How TECH will TRANSFORM the LINE TRADE | Lineman | Alex Wakeland | 141

0:00 what's up guys welcome to Powerline podcast my name is Ryan Lucas all right before we dive into the episode I need to ask a favor from you guys it's been brought to my attention that in the last 60 days 66% of you out there are not subscribed to the show on YouTube if you guys could do me a favor hit that subscribe button it really helps me build this show and you know draw the attention that I need from the people I

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1:04 all right dude I'm stoked to have you in in here and on the episode following you online for a little while now it's pretty cool to have people from the internet here I know it's like oh W it's just Tik Tok or something Weir it's cool like I just yesterday had AJ in here and that was so fun like it's it's so cool to see somebody even following for a while and meet them in person and talk

1:28 you know right so that part's super cool and I've been trying to like since I started this been trying to get people online and to start personal Brands is talking to your brother about this for a moment there a minute ago just like I think everybody should have a personal brand I think everybody should be putting out content online and developing that because it just can like blow the doors open for opportunities like people just don't realize I know

1:51 right like I'm Al lineman I'm not supposed to be here right right you get that imposter syndrome but it's like feel I walk in this I walk in this building and and I still feel it every time I walk in here like I'll come in with my hat and a t-shirt yeah just like meet people in the elevator and just everybody's got a suit and I'm just like I swear I'm in the right building let me

2:12 double check actually this is what I'm here for though I gotta I gotta like I got to represent I got to play the part like that's just not really who I am I'll put that outfit on and accept that but you know I'm most comfortable just being a Trad oh yeah and that's where it's at it's it's more down here with us so welcome yeah happy to be here what is your backstory actually let's start with this one I I'm I'm super

2:39 interested in this what's your biggest goal right now so my biggest goal right now is to improve the safety of the trade and the data security because like data security is obviously huge buzzword but I'm a I grew up a techie like I've had computer since preschool so I understand data security because I used to hack my teachers computers like I know that you can do a lot of damage or a lot of cool stuff with it so it's like I've always had

3:04 this passion for technology I mean I got the Apple watch I got the you know I had a Blackberry before iPhones were cool I was using it to deliver pizzas because it made me a faster pizza delivery person because I could I could have real- time maps and it was like then I get out to the trades and like they're like Tech allergic like they don't want any Tech they hate Tech and I'm like it makes this way easier so I'm I'm really

3:30 pushing to improve data security for us as workers because nobody's nobody's taking care of the workers they're just a problem to be managed not people to empower and I'm trying to like make it so that it's like I'm empowered to take care of my own stuff to take my safety in my own hands because everybody preaches about having a safety culture but nobody's empowering the workers to have a safety culture for themselves like sure I can take care of my own

3:55 first aid CPR I can take responsibility for all of that kind of stuff if you give me the tools to do it and so that's that's kind of like my main focus at the moment I was a super hard charger for for line workor for a really long time and to the point where I think I was telling you before like I was a lineman first a dad second and like a husband in a very distant third and so I kind of

4:17 had to reorient to like realize like there's more to life than work so which you know out of The Frying Pan into the fire so now now I'm chasing this passion so it's like but I really want yeah it's a different passion but I really want to make the trades a safer place cuz I was telling you before like I've literally had guys save my life because I was about ready to make a boneh head move my

4:42 head wasn't in it stuff was going on at home I just had a baby or I was new to the new to the apprenticeship or I was getting ready to hook up grounds and I didn't or actually I was one that jumps out to me is I was getting ready to hook up a Mac and it was a bastard corner and I didn't recognize that it was a bastard corner and my ground wasn't long enough to kill

5:03 myself but that's what I I was attempting to do that and I got to the end of my Mac and I was like I'm four feet short and I I swung back and I yelled down and I was like we need a Mac that's six foot longer so I can I can reach and the guy's like why don't you come down we'll talk about it I was like okay when I got this side hooked up he

5:20 goes I know go ahead and unhook that and come down so then I came down he goes all right we're going to start over re-evaluate take a deep breath and I'm I'm you know a high step Apprentice with another journeyman we're like what what is going on and then he's like okay now let's look up there where you were trying to put that Mac and we're like the blood just drained from my face it was like oh my God like we were about to

5:42 have a really bad day and he's like all right now that we're reoriented and got our head back in the game how about we go do this properly with the Mac I gave you and it was like okay and so like stuff like that jumps out to me where it's like I got to get back I got to do something to make the trade better I got to do something to make it safer for somebody else

6:00 and so that's like this program that I that I found over in New Zealand called Junction I'm trying to get them here because they've seen a huge safety Improvement in their whole electrical industry they've seen huge administrative cost savings they've seen like all these huge benefits and it's like we need to bring that here yeah and like how do I get these Tech allergic people on board and so that's been like the last 10 years that's been my focus

6:26 like how how do I make this work how do I get everybody into I feel like I'm talking to a kindred spirit because same thing man like I come from a little bit before your time but Tech was like Tech and like camera cameras and creative like I was always Forefront of that and I remember like when all the executives in the company were frigging around with their blackberries because they had cool buttons and they could

6:51 send emails to each other and that was great I was out in the field using an iPhone 3G like using the camera capabilities and using the other apps that were available and like making work easier and quicker for the guys in the field and there's like I would try try to talk to them like everybody out here needs these like screw these flip phon like you guys are mental and they're like well we're thinking about getting

7:13 blackberries for everybody like why why nobody out here sends an email like you do like nobody's saying hello there's such a huge disconnect and like I said like you come out to the field and ask me or you we'll tell you where the problem is nobody lies to us we're the little guys we know where all the problem s are they actively tell us not to tell yall where the problems are have you ever seen those like Executives or

7:34 managers that they text each other through the subject line in an email yeah so there's no there's no body it's just like they like guys yeah just that could have been a text like why are you even emailing it like anyway it's it's incredible yeah I love that part yeah and the safety side of it super super relatable because there's not alignment out there that hasn't had multiple moments just like that whether they figured figured it out themselves or

8:03 whether somebody showed them but it was like that near Miss like that instant I've talked about it a few times and like you're lying to yourself if you haven't had that and most of you are like you know thinking about that right now it's in the Forefront of your brain like oh I remember that time like I remember that time I had my hooks on a ground wire and I just Bo touch the bottom side of a hot cut like whatever

8:26 it is you know that moment oh yeah like the first video I had go viral on Tik Tok was when I was I was basically telling apprentices don't don't say I know just don't do that it's a it stops the conversation if somebody wants to explain something to you that you already know maybe they know it a little bit different or they have a little bit different style or you know just a a different shade of whatever let them

8:49 explain it to you they feel good about explaining it you get the knowledge you move on and the reason I made that video was I was thinking about a guy that I was working with when I was I was a high step Apprentice and we were we were macking out a switch right outside of a hospital it was the main tie for the hospital so if this line went out this line would kick in and feed the hospital

9:08 and they had Max going on this side and Max coming up on this side well this side had swung over into the ground wire and they had it on a Max stand and then they went over to the other side and we were setting up to go help him because he was supposed to do his side we were supposed to do our side but they were in a hurry and I looked at my journeyman and I said hey shouldn't we tell them to

9:26 wait he said he a't goingon to listen to us anyway and as soon as he that got out of his mouth big old Fireball that journeyman hit the deck I jumped on top of him like some kind of make believe meat Shield you know and then he gots up got you know starts cussing and yelling and stuff I'm trying not to cuss on the air so then so then immediately after you know everybody's mad that it happened we

9:50 look up is everybody all right and then one journeyman up there is like he's not moving and So what had happened is he had like kind went but he had not done it enough to Sure permanently injure himself but enough to like terrify him and he was in shock so he falls to the bottom of the bucket the other journeyman is now booming down we've taken out the main tide of the hospital both of them so the hospital's freaking

10:17 out back but we're right across the street from the hospital so we're like they come out and they're looking around trying to figure out what's going on and we have already called 911 so then their ambulance is coming over and like that happened and that was like all right that's the last time I keep my mouth shut I don't care if I'm annoying I don't care if you already know I don't care if it's something as simple as like

10:38 Hey Nobody's grounded this line yet it's still hot that's why we're wearing rubbers like just something to just be annoying be that guy that's like hey this is the this is the hazard that we need to make sure doesn't get us and like my little group of guys we've made a joke out of it to where it's like we point out as many hazards as we can even the D one's like hey there's still cars driving like you should have your highis

11:03 on it's like oh okay you know just dude that's hilarious though like that's a good way to like gamify yeah you just gamify it so that it's like you try to you try to find the most obvious Hazard you can well then you're always thinking of the hazards all the time and you get that going in your head and it just spins out of control and so actually that's pretty dope and like working storm simp yeah working storm

11:23 like that's that's our joke we try to figure out like what's the dumbest Hazard nobody's talked about yet all right I got one and you will throw it out there like you know got to have the wheel chalks down even though you got all four Outriggers down and the and the wheels are off the ground you got to have one in front and back and it's like okay and also the line's hot it's like you that's like the essence of Comedy

11:43 though right oh yeah like find something absolutely ridiculous out there like is this actually true yeah and poke fun at it right make a joke about it about it and like I said the whole time your head's spinning on all these different hazards and you're thinking of the big ones but you're like I can't say that one because we've already wrote that down I got to think of a new one and so you just keep doing it like slip trips

12:05 and falls like three points of contact and it's like you see them not doing it you be like hey we told you three points of contact and they're like okay and you make a joke out of I mean you're still following all the safety rules but now instead of like begrudgingly doing it you're like hey look at me I got three points of contact you know making jokes out of it so it works out way better

12:25 it's a way it's a way better culture to be around was on this one big job in the past and the day before we had this like massive incident where guys were using steel care on deflection BL and we all talk in the trade man that peeled straight like almost took a guy's freaking head off so we get to the safety meeting the next morning because every morning start of the safety meeting and it's like okay guys

12:55 you need to watch out for your slips trips and falls today it was raining last night it's a bit muddy and everyone in the back in the group I was with is like are we going to talk about the that went down yesterday like the that will actually kill you are we going to talk about that talk about falling in the yard keep using the same same death trap stuff yeah I've been there as well when we were out in Hawaii doing

13:18 a bunch of climbing it was like no aluminum carabiners on the job whatsoever and it was because one of the guys was actually a rock climber and he's like they degrade ropes they do this they do that they you can't tell that they're going to fail and it was is like all right well we still like carabiners how can we still use carabiners so they went and got us iron Wizards which is like a rigging Carabiner so now we have actual rigging

13:38 carabiners but it was all because but up until then we were just using aluminum ones because they're light and easy and click off we go and so it's like you need to have the people with the expertise especially that diverse expertise of like the hobbies that guys have that they pull into the trades and they use that to abely to make it better like I started out tree trimming so when I Dr on the table yeah so when I was

14:02 when when I was a tree trimmer like I worked off a rope and so when I got into the line industry nobody works off a rope that's just not what we do we work off of hooks and belts and I was like man I I want to I want a belt with a seat on it like I don't want to stand up all day this is I gotta go find a seat so I kept looking and Buckingham came

14:21 out with one with a seat I was like that's my belt I'm getting that one so now I have a belt with a seat and everyone's like why are you and contractors we got to buy all our own stuff so like we're very vested in what we buy like that's a huge investment $600 to an apprentice that's a lot of money especially if you already have a belt that works and you're G to go spend $600 on a better belt because it works

14:43 better it's like it's hard to justify that to you know a wife at home with three kids that are hungry and they're like what do you mean you're spending half a paycheck on belt and it's like it's gonna help I promise yeah and then so now I'm out in Hawaii and we're doing we're doing eight structures to steel monopoles and these steel monopoles have these these big rings on them and nobody knew what those Rings were for I was like those are for ropes

15:08 like no they're not so I looked it up and sure enough they're for ropes and they use them in Europe and I'm like I don't ever have to climb down I'm like can I use a rope and they're like well wrap off of it yeah well I would put a so Propel off yeah so you would well you'd use double rope technique which is like you can climb up and down you can and then I had like a big ring and a

15:28 little r ring so then my rope would go through that so when I got to the ground I could just pull it through and it just down it would come but so I would climb the steel Tower and then I'd just swing over to the wood Tower and I'd do all the work over on the wood Tower and then as soon as I was done I'd hook up health I got pictures on Tik Tok of me

15:44 hooking like leaning over hooking up a helicopter and then as soon as I had them hooked up i' just unhook from them and swing back to the steel Tower I'm already halfway up and up I go and go up to do the wire work and they'd fly off with this big steel Tower or wood Tower and it was like heo actually came out and watched us and was like how are you guys doing the work this fast like this

16:05 you guys should not be able to do it this fast and we were they're like they said it it was going to take 60 guys six months to do it and we did it with I had Jared long Necker was my foreman and he was like he was the champion of that job because I I explained it to him and you got to have a champion above you to say like yeah that'll work and he was the

16:24 champion on that job that's like that'll work and your tree trimmers are using it on the system already so we know it's legal so me and Grizz we're we're squirreling all over this Tower off of ropes jumping going way out on the wire to hook up stuff and Swinging all over the place looking like jungle gyms you know and we're getting all this work done and heo comes out and Jared's on the ground explaining what we're doing

16:47 why it's safe how not only are we 100% fall protected like we literally can't fall we're attached to ropes so when we go out on these ladders if the ladder and the wire breaks we're still in the air so not only are we doing it faster we're doing it safer than anything you've ever had on the system before and he was on the ground basically explaining that and then as soon as he was done he'd go up and he'd do his side

17:09 and he's he's a bigger guy but he looks like a swan when he's climbing so we used to called him Swan bear so he was up there doing all this kind of stuff I'm like like how do you how do you move so so like the wire wouldn't even bounce and he's like walking up and down I'm like you weigh three times as much as I do what how are you doing this so it's like I thought I was a good climber but

17:27 that guy was way better they're they're ninjas I have know like like from Kung Fu Panda man yeah it was it was incredible yeah one thing I I haven't I I don't understand why there's not more rope work in America like if you look at what is it Austrian lineman or something like that that's almost all they do it's all they do man and it I've done it for years well I used to do more of it back when you could get away

17:54 with it like more rope work because I've always ice CL and that was the guy who stopped us from using aluminum carabiners was he he was an ice climber yeah cuz like you do in ice climbing and I know this isn't like a work practice you don't want to bring this into but you make like these things called V threads and you basically just screw holes in the ice that meet each other you tie a little rope a little

18:16 paracord through there and you wrap off that paracord right that way you can pull your rope out and all you lose is a paracord yeah you're good it but like I don't know why industry doesn't use like industry in America oh yeah like you see it in like window washing and all kinds of other things like that but I don't know why we don't use rope work in work and you could you could have one guy

18:37 climb up and then he could pull the end of everybody else's ropes up% everybody's 100% tied off all the time and you could work the entire lattice Tower without ever untying or unclipping because right now the the standard is you hook this one climb up you hook this one you unhook this one you climb up you hook this one un hook that it's like it's SL or you push that dumb freaking hook up yeah so dumb so slow and it's

19:00 like nobody whoever instituted that law did not or rule they did not come ask linemen what are you doing how can we make this job safer for you because when I was on that I was telling you about that big tornado job with the steel lattice when I was on that one I brought rope work there and the only reason that job got done is because I trained everybody I gave them a crash course on how to do rope work so that because the

19:24 V strings were like 15 feet and our ladders barely made it so then it was like you have to hook unhook hook unhook to get down to him and you had to like squirrel the bells and try to do all that and it wasn't that it wasn't that we couldn't do it safely it's that the guys were not confident enough to put themselves in those positions where when you did fall it was it was terrible to

19:44 get back to the tower because now you're upside down hanging from the bells and you have to like hand overand one way or the other and then start over and was like with the Rope it's like you just grab that rope pull yourself up now you're up again now you can do whatever you need to do and once once I showed that it was and again it was like the guys at the top they understood what I

20:04 was talking about and then they went to bat for me and that's that's always been the biggest red black is like you got to have somebody above you to give you a stamp of approval and once you get that stamp you can really run and do some Co stuff it's super super easy to throw redundancy into it as well like you can just drop another straight line a fall like a fall line a fall rest line and a

20:23 dog run on your back or something and like you can have a rope tied off to the ground yeah to my attachment point if I get in trouble you can just let me down yeah and then you just pull the Rope through and it's back yeah you can do that for everybody and it's like like when I first got into trade and they they had the buck squeeze sorry I'm bouncing all over no it's all good so

20:43 the buck squeeze wasn't required yet it was just coming out and it was like to me I was like it didn't adjust it was cumbersome I didn't like it but I was a tree trimer I just got done doing pine trees to do a pine tree you just wrap your skid twice and hook it to yourself does the same thing so I'm flying up and down these poles and they're like hey you got to be tied off I'm like or you

21:02 got to be 100% I'm like I am like no you're not and I'd kick out and fall into the thing and I only weighed 140 pounds so it didn't hurt back then but I'd fall into my thing and they're like wait how'd you do that I'm like you just wrap your skid twice and you're good to go you just need a skid twice as long it's annoying but it it works and everyone's like well where did you learn

21:21 that I'm like tree ter has been doing this for like over a hundred years like this is how they climb that's with rope work yeah I hired a guy a residential arborist to take down two fur trees in my front yard just to watch him work I could have done this could backed the bucket truck up and block this thing and taken it down both of them but I just like to watch him 3,000 bucks for sit there all day all

21:46 afternoon obstacles and like watch himing yeah it was awesome and that's where like that's one thing that I'm really good at is it's like I might not be an expert in this area but I can go find somebody who is and I can ask him how to do this better so like when I was climbing I knew how to climb like a lineman because the lineman taught me how to climb like alignment but I was like I want to be I want to know how to

22:10 climb in all of these different situations like what's the best way to climb and then it was like well you know if you go to the the European Standard it's like they're doing DRT technique and it's like okay why are they doing that and then that's where you get into the wise of everything you start figuring out okay this is what they have so now now I'm sitting there on my computer because I'm a techie and I'm

22:30 writing up my my work plan for this is how we're going to do it better and safer and faster and it's like I would annoy this out of my Forin and my boss all the time because I'd be like hey I got this cool idea can I do this and they're like man but the way we've done it forever yeah can you just can you just do it the way we're doing I'm like yeah I can but like can we try to

22:49 improve it they're like no we're getting paid just do what you're getting paid to do and it was probably took me about eight years until I finally had enough experience that people would like listen to me which is good because I was going 100 miles an hour in the wrong direction a lot of time but like I had to have that eight years of experience where like I could tell a good idea from a bad idea so that's that's another thing I'd

23:12 always run into be squirreled off thousand thousand feet that way and it's like ad brain is oh yeah just all over the place you can tell I'm doing it now let's back up to where you're from and how you got into the trade where' you start before some so I brought my brother with me he's like my safety blanket whenever I go to these things that I'm like I'm not supposed to be here and he reassures me that I am but

23:38 so I was like the youngest of eight boys so was like by the time they got to me it was like damn eight boys yeah five of them were Step Brothers but they were there since I was like four so I don't know any different it's just a lot of boys that have family yeah especially when you're you're the youngest so I never I never take any problem head on because everybody's bigger than me so I

23:56 got to come at an angle but so we went to he went to college to be a nurse and our parents wanted us very much to go white collar to go to college to do all that stuff we didn't even know Line work existed like I knew there was power lines but I never looked at them I didn't work outside I didn't do I wasn't building stuff with my hands I was not the typical lineman type of guy I was a

24:21 computer nerd a gamer a techie like that's what I did and so I'm in college and I met my wife and she got pregnant and her dad was a lineman and then 2008 hit and it was like there's no more money so it like our family's kind of like well we got enough for one of you and Rob's almost done so we're we're leaning that way and it was like understood and I had a family start in

24:46 so it was like all right I need to go find a job like a big boy job with with insurance and things like that and it was funny because like linemen have a super close system they're not going to help you get into the line trade just willy-nilly like to put your name on somebody yeah so he's like I'll help you become a tree trimmer cuz I know that you'll work but I'm not putting you in

25:07 I'm not putting you in line work until you prove that you can make it and he told the tree trimmer like if you can wash him out wash him out yeah I didn't know that until like a couple years later but so I get into tree triman he sounds like a solid guy oh yeah just he had he when I topped out he got his 30-year pin so like he went through allat with the guys who wrote the

25:28 program for all bet like and I moved I'm I'm getting ahead of myself but anyway so I get into doing to doing tree triming so now I got a big boy job I got I got insurance I'm making decent money because line clearance tree trimmers do pretty well and then and it's a it's a great start because you you learn to climb you learn a bucket you learn minimum approach you learn what the wires are you learn the circuits

25:52 chainsaw yeah handle the sharpen a chainsaw all that kind of stuff and then so I'm on that crew doing that stuff and then I move into her hometown and her hometown used to be a co-op so you were either a farmer or you're a lineman and that's it so my neighbors a lineman all of their kids are lineman all of the kids all the guys she went to school with and dated they're all linemen so it's like now I eat sleep and breathe

26:18 Line work so I'd go to work and the club yeah I'd I'd mess up at work you know asking my foreman why and getting in trouble and that foreman would call my father-in-law my father on my way home from work my father-in-law would yell at me I'd get home during dinner my wife would yell at me I'd go outside to mow my grass and my neighbor would come over and yell at me because he was the all

26:38 bad instructor so it's like man I can't get away from any mistakes so I gotta be I gotta be super lineman so that's where my focus turned to after getting that but so I I skipped ahead so anyway so I was back to being a tree trimmer I was a tree trimmer for about 2 and a half years and I applied at 196 I applied at 51 I applied at 145 just anywhere that I could get to to apply that's where I

27:03 applied and then I finally got in at 145 and they only took two apprentices that year so it was like I was super super lucky so then I went down I went through the apprenticeship and they bounced me all over the Midwest you know just anywhere there was a job and there wasn't this was right before the big push of apprentices where they started hiring like 20 or 30 or 40 at a time so I was the only young guy like me and

27:26 this other Apprentice were the only guy under I think we were the only one under 35 on any of the jobs we went on so it was like everything heavy everything hard that was us we were it and so you know I'm pounding pounding ground rods by hand my whole hands are blistered and like I said I was not alignment like I swung a hammer like this like I would I did not know what I was doing I didn't

27:48 even know what a crescent wrench was used for I was trying to use them use the channel loocks backwards like I was that kid and that's hilarious yeah it was it was it was bad but I I ran into I just know the type that's all was yeah exactly so you know exactly what I'm talking they punching the poles punching the Staples in yeah that Staples are flying all over the place and you can't figure out why

28:11 and you I had a smooth faed Hammer because that's what the the book said to get was smooth bed H now so I'm like oh man and I was 145 pounds 6'2 so like and I'm working transmission like I couldn't even lift the dollies so I'm like I'm like trying to figure and I don't know what slackes are so I don't know anything about mechanical advantage just yeah I was a fish out of water the definition of GRE exactly and I I

28:36 started running into you know just really good guys that were like I can tell you're trying I can tell you want to be here you're not an idiot you're just inexperienced this is what you need to do and I would get I would get shuffled around because nobody wanted me until I got to that guy that could see like okay he's trying to learn he just doesn't know anything he's new and then I would just absorb as much knowledge as I can

29:00 so like Bill buddy was was one of my I'd call him a mentor he was he was retirement age before I got into the trade he'd been he helped do the original lines across the Mississippi like he was OG as OG gets but he would answer every question I had any why I had he had an answer just like that so it was like this was the guy and other people didn't like working with him because he was hard-headed but I was

29:26 like nope that's the one I want I leave me here with him and so he he definitely he's the reason that I know what I know about Dro because he would just he would sit there and just talk to me as long as I wanted to to figure everything out and then once I had a good handle on it it was like all right now I can do it on my own because I know all this stuff and I

29:45 just just absorbed as much as I could and that taught me to find the old hands go find the old guy they know what they're doing and they're usually a little bit jaded where they don't want to like the young guys are trying to go fast they're not trying to go the slow old steady way but the slow old steady way has so much more knowledge if you can make if you can be like hey look

30:06 I'll use my young energy to do your plan but I'll do it like I'll be the arms and legs you just guide me and then you'll past knowled is wisdom now it's like knowledge has turned into wisdom yep just amazing guys and then so and I'm you know book two contractor trash we just go when the job's over we leave so it's like I'm at this company and I'm having a great time I've made all these

30:30 familiar bonds like I'm these guys are my brothers and then the job ends and it's like they're all gone they all had to go find a new job somewhere else and the apprenticeship stuck me over here so it's like I left that job and I went to the Quad Cities which is my hometown and where's this Quad City so it's the headquarters of John Deere it's right on the Mississippi between Iowa and Illinois okay so if you look at Iowa it

30:52 kind of looks like a man's face we're on the tip of the nose cool so that's where we're at so I went there and that's that was when I was about ready to top out so then I topped out there and it's a really small local that nobody stays in because every local around us gets paid more and I was staying there because I had a young family so I quickly got to the point where they wanted to make me a forem in

31:15 and I'd only been topped out like eight months you know and I didn't know this at the time but that's like what they do they top you out because they're trying to keep you make you like a forever employee and I was underneath of guy named Scott savanovich which he was an old utility guy that came out became a super just another one of those guys that's just like just way out there smart knows all this stuff and it's like

31:39 if you can if you can get close to him so that he'll give you his knowledge like there's no amount of money that's worth that and so when I became a foreman I was like I'll do this but you're training me like I want you to be the guy that tells me if I'm messing up or not and so I did that for about year until I had like a really good handle on being a foreman or I thought yeah you

32:04 always think you're good at something and then like you go somewhere and figure out you're not yeah so so I thought I was really good and they always gave me the young guys because we were good hard charging crew we were doing units at the time this is back when unit work was like what all the contractors did so we're we're banging out all these units making all this money for the company doing all this stuff and then an opportunity came up to

32:25 go to Hawaii and I was like well that sounds really cool and he's like yeah you should do it like and okay yeah and he hooked me up with the guy to get me out there and so it was like he got me to this level and he's like you know this job is good and this job will be here for a long time if you want to stay here and be a family man and be home and

32:46 do this and blah blah blah you can do that or if you want to go do this I'll help you go do that and I was like that sounds cool so off we go to Hawaii and I go out there and I realized like when I went through the apprenticeship like because I was always with the guy that was hard-headed that had the plan that they wanted him to work and they were always telling me this is how the plan

33:05 is going to be and I was in the air all the time I didn't learn any groundw work so I got out to Hawaii and like if I was in the air I was awesome I could do all the work I could do all the stuff you put me on the ground and I was like lost like an Easter egg and that was probably the most humbling experience I had because like I said I thought I was good

33:22 at my job sure then I get on the ground and I realize the guy on the ground made me good at my job I wasn't good all these old guys that were setting everything out lining everything up so all I had to do was just grab it and go and grab it and go I thought I was killing it but turns out they were killing it using me as like yeah you go get the glory you go do this I love

33:43 talking about that topic we talked about it at NLC a couple weeks ago with Noah and Matt and master the ground man Master the ground yeah I can't state that any louder for you in the back cuz everybody wants to be in the air it's the sexy spot to be it's the Fun Spot yep you know what you're going to be there and you can be in the air for 50 years or 60 years if you want just take

34:11 the two to four years to master the ground and the rest of that six years is going to be a dream oh yeah and they hooked me up with it was two guys from Colorado Oliver quick and Craig mclen super good hands Craig's got the patience of a saint because like I was still doing my like why this why that over and over and over and Oliver was doing the foreman thing so Craig got all of that and we

34:36 were about the same age so he had been in the trade I think another a year longer than I had but he had more of a complete apprenticeship than I did not that I was not that I was bad it's just I didn't know what to do on the ground so when I I was sending stuff up like rigging it and sending it up and I remember I rigged something up and it was terribly rigged and it went up and

35:00 the same thing like they come down calm and collected they just sent it back to the ground come down and they're like do you know what you did I'm like no they're like okay let's go look at your rigging and they showed it to me and they're like so if any of these fall you would have killed everybody and I'm like oh my God I can't believe I did that and it was like okay I need to pay attention

35:21 to what I'm doing on the ground I need to really focus on this and they're like you just need to slow down you're good in the air but you need to learn the ground so you're on the ground from now on until you learn it and like that was probably the best thing they could have done for me so it's like having the trade there and that that's like one of those things where I was saying like I

35:38 need to make the trade a safer place because they've done the trade has done that for me the trade has made me safer where they're like these are your shortcomings we're going to go ahead and fix them so here you go you're going to get this fixed now you're better now we can go on and move on and do bigger and better things and so like that type of stuff is like like it gives you Goosebumps thinking about it because

35:58 it's like it could have been way worse sure and those guys were they didn't yell at me they didn't belittle me they didn't make me feel like I was the worst person ever they were just like this is a big problem you need to fix it and that's what I love about the contractor mentality is like we work with what we got we all support each other we all help each other and we all see each

36:19 other again on different jobs I've seen those guys on three or four other jobs they've always shown up and it's like we remember each other hey remember the time you did that one thing it's like hey I remember that I got better and they was like Yep this is so refreshing to listen to because like I sit with guys on the show all the time and I see it like you do online all the time so

36:37 much negativity around the Brotherhood or whatever Brotherhood is your trade whatever and I feel bad for those people like really bad for them because I'm like how that that has not been like I've been in this for 25 years I've never experienced anything but what you're talking about right you know guys willing to help if that just makes me think like okay I can feel bad for you because you haven't experienced that but then I also like why have you not

37:03 experienced that what is what is the environment you're must be you yeah it's got to be because everywhere you go like the philosophy is always like never miss an opportunity to help a brother because it might take you an extra 10 minutes to help out maybe this guy's trying to get on helicopter work in Hawaii and you know somebody in Hawaii and all you're doing is taking that name and passing it on yeah maybe that's all you did and

37:25 that guy gets to go out there live his dream but then fast forward for five years like you said before that guy's the GF and you get a job because he's the guy that got you that job or you're trying to get to the lazy queue to like improve your certification level and he's the superintendent that's like I'm the guy who stamps if you go or not yeah so it's like I can't tell you how many

37:46 jobs I've gotten where it's like five years ago I was just not a douchebag and help this guy out get to wherever he's at and then I show up later and he's the guy in charge of the whole thing yeah so now now I get to be part of that and people are like how do you get to how do you get to Hawaii how do you get to do this and it's like just be good to each

38:05 other like all those opportunities will come up constantly the Brotherhood will provide you whatever you're looking for just ask it we've said we say constantly like this trade is small this trade is small look at like your reputation is global like social media if anything should highlight that fact to you oh yeah that if you're being an ass like your reputation is going to proceede you and here you go if that continues it just compounds it doesn't

38:34 get better it takes a lot of work to make it better a lot more work to make it better oh yeah for sure social media is like an amplifier of your person if you're a good guy and you're on social media you're a great guy yeah if you're a douchebag and you're on social media you're a huge douchebag see that and it's just like it just snowballs like that like I get on every storm I go on

38:53 somebody's like hey I follow you on Tik Tok and I'm like cool man give me your number you need anything reach out like I get messages all the time how do I get in the trade where's the work at do you know anybody who's taking you know substation text stuff like that and it's like if I have a contact I'm I'm Shuffling people around all the time so that's like that's kind of what I do when I'm traveling to and from storm

39:15 that's like my pastime is like answering comments I make sure to answer every comment everybody who messages me I answer them unless they're a troll or somebody trying to sell me some kind of class or something but it's like I try to help everybody I can and I don't care if you're Union non-union an apprentice going to Lion school I don't I don't care you're you're working with your hands you're blue collar you're my brother there is

39:39 no distinction if you're if you're non-union and that is working for you because there's no Union around your house I'm going to give you all the information you need to come over to the union and if you decide not to that doesn't change my opinion of you at all yeah like that's you that's what you're doing do I think the union has benefits of course I think it's got massive safety benefits it's got massive massive empowerment benefits

40:03 massive training opportunity you can go way more places but sometimes those aren't important to guys what's important to them is I want to sleep at home in my bed every night facts and it's like that's fine there's nothing wrong with that you're still a brother in my trade and if you have a problem if you have a bank you can't figure out if you have some kind of weird voltages going on and you're afraid to ask

40:23 somebody else ask me I'm not going to dog you out on the internet I'm going to say hey man here's a problem that somebody brought up it'd be good I'll make a video about it and I'll tell them specifically like this is probably what's going on I've had that happen countless times people be like I I have this weird thing going on I've have apprentices still call me they're topped out now and they'll call me and say like Hey we're doing we're

40:45 doing a Delta Delta system I've never worked on Delta before like is this an okay thing to do and I'm like all right let's go through it this is this is the section of the book you need to look at this is what I know about it and if I don't know I'll find somebody who does m so that's like always been my stance yeah so it's like not only is it the union Brotherhood but like the blue

41:05 trades brotherhood like We're All in This Together nobody's nobody's coming to change nobody's coming to help Blue Collar but blue collar I love hearing that I honestly love hearing it because like I hear Too Much there's too much of the negative side of it especially on social media oh yeah we just like live there in order to communicate now you live on social media and it's just like it's ly are this is like this isn't there's no Brotherhood

41:33 blah blah blah that's not a fact at all right not even close like the and I had a different like I grew up I'm fourth generation Union so like I eat sleep and breath Union I don't know what else I don't even know how to work non-union but when I was going through the apprenticeship I with Pat quillin I had this view of like screw those non-union guys they're terrible they shouldn't be doing this they're hurting us and he was

41:56 like lack of understanding yeah and he Pat quillin he's the guy that was like hey have you thought about the fact that they're trying to feed their wife and kids too and I was like oh and I felt like this big but I've always been really good at like when you point out I'm wrong I don't have any Pride about being right I was wrong I'm gonna switch my view and now your view which is right

42:18 is now my view and now I'm yours I'm on your team I'm GNA switch that fast because it's like if I'm wrong I'm wrong there's no there's no like you don't have to feel embarrassed about being wrong you were just wrong yeah and so guys like that in the trade have changed my perspective so much and steered me so much it's like I'm just glad I get to do stuff like this where I get to like kind

42:41 of give back a little bit and I it no matter what I do it'll never be enough yeah because like the trade has fed me clothed me housed me not just me but generations of my family so it's like if if I didn't have the trades my kids would be hungry yeah so it's like this is no matter what I do I can't do enough yeah so you mentioned before we started talking on on air about MMA

43:07 oh yeah spark I had no idea what's what's your MMA stories here so when we got to college they didn't have a wrestling team and I had wrestled since I was like three years old so that was when and in the Quad Cities that's where Pat Milotic is there Matt Hughes was was there oh Brock Lesnar came through there like all the big names were in the Quad Cities so like everybody fought in the Quad Cities

43:32 when I was at that age and so I found it was a strip club but I found where you could just sign up and go fight and I was like I could do this so then we started doing MMA me and my brothers I got both my brothers into it and we wound up being really good so we're we're doing a really good job at it and I became I was we were all Brady wasn't but me and Rob were both Semi-Pro champs

43:57 for our weight classes for like nine months and I actually got my wife into fighting so before we got married I talked her into fighting females and she was eight and0 so she was cleaning up and so like we were just this that was the dream then it was like we're going to go do MMA all over the world we're going to do this we're going to do that well then she got pregnant and you can't get health insurance when you're

44:19 fighting MMA and Pat Milotic wanted me to come in and start training to go to the UFC but I was in the same weight class as like George Rush St Pier like I'm not gonna beat that guy like I'm I'm good like down here I'm a big fish in a small pond like I can't do that so I I had to take a real hard look at it and be like okay I'm gonna have to find a

44:42 a trade or something but yeah we did we did MMA and I think that gives you a little bit of a Swagger sure so when I was an apprentice in a ja or something be I'mma beat your ass I was like in the back of my mind I was like no you're not but I don't feel the need to prove that so like I'll just do whatever you tell me it's fine and then like we'd have

45:04 Apprentice like scuffles you'd have time on the rideway and it'd be like I was undefeated Apprentice you know and they're like look at this big guy I bet you can't take him and I was like oh he looks real big AR yeah exactly just got him you know and we were doing that all the time and so that that gave me a little bit of a reputation too and that that opens the door for stuff because

45:24 guys like that stuff guys want to be around it you know and I'm I'm always smiling I'm always happy I've always got this big goofy smile on my face everywhere I go no matter how terrible the situation is and like people gravitate towards that they like that yeah like you can you can look me up on YouTube I have I think two fights one of them is against a guy that outweighed Me by 25 pounds that I should not have

45:46 taken and he beats the crap out of 25 is a lot of weight it was a lot of weight I didn't have a manager to like protect me from stuff weight difference man oh yeah and he was a Golden Glove kickboxing champ I was a wrestler yeah so he going to the ground or I'm getting my ass exactly and I just like you can see him KNE me in the head and I just like I go

46:05 blank and it's like I didn't he couldn't tap me out he couldn't knock me out and I just kept going until the end of the match and then I walked off the stage and like like kind of collapsed once I was out of the view of the crowd and I was like I got to do something else like that was the that was when I knew like maybe fighting just isn't for me yeah but I have another like my first

46:27 championship fights on there and I threw the guy in the armar and like I'm smiling and laughing the whole time like during the fight because I had eight older brothers like fighting felt like I was at home in my living room there's like you know the guys can throw on the the the mean Stern you know I'm GNA kill you face but there's only a few guys in the world that can pull that face off and they're all from Russia

46:50 right exactly actual Natural Born Killers came out of the womb killing people now they're in the US they've already got a body count yeah so those but there's nothing else that like pisses somebody off more than a guy who's just like in there happy SM like why are you so happy oh yeah I had to have a double guarded mouthpiece because I was smiling the whole time and my lips would get CAU on my teeth so like my

47:14 coach would just laugh at me because he's like what are you doing I was like I have this is fun if it wasn't fun I wouldn't do it and so like having that tenacity and that like grit to overcome things when you come out to the line trade and it's like this job's going to be really hard it's like that's okay I'm okay with hard let's do hard and like I said I was just out of MMA I was in

47:34 shape as an apprentice it was like all the old guys were like I don't want to throw these pads I was like I'll throw pads for you if you teach me I'll throw every pad you got yeah so it's it it wound up really really helping being in shape and having that in your back pocket because like I said I didn't have this big ego I had to like thump my chest and prove I was a man I was like I

47:53 didn't care yeah it's nice to have that chip though oh yeah it's ALS Al like you said just now about doing hard things I was on this big kick for a few episodes after I came back from Everest about doing hard things and how it's beneficial for your life to put yourself to selectively put yourself in a position to do something hard so that you can overcome that hard thing and it builds resilience teaches you things

48:16 like makes the the next time something's happening that happens easier to get through especially if it was like an unselected thing like coming out with a health condition someone your family comes down with something like you can get through it if you've done things that are difficult if you haven't it's going to be fre that's your lesson like and you're going to get through it or not but anyway doing hard things is like a big proponent I'm a big proponent of

48:41 that oh yeah well that was one of the reasons I started doing Tik Tok was I had this app idea and I knew I was gonna have to start talking in front of people all the time so I was like well I need practice well better practice than Tik Tok love that so I started doing these short little Tik toks and now I can talk to anybody I can sell my app to the Uber driver like I can do you put me in front

49:02 of a room with somebody who has a problem I can reach out and find the solution I I go to these now I started going to these trade conferences which is like linemen or duck out of water there like we're not supposed to be there you know I'm cyber security conference you're not supposed to be there but like they have no idea what linemen know and linemen are really freaking smart people like everyone thinks like oh they just build power

49:25 lines they just do this they just do that like they have a whole another life I met a guy who was a literal rocket scientist like he had three degrees to be a rocket scientist and he was running a shovel as a groundman I'm like what are you doing here he's like there's no money I make more money doing this then I did doing that and I have a family to feed and I'm like I want to talk to you

49:47 so then we we're sitting there in the ditch pole digging a hole talking about quantum physics like that is absurd yeah and this guy is probably one of the smartest individuals I've ever met and we're we're digging a hole just digging a hole to set a pole so cool and it's like those those resources are at the fingertips of all of these different companies and just they're ignored nobody talks to them nobody asks them nobody knows they exist except for the

50:13 handful of people that have sat in the ditch with the guy and talked about rocket science yeah because well and that's the other thing too like most linemen aren't going to ask him about it they're just going to tell them the task that needs done and move on and I'm just like being obsessive interested in people has been such a huge benefit to me because like like I said when I was working with Bill buddy like I was

50:35 interested in him as a person not just what can you do for me but like what makes you tick what do you like to talk about what are the things that go on in your life that make you keep coming to work like what is that and so once you get that personal level of connection with somebody they'll give you all the Trade Secrets they don't they're not going to keep nothing from you because now you're friends and they want to see

50:55 you succeed too M and you can't fake that it has to be genuine if you try to fake it like people see that and oh you're just here cuz you want a job or you're just here because you want this or that and yeah because you can only act for so long right I talked about that with AJ yesterday too like he's just like if you followed him you know what he's like too super happy smiley

51:16 you know like and he said he used to get that as well like he'd show up show up at a site for first time and you be like oh you're just you're just fake and you're just acting yeah and month to go by oh you're just acting you're just acting a year goes by you're just acting it's like no guys like this is just who I am you can't like you can't act like this eight hours a day 12 hours a day

51:35 every day for two years right yeah like if I if I stop smiling like everybody on the job like comes over and they're like what's wrong there something wrong with you and I'm like yeah I got stuff going on at home and they're like we can tell because you're not smiling because it's it's like everywhere I'm go I'm smiling all the time because I'm I'm just happy like life is good the trade has been good to me my personal life has been

51:56 good to me like I it like I said it kind of blew up a little bit because you know I had them out of order on what it should have been but in the grand scheme of things like life has been great it's your path though yeah that's the way it's supposed to be talk then about like merging your kind of like Tech interests and your geek interests with this trade now and what you're what you're working on

52:21 now oh so now so like on a on a personal note like I've started I figured out you can make make your own personal Ai and that's like super cool what do you use for that so I'll use that as like my work Journal so like I'll type in I've yeah but how did you build that so you go well you pay for a chat GPT you get the personalizer and then you Silo it off the internet so now it's no longer

52:42 on the Internet it's my personal thing and then you can tell it like you are this person you have been a journey and lineman for this long this is these are the things that you do this is what you are basically just describe yourself is in as much detail as possible and then you tell it like you are going to assist a crew keeping track of their records keeping track of their work notes and helping them build power lines and this

53:08 is something I just was like I wonder if this will work this is kind of how I started so you start just you to start writing so I get it you start writing into it like as if it's a journal like you're almost like writing your day y you write your day out this is what I did today this is where I did it and then they have now they have spec books that they'll give out to the

53:28 contractors and you can take a PDF file of the spec book and you can feed it to it and now you can say your Jour and lineman you are having to build a dead end on this property with these specific rules help me make a plan and it'll spit one out in like 10 seconds so now it spits out the plan it gives me all the reference material it lets me know like step by step what to do how many holes I

53:50 can drill on the ground versus in the air like all of that kind of stuff and it's like nobody else is even thinking about about doing that and this is just after this is just something I did that cost me like 20 bucks a month sure and it's like now and like I said I type in the Journal of like this is what I did today this is because I've always kept a crew log ever since I became a foreman

54:10 that was something Scott sanovich told me to do was keep a log about what you did because if something happens sure way later they're going to come back and want to know for liability reasons well now I have a digital version of that and it can look it up and tell them that fast so I can say what was Alex Wakeland doing on February 12th 2024 and it'll this is what you did on that day with

54:32 these guys at on this property and it's like right there and now I don't have to search through it or store these books it just stores all that for me it's wild and it's like this is all at everybody's fingertips and nobody's using it because just I don't know why a lot of people don't know how yeah like that's true there's even like myself like I'm same preaching the stuff that you're preaching I'm never thought us to use it

54:57 like that i' never even heard to use it like that yeah either well and that's the thing like I went to a cyber security conference and they're talking about using AI in the fields and making a field tool and I'm like it's already there like what do you mean I was like we use it like guys like me who do Tech we already use it like a field tool this is how we're using it and they're like

55:16 we never even considered that I'm like yeah if you had your own version of this I could show up to whatever job and I could say Hey you know power company a I I'm building this thing at this location what should I be building and it would spit out exactly what I needed it would tell me the circuit I was on where I was at what all the measurements needed to be and I could record in real time this

55:39 is my you know pre-job this is what I'm doing obviously it would take some development to get there but that's like super doable yeah it's not a hard thing to do the hardest part is trying to like navigate the data security side of it because obviously power companies don't want to be giving away all that information and that's why I've siloed mine because it's like I'm not violating any laws because this is only my AI nobody else has access to this it

56:05 doesn't upload to the internet and so then I just put my journal in there and it's off and running and then I use it for like I started doing a bunch of LinkedIn stuff because I realized like that's where all the people who sign checks are so if I want to get attention from people who can actually solve my problem that's where I need to go so I started becoming very very open on that and you can tell I talk and a rambling

56:29 kind of all over the place I type that into chat GPT and it organizes it makes it all nice makes me look super smart and I'm dyslexic so I can't spell to begin with so I put that on LinkedIn and now I got my post and so it's like like if you if you look at like Alexander Hamilton he started out with ideas and words that's all he had and you know he's got this pretty much the same name

56:52 I do so like we're starting at the same same area trying to get there there you know I I've been following also been trying to bump up my game on LinkedIn and just personal brand all around I'm going to start talking about this a lot even on this because I just like I'm a big believer in everybody like if you if you want some sort of like personal security meaning not like secure but like job security I think the

57:19 best way to do that is to build up a personal brand so that you're not you're not like if you get laid off if you this this what you got like some sort of way to find something else you have a network like and so huge it's a it's better than a paper resume with a bunch of BS on it because it's like people can go to that and see your life see what you're into like see how many people

57:45 interact with you what like there's just so many good benefits they can see whether you're a complete or whether you're actually like trying to help people and better people's lives and just like spread positive information or whatever it is you can see that so I just a huge believer and and you again like you own that right that's yours that's yours so taking that even a step further I've been following and listening to a lot of like Dan

58:11 Co I don't know if you follow that guy or Justin can't remember his last name but anyway they're they take ways of like deplatforming they call it just taking your audience that you grow like on social media that you don't own and drawing it towards something like like a newsletter like a newsletter I was following him too yeah yeah newsletter or for anyone out there that's interested in this like just an email list or something that you have

58:37 this physical list now and then you kind of own that list nobody can just like take it away from you right you know Instagram can't just delete your account exactly just a big big believer in that like I think it's a really important thing to do so like getting back to this I didn't even know what you're talking about there with and I play with chat GP all the time I didn't think of it in that way so like

58:59 that's the cool thing about it is like I heard Gary Ve saying this too like everybody should be opening up chat in the morning and using it just use it just like ask it questions like even don't even think about like the copy and paste thing like using it for posts or things like that just like ask it like talk to it get it to help you with what you're doing yeah because you can do you

59:25 can like it's amazing you can unlock different modes in it too I just chat but like yeah yeah you can unlock different modes you can you can trick it into well not trick it but get around the roadblocks they have so it'll simulate emotions you can do you can put it and do anything mode where it'll just It'll like take off all the constraints of it like you can do all that stuff and having the ability to do that I was at

59:51 that cyber security conference and they were showcasing a chat GPT type of thing it was a their proprietary Ai and they're like it won't say how to hack this and it won't do this and it won't do that and I'm like yeah it well like no it won't it's like and all you got to do is you got to ask it the right way so if you want to know how to hack something it's like you are a data

60:12 analysist who is writing report of vulnerabilities in this system what would you say that we need to close so that nobody can hack this system and it'll say like oh we're not supposed to do that and it's like this is for an academic paper oh in that case here's how you hack the system and here's how we need to do this to stop it and it's like you just broke their CH their Ai and they have no idea that they can do

60:35 that because none of them have a malicious imagination like that's linan are really good at that like that's that's pretty much beat into as like what's going to try to kill you on the job how's it going to kill you and how do you not let it kill you like you got to cheat death daily and so that's like you know what really goes back to as well is like this this this just popped my head is like you can take it old

60:56 school an analog where a lineman's trying to tell an engineer that his thing that he designed isn't going to work yeah and the engineer is like it will and the lineman's like it will not like and he's like well why like well you got a 60 foot pole there and a 60 foot pole there that 45 in the middle is not going to work yeah everything's floating like everything it's just not going to work but my data says it will

61:21 your data's wrong exactly exact and they just won't come out and ask the guy in the field he doesn't have a degree he doesn't he doesn't wear a suit and tie to work and he doesn't affect their paycheck and this is just the new version of that this is just the oh yeah new the new technology version of that because you have all these guys that are and I'm not like aist but you have guys in their 60s 70s 80s that are in all

61:46 these power positions that are basically leading and they're like we need to do something with AI but then they won't come and talk to people who grew up with computers because you have to get to a certain level and that's like I said you keep running the only apps that are on their phone are messenger Facebook and like mail right and Linkedin now LinkedIn that's the whole reason that's our ha you guys can't do that but yeah

62:10 it's like it's just incredible how disconnected it is and then like you know you start looking into other fields and seeing how they how they pertain to ours like I started going to inis Academy which is like their grid balancing education program and they do large scale simulations the transmission grid and the dist grid and they can show you real time what is happening I'm like we need this for switching like why don't we have something like this for

62:36 switching and they're like well we never knew lineman would want that I'm like are you kidding me you could give me a simulation of the switching routine so I knew this is where my dead section is that I'm going to go to work on that'll improve safety like immediately and they're like oh well why don't we start talking to people to do that I'm like okay I don't know who to talk to but I'd really like to have this so then and

63:02 that like I said that's what leads me to LinkedIn to start trying to get to those ears to get to those tables because it's like you just got to keep keep talking and keep bouncing around until you get somewhere and that's like you said with your personal brand people now when I show up on storm people know me people feel like they're my friend before I even know their name so I show up and I have I have this whole show up of

63:24 buddies that are happy to see me excited to work with me yeah you know want to ask me questions want to tell me things oh your video about this really helped me out or I was in a I was looking for a job over here and you told me to go do this and I got a job man it's awesome and I'm like yeah this is sweet and it's like I was just doing it in just for

63:43 kind of kicks and Giggles in my free time and it just turned into this so it's like and I try not to do just the Highlight Reel because it's really tempting to just be like yeah here's all the good stuff here's everything cool about my life I try to CU I me we were talking about it before you know you have the big highs and the big lows you go on a big job super amped up you get

64:04 through all this stuff you do you you accomplish something people say Never Gonna never gonna happen and you do it big high and then you get a layoff gone and all your buddies go somewhere else yeah and then it's like man now what do I do you go home and it's like I got to reset and figure something out it's that's probably the hardest part about being a contractor is is navigating those feast or famine not only in money

64:28 but in emotions and highs and camaraderie because you get addicted to all of that and it's like sure do when I was when I was a young journeyman like I said my whole Focus was lineman Line work I don't have any hobbies I didn't I didn't go hunting I was a computer nerd who was now working 16 hours a day I'm not playing computer games so that Hobby's gone so all I had was Line work so all my buddies were linemen all my

64:54 friends were on the rideway so when I went home it was like I'd hit this depression streak and I loved being around my family my wife and kids but it's also like I was mildly depressed the entire time and eventually it was like she would get to the point where she's like you need to go back to work like not Dro close to the house like you need to go find a a high powerered job you need to go find a helicopter job you

65:19 need to go do some big transmission you need to go do something hard physically and so that you can go get your your buddies back and I'd go do that for a couple months and i' just basically disappear from the house and it's like you got to be careful of that cuz like I was saying work is always happy you show up if you're producing they'll just keep paying you and they don't care if your whole house is burning down behind you

65:40 they'll just keep just keep putting dollars in your in your wallet just keep making you come up keep going to work that's the dangerous part everything burns down personally behind you and that's why you see all these linemen they're divorced they're alcoholics they live on the transmission line they live in hotels they're always broke they're always broke because they're always chasing a high and they're just stuck in that cycle that's why I went and got my

66:04 brother because he like tried to yank me out of it basically like you got to stop doing this and so now he's like my safety blanket this is one of the reasons why I even started the podcast was I was in I for family reasons i' moved out of the trade I'd done it for 15 years on the tools and then I moved into like a management and kind of executive type position in an office and

66:25 I was like disconnected I was miserable miserable cuz I wasn't getting to talk to this group of people yeah they like your family 15 years with and they it's they are like family like because when you do difficult things together and you tackle problems and challenges and you try to find solutions to these it's like you go through something different than if you're just like a normal friendship oh yeah and you I lost that and I wanted to talk to them again so I

66:53 was like let's start a podcast and just start talking to them again and yeah it's and you can feel that like you can show up like here like I already feel like we're buddies we this is the first time we've met but it's like there was no awkwardness there was no weirdness it was just boom your back in your butt CU like you guys understand each other so true and it's like that everywhere you go and it's like it's such an addiction

67:17 so especially like helicopter work because it's the same guys you know you see the same Pilots you're doing stuff everybody else wants to do everybody body's jealous and people being jealous of you that's another addiction like yeah it's fun it's fun everybody's saying like oh that's the coolest thing ever I want to do that too all that stuff that's why again why I wanted to talk about it yeah it's oh man yeah yeah you get to check that that's why I kind

67:42 of like I felt okay with moving to a different position because I did get that opportunity to check all those boxes my my old man came to me back in 2000 and was right in the housing CHR 2008 I guess it was yeah right when I was getting in right in 2008 and he's like he's like hey I'm thinking about selling the business he owned small Powerline contracting company that's how I got into the trade right and so he came to the house and

68:11 he's like hey I'm gonna sell the business he's like I just want to make sure like you're okay with that like if you want to take it over or whatever like let's work out that plan I won't I won't do it and at that time at that time I was like no you know what that's your thing I'm happy for you you go do that you you exit and and he stayed on it was taant and he's like you you stay

68:35 on and carry on with things you're going to do I have a bucket list that I need to check off of things I want to do in the trade up until that time I'd only kind of messed with helicopters a little bit but I wanted more with that and more like I wanted to get in a bare hand work and the list was like long right all the huge list of I wanted to check off the list and Quant provided that

68:57 opportunity so again I was like yeah no sell like it's GNA give me the opportunity to pursue all of that stuff and so that's what we did and and kind of now looking back at it I'm like I wish I could have done both right because I really would have liked I think to move into that being the person I am now move into that a little bit more entrepreneurial now but hey that's that's that's the way it goes definitely

69:22 the cool part of this trade is that you can do all of these really unique things and you get all this experience that you have this ability to get this experience that not the average person gets the opportunity to do right I think sets us apart from a lot of other Industries trades not just trades but like white collar Blue Collar whatever it is that's why we're just a little bit different and I hate I I hate the online

69:52 flak that we get too oh yeah so trades like Lan are you know whatever he and to be fair we're kind of jerks to other people but it's like yeah it's it's like that lineman that's being a jerk to you he might be an but he's our like you can't have him so then it's like he's an to you so I don't have to be yeah I have guys like that that I roll with that like I

70:18 like I said I like being the happy guy I like being everything's fine no problems but then I have guys with me that they're not The Happy Guy they're the angry little elf they'll get mad they'll they'll tell you you're doing it wrong they'll tell you you're an the money is not right you need to fix it they'll call the hall like that's the guy that rolls with me so it's like we're package deals so that I don't get

70:37 screwed because I'll just let him fix it and he gets to do his part and be good at his part so like I said he's he's the of the group but he's our so he's coming with us you know it's we do that a lot that's is like when you see Crews running together that's always the dynamic like one of them is just a grumpy angry person and everybody else gets to just he just fixes all of our problems so we don't

71:01 have to deal with him and then everybody else just gets to be happy all the time he's actually truly a teddy bear underne as well as soon as you get through that that hard shell exactly see you know exactly what I'm talking about I know exactly who that is but they keep the whole crew from getting screwed and like sent on some Far Away dumb job just because you're productive because that's what companies will do if you're producing

71:25 they'll just keep you producing as much as impossible so you need that angry guy to be like look we've given you enough like don't burn us to the ground stop it we're going to bed and then you go to bed and it's like once you have that guy like oh man the the amount of stuff you can get done and the cool stuff that opens up and the you can push off on that guy it is not the part that I

71:45 want to do all like you I'll show up with a smile on my face all day long and then if they if they fire him it's like well we're all leaving and then they're like what it's like yeah that's like we all had this problem we just didn't want to bring it to you so we gave it to him so we're protecting him so you can't fire him I love that love that we do that all the time so what do you

72:03 building now then talk more about what you're building to bring awareness to these people that are out there like us that yeah so I'm starting something else to offer well I'm a tech person where I like Tech but I'm not the expert so I like to go find experts so there's this company called Junction in New Zealand and they are already working they've already they do the entire electrical industry in New Zealand from top to bottom so they do all of the data

72:32 security the checkins the checkouts from locations the credentialing for all of your all of the stuff that you need to go to work they do all of that and so I was trying to find somebody to solve this problem for us as linemen and I just kept asking until I found somebody that was trying to solve this problem it just happened to be on the other side of the world what is the problem exactly so like new higher paperwork is getting

72:58 outrageous like when I was first in the trade it was like maybe 10 sheets of paper a couple videos and off you went now the the smallest one I've come across is 87 pages and it's like just to go to work on storm it's like this is ridiculous and it's all the same information and I might have worked for this company last week and now I'm sitting down doing it again it does it's just it's mindboggling just in paper

73:22 alone we're wasting millions of dollars and in and then they're taking this you know 150 200 Page I think the biggest one was 250 pages long 250 pages of information scanning it sending it to a secretary who then prints it out and puts it in a file and so like they're emailing it and it's like this is like the worst data security ever and like I was trying to explain this to the people in Junction and they didn't believe me that this is

73:52 how we were doing it they're like there's no way we haven't done that in years years it hasn't been that way for a decade I'm like this is how we're doing it in my field right now I love that I'm going to interrupt you for a second I love that you're talking about this too because when when I went into that management role what I what my department did under under me was take all of that new hire process and

74:13 paperwork turned it digital and I was using Salesforce to capture all of that data and so that I could mine the data for certifications that we needed when people like everybody's supposed to be like love love where you're going with it so and it's like like everybody's screaming for this solution I've had this idea for 10 years I've been trying to get somebody and chewing on this idea and then I finally get an audience in New Zealand with a company

74:43 who's like we'll listen to you like oh be prepared and so I just started talking and just I've been I've been trying to get them to come over for really hard for the last three years and they finally are they've been developing an app we're going to have an app coming out soon for all the it's going to be the lineman's like it's my app my information my data I get to keep that so when I load all my data onto this

75:11 when I go and I work for this company they don't get to store my data because I've had my identity stolen three separate times because that company had it and the secretary got a fish email and so she just sent them all the package that's that's all all of my information for the last 10 years with the CDL and everything like they know where I live they know all my bank account information they know every CT

75:32 that I have they know all my all my bank account like everything they know everything about me that's a that's a huge down of security risk and so this system is like you don't have to store that anymore you just get a green check mark he's good to go we verified it it's good you guys can run so now we can lower every company we can lower your cyber security risk because now you're not storing any of that sensitive

75:55 information I can lower your liability insurance because now when a guy shows up to drive a bucket truck you know he has a CDL to drive the bucket truck like those are the type of things that are possible and they're already doing it and they're not just doing it on a small scale the entire country it's like mandatory to do this so they have it and they're working with linemen specifically so like what it's almost like the universe answered my my call

76:21 for a solution and they built it and it's ready and it's just like pick it up bring it here get it going and so now like I said I started doing the LinkedIn thing I started doing Tik toks I started going to trade shows and this is all you know self-funded just because I am passionate about trying to get this solution and like I said like you start talking about I can spin off like I said

76:43 I've been talking about it for 10 years so it's like with this type of system when I show up on National Grid property National Grid can have the information that I've worked for them six different other times so may maybe I already have access to the maps because I passed whatever class I was supposed to and it's still current now they can give me access to digital Maps so now I don't have to run around with Google Earth

77:06 trying to trace out the circuit and hope I don't miss nothing now I can actually have access to the maps that improves safety tfold and then it it makes it saves money for the companies it makes us all safer and it just works way better and not to mention like everybody's trying to figure out a green solution to everything like we're still printing out 87 pages of documents to fill out so that you can scan it shred it print it

77:34 out shred it it's like insane it doesn't make any sense and even the biggest organizations out there yeah are are trying to mess with software that's already predated like it's it's already old it's already stink it's it's software that the companies are so big big now they're just they're licensed to all kinds of they're making their billions they don't care they don't care it's not costom yeah and easy to use in app form for the dummy on the other end

78:06 exactly and this thing like their name implies Junction their whole their whole business model is that like you already have your HR department we don't want to change anything about it all we want to do is integrate our database so that you can recognize it and that's with this contractor that contractor that contract tror you all have your own thing that's fine we're just the bridge in between that so if if par West trains me to be

78:32 helicopter certified and then I go work at Hooper in Michigan that certification is verified on my profile and Hooper can see it and go yeah we recognize that we know that's legit you're good to go and so all of those things are possible it's just every company is trying to figure out their own specific problem they just want to figure out their companies and it's like you're all sharing the same Workforce if you fix our problem you're

78:59 fixing your problem and that's like I said it's like the guys in the field don't want to fill out paperwork they don't want to do this and then you get into the storm contractors and that's that's where I've been spending a lot of my time recently is chasing storms because one works slow for one and for two it gives me the opportunity to do this so I just got off a storm on a nor Eastern storm to come

79:21 here so it's like if I was working a regular job yeah they don't really want to let me go cuz I'm producing and they they count on me being there you might have crew of three guys so if you leave the crew shut down they got to go somewhere else so it's like the storm work allows me to be a lot more flexible to do this and so with the storm work oh man I lost my train of thought the

79:43 stormw in the program or and the yeah yeah so like with the storm work they're trying to G ramp up people extremely quickly so it's like when we get there and we start driving they don't even have they don't even know if who I say I am they have no way of checking it's not fast enough this system's immediate you can have instant verification of all of this stuff so now you can have all of that like the

80:06 example you gave before was like you don't know if that guy just showed up and had a DUI two days prior to that but shows up like yeah hey I'll drive your bucking truck not telling anybody right or if I have a PDF copy of my driver's license I just send that to you maybe that's revoked maybe I don't have that anymore there's no way for them to check that in a timely fashion contract Ary we wait backs it'll hours that's

80:31 just going they need power now they need guys responding now yeah and this makes that possible this is the way that that works and like I said Junction their whole thing is like we're integrating you're the power company you want to have all these analytics of who showed up are they in compliance do they have this do they have that you pay us for the eyes on glass thing which is like the administrative tool you can now see

80:55 that but you don't get all the personal data liability so you don't get to see Alex Wakeland showed up for this contractor to do this thing in this bucket truck they just get a joury and lineman showed up in this truck to do this do this task so it's it it protects my privacy and my like but it's still great valuable data for the company to make solid safety decisions off yeah like if you start seeing hey we're

81:22 having a bunch of hand injuries why are we having those hand injuries well we have more apprentices than journeyman lineman and they're all doing underground you know slicing cable oh we should probably do a class on that they have that available for the whole trade for their whole industry interesting and so it's like like with Quant and with them you know issuing a helicopter shirt they can say we issued this helicopter shirt it shows up in my app with a green

81:49 check mark I can verify that this is a real CT from quanta not only that can say we have because they're the one they're the issuers they can say we have 30,000 helicopter linemen available in America right now we can show you those analytics right now that doesn't exist so Quant is training people but they don't know who's trained how many how many CTS are out there what's their expiration date they don't have any of that data if they had that and they

82:15 could showcase it like how powerful of a tool is that I mean the the economic value of that is you can't overstate it like it I I tried to to explain this it's like it doesn't matter what this costs because it will save everybody on every metric even me as a lineman because I was telling you about the storm contractors where they don't they don't always report their hours or they report their hours and they they

82:39 get stuck and somewhere else like at a hall or something just hasn't reported it yet and then I'll be because I'm chasing storm line Co will say Hey you owe us this many hours because you haven't paid in it's like I look at my W2s I'm like I've paid in I've done this like why do I have to pay you these guys are the ones delayed go get your money from them but they don't care so now I have

83:00 to pay in order to keep my healthare with a system like this I could be like look the AI has proven his hours have been paid you might not have them right now but they're coming and we can prove they're coming from this area just you just wait and they'll be there and then it it like makes that like tattletail to keep keep the contractors honest because a lot of there's been a lot of storm companies starting up and not all of

83:25 them are doing what they're supposed to not all of them are paying the benefits they're supposed to and it's it's become a huge glaring problem and it's almost like that is the problem that will force the solution so you have to have a big enough problem to solve before people will adapt and so this is a big enough problem it's it's like a perfect storm they have a product ready we're gonna have an app ready this is a problem that

83:49 the Manpower has that they want to get solved I have a solution for it if the Manpower signs up as soon as we have the Manpower signed up like it's a it's invaluable you cannot overstate how valuable it is it's like a chicken of the egg scenario so for the person out there that's listening to this and says okay that's fine Alex this is great great idea you got this app it's personal information who's storing this

84:15 information how can you tell it's secure so what we're doing is we're Junction's obviously from New Zealand so they've been watching the whole Tik Tok thing got a have American databases so they're coming in and they're they have established or they're establishing their American company that is going to be ran in America information stored in America they have they're partnered with Microsoft for like cloud-based services so they have military-grade encryption they do they already do

84:45 encryption for their government so they already have like a huge cyber security Branch or of their company so they're coming here and they're going to be American data on American soil with Americans like running it type of thing and like the highest level security and that's their only job so they they're not trying to make money anywhere else in the industry they're not trying to build power lines they're not trying to chase storm they're not trying to

85:12 provide Power their only job is to secure your data for you and that is a hugely powerful company Mantra because right now I'm trusting every single contractor to provide data security for all of my information yeah that's that's not what they do that's not their Forte they build power lines go let them be good at building power lines let this company secure the data because that's all they do they don't do nothing else and so that's where like I said you're gonna be

85:41 that'll pay off in huge dividends because like you can lower cyber security risk you can low lower liability like all of those things get lower because you have this tool so it's really it's not even going to cost it's a cost savings tool it's kind of like the the cameras they started putting in all the cars I forget what it's called ltic yeah lytics so it's kind of like that like the money that that cost you

86:02 it saves you on your insurance and every time there's an accident this will do the same exact thing and we can show that with real world metrics for the entire country of New Zealand it's not like a small it's like 950 megawatts that's like the fifth largest utility in America so I mean it's big yeah and it's it's running everything every problem we're going to run into they've already solved it so it's just like like yeah no

86:24 problem we can handhold you through the whole thing we can build your profile for you it's just it's clean it's smooth and like you said it's it's new tech it's not it's not like from the 1990s like most of the tech that is in the Powerline Industries and that's where how close are you to having this like available so we have we have an app in development and the app should be available in about three months and as

86:48 soon as the app is developed developed and available and guys start putting their profiles on there then it's just a matter of who would like to partner who would like to be in the ecosystem who would like to interact with it I'll be able to even as a linan if nobody picks this up nobody wants it for whatever reason as a lineman I'll still be able to have all of my data on there and I'll be able to share a PDF file so even that

87:11 is going to be epically easier for me as alignment but as soon as we start doing that the companies are going to see it and be like this is way better this is way e why don't we start doing this and so then it's just a matter of how fast would these companies like to adapt and then it'll be I think it'll turn into a dog fight where everybody will be because they'll be trying to have to be competitive because you won't

87:33 be able to compete if you have all the workers you'll have all the work and I'm literally making it easier for me to work for you so if it's easy to work for you and hard to work for them I'm g go work for you especially on I love this about see like white color you don't tend to like upgrade your certifications there's like you get a diploma or degree or whatever and that static blue color is not that way no

87:57 it's a it's a million different certifications in a million different states or countries or whatever changing all the time recertifying to and your wallet goes through the wash and you lose half of them totally I think it's a it's a fantastic way even just like up like even the way I showed you I I keep Ming my notes app scan them all in as PDFs and they're there and I could ship them out to email them out easy I

88:20 thought that was like fantastic this is great right yeah Cutting Edge Tech in our IND yeah cutting but even like updating that like I went into it the other day I just updated my passport I went in my notes out like that's my old passport already like just updating it to your current stuff right and keeping up with that it's just it's not something that the typical lineman does but take it past linemen too man like

88:42 just blue collar like we said they're all same all yeah the electrical industry electricians recertifying constantly for things I just think it's I think it's dope yeah and then you have you have like site specific requirements so it's like I have to have first aid CDL this that and a 3M splicing certificate even the orientation for certain like utility to get on their property or get in the sub certain substation or what yeah it's just all that double training and

89:12 retraining is like that all just goes away because now you have a verified trusted record a trusted metric that you can go with and we have and like I could spin off on this for hours cuz like I said like they have a trusted metric for red yellow green and red is something I uploaded nobody's checked it I told you I have it it's on you if you want to accept that risk or not it's how risk

89:38 adverse are you to accepting it right now that's whatever that's just what everybody accepts everything is red yellow is Like Somebody went and verified it so if I show you my driver's license and you went and verified it now it's yellow so that means when I go to the next company they'll say hey hey Ryan verified this do you trust Ryan because both of them say that he has it and if they do yeah okay we trust him

90:00 okay cool you can move on and then green is like the dot issued it directly to me you have that chain of custody it went from this hand to this hand it is it's government verified yeah we guarantee that this is that sirt and that's where like with the Quant training like like I showed you my helicopter shirt like I can fake that and there's no way for anybody to catch me right now I mean they maybe could but they're not going

90:23 to I guarantee it yeah but this would be like you're immediately as soon as you scan it it'll it'll be a green check mark Cuz quanta issued that directly to me you have that chain of custody and then there's the expiration date and then quanta has that as well so Quant could say hey we have five guys on this helicopter job that are about to their shirts about to expire we should do another class and they have those big

90:45 level metrics and that's just like that's just phenomenal that makes every every aspect of the trade safer more secure and like the big data security push right now like you're not supposed to be able to get into operation rooms or certain highlevel substations this would be like I can take a picture and verify who I am remotely and you can either decide am I allowed or am I not right now it's just they're with me let's just go you'll be fine they don't

91:14 know me from Adam I just showed up for storm and here I am in the operating room hey can I plug in my phone like I started doing that just to see if I could yeah because I've started talking to these ballsy yeah I know just expose yourself I know but I just all I would do is be like okay I can do this yeah I'm not going to but like they would let me plug in my phone they would let me

91:36 plug in and maybe not my phone maybe they'd let me plug in my headphones but like you can make you can make USB look like anything you want yeah sure and so it's like this data security risk they're looking at the wrong people they're looking at outside threats it's like you got to look at the inside threats the social engineering and we make that so that it's like we're not going to close every single loophole we

91:58 massively collapse him down yeah and like I said it's good for everybody it's good for the lineman I get to when I leave the job I'm empowered to take it with me good for a pipe welder he can prove that he has all his stuff good for you know a janitor he can prove that he was here working when he was here working like it just it improves every aspect of every single level what a lot

92:19 of people don't understand either is like so I'm Canadian my process of coming to America here on a work visa like allowed to work here on a work visa so with the trade and the trade skills it came through an intercompany transfer type work visa l1b and it meant that I had been trained with some sort of proprietary knowledge training I had something proprietary to the company in Canada that belongs to the same

92:49 company in the United States therefore I could easily get that Visa that was like a bare hand service certification and line master and all of those but when I came into management that's now a different Visa that's an l1a so like why like how does that work right what a lot of people don't understand is it's it's the time in trades and it's all of those certifications can actually be counted as you know you accumulate enough of

93:16 those over a length of time it can be counted as an MBA oh and that's the stamp you get and they don't even ask like it's just like yeah we accept that boom like so if you want to take and move from that trades position to an office position or open up your opportunities in a corporate in the corporate side of it in management or whatever you can do that and have idea I never even knew that was a thing and so

93:42 it's like and again like that way of verifying that like is that that red version of it's me just passing along and and you know it gets the it gets the like for Quant it was a Quant stamp on that so I guess it's yellow because Quant is verifying and telling the government that I've done that here so but this way you know oh yeah it's it's it's way smoother it's way better and it like it just solves so many so many

94:10 issues and it's like every level every level I get to I'm like these are all the problems I can solve for you and then I get to the next level and it's like these are all the problems I can solve you because for like 10 years i' like I'd be like I'm going to solve all these problems for the Manpower and that's all I thought about and I was like look how good this is for the

94:27 Manpower and then I'd get just above the Manpower and they'd be like we don't care about solving those like oh okay well what are your problems and then they tell me their problems and I was like all right how do I solve those and then I figured that out and I was like all right now I got your problem solved and then they put me to the next level and then we don't care about their problems like we're worried about ours I

94:45 was like a man and so I just started over again and for like for 10 and i' I'd get a little bit of success and then it just Di and then I get a little bit more and it die and I just had that tenacity to just keep asking people the way I got to Junction was I I just cold pitch this to a customer service line that was it yeah like a voice message or just no like online it wasn't even like

95:09 a person no yeah so I went to the customer service and I was like hey I really like what you're doing because I'm researching this all the time in my free time I really like what you're doing here's this huge problem in the States this is the whole idea and I just typed everything I and this is before chat GPT so like it was gobbly cook and this lady calls me and she's like we got your message what do you want to

95:33 do and I was like oh here's the idea and it's going to be great and I just you know super fired up I talked to her I talked to a customer service rep for three hours I had her on the phone and she listened for three hours what yeah just crazy yo so then she gets me in contact with Junction and Junction does like a zoom meeting and they're like yeah we're already doing this in the

95:57 states it's or in the in New Zealand it's you know working out really well we're working with all these linemen blah blah blah and then the pandemic happened I was like oh man now I lost all my traction because nobody's going to travel nobody's gonna do nothing but I kept it was a time to focus yeah but it was like it was probably about a year before Co but they were getting ready to come over and really start

96:20 exploring it and then Co happened and all traveling stopped but I kept every time I fill out a new hire paperwork I'd scan every piece of paper and I'd send it to them every every certification I got I'd send it to them every document I got it send it to them so they probably have and in my defense when I signed those papers those are my papers even though the company's taking them but they probably have at least 20 different

96:44 contractors new hire paperwork just with all my stuff filled out on them just like we can automate this can you do this can you do this and they're like yeah of course no problem we can do this no problem and so I was like this is really going to happen amazing so then yeah and it all started because I just I would not give up on this idea I knew it was such a good idea and it was

97:05 so lifechanging that I was gonna even if I didn't make any money because at the first I didn't I mean even still I didn't care about the money I wanted to go do Line work and that's that was my only goal I wanted to go do Line work and make it easier for me to do Line work so I reached out and thought of this and chased this stream for about eight years just so I could be get to

97:26 doing Line work easier that was that was the only goal and then like they're like hey like you should probably get something for this and I'm like I just want to do Line work I'm happy with what I'm doing and my brother's like you need to stop trading your time for money forever like this is a good idea you're good at this you're good at convincing people like stop working so much and start focusing on this so that's when I

97:52 really was like okay and then I kind of reset and started you know trying to get to trade shows and talk to Robin podmore which he's with inis Academy and he he offered to cross train me in nerk certification and grid balancing and then it was like that opens up a whole new world and it's just like the world of line work will take you in so many crazy places if you just say yes and follow y it's amazing yep and it's like

98:19 I still get imposter syndrome though because like I'll be sitting there and I have this super passionate I'm talking to all these people and then somebody will lean over and be like hey that guy's a billionaire and I'm like and it kind of like short circuits me for a bit and the guy's hanging on to every one of my words I'm like why is this guy listening to me like this doesn't make any sense but like that

98:39 authentic passion and just genuine interest in people like you can't fake that and then people love that yeah and people can see like this isn't a money grab this is like this is going to change the industry it's going to do so many good things not just for Line work for every trade across the country and it's like all I need is one company to start just one company to say yes and I finally reached out to an app

99:07 developer I can't name him because we have a we actually have a meeting later today with him but he's like I know exactly what you're running into because he was a utility guy as well and he's like perfect I came out and I had an idea for an app and I went and built it and until I had somebody else sell it for me I couldn't get to the right doors nobody would listen i' do demos i' do

99:27 this i' do that and just nothing as soon as another company sold it on my behalf everybody else jumped on he's like now I got more work than I can handle but he's like I know exactly what you're going through and I'm G to get you there and I was like holy this is really happening exactly what you need because you need somebody who understands it you got to have that champion if you don't have a as well like yeah maybe he's just

99:48 not very versed in the power of or in the skill set of persuasion selling really but yeah no I can my brother will tell you I can I can sell anything to anybody as long as I believe in it because I'll just keep I'll keep but that's the most important part right yeah you you really should have you really should believe in what you're trying to there's so many people that don't and you can tell like when I was

100:10 at that trade show none of them had ever gone in the field to put their stuff in the field I'm like you don't even know what you're selling what are you guys doing every single human being should learn a a set of like a handful of skills and in those skills is sales and selling marketing like persuasion writing those are things that every single person should learn and unfortunately you don't really learn most of those in no in our school system

100:37 no our school is just getting you through school yeah which is you know it's job it's doing its job but just barely yeah it's made to fit it's made to fill the quota for a certain system and that's that's not the system that we come from no and now with AI it's upsetting all the systems like all the systems are turned on their head now yeah like I remember my teacher used to telling me like you you won't carry a

101:00 calculator in your pocket every day yes I do yeah my English teacher is like you can't have somebody write something for you yes I can because I was dislexic that like held me back so it was like I can read just fine but when I try to write if it's longer than like four letters I'm screwed up yeah so paperwork to me I hate paperwork like with the passion of a thousand Sons like I really hated it and that hate has driven me

101:27 this far which is pretty absurd but you know I I'm in the same boat man same boat I respond to 1% of emails like I just I slow reader if it's and I said this on the podcast yesterday I'm GNA say it again forever was listening to this one but anybody who DMS me a DM that is longer than three sentences man please stop stop I don't need your life story just shorten it down condense it

101:55 three sentences done they have an AI plugin for emails that will do that for you it'll take their whole email and it'll give you like three bulletins it's it's one of the chat gpts it's like a email assistant or something and it does it it gives you like a summary real quick so I started using chat for answering comments and answering stuff like that I just like copy and paste it when I'm on the computer it's I can do it on the phone

102:19 too but it's a little bit more com a little Punky but yeah I just like especially I had a couple of like I've had a couple like well-crafted comments on my posts on LinkedIn and you can tell these people are like clearly writers like they're good at like and they' come back with a point of view that was very like oh if I don't answer this properly like I can either just like ignore it yeah you can't like

102:45 it then they know that you saw it but I've been testing the waters like throwing it in chat I'm like test it with a prompt like please answer this in a you know like a very nice be soft but be like but add this and that be Stern and like I'm just like Eyes Wide Open I'm like babe look at this look look what it wrote me as a response how smart I look totally I'm like this is and I'll

103:07 put it in there and people still aren't really aware of that yet you can tell it to right Blue Collar too oh yeah that's what 100% I do that too 100% write it in the voice of a blue color totally that's where like you get your like you need a Ryan AI where you tell it this is me I run a podcast I do that this is all my experience you do all that and then you

103:28 when you get those comments it'll know your voice exactly you can feed it all the time and you could take like I know like you do YouTube Right Where You transcribe your YouTube you can take all of your podcast and dump them in there and be like you are Ryan in all of these and where it says Ryan it'll know you and it'll respond like you do and it's like it's it's almost like cheating but it's like this is my tool it's the same

103:51 thing using you put I put the work in I it's the same thing as using a power drill as opposed to using an old low wrench like I'm just doing it faster yeah and that's the stuff that's like yeah like Tech has always excited me like that I've always been into it and like most linemen like I said they're tech tech adverse like they don't want anything to do it so I'm like hey you want to talk about chat GPT and quantum

104:12 physics and they're like absolutely not I'm like oh okay as they pull out their L yeah like I got this new wrench like all right fine like the the most revolutionary thing to happen to the L was when Milwaukee put a hammer on it f finally the smart tool yeah the smart tool so we can use it like an idiot love that man well this been a dope conversation man is there anything else you want to talk about I know

104:39 you can talk for a while yeah I could just like the the biggest advice I would give to like a new journeyman that just topped out especially if they're like a hard charger and they want to be really really good don't put Line work at the top top cuz I mean you'll be good but like you have to be a person too if you just put Line work at the top you'll probably be the best lineman but like

105:03 that expires like you gotta you got to have a family and a life behind you to make it worth it so take your breaks take your time off the job will always be there the storm calls always come again like those are always going to happen again take your time to like be a human be and live your life that'd be like my biggest advice for new guys because a lot of these young guys are getting in it's like stars in their eyes

105:27 they're going to go do this they're going to go do that they're going to be a helicopter lineman and it's like yeah that's all it's all doable stuff that's all good stuff to do but also like you're going to be a father you're going to be a son you're going to be a husband like you need to you need to embrace those roles as well so that would be that'd be the only closing argument being an MMA guy you might love this I

105:50 posted about on LinkedIn last night but like I just finished listen listening to Ronda Rousey oh yeah on Diary of CEO interview she just wrote a book in what a lot of people don't realize about her career is what she was battling just from being hit too many times and too many concussions and she know you know she went that 15 and0 and then you know had a little tap and was knocked out standing up and then kick to

106:18 the head and she's down and she spent her whole life not telling anybody about that right and just putting that that thing for her was fighting as number one and you know letting everything else go until she had to pay that ultimate price but it's the same thing that exact same thing that you're talking about she ignored family ignored her health her mental health her physical health everything until she just couldn't anymore and you run you'll run into the

106:47 same scenario in line work is if you just put Line work as first all that other stuff Falls away you don't pay enough attention to that and one day it's not going to feel like it when you're 22 but when you're 42 or 52 your body's going to tell you it's like that's enough your body you're done you're no longer the best linan anymore to Old you're expired and the work doesn't care n like you said before the

107:15 work does not give and then what you and it used you your whole life and it gave you nothing in return you thought it was paying you in dollars right but that's all gone it's gone to whatever and the trade is very very guilty of building that mentality in young journeyman linemen like as an apprentice that's you want to be the best journe in lineman that's it they beat it into you like you better be the

107:42 best and then you top out and it's like I need to be the best and like you get this Swagger of I'm Al lineman and that's where that like all linan are come from because we have that SW Swagger I'm a goddamn journeyman lineman you can't tell me what to do and we literally built the bylaws so like if the CEO comes down and tells the journeyman lineman you got to go do this it's like you're not a journeyman

108:02 lineman and you're not my foreman I ain't got to do anything you tell me to do you can go kick rocks and I've seen guys do that and that type of like power like I said it's addicting and you get this Swagger of like you don't do linemen you are a lineman that is what they tell you that is the that is the the secret sauce to be in alignment is you you are it's not it's not something

108:22 you do it's what you are and then that can lead to so many toxic things if you follow it to its completion and the trade wants you to because it's very very productive like you will be the best employee if you Embrace that and run with it but it'll burn you down personally you will have so many roadblocks and issues that come up and some of your greatest hero linemen that you see even online or even in the

108:49 trades like ask them about their personal life yeah ask him about anything outside of linmark what do you do for a hobby and you'll see they don't they don't have anything they don't have any friends boat yeah yeah you ever go out on it nope it's just sitting in the garage or when was the last time you went and went on a guy trip just for fun he like oh we don't do that we go to we

109:09 go to the rideway and that's where our guys trips are and like when was the last time you got a Christmas card H none of my kids talk to me anymore because I was never there like I paid for all their college but you know they're they're off doing their own thing now and they don't value the relation relationship with you because you never built one and so that's where it's a it's a toxicity that nobody talks

109:29 about nobody brings up and so that would be the last thing I'd want to like really impress upon people is like yeah you want to be the best lineman ever but you got to be a human too so love it dude thank you yeah thanks everybody see you yeah have a good one I hope you guys got some value out of that episode I hope you enjoyed it I just want to draw your awareness to a

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110:51 to up that quality so hit up the YouTube channel make sure you're subbed to all those those platforms appreciate you guys hope to see you again soon we'll see you again soon peace