Transcription
Hector, one of my favorite guests. You're back. You had a trade school. It's doing $3 million a year, 30% net margins. You blew a lot of people's minds. AI is not replacing the trades. AI is not helping the trades. We have a staffing shortage when it comes to the trades. It's actually going to get worse over time because the people who have been in the trades are retiring. There's this imbalance of demand and supply. I thought it'd be amazing to bring you back on and talk about not only the trade school, but how companies can take advantage of trade schools.
All right, Hector, one of my favorite guests. You're back. Last time we spoke, you had a trade school. It's doing $3 million a year. It's like 30% net margins, which was nuts. And you blew a lot of people's minds. A lot of people just have been reaching out to you and saying like, "What? How do I do that?" And so I thought it'd be amazing because a lot of stuff is happening right now in the real world to bring you back on and talk about not only the trade school, but how companies can take advantage of trade schools, supply themselves with a staffing pipeline and make a lot more money.
So happy to be back. It's been life-changing. Obviously, I joined Tribe and you're an investor of Tribe, so I have to call you boss now. But even then after doing your pod man it really I got a lot of DMs and I felt like what it's like to be you and popular and prom king and all that stuff. So it's been a wild ride. I appreciate it. You're making real money. So that's the good stuff.
So I'm going to set the table for people who are listening. Last time we had Hector on, Hector owned a trade school and it sounds weird, but it was an online trade school and the government actually pays the trade school for people to come in and for him to train them. And it was an amazing episode. If you want to go back and listen to it, we'll link in the show notes. But the reason that these trade schools are becoming more popular is because we have a staffing shortage when it comes to the trades. And so I'm going to read some statistics. Right now in America this year, we are 550,000 plumbers, 600,000 auto mechanics, 80,000 electricians short of where we need to be. That's nuts. Like that's how short we are. So So if you're out there and you're like, "Well, yeah, I remember calling to get my I don't know, pipes fixed or my HVAC fixed or some electrical fixed and it took 3 weeks to get out there." That's why. I mean, there's just a massive massive shortage. And not only do we have a shortage, but it's actually going to get worse over time because the people who have been in the trades are retiring. And people like you and I who when we grew up, our parents were like, "Oh, you don't want to be like that guy, an electrician. You should go to college and get a degree." And so because of that, you know, we don't have as many people in the trades and but we have degrees and we don't really know what to do with our hands. I don't like I don't know how to change oil in a car. And so there's this imbalance of demand and supply.
And you started with this online trade school and you've sort of morphed now into helping businesses figure out their staffing pipeline by taking advantage of these grants. They don't need to start their own necessarily massive school, but internally take advantage of the grants, train people up, get them trained on those trades, and then they fix their staffing problems. Is that a fair characterization?
Good night. I said it all. I'm out. No, that was good. That was amazing. That's that's to me mic dropped. You did good. Don't forget to tip your waitress on the way out. That's awesome. Yeah. No, you said I mean you left out this the cool part of how we do the training, right? But we'll get into it. But yeah, I mean you said it correctly. One thing that stands out, I'm a big Mike Ro friend and he's a big, you know, he's Mr. Trades and he always says it for every five people that retire only one gets replaced. So I think we're in trouble.
You know what's crazy is like everybody's like, "Oh, AI is going to do X, Y, and Z." And then you look at it, you're like, "Yeah, but AI is not replacing the trades. AI is not helping the trades." But, but I was Chris and I were having this conversation just yesterday. I have a sprinkler head that was broken in the yard. Chris had a problem with his HVAC unit with his air conditioner. And we were talking about we FaceTime chat GPT and we're like, "Hey, what's going on here?" And it like walked Chris through what was wrong with his air conditioner. I guess it was missing some freon. and it walked me through identifying what the problem was with my sprinkler head. So, it's like there is AI that's augmenting that's helping people in the field that I actually think is going to make it more efficient to like diagnose the problems, fix the problems, etc. But then there's also things like you just showed where these VR headsets like people are training in virtual reality on how to fix these things, right?
Yep. Exactly. So, I went through that myself. I mean, two days ago, I woke up to just the fan blowing, like fan mode, and we're all kind of hot. It's, you know, 100° outside. And I'm like, you know what? I've never even taken my own course. I'm like, let me just fast forwarded to this part. I put on the goggles. I watched it. Turns out it's just a capacitor. This thing, it looks like a little battery. Okay. So, I swap I swapped that out. I didn't get electrocuted. I'm like, man, we're in trouble. We're in trouble. Cuz that would have been a $300 trip easily for somebody just to swap out a little Oh. easily. Definitely.
Well, the idea that Chris and I discussed yesterday, I which I think is an amazing idea. I even bought the domain. Handyman Mentors.com. There there are guys like me who just I'm not handy, right? Like we didn't grow up handy even though my dad tried to teach me how to do stuff. I'm a son son of an immigrant. Are you son of immigrants? Oh, yeah. My parents are from Mexico and they didn't teach me to do nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like our dads are probably super capable. Like they could do anything, right? And they look at us and they're like, "Oh, you pansy. You don't even know how to change the oil." Right. Right. Right. Well, that's not how your dad sounds. Your dad's like, "Hey, Hector, like why can't he even change the oil?" I don't know. That was like way off. That was super racist. Okay. A little bit of racist, but just a little bit. Like 10%. 10%. Anyways, like we didn't learn how to do this stuff. And like if we're just going to wait for people to come out from the HVAC company or the, you know, or the electrician, it's going to be two, three weeks. So, why not have where we're setting up these boomers to to meet guys like me and just kind of mentor them, teach them like this is how you change a sprinkler head. This is how to change the oil in your car. This is how you redo an electrical box. That actually might be too much, but you get the point I'm making, right? Where it's like, yeah, raise the competency of normal people so that we're not necessarily just waiting two or three weeks for people to come out and fix real stuff.
Dude, it's true. I mean, the guy that fixes my AC lives four houses away and he's my neighbor, but it's prime time. He's like, "Hey, man. I could get to you maybe in 3 days." And I'm like, "Do you live across the street?" Like, "Just come over." But he's just he's that busy. I mean, I couldn't knock him. I'm like, my wife looked at me. She's like, you know, let's go stay at my dad's. I'm like, I'll figure it out. And then I figured it out. But the thing is, you have to be careful. I don't want to figure too much out because then she's going to figure out I don't know how to do stuff and expect things from me. So I said the fine ladder really low. Yeah. My ladder. I'm just not that guy.
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Okay. Here's what I love is like it was already mind-blowing when you told me about trade schools, online trade schools. Was like, "No, we have a trade school. We do it online and then the government pays us to train these people. It's highly profitable. We don't have to have this massive school infrastructure that most schools have. It's online, blah blah blah." So, that already blew my mind. Then you started telling me, you've been creative and you kind of taken that ethos and said, "You know what? Why don't we help companies take advantage of these grant programs? They don't have to have a school to do it. They can take advantage of these grant programs. They now have a revenue stream coming in that gives them money to train people. It fixes their pipeline for staffing and it allows them to expand their business. It's like just like a win-win-win all around. So, your phone's been ringing off the hook and you've been helping companies do this, right? Like what is it?
It's been an amazing ride. I mean, we almost spoke probably like a year ago, so this is like our oney year anniversary. Oh my god. Oh, Hector. Looks like we made it. Oh, okay. Sorry. America's Got Talent, here we come. Anyway, yeah, let's get back to back to movies. Yeah. So, at first, you know, I I took an exit from that school, and I need to figure out what we're going to do next. And it happened a lot quicker than I thought. At first, I was just doing like some, you know, contract work, project work, like helping other schools fix their funnel, like sales training. like they didn't even have sales scripts and how to text people like just helping them audit that and get that fixed. And then January of this year, I get an email and it's from an Allstate agent dude and at first I ignored it because he's like, "Hey, I want to do a school." And I'm like, "I can't really do school this year." So, I kind of ignored it. He was pretty persistent. He emailed me almost once a week and I would look at it and I'm like, "Man, I need to stop doing it because I'm not going to respond." And so, I kept it unread, unread. And then the second email he emailed me from a dog grooming email but the same guy and he has a interesting uncommon name. So I finally look into and I call him like dude I'm so sorry the holidays got in the way. What's going on? How did I help you? And he goes into he goes listen me and my wife own a dog grooming business right here in Princeton, Texas. So just little wall 15 actually number one city in the US for some reason. They're growing blowing up. But he's like, "Look, we have three locations and we're a month out like for bookings for dog grooming. I can't find enough technicians cuz we specialize in doodles like golden doodles, labradoodles, and he's charging 250 trimmer haircut." And I'm just like, "That's crazy." He go, "So, I thought and I guess he saw a podcast or somehow or some way he found me and he's like, I want to do a dub grooming school." And I'm like, man, that'd be cool. I don't I don't think that would work. And you know, I put my thinking hat on. I go to the state of Texas. I look up like, can the grant pay for this? And lo and behold, vette, like a vet assistant. It qualifies because it's entry level. And I guess there's a need for it. Obviously, he's a month booked out. So, I'm helping him. I already did. We helped him open up a school where he could train his own technicians, pick from the cream of the crop, and keep those and the rest get certified. They go find work elsewhere pretty easily. and we're able to add about 300,000 in revenue by using the grant. So, not only is a grant paying for students to go there, he's teaching them the curriculum. They go take a test, they get certified, but also a something a little new that came to mind is OJT stands for on the job training. If the employer hires somebody that took this WEOA grant, they get paid 50% of the wages up to the first 90 days for up to 90 days. That way they get to test drive each other, but really the employer gets to half off of their wages. They pick the cream of the crop and the student, the grad gets something to put on their resume, like an extership almost. And it was just mind-blowing to me and it was a game changer for what I do now and for them.
Let's go through the vette model. Is the grant amount the same for any of these or does it ch does it vary? It's like, oh, you're an electrician, here's the amount. You're a vette, here's the amount. It's whatever you could justify in value. And because he could guarantee him job placement, we're charging pretty much at the top. Is there a scale or are you telling the government like, "Nope, this is the amount we're going to charge." We get to tell them, "This is the amount we want to charge." And why? Wow. Do they audit it? Are they is it like an application where you're like, "Okay, hey, we want to charge $8,000 a student." And they say, "Nah, too high." You just have to justify it. You obviously it's a lot of work to become a school and that's why it exists. But to apply through the school and how you apply, how you write your catalog, how you write your curriculum. But these businesses, they don't have to be a school. They're already a business. They just have to dedicate a room or certain hours or certain days to teach. And they're already doing that anyway. I mean, they got to train somebody for so many days. But why not now add an additional revenue stream? And it's been really profitable for them.
Well, there's a guy on Twitter who we were just talking about, Chris Hoffman. He owns Hoffman Brothers. I don't remember exactly what they do. I think they do HVAC. I know they do HVAC, but I think they do some other things as well, but they're big. They're like a in St. Louis, right? They're in Yeah, they're in St. Louis. I want to say they're like a hund00 million company, right? Yeah, I think they do all three. HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. Okay. The big the Is that what they call them? The big three. It's just what people are starting to do. Like you're if you look at vans, they're not just HVAC anymore. They're dipping into all three. Oh, okay. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like, you know, you're already intertwined. Mhm. selling more stuff, right? You already know. Anyways, he opened his own school within the company, correct? Is that a school like we're talking about or was it just he's just funding it himself? From my understanding, he's just funding it himself. Love the guy's content. I just think he's leaving a lot of money on the table based on his numbers. He's probably leaving a million dollars on the table every year.
I'm a Hback company. I'm an electrician. I'm a plumbing company. Anybody who's in the home services business and I have multiple employees, is this probably best for a company that's like $2 million in topline revenue and above? I'm assuming you'll be surprised. One of my newest clients, they do quite a bit. I mean, this dog grooming business was only doing 500, you know, just because they're so backed up, but they just added 300, you know. Okay, so maybe the threshold instead is like they have two employees or more or something. Will it working for them as a tech? At least five and they're looking to scale and this is going to help them scale because it's fixing your staffing problem. I mean, even if you do the courses online or with the virtual reality, we all know and what we were able to debunk the first time I was on is our boot camp style classes through the grant just get you the credentials, the piece of paper. Once you go to that employer, they're going to want to train you how they do things their way. They're going to be here, go shadow Nick for 60 days before you throw your keys to work truck anyway. So, that's what we've been able to do. But it works for anything. It's not just trades. I know we talked about that last time, but like man, I've been involved with a dental school, with a CNA school, with an IT school. Right now, IT sales has been hot and has always been hot and it's, you know, a lot of people want to work remote because with all this return to office mandates, people still want to be remote. I help a school right now, you know, scaled really fast their IT textiles course.
Well, in many services businesses, healthcare is a services business as well, like that's where I come from. The bottleneck is not demand. I mean, yes, we're worried about demand and we'll run paid ads, etc. But the bottleneck in my experience for many of these industries are the labor necessary to fulfill the demand. And that's really where you see these companies hit the ceiling. It's not that, oh, my ads aren't converting or my the mailers didn't work. It's not usually not that. It's usually we don't have enough people to meet the demand that's coming at us. The flip side is though, they're thinking, how do I fix this problem? And if I'm a business owner and I'm listening to this, it's like, I don't have time to open a school like how am I going to do that? Can you walk me through like what does it look like? What are the economics? What are the time commitments?
Yes. So, let's go into let's use my CNA school as an example, right? When I say my somebody I helped, it's not mine. But so I met this guy, profitable boutique elder care living, so high-end assisted living out of residential homes in the Austin area. And he charges, I mean, without I think like 10,000 a bed, you know. So really, really high-end professional chefs. Yeah. A month. Chefs. But because of that, now he needs CNAs 24 hours around the clock. You've been in in the industry. You're just talking about it. It's hard for CNAs to stay motivated, stay doing that work because they're not compensated as well, but it's an entry level to like nursing, right? If you will. So, what he does with these CNAs, just so I want to just educate every CNA, certified nursing assistant. Yes. And so, what they're doing is they're doing things like bathing. They're helping with daily tasks. They're not a nurse in the sense that they're going in and like changing wounds or any of those things, but they're kind of the backbone of many facilities. like they're the ones that do the hard work, getting in and out of bed, changing their diapers, bathing, you know, all of those things. Grooming care, those types. So, that's what we're talking about here. They're almost like a teacher. They have to really love what they do cuz they're not Yeah. getting paid for it, right? So, it's hard work. It's very hard work. It's hard. And that makes or break you. Like, are you going to want to get into nursing? Start off a CNA. You get a front row seat if you want to be in that world. Right. Right. So, so this guy, he's like, "Man, I'm spending 50,000 a year trying, you know, just fixing staffing, like with staffing companies and getting people training and staffing." And, you know, underneath my breath, I'm like, "Dude, you should start a school." And he's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Well, I mean, let me ask you this," which again was shocking to me. He already has 30 CNAs and only five are certified. So, other 25 are just doing the role. Kind of like a home health provider. You really don't need much, but you do it. And I'm like, man, there are actual differences. So, you can be a home health aid and there's a CNA. So, one is a like you're a certified nursing assistant and that like an aid is just somebody who they pay 15 bucks an hour to do the real work without being certified. You get paid more if you're certified. Yes. Yes. Yes.
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So he says, you know, he tells me that and I'm like I quickly do some math and I'm like, let me ask you something just without being so nosy. How many of your CNAs are on food stamps or low-inccome and have kids? And he's like, probably all of them. Do they make no 16 bucks an hour in Austin, Texas? That's not anything, right? That's minimum wage. I guess you are. So I told him, dude, you're already sitting on a pipeline. If you certify your own staff 25 times, let's just say Austin pays $7,500 for somebody to go through training. He keeps all that. You find a CNA course, white label it, you slap your new school name on it, CNA Academy, and you get to certify your own staff and get paid a lot of money for it. If he wants to scale from there, which he is, he's going to always find new CNAs, train them, pick from the cream of the crop, and the other ones get certified and go on their way. It doesn't take much time because you're buying a white label course. The course is already done. You're just administering it. He's going to have one like office manager kind of run the school and they're still going to go through their training. He's just we just helped him fix his staffing problem. So, $7,500 per student. Per student. Again, what are you expected to do that if I'm the employer? I've got to offer obviously the curriculum, but it where else does that money go to providing? Do they get a laptop? Do they get Sure. They could do whatever they want. What's really cool with his is they do the course online, they come in and they spend a month training, which he's also going to apply to be an OJT, on the job training provider. So, he's going to get half of his wages reimbursed and he's going to get be able to pick from the cream of the crop. But, let's just say that course only cost 500 bucks. the rest is profit. But what's cool with him is he actually has a career growth program. He starts him off at 16. After 30 days, they made their training. He moves them up to 18. After 6 months, another review, he moves them up to 20. And then the real career progression there is as he scales, they're going to be house managers after a year or two or two years. And those house managers make between, you know, 60 and 70. So, it's it could be life-changing for somebody.
I don't know the answer to this. Maybe. And if you don't know, that's fine, too. Could you pay like let's say he has those CNAs and they want to be or those aids and they want to become CNAs. Could you pay them a bonus once they become a CNA? Does that make sense what I'm saying? Why not? I mean, he's making $7,500, right? The least you could do is give them a bonus. He's going to get Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz what what happens is you also don't want to interrupt their job. I mean, they still got to work for him, right? But the cool thing with online courses, you get to do it on your own time. And not only that, like I don't want them leaving in six months, right? Like I I just spent the time and energy to invest in them to train them up and now they've now they're a CNA. Well, now that you're CNA, like there are other options open to you, right? So like I would want to see them stay. And that's where I think of like a retention bonus or maybe a bump in pay or whatever it is. Not only that, you can use that for future training like now let me pay you to become a phabotamist and let me pay you to learn, you know, insurance, medical billing, and coding or whatever. There's no there's a lot of legs here and it's going to be fun.
I know we're just talking about this specific scenario, but this will apply to any tech for the aid who decides to become a CNA and go through the program. 7500 from the government. Are they paying anything? No. Okay. No, no, no. As long as they qualify, right? Because remember, you still have to Google WA. Most CNAs are going to fit this bill because they make about 14 to 16 bucks an hour. And as long as they're on food stamps, Medicaid, some kind of life there, which you're in that world, so you know, a lot of them still are. That's right. Tell me the qualifications again. How do you qualify for it? You have to be low income. Low income, US citizen, transitional housing, on SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, WIC, some kind of life barrier, some kind of government. Do they have to be on all of those or is there like a combination of those that they have to meet? Just one? Just one? Just one of those? Cuz you got to remember the purp the purpose behind this grant is to teach you a new skill set, earn more money so you don't have to rely on government benefits and earn a decent wage and get into a career progression. So if it's CNA in hopes he's he his career progression is he wants to turn a CNA into a medical assistant. So it's just another step up and eventually maybe get into nursing or whatnot. I don't know what you can and can't do in adult in elder care. I know he says that he still has some kind of other services come in to perform certain duties, but yeah, this to your point, this applies to anything to welding to dental assisting to medical front desk is such a turnover role and everyone's always looking for it. You're the first person they see.
You were just telling me so there's a list of like qualified techs for this, but then there's also some creativity that can be involved. For example, I think you were talking to me about a dentist where you're like, "Yeah, they're looking at using this for their front desk person, but that's not typically where a dentist would look, right?" No. No. Most dentists you think cuz you see everyone advertising dental assisting school. We have enough of those. This dentist, his real pain point was, you know, it's my front desk position. Like, how can I train him to use Open Dental, the most common CRM? How could I teach them to use AI for insurance and billing and coding? How do I teach them how to do, you know, soft skills? How to deescalate a client that's mad that their insurance doesn't work? And it's a real need right now. But not just for dentists. You could do this course for dermatology, medical front desk, GI doctors, just about any practice. That role is really important and it's such a high turnover. So why not get paid by the government to fix it?
Is the grant state specific or is this a federal grant? It's federal. It's in every It's in your backyard. It's in Meridian, Idaho. Shout out. Does the ability you can charge change depending on where you are? Yes. Yes. So, unfortunately, the grants the same, but every state has their own requirements inside every state are broken up in regions and every region will only pay for certain courses, certain fields. Like if you go to Galveastston, Texas, it's going to be more coastal like underground welding, boat technician, like stuff like that, right? If you go to rural Texas, you're going to see like wind turbines, solar, oil and rig, drivers, like stuff like that. Is it county specific? Like you'd need to look at the rules in your county. Yes. Okay. So, it's like Medicaid dollars in the sense that Medicaid is federally aortioned. So, it's like, okay, whatever the state is, this is these are your Medicaid dollars. the state can decide how those dollars are spent, if that makes sense. They're identical. Like, yeah, Texas is so populated that I think Texas is one of the biggest states that gets the most pull cuz it's they also track on how you use it. Like, to be a school, there's still certain metrics you got to hit. Like, you got to make sure you have a 70% completion rate, a 70% graduation rate, and then a 70% people get a job in the actual field. Not like college where you get a degree and never use it, which who knows what that percentage rate is. High. Probably high. Yeah. Very high. Yeah.
If let's say I'm in Idaho, I'm in the county. What's usually the first step? Do you go and meet with like is there a person assigned to administering these programs that you want to go and build a relationship with first? There is, but you'll be surprised. Nothing's in person anymore. It's all through behind a computer screen when it comes to applying. But if whoever is watching this, it should be like, "Hey, are you a business owner? Are you struggling with staffing and you want a cool way to drive additional revenue and fix your staffing?" However, there's some states that are tough like Florida, you have to wait two years to even get access to the grant. So, I'm sorry, Florida, it's a pain in the butt. Texas, Arizona, Montana, Arkansas, it's a no waiting state. So, as soon as you apply, after you go through the process, you're approved. where places like Tennessee, they review schools twice a year. So, you have to wait for that period or that little window to apply.
Where would I go and even read up around this? Is it like tradeschools.org/idaho? Like, no, there's no such thing. For those that are really interested and want to go down that rabbit hole, I guarantee AI as good as it is won't take you there because it's really not as accurate as you would think it is. But just Google ETPL and that means eligible training provider list or Google eligible training provider Idaho eligible training provider Kansas because an eligible training provider is a school. You're providing a training that's in demand and those demands can change. They honestly do. So where would you go to like figure out how do I become an eligible training provider? You're going to have to Google it or state by state. state by state or get in line and talk to me or Hector onlinechools.org.
Man, what's funny is, you know, I still don't have a website to this day. Oh, come on. No website. I have a Gmail account, a Google doc, and a Stripe account, and we're cooking. So, wait, how do people get a hold of you then? Carry a page. Sometimes I have an old Nexto phone that I use every now and then as a walkie-talkie. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. My MySpace is still active there. No, seriously. What is your room? No, they find me on Twitter. Well, okay. Well, if I'm not on Twitter, how do I find you? They could email me. You know, tell us your email. Do I have to pull you to like get your email? I'm like trying to throw you business here and you're like, I don't know. Okay. Rendezes just like it says on the bottom of the screen at LLCgmail.com. That's it. Rendezes LLC. Yep. Just gmail.com. Gmail. just a Gmail. That's a good email, man. That's my professional email.
So, if a business owner is looking basically like your new business that you're that you've kind of gotten pulled into that you've tripped into, so to speak, is helping businesses navigate this, right? Because there is a lot of complexity to like who do I talk to in my state? How do I set the prices? How do I create the curriculum? What's the credentiing process? All that stuff. You're kind of doing the consulting piece to help them actually get correct credential if it makes sense. if that makes sense because again there's some states that really tough if you're going to want to be in the trades and you're trying to do anything in the east coast expect it to be tough you're against the unions over there so it's a different battle over there what does really well is it or healthcare not the actual trades that are unionized so it just depends case by case so like your trade school that you had was doing $3 million a year topline and like what a million dollar a year in profit yeah after overhead and everything probably it's like 80% margins something ridiculous how many students Did you have total a year? Yeah. Yeah. To get to $3 million? No, about 30 a month. 30 a month. Oh man, that's less than $400. That does not seem crazy. It's not crazy. You could add this as a legitimate business stream, revenue stream to any business. It's been fun. It's also been fun helping other schools get fixed. For example, there's some school numbers that call me and I guess I call it an audit, you know, and I ask them for basic stuff like, "Hey, send me your sales script, send me your cadence, like what text do you send out when this happens? What's the first text you send out? What's your email sequence?" And crickets. A lot of these schools don't even have those simple processes in mind. They're not using CRM. So, it's easy to fix them because how do you operate? I mean, a school is still a school. It's still a cell. like you got to convince someone over the phone to sign up to your school. And you'll be surprised, you know, a lot of trade school owners are trades people themselves and they got stuck working in the business instead of on it and they're the instructor, they're the owner, they're trying to do everything. The wife's kind of pitching in and they never scale. So, I'm happy to help those as well.
What do you do if you're, let's say you're a small business owner and you have locations in four different counties? Do you train everybody in one county and then they're all certified and you get the grant or do you have to have a school in each one of those counties and be credentialed from each county to get the grant? No, I mean the goal is to do it all online, right? So you have a bigger reach and then you train them based on where they live. So if they live towards that county, you do it through that county. Can you do out of state? Like could I have a school in Idaho and train someone in Texas? No. No. Okay. So it has to be in the state. You're only licensed to do business in your home state. Now, there's ways around it, but just to keep this professional and clean. You do have to be licensed in your home state. Now, after two or three years, if you want to get accredited, which means you go from a dot to edu, you do get access across state lines. So, you get access to about 34 36 states now with that accreditation. But then everything changes because when you become accredited, your courses now have to be 900 hours. And now you're competing with everyone else semesterbased schools. What's cool about doing it online is you could start classes every week and your classes are about 100 to 150 hours. So, no one's waiting. There's no delays. I mean, you could literally take a course and wear a new uniform 3 months from now.
Let's say that I'm in I'll use Idaho as an example. I live in Ada County and there's somebody who's in Canyon County. I have a service location out there and I want to train them. Can I train them in Ada County and have them work in Canyon County and get Do I get paid by Ada County? How does that work? As long as in the same state. So, it just depends. Usually, you get paid by the county they reside in. So, they go to Okay. I don't know what's called at that. Yeah. Like, if I'm here, you know, if I'm here in Colin County, I have to go to the Colin County Workforce Office if I want training dollars, but it doesn't stop me from getting a job working in Dallas. It's another county, but So, I get accredited by the state, but I get paid by each county. Yes. Yes. To make it simple. Yes. And each county has criteria for which trades effectively that they will pay for. Yes. Like they have a thing called targeted occupation list. Like these fields will pay for because they're in demand and more likely you're going to get hired in this position because you can't meet that demand. Yeah.
Is the billing and collection a nightmare? Like are you billing, you know, 20 different counties and getting paid by different counties or like It was when we first were doing it, but we got it down to a science. It can be, but I mean you're with AI now, like a lot of stuff could be automated. You know, AI could be our best friend when it comes to trade schools if you use it properly. What does the payment look like? Are you paid everything up front? Are you paid in installments? Depends on the county. Some counties pay you, let's call it, 10 grand up front and then some counties will do half up front and half when they complete the course. And how quick is the turnaround? Let's say I send a bill to the county. Typically, how long does it take before I get paid? Net 30. Oh, this is really fast. Oh, real fast. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I know. But typically, you're not doing the full program and then getting paid. You're getting paid something. Yes. Along the way. Always. Okay. Always. It's probably 60. Now, now this is Texas, right? I don't know other states that well. In Texas, about 60% of the counties pay upfront. The other 40% pay half up front and half when they complete it.
All right, here's the last question. If I'm a business owner, like how do I know that I'm a perfect profile for doing this school model where I can get an extra revenue stream, I'm creating a pipeline, and I'm also helping my employees advance. Like, how do I know that I'm in the right spot to be able to take advantage of it? That's the rolling the dice. We don't know. I know Texas really well. I know Arizona really well. I know, for some reason, Montana, Missouri, Kansas. I know some states really well, but some states it just doesn't make sense. Like if you call me, if you're in Florida, I'm sorry, but it's going to take two years to create a school. So, is it worth it? It could be maybe down the line, but just know it's going to take that long to get access to Okay. Well, let's say let's say I'm in a state that's a good state, right? I'm in I'm in Texas. Yep. Is there a I think you said five employees. If you have five employees or more, that's kind of a threshold. Are there any other thresholds that you would look at and say like, "Yeah, you should probably be in these types of services?" the services as long as you could justify if there's a need. You'll be surprised. I took on a client that has a telematics company. I'm going to be honest, I didn't know what telematics was. I'm like, "Yeah, probably not going to work." Then I took the call with him. He's like, "Oh, no, man. They just need to learn basic electrical knowledge because we're installing technology and GPS to fleets of vehicles and I can't find those technicians fast enough." And I have loads of contract work and this guy's in the middle of nowhere in Texas, like like middle and Odessa oil country. And I'm like, "Dude, you could definitely start a school for that." And we did, you know? So, it just depends. It can't be so niche, but then you'll be surprised. I helped the dog bloomer out. So, it just it'll take some work on learn, but man, if they have at least five employees and they're looking to scale up, even if they're not keeping them, what a cool thing to do to have somebody train, have them train with you as an externship for 30 days, maybe keep them if you love them. If not, they get certified and they'll find work elsewhere. Full circle.
What's crazy about this is this is not like a government money grab or kickback. They wouldn't be paying this unless there was real value here. And the value is we have a shortage of these types of technicians. Yep. We just talked about it in the beginning. Big huge not just in trade but actually healthcare man. I mean, the most talked about courses are CNA, CDL, roofing is one of them, even though I don't know how you would do that, but it's just some some really random low low entry and the the minimum wage in those fields are actually going up because they they want to keep people because it's such a turnover. It's insane. I mean, there's a real need. There's a real shortage. We say trades, but but these technical, right, these technician level roles, it is a trade. It is in there. Like it is a big and it is almost on demand anywhere. Can you believe it? Like it sells course like it's working remote working from home and sells in it even though it's not technical like cyber security in but it's just an IT role sells and that's one of the most popular courses right now out there.
Well, the one thing I didn't realize the last time, and I don't know if we talked about it, was like the on the job training. For the first 90 days, they'll pay half. If the employer registers with that workforce to say, "Hey, I want to do on the job training and hires a graduate, even if they went to their school or not, but just hires a graduate that went through this grant, you'll get up to 50% of their wages paid for up to 90 days." I think that's a game alone. Yeah, it's insane. It's freaking incredible.
All right, Hector, this was awesome. We kept it short. We kept it freaking action-packed. You wore your tuxedo shirt again. This is amazing. That's right. Sunday's best. Can't wait to Can't wait to talk to you next year when you're doing $10 million a year and own 17 schools. Just kidding. I hope you're not kidding. I would love that. All right, man. We'll talk soon.
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