Speaker 1: I guess it's just a radio thing. One thought per break.
Why have only one podcast when there are fifty thousand
things moving around us all at one time? Why are
you shoving that into a potato bag? Arrow dot net
A R R O E dot net, Seventeen unbelievable podcasts
are waiting for you. Heallo, and good morning everybody. How's
everybody doing today?
Speaker 2: It's hey Arrow at Brady, how are you?
Speaker 1: What you've been up to? Ed?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, just fight, fighting, the good fight here in DC,
trying to figure out if the federal government's going to
open again.
Speaker 1: Well, my gut is telling me it's gonna happen soon.
But I have a why is it? Though? And you're
probably because you're right there. It just feels like there's
a bigger fight on the way, that something is going
to build up today, And to me, that affects the
little guy, which is us out here on this side
of the rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely, I agree. I don't know where the
middle class comes out in this scenario with the health
insurance premiums, with all the challenges on the budget and
the deficit. And I heard President Trump just offered two
thousand dollars checks to everybody in the country. But we
have a deficit problem. We have a we have a
huge hole and we got to fill that. So it's
going to be an interesting, interesting couple of months.
Speaker 1: So many people that jump into the trades, which is
one of the things that you and I want to
talk about, and that is is that they go into
it with more of a side hustle approach, and ed,
how can we change that and make it a career
and not a side hustle.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's quite frankly, it's things like this. We
need to promote this to young people. We need to
promote this to parents of young people. We need we
need to really put a dedicated campaign to to suggest
how good this opportunity is. I mean, we there's some
there's a lot of headwinds hitting young people AI entry
level jobs, college debt, college graduation rates, all things. And
that's not to diminish the value of college and the
value of professional licenses like attorneys and doctors and all that,
but we really need to sell the idea that this is,
this is an entrepreneurship opportunity. This is the way that
people cannot only learn a trade at a young age.
This guy is the limit. I started out as a
framing carpenter when I was in high school under a
master carpenter, my master union carpenter, and you know here
here I was in two thousand and six and I
built two hundred and fifty homes. Wow. And so over
over the years we really got to sell that, and
we got to sell this as an opportunity to control
your own destiny, not count on other people. And quite frankly,
these jobs aren't going to a you know, we need
to train Americans for American jobs. We need to put
Americans to work. And the industry's got number of headwinds
as well, that perception immigration is a headwind. So there's
a lot of opportunity here. We need to sell it.
We need to get it into the schools, We need
to get it into the parents as mainstream career paths,
not alternative career paths.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to challenge department heads at businesses as well,
because there's an onslaught of young people that are coming
from schools that are trying to get their foundations moving
forward right now. And one of my favorite things to
do is to sit with them and listen to them.
What are your goals, what are your ambitions, and then
we as just regular coworkers and employees can encourage them
as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when you're talking to CEOs, you're talking about
what the future looks like. Is that what you're asking?
Speaker 1: Well, i'll tell you what. I think it even started
because you were talking about parents and with schools and
stuff like that. But I also think it belongs in
the hands of the co workers as well, inspiring the
younger generations to I understand where you are. You need
to learn the disciplines of what it's like to have
a job and the financial aspects of it. But as
you build, you know, as you go into your college career,
you have to be able to take what you're getting
right now, which seems like a job, but it's okay
because it is a first step of your beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, And I think that's peer to peer
are peer to students. So you know, we in our programs,
we want people that are in the industry to go
in and talk about how good this industry can be,
how successful you can be, how it's limitless. Right, So
when you talk about mentors and people that are our instructors,
and I got one hundred and eighty instructors throughout the country.
They teach, yes, they teach electrical and carpentery, but they're
also mentoring. They're teaching, they're teaching soft skills of how
to show up on time and how to be a
good employee, but also mentoring them on their opportunities. And frankly,
we have a problem with young people that they don't
see optimistically. They don't see what the future. There's a
lot of challenges and we've got to give them hope
and aspirations to be better. And that you mentioned that
goes to parents. I mean parents have to start looking
at reality and saying, you know, I want my kid
to go to get a degree. Yeah, but what is
the return on that investment? What are they going to
have when they come out? And I think when you
look at somebody going into a twelve week program in
the trades and learning the trade and getting into an apprenticeship,
becoming really skilled and then opportunity to open your own
business and control your own destiny, that's a path we
have to have people really look at. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things that I've bumped into in
the trade schools is that as an instructor. It seems
like three quarters of the students already think they're stars,
even though they're into welding or they might be into
home building and stuff. They think their answers are already
sitting inside their knuckles, and it's like, you haven't gotten
them bloodied or cut up yet. Let's let's start, you know,
number one, and let's let's figure out how we're going
to get you through this so that you don't think
you're a star right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. There's a media gratification in
young people and that you know, social media, a lot
of the things that have contributed to that. But the
immediate gratification, uh, we got we got to get back
to teaching that it takes hard work to get to
places right and so when when we when we talk
to counselors, when we talk to college, uh, entry level,
when we talk to parents, We've got to again it's
a realistic approach. It's hard work. This isn't for everybody,
by the way, the skill trades, it's not for everybody.
It is now when I say that, I want to
say it is for women. And we we have four
percent women in the skilled trades. And that is so underserved.
We need to Women can do these jobs just as
well as men in so many cases, and we need
to make sure that they understand that we're they're aware
of these opportunities. But it's hard work. Anything is hard work,
and something worth getting is worth hard work to get there,
and so I think we have to re educate. We're
not going to get You're not going to be successful
playing games all day. You have to I mean, look,
that's fun and actually we game up. We created opportunities
for people to learn trades while they're playing games, while
they're looking at senderlators. That's fun and also rewarding at
the end of the day. So I think there's real
opportunity here. But it shows, like yours that we need
to help socialize this.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Ed Bradley coming
up next. He is the CEO of the Homebuilders Institute.
We are back with Ed Bradley. What are you finding
in your studies about when does somebody start taking it seriously?
Because I mean, I'm always reminded of even though I've
been in radio for forty six years, I'll bet you
my first three to five years was that punk kid
up in Buildings, Montana, who thought that he was that
radio god already, and I didn't take it seriously until
five years. And I see a lot of that in
the younger generation as well as the twenty five to
thirty year olds who think, well, you know, I'm in
between jobs right now, I'm not going to take it
seriously until I find something. No, take it serious now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We actually we would love to be in the
schools in seventh and eighth grade because that's where you
start influencing I mean, even the fifth and sixth grade
building birdhouses or building Doug houses, all those things, it's
influencing the young people. But seventh and eighth grade you
can start looking at construction math math in a different way.
You can start looking at all the physics. And it's
an interesting stem project. Right The construction industry is as
much stem as anything else, and so we need to
start young. But certainly in the high schools need to
make it more available to students to explore as a
freshmen or sophomores, and then if they really choose this,
this opportunity, they're juniors and senior years working as interns.
Between junior and senior year in the field learning construction
as an industry. And then you know, so for the
young people, we need to start them early. Many of
them should be qualified to go into the trades right
out of high school two years later making sixty seventy
thousand dollars as electricians or plumbers. But then when you
talk about the twenty five thirty year olds and those
that might be laid off because of AI, that might
be that might be looking for a career, change, hospitality,
whatever the case may be, we need to then market
to them in a different way. This is an entry,
this is a this is a beginning again, unlimited opportunity.
But you have skills. You know how to work, you
know how to show up, you know the discipline of it.
Now we'll train you on the skills. You just need
to then perfect them. It's like playing the piano in
the rage. The more you play the piano, the better
you get. Right. The more you play games, the better
you get. And the same thing with carpentry. The more
more layout you put on a building, the more plumbing
you do, the better you get. And we've got a
long way. We got a lot of fifty five year
olds that are very, very skilled that are retiring out yep,
and the twenty year old coming in is going to
take some time to get to that level of productivity.
But yeah, it's just we need to we need to
encourage people to invest in this time. It's not immediate gratification,
but it's a long it's a it's a there's a
great runway for it.
Speaker 1: You talk about those people that are retiring out, you're
absolutely right about that, especially when it comes to what's
going on beneath the surface of the earth. Because that's
one of the things that I try to share with
the younger adults is that, look, those water pipes are
going to break forever. AI is not going to replace
those water pipes or that or that digital camera or
whatever you've got going on in your house. Somebody still
has to put that in the ground. And I say
you do it and that, and it kind of opens
them up saying, I do need a job that I
can guarant that's going to be here forever and just
go get dirty man.
Speaker 2: That's right. And I use the example of AI is
not going to fix your toilet at you in the
morning when it's leaking into the kitchen on the kitchen
floor but it also you know, the amount of money,
look at the lack of just pure economics, the lack
of supply with a huge demand increases prices. Right, plumbers
are demanding seventy five dollars just to come and look
at your job, not to do anything, but to look
at your job. Because there's not enough plumbers out there.
There are people that are looking for plumbers all day long,
electricians to fix their electrical and they can't find them.
And so there's there's a huge opportunity, I mean, and
it's fun to think about the opportunity as a as
a You asked a question about when when people start
getting serious. I went to college until I was a junior.
I really didn't think about this. I didn't think about
what my career was going to be. But it's got
to start earlier because there has to be a path,
a very deliberate path, and so start exploring. Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the things that my son in
law did with my grandson. He says, you want a car,
We're going to walk the neighborhood and we're going to
find one that's up on blocks, and you're going to
buy that car and rebuild that car. And that had
I have enjoyed that so much because my grandson's responsibility
in life has has led him to a career that
really has nothing to do with AI technology. It's about
being with real people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that example, I mean it's meaningful because
we you know, high school students will go into some
trades training. They may not go into the trades, right,
but they're always going to be able to fix their
own stuff at the home, and so they're going to
This is a skill that's portable. If you learn this,
you can move. You can take your license with you.
This isn't like you're locked into downtown Chicago. You can
move with your skill and you'll always find work. And
one of the criticisms of the industry and one of
the challenges with bringing people in is stability. Right, it's
a cyclical business. The economy is cyclical, but meaning that
there's good times in bad times. But you learn one
of these trades, there's always maintenance and service agreements and
there's always something to do that's going to be needed.
And so it's in my opinion, it's somewhat recession proof
into the trades. Now I'm a builder, that's not necessarily
the case builders go through slumps and they go through
peaks and highs and all that. But if you're a plumber,
you're always going to have work. If you're an electrician,
you're always going to have work. I think there's some
again perception that it's a cyclical business. There's no stability.
It's like housing homeownership. Home ownership has gotten older and older, right,
the first time buyer, partly because a lot of these
young people went through this great recession where their parents
just struggled, right, And so we have to change that
perception that was a one and one hundred year nineteen
twenty nine to two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
that's a long time. That's a one time deal. We'd
have to promote home ownership is still and the trades
are still a good career path.
Speaker 1: I got. You know, we got to give kudos to
home builders like yourself, because you guys are planners of
the future. You are visionaries. You look at the weather,
you see there's a gigantic mountain in front of you.
Do you stop? No, you do not. You keep going
no matter what. You unite because you have to have teamwork.
Do you see what I see when I see it
when you talk about being a builder, I see the
entire picture when you pull that lands back. And that's
what I want, even even the middle aged people, is
the fact that there is something there if you choose
to become a part of the community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so I delivered. I told you two thousand
and six, I built two hundred and fifty homes. Yes,
the proudest days of my career have been handing keys
over to young people. And you know what that's for me.
That started with going out into the rural areas and
looking for farmland that might be developable. And so here
here I'm looking at ten foot high corn stacks and
thinking what that could be that vision of a subdivision.
And so then you take that from putting it on paper,
and then you go through the process to entitle that
and work with the city and work with the municipalities
to get that into where you actually have sewer, water, curb, gutter,
and you have lots to build on. And then you
go out there and you build a hole, You dig
a hole, and three weeks later you got to roof
on a foundation, and three months later you're in keys.
So the vision people have to have to look at
the vision of what this career and any everywhere in between.
There are specialists, there are bankers, there are real litoris,
there are contractors, and so Yeah, young people have to
have that vision. We have to help them. We have
to help create that vision for them as to what
this looks like. But it's it's an exciting opportunity. It's
an industry that is very dynamic, very vibrant, and I
just I think we have to sell We have to
sell it.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more of what
you're doing ed because we've only had like ten or
fifteen minutes here and that's not enough. We've got to
get into the mind, body, and soul of those that
want to grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, HB I encourage them to go to HBI dot
o RG, the Homebuilders Institute we have. We're in all
fifty states with programs. Some are high school programs you
have to some are transitioning military programs. We're in at
risk opportunity youth programs. But start at HBI dot org.
And if we're not there, there are a lot of
great programs throughout the country. A lot of skilled trades,
introductory level, skilled trades programs. I encourage them to look
at that explore in vast time ours. We don't charge,
so there's no money monetary value too. I shouldn't say
that no monetary value. There's a lot of monetary value,
but there's no cost to a student. It's the effort,
it's the time commitment to look and explore into this industry.
And then we help people find jobs in the industry.
So we don't just train and pray that they go
out and find the job. We train and we connect
them with industry through the homebuilders throughout the country National
Associational home Builder members. People that are in the industry,
we connect them and will help them find a job.
So start at HBI dot org.
Speaker 1: Well, please come back to this show anytime in the future.
Speaker 2: Ed.
Speaker 1: The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Sir Erro. This is fantastic. Thanks for the opportunity to
sell what we what we do.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right you two. Thanks