The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mike Vandemaele, CEO at Pro Services Inc. & Building A Career In The Skilled Trades and Maintenence Tech Fields

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

Mike Vandemaele, CEO at Pro Services Inc. & Building A Career In The Skilled Trades and Maintenence Tech Fields Prosatwork.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We're going to be talking to an amazing entrepreneur today and CEO.

We're going to be talking about how he built his company and some of the vision he has for it and the impact he's having in the world. But in the meantime, as always, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Put your arm around them. Send them an email. Say, you need to subscribe to The Chris Voss Show because The Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mom does.

Now, go clean your room. Anyway, guys, thanks for being here. YouTube.com, 4chesschrissvoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrissvoss. Go see the big 130,000 group on LinkedIn, the LinkedIn newsletter, which we're always punching out on weekdays. That's always fun to read. There's always great profiles of brilliant leaders and, of course, book authors on the show there. Today, we have another amazing CEO on the show. They just keep coming. I don't know where. We just put them in the Google machine

and out spits the CEOs from the Google machine. That doesn't sound like a good looks, but this one was not spitted, but he appeared. Let's put it that way. We just improv the ramble every time. So you just never know what's going to come out. But it's usually funny. And if it's not funny, it's not funny. But then that's sometimes funny. Anyway, Mike Vandemille, founder and CEO of Pro Services, is on the show with us today. He started his company in 1987.

I graduated high school in 1987 in Portage, Michigan. Did I say that right? Is it Portage? It's Portage, yeah. There you go. Do I have to say it with an accent, a Michigander accent? I don't even know what that would be, but it sounded good. He began his career as a pipe fitter and built the company from the ground up

and provides skilled trades and maintenance technician solutions to manufacturing customers across the country. Welcome to the show, Mike. How are you? Great. How are you? Yeah, Mike. I'm doing great. Can you calm down just a little bit, though? You're bringing too much energy to the show. Too much. There you go. It's wonderful to have you all the way from Portage, Michigan. You might be the first guest who's called in from there.

So there you go. But we're glad to have you on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please, sir. Prosatwork.com. Prosatwork.com. And let's talk about you and your company. You've been around for a long time. Like I said, you started the company the year after I graduated high school.

Yeah, it seems like a long time ago now. It feels like a long time ago, believe me. But, you know, it's still very interesting and still love what we do. Because I'm 100. I don't know about you, but. I feel like I'm 100. I don't know about you, but... I feel like I'm 100. I'm going on 55 next year in a few months, so I'm feeling it. You're just a baby.

Oh, thanks. Well, it's good to know. Does it get better? It does. It gets better with age, just like wine. There you go. Well, I hope so. Every time I sneeze, my skeleton falls out of my body,

so I have to put it back and all that good stuff. So give us an overview of your company, what you guys do, and how you do it, please. Yeah, the company, like I said, I worked as a plumber, pipefitter, welder, went to a UA apprenticeship program to learn that right out of high school and worked for a few contractors for about 10 years and just uh wasn't really loving what the way we were working for the clients i felt like the client wasn't necessarily getting the biggest value for the dollars they were spending quite simply so i just thought one day well, I might as well just go on to work

in the business for myself. There you go. What does your company do specifically? The company was founded and started on process piping. So industrial plants like the pulp and paper industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the brewery industry, food and beverage industry, we specialized in process piping for their various processes in their plants. Awesome. So anywhere from installation to maintenance or, you know, shutdowns, whatever it took. And this is sort of blue-collar work that's necessary.

Like it's never going to get replaced by, you know, computers and, you know, Silicon Valley, I suppose. Yeah, I've got a big vision, but I don't see it ever being replaced by computers or robots. And there's still, you know, we've had a lot of blue-collar CEOs on and it's becoming a really high-paid specialized skill trade where there's fewer and fewer people that

are doing it, but it's incredibly valuable. It's not going to go away anytime soon. You have to lay a foundation to this country that's based in blue-collar to be able to build white-collar on top of it. I agree. The biggest crisis I feel we have in our country today is the shortage of uh skilled trades and maintenance technicians yeah and and the pay is good too i mean i'm very good yeah you

i see people that are like oh i don't want to go in a blue collar i'm gonna go work at mcdonald's i'm like have you seen the pay that's over there? Like, they get paid really well. And it seems to me like the more people don't realize that, the more, you know, it's a skill that's always going to be out there. So tell us about your mission, your vision for the company, and what you guys are trying to do. Well, the mission and vision for the company is just to provide the best skilled trades and maintenance technician services we can for the industry.

And do you guys just do the local area? Are you guys nationwide? Oh, we're nationwide on the maintenance technician services. We have maintenance technicians working in 24, 25 different states today. Oh, nice. Nice. Various industries. Now, what's the difference between, what's skilled maintenance work?

Is that for maintaining things? What's the terminology for the foundation there? You know, my terminology, whether it's correct or not is a i feel like a skilled trades person as an individual it's gone through a very specific trade apprenticeship program becomes a professional in an individual trade with some knowledge of others you know they can build things they can things, they can do high-end maintenance on things. And then the maintenance technician business started about 10 years ago. It seemed like the customers we had were continuously wanting to take some of our skilled trades guys and put them into their maintenance teams.

So, you know, I could see the shortage of skilled trades people as it was. And then with the industrial maintenance, you know, people wanted to use our guys in their maintenance team. Number one, it wasn't the best fit for them using an individual skilled trades guy in the maintenance team. And the individual skilled trades guy didn't really want to be in a maintenance team. So it was kind of a band-aid. So that's when I started thinking about what's the future look like for what are we going to do for maintenance technicians in the future?

Oh, yeah. Pipe fitters, plumbers, millwrights, iron workers, lineman service, maintenance, residential and commercial, HVAC, and plumbing services. You know, I lived in Vegas for 20-plus years. You want to talk about people that make good money, people that work on air conditioners. Yes, Florida. Oh, Florida too, yeah, I guess with the humidity on there, yeah. Yeah, I think my doctor was cheaper than, than my, you know, we, it

seemed like every couple of years we'd blow out an air conditioner and you have to, in Vegas you have like one for every floor. Yes. And so, you know, one, it's always like one of the two of them is going to go bad. You just never know which one. And you know, it's one of those things where it's just, it's never one of those things that's going to get replaced by the internet where you're like, can I just file a ticket on the Internet and it'll fix my air conditioning? It'll never happen.

You've got to have a guy who comes out and works on the unit and all that sort of good stuff. So what do you guys provide? Do you guys provide education or do you provide jobs where you help book stuff or how does it work? Well, how it works on the maintenance technician side is when we first started offering the maintenance technician service, we were basically looking for individuals working as a maintenance technician that had already had some skill sets. But it didn't take long.

I realized, okay, we're doing the same thing everybody else in the country is doing. And I said to our team, I said, if we're going to be very successful in the maintenance industry, we have to develop and create maintenance technicians, not go find them. Yeah. And there's probably a lot of entry point in needing to teach people to be professional, to do the job right, and all that good stuff. Because, you know, I've had a few friends that have hired people in Vegas that didn't, you know, weren't licensed and didn't have the, you know, pay under the table guys,

and that didn't work out too well. So I'm like, you want to make sure they're licensed and professional. You definitely want a licensed professional. And that's where you know i kind of do a separation of the skilled trades guys go through a very extensive apprenticeship program yeah four or five years and then they get their journeyman certificate yeah the maintenance industry in our country has always been run a little differently where they basically hire a guy in as a maintenance person and he learns from the individual he's working next to.

So he's going to learn whatever the person he's working with. And there really has never, in my mind, been a very good education to be a maintenance technician. We kind of separate the two. There's a place for both of them. So we started our own, what we call Pro University about eight years ago. Pro University is a maintenance technician school. We screen individuals. We start them in what we call an apprenticeship program to be a maintenance

technician, not a skilled trades individual. So he's learning various skills needed to keep machinery running. You know, like the reactive repairs, that's basically what we classify a maintenance technician as. There you go. They're taught various skill sets, and instead of a four- or five-year program, it's a two-year program. We pay our students to go to school instead of them paying to go to school.

That's pretty cool. We supply them with benefits. Wow. They go to school 90 days full-time. Wow. Pay training. For 12 weeks. That is awesome i mean let's see if you've seen that what college

costs and then the amount of pay that i have a couple granddaughters going to college so i know what it costs yeah and then the the pay like there's so many people that go to college and they pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars and they come out and they've earned degrees that qualify for jobs that make them like $30,000 a year. Exactly. And you're like, you can't. You can't pay back your student loans. You can't pay back your student loans. It's crazy.

And so people can apply with you guys to do a maintenance apprenticeship, mechanic work, and they get paid training. That's a pretty darn good deal. They get paid to go to school, $40 a week, health benefits, and then after 90 days, guaranteed job placement. Wow. You know, this is the sort of thing where we've had lots of authors on the show that have talked about this and done studies with it. And in Europe, they're much better at their school system where they kind of find and identify what you're good at early on. And some people are very tactile.

They're very kinetic. They're good at working with things. Like if you try and explain something to me to teach me something, my brain will go. But if you put up my hands and I get to play with it and toy with it and really kinetically grasp it, I can do it. If you show me how to do it, I can do it. But if you're trying to explain it to me, I'm just like, ooh. And, you know, many people are just that way. That's the way they are.

And they're really good with their hands like i see people on like tiktok and stuff that are like just amazing artisans of of being able to build or work on stuff or you know whatever they do they're just they're just so damn good at it and there's people that that uh that excel at that in our industries. There are. Like you said, I think one of the couple things like a lot of the vocational classes were taken out of our high schools years ago. You don't hear very many people telling their kids when they graduate high school, well, go into a trade. They tell them to go to college.

There's some people that's not for it. Like my nephew is that way. He's not into college. He's not into all the book learning. And he's good at being a people person. He's good at selling. And so a lot of people need to realize that maybe people can work in the trades. The money is good. Holy crap.

The money's very good. It's not going away anytime soon. What about unions? There's still a lot of unions running around for these sort of industries, right? A lot of unions. All the trades individuals are union. The maintenance technicians can be union or non-union

depending on the plan and the environment that's currently in the plants. Yeah. And what is the number here I've got from you guys? 600,000 industrial maintenance technicians are in the U.S. with the average age 70% over 55. So we need more young people coming into this industry then. We need a lot more young people coming into the industry.

You know, I like to say to people, you know, where would we be in our country if we don't have industrial manufacturing? Yeah. I think we've seen some of that through COVID, you know, the supply chain issues that we're all having. Oh, yeah. I mean, they were saying that one of the top jobs that young people want nowadays is TikTok influencer. And last time I checked, that doesn't pay very well. We put videos on TikTok and we're still waiting for a first check. of work in the union trades uh you know they they get paid when they get laid off uh they've got great health benefits um you know it's it's a it's a good business and you know it's one of those things where no one can take that skill away from you you know you can get fired from your job because you're working as a manager or something you can go get another job as a manager but that's

pretty high competitive but you know you once you have that skill, it can't be taken away from you. Cheers forever. Yeah. And these machines just get more complicated too. We've had some people that come from, I think it's Fabtech, the big convention for Expo. Fabtech, they've been on the show. We usually hit the show every year and do interviews uh, these guys get paid a ton of money. I mean, even like small robotics and stuff. And it's because it's so specialized and you, like you mentioned, you have to go for years for training and learning the business. You know, it's not something you can just like learn overnight. Like I can figure out some some stuff to learn overnight but this is stuff that you really have to know and understand stuff

and uh yeah i've been at a loss sometimes with some of the things where i'm like how come my air conditioner isn't working the guy takes it apart he's explaining it to me and i'm just like i don't know this is why i pay you a whole ton of money whole ton of money. There you go. So, paid wages and benefits to go to school, guaranteed job placement after the first 90 days. You guys really have this down to a business. Is it in every state that this is available or in certain states?

The Pro University currently is only in Portage, Michigan. Okay. So, the first 90 days they have to come here. Okay. But then the rest of their curriculum is online. Okay. So the first 90 days they have to come here. Okay. But then the rest of their curriculum is online. Okay. And it is Department of Labor certified.

It's, to our knowledge, the only Department of Labor certified maintenance technician program in the country. That's pretty awesome. And so they can go back to wherever they are in the U.S. to utilize the skills? Wherever they want to go, we'll place them. We have, like I say, we're working in 24, 26 different states today as

technicians. Now, is there a dormitory where I can party at like most colleges? No. There's no party. No partying. Well, it's very good. We really screen these people, look for the elite. There you go.

We like to consider it like the Blue Angels. Ah, there you go. We're the Blue Angels of maintenance. Well, hence the title of your company, Pro Services, right? Yes. I mean, you do want professional people in the business. Like I said, I had some friends that have had homework done that weren't licensed. And I was like, wait, you went and used someone who's not licensed?

And they probably don't have insurance either. Probably not. And you're going to let them work on your home? That's like an end goal. Oh, you don't know, Chris. And then later you get a call and you're just like, yeah, that was a really bad idea. And we have a mess on our hands. We're out a ton of money.

And I'm like, yeah, that's why you always hire professionals, especially for the insurance part. Well, you know, that was part of my vision as well. You know, like they say, sometimes my mission when people ask me what it is, I'm like, I want to change the way maintenance is performed in America. Because I feel like so many occupations, we have professionals. We go to an oral surgeon. We go to a heart surgeon. A nurse has to go to school for how many years and get a certificate to be a nurse bedside. A dental hygienist.

And sometimes in some of the conversations with CEOs or plant managers I'm like well when we're talking about their maintenance issues and their down times trending the wrong way I'm like well you know who do you or your wife go to get your hair cut? What's that got to do with the maintenance issues in my plant? And I'm like well the person you and your wife are probably going to to get your haircuts, at least gone through some kind of an educational class, got a certificate to say they can do that. But yet you'll hire an individual off the street, put them out in your plant to work

on a multimillion dollar asset and expect them to keep that machine running at the maximum amount of time. Yeah. There's something wrong with that equation in my mind. Yeah. I mean, you, you,

you know, you know, if you've got to go to the doctor, you can go to the alleyway doctor. I mean, you can, if you want, but,

uh, your appendix probably is not going to end up, uh, you know, whatever taken out, right? I wouldn't advise it. So, yeah. Being professional is into that occupation is my mission and goal.

And this is a business that will just, as businesses grow, I mean, you know, you've got manufacturing lines that need to be maintained, you know, all sorts of different things to build stuff, manufacture, whether it's, you know, everybody needs this stuff. When the heating and air plumbing goes out or the plumbing goes out or you need to build stuff to make stuff, this is the ground floor of what needs to be done, and it's not going away anytime soon, you know. It's not a sort of thing.

And it's very skilled. And it's interesting to me that more people don't want to get into it because it's a great college alternative. The entry point is much lower cost-wise than going to college. And it sounds like, too, you can get your feet on the ground sooner than going to college for four years. You can get your feet on the ground sooner than going to college for four years. You can get your feet on the ground starting to earn money quicker. Yeah, that's the intent of our entire program is to make these individuals,

they're drinking through a four-inch fire hose in that first 90 days to learn as much as they can. So immediately day one, when they're in a plant working on a maintenance team, they're making some kind of an impact day one. There you go. There you go. What else have we touched on that you guys do with your company? Well, we do a lot of big installations as well with the skilled trades people. We have specialized in the pulp and paper industry, the corrugated industry, and brewery industry for the past 20, 30 years.

So we do a lot of major projects as well. And just basically helping people get good at this stuff. Is there an ongoing relationship people have with you after you place them at jobs do they do they have any ongoing training or or uh or can they keep coming back to you for job placement well there's ongoing training but i like to phrase it as working as a maintenance technician in the industry for an end user, you have a job. That is your job. That's where your job is going to be.

The education is not great. You've got to learn a lot on your own. But I like to say going to work for a professional organization, that's the service they provide becomes a career for them they can they can go through the curriculum become a tech one they can advance to a tech two with further education they can go to a tech three they can go into maintenance management maintenance planning they have a career you know what they want to do. And on top of that, working for us in maintenance, if your wife gets a promotion,

but it's three States over clear across the country, no big problem. No big deal. We'll find you a job where your wife's being relocated. That, that makes sense. You can, I mean,

you can use this anywhere in America. Yeah. Or the world probably. In the world. Yeah. That makes it, you can use this anywhere in America. Yeah. Or the world probably. In the world. Yeah. That makes it, that definitely makes it easier. I mean, having a trade where you can work anywhere in the world, in my business, I can work anywhere in the world as long as I got some wifi every now and then. Uh, it, it makes all the difference in the world. You know, you're not locked down to anything. You can travel, you can do stuff. Um, you know, it makes all the difference in the world. You're not locked down to anything. You can travel. You can do stuff. It makes all the difference in the world.

So you've built this company, and it's been around for how many years are we at now? If you start in 87. I think 35. 35 years. What are some of the things that you've attributed to the success of building a company that's lasted that long? I think it's pretty simple. Do what you say you're going to do. Do the right thing always.

Deliver value. You know, I always tell my people, we have to provide a value beyond the service of what we're doing. Because anybody can provide the service, like you said. You know, there's a zillion people out there. Some may be licensed, some may be licensed some maybe not but make sure we're delivering a value that you know it's like the most value we can give you for give them for their dollar versus the littlest value we can give them for the dollar what our goal is and contributing is a big deal

to you too as well yeah we we consider ourselves a team member when we go to work whether we're skilled trades or maintenance technicians. We're part of that team. We're part of an extension of that organization's team to maximize the output of the manufacturing process. And that's one of the greatest things about being an entrepreneur is reaching that point where you can give back to your community and you can be a leader in your community and make your community a better

place. I mean, it just is more rewarding. Yeah, and it's one of the things I always got off on as being an entrepreneur where giving back, whether we gave back to a local hospital for abused child victims

or, you know, just supporting the local community and helping out. It's one of the beauties of starting a company and making an impact and changing the world, and I'm sure you've probably impacted a lot of lives over all these years. We have. You know, it's very – I enjoy the stories from people that come back and say, you know, you really changed my life. I had one guy come to me. He was working in a bowling alley.

I looked at his resume, and he wanted to go through the Pro-U. I'm looking at it, and I'm like, works in a bowling alley. Well, what's he doing in the bowling alley? Well, he's the guy responsible for the pin setting machines every time they break down make sure they're all operating oh yeah so he's working on a bowling alley making 12 an hour wow today that individual's working in industry as a high tech three maintenance technician making 45 an hour so whenever i see him he's like you know you changed my life my family's life all right guys, guys, I'm quitting this podcast business.

We have several success stories like that where we're taking individuals, evaluate their skill set, improve their skill sets, and or develop them from just green. That is crazy, man. That is crazy. It's such a good business. Like I said, we have the Fabtech people on, and, you know, we'll talk to welders and all sorts of people.

I think that show's going on in Atlanta right now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they'll talk about the money they're making, and I'm like, yeah, I mean, you might get a little dirty in the day, but you can go home and shower and, uh, you know, the power that you have of, of what you do and the earning power. And it's, it's something you could never be taken from you. Uh, and my understanding is Winston Churchill, uh, inspired you. Uh, do you tell us a little bit about that. Well, I've been inspired by several people.

Just people that have made a difference in the world. I'm a big Winston Churchill fan. Never, never give up. Never surrender. Never give up. Do the right thing. Go on to the seas and oceans. We shall defend the armies wherever they call us.

Work hard and dream big is always my advice to people. Work hard. Work hard and dream big. Work smart. Work hard, work smart. You know, that's something that a lot of people don't realize anymore. They're just like, you know, there's this new sort of phenomenon in the employment industry called quiet quitting, where these people aren't happy with what they're doing,

and they're doing a thing called quiet quitting. Have you heard of this? Yeah, they just don't show up. They show up, but they don't show up, right? They're there, but they're just kind of like, I'm just sitting here at my desk. It's kind of like one show. What was that one movie, Office Space, that was kind of a comedic take on things. But, you know, it speaks to me with the quiet quitting phenomenon

that people need to find what they love. And I always tell people that. I mean, even in companies that I started and invested at an early age and we had for 10, 15 years, I never loved them. I loved the money from them, but I never loved them. I was an entrepreneur that unfortunately never got into much of anything he loves. About the only thing I found that I love passionately that I will do and I love sitting front row on is my podcast. And that's about it. About everything I've ever owned and I've made millions companies.

I, I still didn't love them. I go to work and go, I hate this shit. I hate this company. I hate what it does. I ain't working for it every day. The only reason I'm here is to kick ass as a CEO and be innovative,

make money. And so these people, people need to realize that, you know, you can make a lot of money and still be very unhappy. And, uh, I might have quite a quit a of them, actually. I don't know. I think I wasn't allowed to as CEO, but I felt like I wanted to. And so people need to find something they love, something they're passionate about. And I've seen, I've known a lot of people that have gone into white collar business and they haven't loved it. And they've gone into craftsman trades or

some sort of kinetic trade with their hands and they're just brilliant at it you know one of my friends was a comedian who did stand-up comedy and he's now making these opal jewelries uh and he's kicking butt at it and he does like all the there's all this stuff you gotta do like soldering and he loves it and he's good at it and I'm like you went from comedy to working with your hands like holy crap and so all these quiet quitting people they really need to just go find

what their passion is what they love and it may not be working with your mind it may be working with your hands and your mind you can work with both, yeah. But no, I feel fortunate. I still love what we do. I love what we deliver to our customers and helping them be better at what they do.

Sounds like it makes all the difference, loving what you do. And you've been doing it for as long as you have. Yeah, I plan on at least another 10 years. There you have. Yeah, I plan on at least another 10 years. There you go. I'm going to be doing what Warren Buffett says. I'll retire seven years after I die. So I'll just be on the podcast as a zombie. They'll just prop me up like, what was that, Weekend at Bernie's movie?

And they'll just put me on the show and probably inject me with a whole ton of coffee and kickstart me. That's pretty much what they do every morning over me on the show and probably inject me with a whole ton of coffee and kickstart me. That's pretty much what they do every morning over here at the show anyway. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on, Mike. Anything you want to touch on or tease out before we go? No, you know, it's just, like I say, my passion is to change the way maintenance is performed in America. I want to bring professionalism to the maintenance occupation because I really believe with the professional skilled trades individuals and a professional maintenance technician we can really make a major difference in this country

and it sounds like good advice too for parents who are looking at their school kids I mean certainly if I if I was a parent looking at a college bill, I'd be like, well, let's figure out what this kid's good at. Yeah, before we spend all that money. Before you spend all that money. You know, it's the time. Yeah. It takes a lot of time. And then, you know, paying back these loans.

I mean, I know people that are close to my age, about 50, they'll announce on Facebook. They're like, I just paid off my student loan. I'm like, oh, my you're you're my age and uh you know we did mortgages for 20 years with one of my companies and i would see people that would come in that would be doctors and they're getting paid like you know 250 400 a year but they're paying like a hundred a year in, in, uh, their school loans. And by the time I would balance out all their debts and stuff, they would be almost minimum wage. Yeah. And I'd be like, I'd be like, Holy crap, you're a doctor. You know, I know lawyers that are, that are, that are, you know, up to their neck in, in debt. And you, you're like your quality of life for the next 10 years, isn't that great?

Even though you're a doctor or a lawyer, because you're servicing these loans. And then a lot of people don't end up happy in whatever they're doing. It was a good point you brought up. You got to do something you love doing. You do. It makes all the difference when you show up for work. Uh, you know, I get to sit front row with some of those brilliant minds, the coolest people like yourself. Um, we have the greatest journalists on the show. We have, uh, people that, you know, spend 10,000 hours or you've spent, you've spent hundreds of thousands

of hours lifetime. Um, but you know, people have spent so much time on the show and I get to sit front row with them. You know, a lot of them are people we see on TV and they just get like a three minute blurb on TV. And I get to ask the great questions and I'm like, well, I didn't get any of my questions answered there. I get to do it. And I just love it. It's like a front row seat to learning. I probably have a better college education doing this than I do anything else. And so, uh uh doing something i love makes all the it makes all the difference when you wake up in the morning you're like i'm gonna go to work today you know you're not just like oh god this thing again and i've been there and i've owned the company you know i'm the boss and i'm just like oh this thing again i don't want to do

this i hate this i love being a ce a CEO. I love being the guy who kicks ass and innovates and the guy who makes things work. But on that, there were some things that I'm just like, I really hate this industry. Like, I really don't. Sometimes I'd be like, yeah, vice president, you babysit that thing every day. I don't want to deal with that thing. You know, in college, it's great. But just i really believe there's a lot of individuals that go to college you really don't want to go to college there are there are you know people just go well what do you do now go to college i know my dad said go to college it's a line from

fight club find what you love find what you're passionate about make a difference explore some things too try some different things on in life. That's what I tell young people, especially with internships and stuff. Try some things in life. See what kind of fits you. Because the worst thing you can do is go 20 years just miserable and then you wake up one day at 40 and go, I really hate this.

I don't want to do this anymore. This is a bad choice. Pick your game early and get it on. Well, thank you very much, Mike, for being on the show. Very insightful and very inspiring work as an entrepreneur. I've done like 27 different

corporations. You've done one. I clearly messed up somewhere in what I was doing. Well, my intentions were to go into the concept at 17 years old after high school and get my journey started. Then my intention was to go to school to become an attorney.

I just loved what we were doing. There you go. There you go. Now you charge attorneys a whole lot of money to fix their plumbing and their HVAC. Just as high as theirs. There you go.

Great story to have you on, man. Give me your.com so people can find you on the internet one more time. ProsAtWork.com. There you go. Guys, be sure to check him out. You can find him on the website. You know, I highly recommend, like I say, you've seen our Fab Tech shows and some of the blue-collar.

We've had plenty of blue-collar folks that are making a lot of money in blue-collar work. It's sad that in this country we've kind of had this sort of attitude where, you know, in China they have people that want to be astronauts and engineers still. And that's what made this country great was engineers. And now we have less engineers than any other country in the world. And they actually come here and they learn to be engineers and they go to their countries and do the thing. We need to have more skilled workers to build the foundation of this country that helps make it great. And it makes all the difference in the world. So if you're a parent out there, check it out.

If you're looking for a job or trying to find your place in the world, don't quite quit. Go find something you love. And believe me, it'll make all the difference in the world. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Go to all of our LinkedIn properties. Lots of stuff going on there. All the Facebook groups you can find on Facebook as well.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. That should have us out, Mike.