E{emum} | Your Career Decision Defines Your Entire Life

Why, at 61 years old, are you making a career change?

If I don't do this, I'm going to regret it.

If I don't do this, I think I'm going to look back and wish.

Wish that I had.

In high school, I knew what a truck driver was, but I had a very different image in my head than what I now know to be true.

That decision will affect you your entire life.

If you're thinking about a career in the trades and you want to know what employers actually look for, what the work is really like, and what nobody tells you before you get started, you're in the right place.

Built in the Midwest features conversations that'll help you figure out if this path is for you.

For someone who's never heard of us before, give some context of who are you?

What are we doing?

Yeah.

And why are we doing it?

Yeah, why are we doing it?

Why is this important to them?

You know, it's a really interesting question.

And because it can be very complex, especially when you look at the demographic of people that come through these schools programs.

And when I say 18 to 80, it's literally every.

That entire age group, 18, 80, and everybody in between.

And when we're talking about younger people, all right, say right out of high school, it would be important for them for a variety of reasons.

One, these are great careers, these are great jobs, they are great pay, great benefits.

And these are things that they can do and be passionate about in their life with relatively short term vocational training where they don't have to go to school for eight years to be a chiropractor.

Now, don't get me wrong, if that's what you want to do, by all means.

But there's other kind of successful paths in life as well.

You know, the other thing is, as we kind of dive through that 18 to 80, you look at like a lot of people just in this class right now.

I mean, look at how many people are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, that are coming through these trades programs.

And I'd like to talk to them and say, you know, why at 61 years old, are you making a career change?

A lot of them tell me the same thing, that they've been doing the same thing for many, many years.

And maybe they got laid off.

Maybe they just needed a change of pace.

Maybe they just wanted to get into a new career.

And they said, you know, what for?

For a month of training for CDL or six weeks of training for heavy equipment, they're like, what do I have to lose?

So at that point, I think there's opportunities there that they see and they said, you know what, if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it.

If I don't do this, I think I'm going to look back and wish that I had.

And so it is interesting.

So whether you're one of those young people right out of high school and you're looking for a great trade, you know, these could be a great fit for you.

And so that's what we're gonna be talking about on these podcasts is why it's a good fit and giving you education and you make your own decision, right, but at least educating you on what these are, what this looks like.

It's funny that we talk about this because just talked to a veteran student, this is a couple weeks ago and he's, guess how old he is?

40s, 26.

Right.

And you know what he told me, you know what he was worried about is he's like, well, I just, I don't want to be the old guy in the class.

I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding.

He's like, I don't want to be the old guy in the class with, you know, a bunch of 18, 19 year olds.

Like, you know, that's why I don't want to go to community college or university.

He's like, because it is predominantly all young people right out of high school.

And I was like, not only will you not be the old guy in the class, but you might be the young guy in the class.

He's like, well, what do you mean?

I was like, well, yeah, I'm sure there'll be a person or two that has come right out of high school.

But I was like, you're going to see a lot of people, as I see on the roster that are in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

And I'm like, there's actually a guy in your class that's 65 years old, so I hope he doesn't make you feel old.

So he got a kick out of it and laughed because he was worried about that at being 26, being the old guy in the class and going to school with a bunch of 18, 19 year old kind of kids.

And at that point he's been in the military a long time and, and so he's very different kind of maturity level.

And I think the school has done this for so many years that it knows how to take people right outta high school and people in their mid-20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and people in their 60s and kind of bring them all together under the same roof and help them all be successful in their own way.

And it is interesting cause I've listened to other podcasts, watched other videos about different learning styles, and it's funny how you get the Generation X learning style and you get the millennial learning style and this Generation Z learning style.

And we'll have all these people in the same class, and they are very different in their own regard.

But regardless how the programs are set up, they're designed to set you up for success.

So regardless, all these people end up receiving so much in the program and end up being successful.

I don't know if that answered your question.

There's something I want to touch on there because so much of what we do is like, our whole kind of guiding philosophy is that we are helping set people up for success in the trades.

It's never been about pumping people through classes to just get our graduation rates at a certain level.

It's never been about speed people through before they're ready.

It's not about that.

But I want to level some transparency.

We are here kind of as representatives of a trade school.

Two trade schools, really, Midwest Truck Driving School and North Country Heavy Equipment and Electrical Line School.

So those are kind of the programs that we specifically offer, which covers, I mean, it covers really a couple core areas, which is truck driving, electrical linemen, and heavy equipment operator.

Those are sort of the buckets that we play in.

Exactly.

But what we're doing here and what we've, you know, really kind of the bigger picture and bigger mission is like, we are here to empower people to start and get hired in trades careers.

That is what we're here to do.

And there's stuff that we just can't include as part of the curriculum of when they're here at our school.

But there is a lot of material out there, a lot of things that people just don't know before they make a decision.

Absolutely.

And you and I have both been at sort of the mercy of making decisions around education before, where we didn't really know what we were getting into.

No.

And then nobody really, like, gave you the heads up.

No.

And then you kind of get trapped.

Right?

You kind of get trapped and you're like, well, this is what.

Or you get trapped in the status quo.

Well, this is what everybody's doing, so you gotta do it too.

And you.

You don't know the different options.

And I think that, to me, is maybe what this is all about, is about giving people Options.

Options and opportunity.

That's what this is about.

Because.

And this drives me crazy.

And I see it all the time when we do tours.

I'll say, can somebody in this room, and there's 30, 35 ISD or CTE kids in the room, tell me what alignment is?

Right?

They're at a lineman school, right.

Mind you, they're at alignment school.

Tell me what alignment is.

And maybe one of them will say, well, don't they, like, build power lines or something?

And these are high school kids, right?

And I'm like, you guys.

So that's what this is about.

And that's why we like doing tours and stuff.

It's about career exploration and about checking out these different careers, checking out these different trades.

And like you said.

Yeah, so our specialty as these two schools is CDL training, lineman training, and heavy equipment operator training.

But you know what?

The fact of the matter is, we love the trades.

We love the trades.

We push the trades.

And maybe one of those programs isn't for you.

I mean, I have buddies that are millwrights.

I have buddies that are pipefitters.

I have buddies that are carpenters.

I have buddies that work and build the big ships at Marinette Marine.

I mean, you know what I mean?

There's a lot of different trades out there.

And so that's what this is about, is about exploring these different careers.

Because I will tell you in high school, and I'm curious, I want to put you on the spot here, rj, but if I asked you, your senior of high school, rj, tell me what alignment is, could you.

You could have asked me that last

year and I wouldn't know.

Exactly.

Because I wouldn't know.

Well, so not only.

So that was never even a viable career option for you in high school.

It wasn't even a thing you were even potentially thinking about, because you even know what it was, let alone that it was.

It would have been a viable career option.

And so I think that's where I get excited about this, is to be able to educate young people, but not just young, but young, old, in between, about these different opportunities.

But also, you know, part of it, speak to that younger generation and say, hey, you know what?

Have you thought about this stuff?

Are you familiar with this stuff?

Because if you don't know about it, like, I think about, like, Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan or some of the great different athletes that we know, you know, if they didn't play that sport, would they ever know that they were great at it or that they were Passionate about it.

Or, you know, you think about that if Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins never spoke in front of audiences and made the massive impact that they did, if they never put themselves out there to do that, do you think they ever would have found the passion in that and found out how good they were actually at that?

And so I think that's what this is about.

It's a much bigger mission to explore these different things and give people maybe some different context they weren't thinking about.

And I've been doing it with my own kids lately because.

And I hear that with my.

With Aspen, she's in kindergarten and I ask her, what do you want to be?

And she literally has four different options she's thinking about, like doctor, policeman, teacher, maybe there was one more.

But that's it, right?

Because those are like the boom.

Those are the cookie cutter blocks.

As you get older, I like to assume that all of a sudden, what is just two or three options?

Like my son, firefighter, that's it, right.

What are the chance of him actually becoming a firefighter?

Probably not going to happen.

Maybe, right.

You know, and I would be excited if he was, but probably not.

But as you get older and you get more educated, all of a sudden you're like, well, there's hundreds, if not thousands of different career paths you can take.

And I think that's what this is about is it's.

It's about educating people about what's out there, what exists.

Because the fact that I, in high school, I did not know what alignment was, I had no idea.

If it had told me, like, give me the definition of alignment, I. I had no idea that they build, maintain, distribution and transmission power lines in our electrical grid.

I have no idea about that.

Right.

So that's why we do.

I think what we do and being able to reach more people and talk about these things and bring more value from us into their lives.

Well, outside of just knowing about it, I think there is also the matter of what you think you know about it.

In high school, I knew what a truck driver was, but I had a very different image in my head than what I now know to be true.

Same with construction.

It was never an option because I thought it meant something, that it wasn't favorable in my mind.

I dismissed it as a possibility because I didn't really know that much, but I thought I knew enough to make a decision.

And really what we want to do here is we want to dig deeper than that.

Like, you can't make.

Absolutely.

I won't say you can't.

Many people make decisions based off of like a quick Google search and a couple brochures.

And they make decisions worth tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, years of their life that stem into their career, which takes up the bulk of their life.

And then you see the rate of career dissatisfaction.

It's like, well, maybe if you had more information at the start and you made a better decision for yourself, then maybe you would actually be in something that you enjoy.

Absolutely.

And not just did what maybe your parents did or that, you know, oh well, your parents went to Michigan State or U of M. And you know, you should go there too, spending, you know, 50 grand a year, 60 grand a year to go there and end up with, you know, $150,000 in student debt.

Maybe this is your wake up call to question that decision.

Like maybe the status quo and is not the best option.

And it is for some people and it's not for others.

But you gotta make sure, I mean the fact that we have, what is it like a 52% dropout rate for first year freshmen in universities.

So more people drop out their first year than actually make it through.

Is it because they learned like, oh, maybe this wasn't for me.

Maybe a little knowledge or education and conversation would go a long way other than just, well, this is what everyone else is doing, so this is what I should do too.

When in fact there's a lot of amazing opportunities out there and you got to give yourself a fighting chance, right, to, to, to check those different things out 100%.

I, I, I have to tell this story because the reason why I went to Northern.

Yeah.

All right.

So making a decision, I wasn't asked where I was going to go to story, where it's going to go to school.

Sophomore year of high school, I was asked randomly.

I was not on the team, but I was asked to be the backup for the backup on the Quiz bowl team.

Like 0% chance that I actually am involved.

But like, well, we have the second seat just in case someone like two people fall down a set of stairs.

So they're like, hey, we're going to Marquette tomorrow, do you want to come with us?

I'm like, that sounds way better than what I was going to be doing otherwise.

So I hop in the bus, we go up to Marquette and, and we get up there, we roll onto Northern's campus.

I've never been there before.

And I get off the bus and just like 14 year old me with rainbows in my Eyes.

Oh, yeah.

This place is amazing.

This is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

I'm going to blew you away.

Walk into the academic building, the university, they've got a Starbucks in the basement.

And I never had Starbucks before.

I'm like, I'm coming here.

I no idea what I'm going to study, what I'm going to do, but I just made a snap judgment there.

And I later went through through their list of programs like that one seems good.

And justified it around that experience.

Is that a good way to make

a decision about college?

No, no, it's terrible.

But it is that excitement.

And you get almost starstruck when you go to some of these campuses and you have these big elaborate buildings and you go to.

And I went to Michigan State, so you go to Spartan Stadium, right?

And you're like, holy, why you get in there and the student section or the Breslin Center.

And don't get me wrong, I love watching Tom Izzo.

I still do.

But you get into that and it's like, wow, this is magnificent.

It's beautiful.

But is that why you should go to college?

Because you like watching football or you like watching March Madness?

And I still like watching March Madness.

All right.

But.

Well, it's the nature of when we make decisions, emotion usually pushes you along the path.

And then you justify it with facts.

You get excited about something.

You see it could be an ad, it could be a recruiter, it could be someone else talking about it.

And you say, this thing is amazing.

You're like, you're right, it is.

And then you try and find facts that support that decision.

It's like that confirmation of bias.

You will work hard to justify your own decisions.

And that's why I want on this show where we're going to bring in multiple perspectives.

We're going to bring in guests of instructors, recruiters, employers, people in these industries so people can hear perspectives beyond our own admittedly biased view.

Sure, absolutely.

And I think that's what I'm so excited about is to bring in people that have completely different experiences than my own.

We work with a lot of veterans.

I'm not a veteran, but I look forward to being able to talk to veterans that picked maybe the lineman career or the truck driving career after their military career.

And maybe why did they pick those careers and what got them excited about become an alignment.

And so I look forward to being able to pick their brains.

And maybe somebody that's in high school that maybe never thought about being in the military said, hey, that's actually kind of a good, cool gig.

Like I get free education, free college or university or trade school, whatever you want to do.

And not to mention for him, he got his motivation for trade school or other people that I know got their motivation for trade school in the military, because the military exposes you to a lot of different experiences where you might find your passion and not know about it, but because you were in the military, put yourself out there, all of a sudden, maybe you know what you want to do through that experience.

And so, you know, and then talking to different professionals in the industry and different trades, I think it'll be as educational for the viewers and the listeners as it is for you and I throughout this experience.

So that's something I truly look forward to.

Able to kind of expanding my own train of thought when it comes to different trades and not just the ones that I specialize in and I'm very good at, but a lot of other trades that maybe I haven't even thought about yet.

There's a lot of things I would love to learn more about.

And so talking to these different people and telling people that, hey, these are different things that are built right in the Midwest, that's something I'm excited about.

Yes, absolutely.

So as we're kind of thinking about who we're bringing on, what can people expect from the kinds of guests that we've discussed?

Who can they expect to hear from?

Yeah, so you're going to hear from transportation professionals, you're going to hear from big recruiters.

So one that's going to be coming up here, and I can give you a little sneak peek, is a lady, she works for Schneider, one of the world's largest trucking companies.

She works for Schneider.

She's been with Schneider for a long time, like decades.

And she's going to talk about kind of her experience, maybe what got her into the transportation industry, and talk about kind of trucking and maybe a side of trucking that maybe some people are familiar with and some people are not familiar with.

So that'll be exciting.

Also, we're going to talk to safety professionals as well as other professionals in different industries.

So there's a gentleman from MJ Electricity one, their parent company is one of the largest companies in North America when it comes to transmission building, transmission lines across the country.

I mean, they have an absurd amount of people.

Right.

And they've hired a lot of students.

And so being able to talk to him about the trade.

And within that company, they have operators, they have pipe fitters, they have all these different carpenters, they have linemen, they have underground, they have mechanics and diesel technicians.

And so being able to talk to him about kind of what trends does he see, what openings do they have and are they hiring, how to get into those companies like that.

But then we're also going to kind of change gears a little bit and talk about other trades that I'm not familiar with.

So talking to maybe like the boilermakers, right?

I don't know anything about the boilermakers.

Right.

I know I have some friends that are in there though, and I talked to them and they would love to come on and talk about some very different trades that I'm not familiar with.

And like talking about like the pipe fitters and the millwrights and the carpenters and diesel technicians.

Right.

There's such a demand right now for diesel technicians.

I was just talking to A.J.

one of the guys that the school gets a lot of their maintenance work done and he's like, yeah, if you know any diesel techs, let me know.

And you just can't find them right now.

You can't find them.

There's a huge need for it right now.

And you break down anywhere in the country with a cmv, guess what?

You're gonna be hard pressed to find somebody same day or even same week to fix your truck or trailer because there's just a huge shortage of diesel tech.

So I'd love to talk to that and talk about that and what are we doing to combat that?

Right.

It's a great opportunity for young people or for older people.

Right.

But talk about that as well and where you can go to get that training and kind of what that process looks like.

So, you know, it's one thing built in the midw is going to.

That's what it's going to be about, is built in the Midwest.

And what do we do as a trades program and what do we do as trades enthusiasts to help educate the next generation of people to be able to make those smart decisions, like you said, is making rational, smart, not emotional decisions.

All right, now a little emotion.

Okay?

But not to the point where we're justifying.

We're just gonna pick a degree on here because it sounds cool and we're without a whole lot of thought that goes into it.

And that's what we want people to do, is make those good decisions and help them because that decision will affect you your entire life.

Just ask your parents or aunts or uncles if they still have student loans that they're paying on in their 50s.

And 60s, and I know a lot of them that are.

And so we don't want that to be you.

Yeah, 100%.

So, as kind of our guiding principle, it's really.

We're having conversations with people that are building, powering, and moving America with kind of an emphasis in our region on the Midwest.

And a lot of our students go elsewhere by nature of the trucking industry.

Many of them go throughout the country.

Our linemen students go all across the country.

But if you are looking for a career and you're trying to make a good decision, we would love to have you.

Yeah, absolutely.

We want you to be excited to come here, but we want people to understand fully, with their eyes open what they're getting into, because our success is their success.

Absolutely.

It fires us up more when a student comes back a year later and says, I've got a great job making great money.

All these things have changed because of this decision.

Not the people who they got in.

They thought it was for them.

They're like, I actually hate driving, so I don't know why I got a cdl.

It didn't work out for me.

But, you know, it is one of those things, too, that it's.

And for a lot of us instructors, we've talked about it, but it's fulfilling.

Right.

There's an intrinsic reward to taking somebody that maybe was, you know, on food stamps or living in their friend's basement or that just came out of being incarcerated or like, a student just a few months ago came through with the Michigan dnr.

Right.

They were working with the dnr.

Guess what hinged on them keeping their job, though?

That cdl.

They needed that CDL in order to stay employed.

So they were, I mean, high stress the whole time.

Now they had their bachelor's degree in forest management or whatever.

You know, I don't know.

See, maybe that's another interview, you know.

You know, but they needed their CDL because of the firefighting role that they play.

They got to be able to pull that heavy equipment and stuff.

And he said.

He literally told me.

He's like, yeah, this is actually really stressful because if I don't get my CDL like this, I don't have a job here.

Like, it's a requirement to get a CDL within the first six months of employment.

And talk about a lot of pressure it puts on you.

Like, it's either you get it or you're on kind of thing.

And so, you know, being able to.

Being able to take these individuals and do whatever we can to help them be successful.

And like, like you said, I really am, am admire the fact that as a school, our success as a school is your success after you leave the school.

Right.

And so you know, seeing these students go out there and get great jobs and work up the ladder and do some really cool stuff and you know that, that part is, is exciting to me.

And so just had actually Chase take a stop by here yesterday and, and he's with K. Graham now, I trained him five years ago and now he's hauling doubles, B train doubles flatbed for K. Graham and he's doing great and he loves it.

And so it's like, you know, talking about coming full circle now and I'm like, you know what, maybe you'd make a good instructor around here, you know that?

So maybe if he hears this, I'm going to put that bug in his ear next time he's around.

So,

so for, for those who are listening as we start to wrap this up, the spirit here is if you're considering the trades, if you are coming out of high school, you're trying to figure out what career makes sense for you, if you maybe got your degree and it wasn't really what you were hoping for, you're transitioning out of the armed forces or you're just, you're looking for something different that's not going to put you under a mountain of debt and take up years of your life to make happen, then tune into a couple episodes, see if this speaks to you, you might learn something, you might not.

And if someone in your life is in that situation too, then we'd love for you to share an episode or two with them as well.

So something very important is this is a conversation, this is not just a one way thing.

If people have questions, if you have questions about the trades, about specific industries, about what to expect, anything, wherever you're watching, wherever you're listening, leave a comment, send us an email, send us a message and we will get into it on a future episode.

Absolutely.

And that's something that we can easily do on a weekly basis, is print out those comments and the questions like, hey, I'm really interested in this trade or I'm interested in this trade, I don't care what it is, put it in there.

Eventually we can find somebody that's willing to talk about, talk about that trait.

And that's what we want, is to open up conversations that you would never normally get to have with individuals.

And so like I said, leave a comment, leave a message.

And if we can respond right to it.

Right there.

Great.

And I look forward to be able to converse with everyone that's listening.

All right, that's all for today.

That's perfect.

So new episodes will be dropping every Friday.

Friday.

So make sure to check that out.

We will see you in the next one.