Transcription
You do not need a college degree. You simply need to know what to say and how to get in front of the people who are hiring. If you have lost your job and are on unemployment, you could go to your local workforce office. These offices are where you can get resources like food stamps. And at that office, there is a grant available that will pay your tuition to go to trade school. They want you to learn a new skill set. We recently took someone from making $15 an hour flipping burgers to $25 an hour in less than six months. Guess what? I don't think they will qualify for food stamps anymore. If someone is flipping burgers all day long and smells like oil all day long, the last thing they want to do is go to night school or weekend school and be away from their family even more.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. I'm your host, Austin Gray. In this episode, I have Hector Resendez joining me from Trade School Secrets. Now, this episode is going to be super interesting for those of you who own and operate local service-based businesses and have trouble attracting talent. What Hector does is he teaches people how to start trade schools with this unique government funding program where he teaches people how to recruit people into their certification, create another revenue stream, and pick from the cream of the crop of the people who are certified for the types of technicians that you are looking for. Not only that, you also get to create a new revenue stream for your business. And how he is doing this is really, really interesting to me. And you will learn in this episode, if you stick around and listen to the whole thing, that I am very interested in how this applies to attracting talent for our business. And I think this could be applicable to many different trades all throughout the US. So stick around for the whole episode. Thanks again for listening. Hey, if you have not signed up yet for the weekly newsletter, we are going to summarize the main learning lessons from this podcast. And if you want to just read it on Saturday mornings, we send all the main points to you in a weekly newsletter. So, go sign up now if you haven't already, owner.com/newsletter. That's oppos. See you in the episode. Why don't you introduce yourself? I'm just going to throw it on record and we're going to get to know each other on air because this is like the most fun stuff to talk about.
My name is Hector Resendez. I have a small little startup, a one-man show called Trade School Secrets. I live in a suburb outside Dallas, Texas, a little town called Lucas, Texas. And basically, I helped somebody a while back start a trade school. I learned the operations and economics about that. I fell in love, started my school, took an exit last year, and now I help other folks all over the country either fix their school, scale their enrollments, and my goal is just to bring awareness to the trades, even though I'm not a trade guy myself, but still, that's the goal here.
Fantastic. All right. So, as I'm in the trades, a lot of our listeners are in the trades, and so I'm fascinated by this. What is a trade school?
Cool. So, trade schools and vocational schools in the past, they've been on the road, either like a truck driving school, a welding school, an HVAC school, but the traditional trade schools typically take about a year to two years. And what I was able to debunk is all our schools are online only. Um, so your traditional HVAC course, instead of taking 12 months to go take it in person, the way we bring it to the audience is you wear MetaQuest goggles and it's a virtual reality course and it's boot camp style and you're done in about 100 hours. Therefore, it's just a shortcut to your certification. So, for example, like an HVAC, it's EPA 608, your OSHA 10, NATE ready. There's some people doing healthcare with it, like your CNA entry-level medical courses, dental courses. There's just a lot of stuff that could be accomplished online. Um, not to bring up old news, but if COVID taught us anything, it showed us that we can still survive working from home, training from home, and everything. So, it's just a shortcut to get credentials so you're not going the in-person route. A lot of times people don't have it in the cards to go in person because they work and they don't want to go to night school or weekend school. So online also allows you to cover a bigger audience versus just your backyard. And that's the space I'm in.
And what trade school did you start?
So, for legal reasons, I can't say the name, but I'm sure if people just Google, they could figure it out pretty quick. Uh, however, we started off as a healthcare and IT school because it was COVID and we thought that's what was needed. What we later found out was it was really hard to get people jobs in that field because sometimes, if not all the time, a lot of our audience has blemishes on their background, and therefore you need a really clean background if you're going to enter the healthcare space. So the reason we adapted and pivoted to trades is that often times people are more background friendly with the trades. It's a tough job, so not everyone's lined up to do it, and so we positioned to them. However, over time, where I come in, and the reason why I love meeting people like you and bringing awareness is there's a grant out there that no one talks about that I feel should be on every billboard. And the grant's called WIOA, stands for Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. And what this grant allows you to do is, man or woman, if you fall on hard times, no matter what state you live in, you're in Colorado, right? So, no matter what state you live in, if you're falling on hard times, you're on food stamps, you're on low income, or you live in transitional living, like considered unhoused, like sober living or a shelter. If you've lost your job and you're on unemployment, you could go to your local workforce office. And these offices is where you get resources like food stamps. Um, and at that office, there's a grant out there that'll pay your tuition to go to trade school. I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin. And this last winter, I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bearclaw. And in both businesses, I've implemented Jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting, job schedules, and invoicing and even collecting online payment. Why? Because it's worked so well for us and Bearclaw and it's saved us a ton of time and headache. So, if you are looking for a software that can help you manage the back end of your business, look no further than Jobber. You can visit go.getjobber.com/ownonerops. Own wnr ops.
They want you to learn a new skill set because the way they think about it is, if you learn a new skill set, guess what? Now you're off government assistance and you're paying taxes and you're not flipping burgers anymore. You're learning a new trade. And it's rare that you meet somebody that gets into the trades and gets out. So it's just, that's the awareness I want to bring, and it exists everywhere. Just people don't know about it.
Can you tell us more about that grant?
Sure. Like I said, it stands WIOA. You could Google WIOA near me and it'll take you down that rabbit hole where, um, you'll see that it exists everywhere. There's no, no matter who the administration is, that grant's been around since 1994. Just no one knows about it. Just like food stamps has been around, this grant's been around. Employers like you, you could register with the local workforce and if you wanted to find talent, if you hired people that took this grant, here's a secret sauce for you guys and your audience. They'll pay 50% of your wages up to 60 to 90 days because you're hiring those kind of graduates. It's a win-win. You get to test drive somebody for 30 to 60 days at half the wages, and then they get some experience on the resume. So they get their hands-on experience. Um, so I think it's cool that people should really look into it. And my new ICP for this year has changed quite a bit. So where for the last year I've been focusing on helping people fix schools by scaling their enrollments, whether it's sales scripts or out-of-the-box marketing strategies. My new ICP now is helping midsize to large-size operators create their own school, which fixes their biggest pain point, and that's finding skilled talent. For example, I onboarded a customer last night. It's why I'm here in Austin. He owns an adult daycare facility, 120 beds, always needs CNAs, which is certified nurse assistant. So, guess what? We're going to bolt on a CNA school to his existing business where he gets to pick from the cream of the crop, and the rest gets certified and goes get jobs somewhere else. He's going to tap into the workforce. He's going to get 50% off his wages. So, if he's paying the CNA $20 an hour, he only has to pay her $10 an hour for the first 60 days. They get hands-on experience. He picks from the cream of the crop and rinse and repeat. So, it's a cool little model. It fixes the biggest pain point every employer has, and that's finding their talent.
Especially in the trades.
Especially in the trades. Yes. Everybody has two problems. Where do I get my next customers? Which we talk about a lot on this podcast, strategies.
I think that's my love language. But it's the second. Where do you find people, talented people?
And that's the coin flip, right? You think everyone's figured it out where, oh, the best talent comes from here. Sometimes they're the ones that aren't certified, the ones that have never done that job before. From every time I've talked to an employer or anyone in the SMB space, a lot of the times what they look for is just the attitude and the willingness to show up. Like they don't really care about the certifications. They don't care about your experience. A lot more times than not, they don't care if you have blemishes in your background. It's like, man, can you show up? Can you get excited? And do you have a good attitude? Because every day is not a good day. It's hard to do anything trade related. And that's what I figured out. I onboarded a guy last week and he has a dog grooming business. He has three dog grooming locations. He's two months booked out because he only specializes in like Golden Doodles and Doodles, like a high ticket. His average ticket is $250. And he can't find enough technicians. So, here comes Hector. We're going to do a dog grooming academy for him, and it's going to fix his pain point. So, I'm like, you know what? I think I'm on to something with this. And the different audience and most operators, they know that this is a problem, and it's a little bit easier than helping somebody start a school from scratch, which I've done in the past.
All right. So, talk to me about the actual business model of the trade school. So this is going to be another stream of revenue, correct, for that operator?
100%. High level. Make a long story short. I'll give you the example for the CNA course. You could white label these courses. Meaning, we didn't come up with the curriculum. If Austin is a white label company, I buy the course from Austin, let's just say for $1,000. We slap our school name on it, and then we could sell it back to the state, or you can even sell it to a general market for $5,000. So, the margins are insane. To your point, it's an extra revenue, but at the same time, it's fixing your problem, and you're making extra revenue, and it just makes your business look a lot more marketable if there's an exit plan in place. I know your wheels are
Oh my gosh, my wheels are spinning a million miles an hour. Take us deeper on that.
Yeah. So, yeah, because it fixes the pain point. For example, one of the first companies I was able to help, um, was a welding company, and they couldn't find welders. Everyone knows that there's nothing better than learning hands-on. The problem is, skilled labor shortage is real, especially what's going on right now with the deportations and every, all these federal things are cracking down on everything. People are scared to show up to work. Right now, more than anything, credentials matter. Like trade schools is finally on a conversation. Used to be college or military. There's so many people from tech getting into trades, and you see it all the time. So I think it's now important that people start getting certifications in the field they're going to be in. So why it makes it more marketable? This welding company that I helped, they are a welding company. I think they had 30 employees at the time. They acquired another company and they needed staff fast. So, by bolting on a school for them, instead of them spending $80 to $100,000 staffing, that's what they were spending, finding staff and paying staffing companies, which I didn't know that was a thing. Like, I knew staffing companies exist. I didn't know how well they did with their margins. Like, I didn't, just me being naive, not on my radar. But, so you eliminate the staffing cost, you create your own school. Now, as an owner, you get to teach them really what there is. Because you go to trade school, you're going to get six books. 90% of the time you're not going to open up the book. You're going straight to a piece of equipment and learn and learn until you get it down. What I've been able to debunk is all our schools are online only. Um, so your traditional HVAC course instead of taking 12 months to go take it in person, the way we bring it to the audience is you wear MetaQuest goggles and it's a virtual reality course and it's boot camp style and you're done in about 100 hours. Therefore, it's just a shortcut to your certification. So, for example, like an HVAC, it's EPA 608, your OSHA 10, NATE ready. There's some people doing healthcare with it, like your CNA entry-level medical courses, dental courses. There's just a lot of stuff that could be accomplished online. Um, not to bring up old news, but if COVID taught us anything, it showed us that we can still survive working from home, training from home, and everything. So, it's just a shortcut to get credentials so you're not going the in-person route. A lot of times people don't have it in the cards to go in person because they work and they don't want to go to night school or weekend school. So online also allows you to cover a bigger audience versus just your backyard. And that's the space I'm in.
And so when you're deep, like when you're saying you're debunking this, I want to get more clear on this. You are making it easier for that person to get a certification, or are you qualifying that person better with the use of what you mentioned?
Both. As the operator, as the owner, you get to vet these people first. You could tell if the attitude is going to align, if the way they show up, did they tuck in their shirt, how did they do an interview? And you onboard them. There's still some vetting process. You don't want to just let anyone come operate heavy machinery. There's certain words, certain questions you would ask for that person, right? But you get to control, for example, um, what example can I give you? If you had an electric company, as an electrician, so many times electricians, owners would say, man, if I could teach them just how to pull wire for 50 hours, that's 90% of their job, instead of them learning this book. So as an owner, you get to control all of that and teach them what really happens in that field because, just like anything we've ever learned our whole life, how many people went to college and used their degree? Very little. How many people go to trade school and actually use those books or anything? Very little. It's just how do you fast track them? And as an owner, you get to control. Look, I really just want to teach you these three things really well. Learn the theory, but I want you to learn these two, three things because this is what matters. And as an operator owner, they get to dictate that. They get to control all of that. They're future client or future employee.
Okay. So, tell us more about that. You said that they're wearing
A lot of the classes are online, and if it's skilled trades, there's a lot of white label provider companies out there that they're figuring it out. There used to be just one, and now there's five. And it's just like what you see the kids wearing, it's MetaQuest goggles. You're literally in a garage, outside on a building, in a kitchen simulator. Like it's, you're, you're virtual reality learning this course. It's cool. It's sexy. People like it. However, you could still do it on a laptop. That's just a cool piece to it. And I don't know if you've ever worn one or anyone has, but it's pretty wild to be in the actual environment that you are like messing with the switches, electrical boards, I mean, everything. And it's just a cool way to learn it. But the hack there is you're taking a class that used to be a year long down to 100 hours by stripping it down to learning theory. The only reason vocational schools and trade schools take so long, they fluff the hours so they could qualify for all the FAFSA and Pell grants and loans and everything out there because that's what it did. Takes that by being a boot camp style school, these schools don't qualify for all those loans. So, it's just a self-pay model where you use the grant, but the key there, it's 100 hours. If somebody really focuses, they could be done in two months and they're wearing a union uniform by month three. So, it's just a shortcut.
Okay. And how much are trade school owners selling curriculum for? What's the average ticket price?
If it's just to the general market, you're looking at $4 to $5,000. Assuming they're buying courses as low as $500 to $800. So you can see the margins there. They just sold one a week, they're pretty happy. But if you're selling it to the states, I'll give you an example. Arizona maxes out at $10,000. Florida maxes out at $10,000 for these grants. Georgia's at $10,000. Not sure where Colorado is. Certain parts of Texas is $7,500 all the way up to $122,000, and you're still buying the course for the same price. So you can see how the margins there get crazy.
And how much does the grant cover?
Those amounts I just mentioned. So the grant could cover up to $10,000. That you're buying for $1,000 and just slapping your school name on it. I know. Don't let your head explode. I stayed quiet for this for a very long time because I was nervous myself. I'm like, is somebody going to come arrest me? This is a crime. Like, I don't understand this. And my wife was nervous. Her whole family was nervous. And I'm like, so far it's a thing. It's been around. Everyone else is doing it. Just how many CDL driving schools? That's the, like the number one saturated school. Every time you drive on the highway, how many CDL schools do you see? They've always been around. It's just never been on a radar as a business.
Okay, that was going to be one of my specific questions. Can you do this for CDL?
Yes and no. You could do like the driving part simulation, like to learn all the rules, and it is simulator, but you do need to go to an actual truck and do your pre-trip and stuff like that. But there is some companies out there, not a fan because they're expensive. There is some companies out there pulling it off on a simulator. And the reason I'm telling you that before I get a lot of hate, because I get hate on this one all the time. What do you think our pilots did for 1,000 hours before they went on and flew us on planes? They did a thousand hours on a simulator, and then we trust them to jump on a plane just because they have some assistance with computers. So I didn't invent this space, like it's been around forever. I'm just bringing awareness to it now.
Okay. All right. But I want to go back to the business model here.
Okay.
So I want you to state that again for
Okay. Let me give you the example with the CNA guy. So he's in Austin, Texas. They pay out $7,500 for the grant. And hopefully he doesn't mind that I'm really getting into the weeds here, but it's going to clear up everything. He needs about four to five CNAs a month. He's going to look for CNAs. A lot of his CNAs now are already on food stamps because it's not that hard to get on food stamps. If you have two or three kids and he only pays $20 an hour, they qualify. It's still considered low income. He's going to put through the grant about half of his staff to begin with. At $7,500 a pop, assuming he's buying the course for $500, he's making a $7,000 margin to get them trained, something they need anyway, to get them an actual certificate to provide quality work for his assisted living business. So, he's going to add an extra $40 or $50,000 a month on top of and he's fixing a problem. So, an extra $400,000 a year. What do you think that's going to look like when he goes to sell? Because he has a goal in mind and he's, "Hey, I want to get to 400 beds and exit." When private equity is making runs and plays at all these things, I have a strong feeling that by having your staffing problem fixed, I really do think they'll be more marketable and ask for a bigger price when they go exit. I don't know if that was clear enough, but
I'm going to keep diving into this.
So, he buys a course, a training course for $500?
Correct.
Once for every, every person, every seat, every credential, one person?
$500 per person.
Correct.
And then he applies for the grant, or the people apply for the grant?
The students.
Okay. And the, uh, remind us of the WIOA.
Yep. Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act.
Pays the?
The school.
Which is something he created, and you help him with?
Correct. Correct. Correct.
So he's claiming the revenue?
And a spread on $7,500 minus $500.
And because he's an owner, not just a school, he guarantees job placement, which is all this grant and workforce cares about. Help us get more people from flipping burgers into an actual trade so they don't smell like oil all day long and see what it looks like to wear scrubs because usually CNA is the entry point to become a nurse or a medical assistant. You know what I mean? So instead of becoming a medical assistant, going to school for a year or two, start off as a CNA. And his program is really well. It's like the first couple of weeks, it's like $16 an hour. If they figure it out, okay, you're going to stay. They bump up to $20. After three months, they could qualify to be like a team lead role, and that's $25 an hour. We just took somebody in less than six months from $15 an hour flipping burgers to $25 an hour. Guess what? I don't think they're going to qualify for food stamps anymore. So now that grant did its purpose. You're getting more people off government benefits into a workable wage so they don't have to rely on benefits.
Where's the catch here?
I've been saying that for a long time. I've been saying now the catch is this. I've done podcasts before and I did get not burned, but every state is different. Like unfortunately for you, Colorado is a really tricky state to start a school. However, that's from scratch, and that's just from I haven't done it from the point of view as you already have a business and you want to add your own academy with a grain of salt there. Every state is different. For example, Georgia wants you to sell the courses to the general public for a year to have somewhat of a sample size of your placement and completion rates before they give you access to the WIOA grant. Texas isn't like that. Texas, if you apply, four to six months later, you're a school. There's no really waiting period. There's just a process to get through. So, there's some sleepy states out there. There's some states up north that you just apply and if you have a course that's in high demand, they'll approve you. Then there are some states you just really want to stay away from, which is California, Washington, New York, Florida. I love you guys, but your state's really complicated.
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That I don't know. I've been asking, what's the catch? Now, if I come out on an episode on American Green later on, then we found out what the catch was.
Okay. All right. So, hit me with this. We need qualified operators on our forestry side of the business and on our excavation side of the business. This is something that we either have to spend a ton of time with our lead operator, like that guy, just like watching and coaching. So like my head is spinning a million miles an hour. We could get people 100 hours behind MetaQuest goggles in like virtual reality. And if we could control what they're training through, and I know that would be a lot more work than buying the white labeled course, but we're in a very specific industry here.
Offline, I'll tell you who has those courses already made up. They've been around for four years for everything in your space.
Perfect.
Yep. It exists. Again, you'll be surprised what exists. It's just I was dumb and naive to ask questions no one was asking.
Okay.
And yeah.
You got till the top of the hour.
Yeah, of course.
All right. We're going to wrap this episode up. I'm going to build this thing.
All right. I'm serious.
Dude. I'm.
Where's the catch? If I can find qualified operators and if I can create a school and if I can create another revenue stream, why, why let me ask you this, why wouldn't I do this?
Now, it's doable. I just never dug deep enough in Colorado. The first thing you start off with, and here's a secret sauce, is calling the state and finding what that looks like. I know how to get somebody licensed and approved in the state of Texas and other states because I've done it already. But when it comes to certain states, they're a little bit trickier, but it could be done. It's just not everyone's willing to do it. There's a lot of paperwork, politics, you have to spend. I think Colorado is $5,000 to just even apply to be a school. So, that's the catch. Some people aren't willing to do that, or they don't have that to do it. So, again, I think in the past, I was helping people that wanted to start a school that already had a 9-to-5 and they just liked what I was doing and the impact. But now I think the bigger, the more important people that get it are people like you, people like the CNA, dog grooming. So I think I'm shifting my ICP to that because it just makes a lot more sense. It's a win for everyone. Again, my whole mission is how do I get people out of flipping burgers into a trade. Not to knock on the fast food industry, but it's just an easy analogy to give.
Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I'm an entrepreneur. I love making money, right? Like the cat's out of the bag, right? Should be come no as no surprise, but the way that we do that, the best businesses solve the problems, right? And so it's why I'm so passionate about the wildfire mitigation space. It's like we have a massive problem. We all saw what happened in LA.
Oh yeah.
There's a massive wildfire, and in my community in 2020, we had one of the biggest wildfires in Colorado history. So like we're literally on a mission to go clean up the forest. Do we make good money doing it? Yeah, of course. We're solving a problem. And so it's like the, I was, I was there for that. Yeah. I went to, was co everything was like 90% off, and we had never been, and we drove up to Colorado Springs, went to the zoo up in the mountain, and everyone was messed up, but like the hotel, that's all you saw in the news, these fires everywhere. And I'm just like, should we leave? Can we get home? But I remember that now that you brought that up.
And I don't talk a lot about this on the podcast, but legitimately, like the wildfires are a huge threat in the western United States. And so 2020, this fire in our community engulfed over 120,000 acres in one night. If the wind conditions are right, we have so much dead wood in the forest. I heard people talking about this consistently in my mountain community. And like I said, going back to that, like just being a problem solver, the best businesses, in my opinion, solve a problem. And so, everybody was talking about two things. Hey, what's affordable housing in these mountain towns look like? And then how do we solve wildfire mitigation? I'm like, I don't really want to. I don't have the capacity to go solve affordable housing. That's somebody smarter and wealthier than me on the development side. But I grew up running a skid steer and many excavators. And I think if we just pair up great operators with equipment, especially with how fast robotics and equipment and AI is coming through, dude, I have one guy operating two different machines right now because one's on a remote control. Like, we just pair up great operators with great machinery and we go clean up the forest. It's very simple. But we need to train that person how to do this specific work. And look, I told you this before we jumped on air.
Yep. I looked at you and I was like, I'm really excited about this conversation.
Yeah.
Why? Because I think it can accelerate us solving a problem. And so I know we just met, but I am very excited about the opportunity to learn more about how we could potentially train people to be better operators as soon as they come in.
Happy to bring awareness to it, man. I think there's more need for you guys out there. And if this brings awareness, I'm happy to be a part of it, even if it's small.
Where are the biggest, before we jump into that specific stuff as it relates to forestry and excavation? Where are the biggest opportunities for people who, let's say somebody just wants to go start the trade school and be that person for a specific industry? Where are the biggest opportunities right now?
I think it's going to vary state to state and region to region. But a good place to start if you're in a town and you go to Indeed and type in appliance repair technician, certified nurse assistant, and you see 50 plus jobs, there's probably a need for it. And so far, every client I've ever had and helped, I don't care how rural the area is, there's usually a town, big enough town within an hour that they go work at anyway because it's so rural. It's rare that there's no need for a lot of the trades, whether it's appliance repair, dental assistant, dental front, healthcare front desk, technicians for apartment complexes, technicians for hotels. A lot of times it's been overlooked, but now in these days, some of these technicians in these apartment jobs that learn appliance repair, the hack there is they don't get paid so well, but they live on site for free. So, it's like a little rent hack. So, it's just people aren't asking the right questions and I think they should really consider trade schools. And a lot of times what happens is these trade school owners I've met, they're like the employers, they created a school, but because they're a tradesperson themselves, they get stuck. They get stuck working in the business instead of on it, and they never scale it. And that's where I come in because I don't want to be behind a laptop and on the phone all day. They become the instructor. They're answering the phone. Their marketing, they never scale. They're never able to um, walk away and let it run itself, putting the right people in place. And that's what I bring awareness to. I'm like, "Hey, you got to automate." With sales reps, with it being online, there's so many offshore talent that you could get for a third of the price that could handle your repetitive daily admin stuff, and it'll allow you to
buy back your time. Um, but yeah, man. Anytime somebody invites me to a podcast, I say yes because I want to bring more awareness to it. I've done some of these in the past and usually my DMs will blow up and every now and we make a connection that makes sense. It has to make sense. They have to be in a state that makes sense. I'll give you a small quick example. There's a guy from New Hampshire that wanted to do this and I was nervous cuz I'm like New Hampshire after you talk to the five people that live there. Then what? But what was cool about him is that he licensed in New Hampshire but he gets reciprocity to Maine and Vermont. So now he has a big territory to play with. So that was cool.
>> That's awesome. What's been your biggest success story with somebody you've worked with?
>> So there's several. There's a girl in Houston, really young. She's probably 30, 32. She started off with one electrical class. She's doing about 3 million a year. The class is about 6,000. She went from two staff members to 20. She's the only female Latina trade school owner that I know about, but she is like the epitome of in it. She's going to conferences, speaking on stages, speaking at high schools, and just getting people into basic electrical. I have a client in Arizona. He teaches an IT tech sales course. Get people into tech sales that don't require a college degree. Like, he's debunking the fact that you don't have to have a college degree. You just have to know what to say and how to get in front of these people that are hiring. And he teaches people how to get into tech sales. He developed his own course. So, he owns the IP. So, you could imagine his margins. He's selling that course for 10 to12,000 every day all day. Probably will do two million this year.
>> Okay. So, let me ask you this. When you say he he's teaching people to get into IT tech sales, it doesn't have to be like blue collar trade specific.
>> No, there's a lot of stuff out there. He also does really well with his cyber security class that a little bit more smarter individual, but they ask the right questions to make sure they get somebody qualified. But it is, even though there's a lot of layoffs that you see on the news and stuff like that, but like cyber security is one of those that's not going to go away with as much as identity theft and scams are going out there. But yeah, there's again dog grooming.
>> I'm on boarding a client next month that does telematics. He needs technicians because his business is adding GPS and telematics to fleets of vehicles at a time and he can't find enough technicians. He's in a small rural town in Texas and I didn't know he was spending $50,000 a year in staffing. So, that's going to solve that.
>> Okay. So, another area my head's going to and I've had this thought recently. So, like I joined the Jobber team as an ambassador.
>> Yeah. They sponsored the podcast.
>> but I was using Jobber way before they decided to sponsor the podcast way before they asked me to be an ambassador.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> So, I was just naturally talking about how Jobber makes my business run more smooth. I get a lot of requests right now because, you know, how to set up Jobber videos on YouTube and people literally just reach out to me and ask me for consulting on this. And so, I've been doing a fair amount of that. My question for you, and a thought popped into my head the other day, every small business owner I talk to, I mean, like a ton of people here locally are always like, "Hey, how are y'all doing your marketing? Like, how do you send such professional invoices so fast?" Right? And this stuff is natural to me as a 33 year old, but it may not become natural be so natural to somebody who owns a business who's 55 or 60 or 65, right? And like implementing that software is a really hard thing to do because then they have in their mind they have to run the software, right? But what if we could train the people to run the backend back office operations on a platform like Jobber? Is that something that would qualify for a trade school to basically teach people flipping burgers how to operate the back office of a small service-based business and then deploy those people into back office operations?
>> There's definitely an idea there where it's going to vary in range is that every state pays for different courses in different fields. So, for example, and I'm going to talk about Texas because that's where I live. If you like the Houston area, they're big on the coast. So, like welders, underwater welders, boat technicians, believe it or not, roofers, and power washer, like very coastal. If you go to West Texas, wind turbines, box truck drivers, delivery drivers to drive the fuel and transport back and forth, and just really oil and gas. And so, it just depends on what the region looks like. Um, but it's just asking the right questions. How do we design a course that's uniform that could be a blanket? And sometimes we've had some wins where you could challenge the state and make them put this field on their demand list for the course to cover it based on justifying something. As an example, I have a big partnership with a portable AC company and they don't need technicians, but they need the drivers to and then fix these portable ACs. So, one could say that it is in the HVAC space, but it's not to them. It's in the CDL space because they need a clean record, a driver to go set up these big old machines and wheel on them. You've seen them, right? Those big portable AC things. And that's a they have 50 locations. They're the largest. The owner is like 28. He's a baby. And he has locations anywhere. And he can't find talent fast enough. So again, something like that is a nationwide problem that we could probably solve because it's in the driving transporting world. It's just offline. How do we create a course that any state would see that as a demand and prove it why and justify it? What I've learned being who I am and what I've been doing is we just got to ask the right questions to the right people.
>> I love this. My head's spinning.
>> I get it, man.
>> Where can people find you? I want to use the rest of this hour to pick your brain on some specifics here.
>> Okay. Yeah, dude. I'm not I don't exist anywhere, man. I joined Twitter last May because a neighbor of mine went viral on Cody Sanchez podcast. I don't know you heard of him. His name Spencer. He started a garbage company.
>> Yeah, I have. And he and I have gone back and forth. He's just an operator, right? He's in the weeds right now. Gone back and forth on scheduling.
>> Five houses away from you.
>> That's awesome.
>> Small world, right?
>> Lonear. Is that what it is?
>> Yeah. He has the sickest, funniest t-shirts and marketing campaigns.
>> Does he?
>> Hysterical. Oh my gosh. It's hysterical. Anyway, but he's the one that goes, "Dude, you should join Twitter." Because I was driving by when he was filming with Cody Sanchez. And I text him. I'm like, "Dude, that girl looked like Cody Sanchez." He responded later on, "Dude, you got to get on Twitter and talk about your stuff." And I'm like, "Who's going to want to talk about a trade school?" So, I joined and man, God willing, I think I'm at 8,500 followers and people are just as boring as me and want to talk about trade school. So, that's cool to see. I'm on Twitter as TS Secrets for Trade School Secrets. People laugh at me all the time like the Bodies of the World. I have no website. I have a Gmail account, yet I have a cool little oneman show helping people fix their staffing problems. So, that's where they could find me. I don't exist anywhere else.
>> Sometimes the operating from the Gmail account's the biggest flex.
>> Yeah, you can't tell Bod that though.
>> Hey, they do great work. They crush.
>> Yeah, he's in my peer group. I get to know him. We text each other almost every day. Just jab at each other.
>> So, what is this peer group?
>> Tribe. So, tribe is a peer group where entrepreneurs like me and you go. I've never been in business for myself by myself. When I joined, I needed that accountability. I needed structure. Tribe literally changed my life because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now and have the stones to charge what I charge and bring this kind of value. And they've taught me how to do that. I joined really early. I think we're over 200 members now, but there's a lot of people out there. Nick Hulinsky and Chris Corner, which are some of the investors in tribe, just to give you some reference. Fun fact, Chris Corner also lives across the street from me. We're in a area and he's on the country road and it took Twitter to introduce us, but small world there because he's a big personality on everything.
>> That's awesome. Yeah, I had Nick on the podcast. It was funny. We recorded like several episodes. We had all these ideas.
>> We're like, "Oh, shoot. Let's talk AI. Oh, crap. Now we need to start a new AI podcast. Let's get it." I'm like, "Dude, I'm so deep in three businesses right now and a podcast." And I was like, "I can't commit to something else." But I will talk AI and automations any day. That dude brings so much energy and he's awesome.
>> Between both of them, I go to lunch at Chipotle with Chris Corner because it's around the corner from us once a month and I leave that hour with my head exploding. Hector, you should be doing this. Hector, you should be doing if I was in your you should do that. I'm like leaving with like notes and notes on behind napkins. I'm like, man, if I could just figure out how to implement one of them because those guys work at a speed of lightning and they're just spitting out ideas and Yeah, I understand.
>> Yeah. Super fun. Yeah. Tell Spencer, hey, we've gone back and forth on scheduling, so tell Spencer it would love to have him on the show here.
>> Yeah.
>> Next time you see him, same with Chris. He and I have not been able to schedule anything. Yep. would love to get those guys on here, but it's crazy that y'all all live in the same area.
>> Within the Mayo, man. I think it's Yeah, it's wild. Within the mile.
>> It's so cool. So cool. Texas is friendly to this trade schools.
>> Yeah, we need more of them, man. That's bottom line. We need more of them. We need more online examples just because not if somebody is flipping a burger all day long and they smell like oil all day long, the last thing they want to do is go to night school or weekend school and be away more from the family. So, if you can
>> Okay. All right. We're going to wrap this one up and I have some specific questions for offline listeners. This episode is brought to you by Dialedin Bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialedinbookkeeping.com/ownrs. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first three months 50% off. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. You heard it first, trade school secrets. Go check Hector out on X. If you have ideas for trade schools, I'm sure he'd be willing and would love to help you out. Thank you so much again for listening to another episode. We publish episodes about building local service and tradebased businesses every single Friday. And then we send a newsletter with the recaps of the main lessons that were learned from that episode. And we send those to you on Saturdays. So, if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, go to ownerops.comnewsletter. That's owls.comnewsletter. I've got some final exciting news to announce. Again, I've said this in the last podcast a couple times, but if you have specific business questions, I took a page out of Chris's book, listening to his podcast. He does Q&A where he answers questions with his guests. So, we set up an open phone text line after hosting the open phone founder on the podcast. So, we've got 970-585WNR. If you have questions about how to grow your business, text them in and then I will add those questions into the episodes live with the guests and we'll answer those on some of the episodes. All right, we're going to wrap this one up. Thanks again. Don't forget, work hard, do your best, never settle for less.
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