that. That's right. That's right. But you have to be careful because all PR overreaches eventually. We did need a good push for more kids to consider a four-year path,

but we weren't content to make the case on its merits. We had to turn the trades and everything else, all community college, all trade schools, all apprenticeships. We had to relegate those things into cautionary tales. And I don't wanna go too far the other way in an attempt to fix it, but I probably will because you don't really know where a line is until you step over it.

And when I say that, Dave, I simply mean that the evidence demands of verdict. $1.7 trillion in student loans is on the books. We're having a big giant argument over whether or not it should be forgiven. We don't have to go there. While they continue to make them. While they continue to make it.

Meanwhile, 10 million open positions, most of which don't require a four-year degree. And here we sit, right here, room full of smart people in 2024. And we all know it. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but we're lending money we don't have to kids who are never going to be able to pay it back, to train them for jobs that don't exist anymore. Now, that's crazy talk, but we've been doing it for 40 years because that poster and everything

it signifies is alive and well in the minds of millions of otherwise well-intended parents and guidance counselors. You're never going to be somebody if you don't get the four-year degree. That was the message. That's it. And the message is false. Yep. And quite the opposite is actually, the verdict is in, quite the opposite is true.

We've got a whole bunch of people who will never be somebody. because they got the wrong four-year degree in the wrong place at the wrong price with the wrong methodology, and it set them up. So again, just for those of you listening at home, tune up real careful to the radio, real careful to the podcast.

We are not saying four-year degrees are a bad thing. We're not saying ignorance is a bad thing. We're not saying education as a concept is a bad thing. When it's overpriced and leveraged and people are studying things that are not useful, it is not lifting society, and if in the process of doing that, the only way to do that is to push down the tradesman

and make that an invalid thing, then you've doubled down on your stupid at that point. Back to Dylan's question, technology, all right? When I was in college, I didn't have this thing. And for those of you listening to home, I'm holding up my smartphone right now. All right, this is a tool. We didn't quite know what it is.

We still don't. It's a portal. in my view, and it'll take you anywhere in the world. 98% of the known information is available through this thing. That simply means if you have a kid with a curious mind and that kid wants to master a skill that's in demand but still scratch the curiosity itch, well, that's the liberal arts degree today.

I literally watched a lecture two weeks ago at MIT on my phone sitting on the tarmac for free. right? It's all out there. So I think the reckoning that you guys are going to need to contend with in the coming weeks and years is this realization, and this is where we started, right, with Gen Z. They're figuring it out. They know something's wrong. They know something is hopelessly mismatched. The message hasn't been honest. And as the honesty starts to rear, its head. There's going to be a mad scramble.

And I think you're going to see a new enthusiasm for the trades. There's going to be a scramble to get skilled and so forth. And you guys will have a front row seat to it. So maybe the answer to her question, the type of PR, is, hey, if you want to stick it to the man,

if you want to go back, you know, every generation coming up wants to rebel against the former's, right? The best way to do that is to go in the trade. That's right. But look, again, I think a balanced workforce is like a balanced human. We need two sides of the coin.

This gray or this blue collar and white collar modality. The color of collars is changing. All your questions regarding tech, prove it. Tech is going to blur white and blue into something gray and purply. and the most valuable employees you have are going to be people who are intensely curious about all things in the world of liberal arts, but also very, very skilled.

These are the people we want. Do you remember during the Republican debate, this would have been 15 or 16, I guess, all 17 are up on stage? I forget what the question was, but Marco Rubio had a great line. He said, ah, you know, what the country needs, are more welders and fewer philosophers, right?

Crowd goes crazy. I get three, four hundred people on my social media saying, hey, this guy's singing your song, right? And I'm like, no, actually. That's not what I mean to say. What I mean to say today is that our country needs more welders who can have an interesting conversation about Descartes or Nietzsche. And we need more philosophers who can run an even bead.

We need more balanced people who at least have an understanding that the world is big and beautiful and vast. And if you are fundamentally curious, you are now armed with a toolbox unlike anything we've ever seen in the history of the world. And that too is reason for enthusiasm, I believe. Mike Roe, ladies and gentlemen, give him a hand. So if someone's curious about the work ethic scholarship or the curriculum, how do they get in touch? In real time, right now, through the end of April, we have a little more than a million dollars

we'll be giving away at microwworks.org. We do this twice a year, trying to do a couple million a year. These are not for four-year degrees. These are for trade schools. Steam fitting, pipe, fitting, welding, heating, air conditioning, electric, and so forth. We've assisted close to 2,000 people. MicroWorks is spelled. M-I-K-E-W-E-W-E-W-E-W-E-W-E-W-R-E.

The money's sitting there. Honestly, folks, go get some. Very cool. Well, that puts this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast in the books. If you're a business owner or leader with the company, we're glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Remember better a weary warrior than a quivering critic.

This world needs more high-quality leaders. So take courage out there and lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Autry Leadership Podcast.