Fighter Jets to Training the Next Generation w/ Chris "Elroy" Stricklin – DT 302

Summary

Dirt Talk by BuildWitt – Episode DT 302: "Fighter Jets to Training the Next Generation" with Chris "Elroy" Stricklin

Release Date: January 9, 2025

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Introduction

In episode DT 302 of Dirt Talk by BuildWitt, host Aaron engages in an in-depth conversation with Chris "Elroy" Stricklin, a seasoned Air Force veteran and construction industry leader. The episode delves into the parallels between military training and workforce development in the construction sector, exploring innovative strategies to train and inspire the next generation of workers.

Sponsorship Highlight

The episode opens with Aaron acknowledging Ariat as the official sponsor of Dirt Talk. Emphasizing the importance of quality workwear during harsh winters, Aaron shares his personal experience with the cold, stating:

“But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible.”
[00:00]

Career Inspirations and Education

Aaron reflects on his own educational journey, expressing a lack of enjoyment during college but recognizing its value:

“I didn't enjoy college. Honestly, I... I wouldn't do it again. I didn't have fun, but that's what I've learned...”
[01:00]

Chris responds by discussing his involvement in athletics during college, highlighting the diverse opportunities available:

“I did different things across all four years... everybody has something they can participate in.”
[02:03]

Military Training and Insights

Chris shares his aspiration to become a fighter pilot from a young age, inspired by a Popular Mechanics article featuring the demanding life of Navy pilots:

“He wanted to throw up the whole time. And I read that and went, I'm in. That's what I want.”
[03:35]

He further elaborates on the rigorous training at the Air Force Academy and the competitive nature of pilot selection:

“We only sent 225 people out of my 900 graduates. So you had to be in the top 225 people that both qualified for and put. They wanted to go to pilot training.”
[50:51]

Workforce Development in Construction

Transitioning to the construction industry, Chris discusses the challenges of making construction a preferred career path rather than a fallback option. He emphasizes the importance of sparking interest early, particularly targeting 8th graders, to build intrinsic motivation:

“We need to get people around these machines once for them to get it and right now or to know... it's just the construction's been that fallback career where construction... to me it was inaccessible, which is... crazy.”
[06:42]

Training Simulators and Community College Partnerships

Both Aaron and Chris highlight the role of simulators in training. Chris details the collaboration with Alabama’s community college system to integrate simulator-based training, which includes online theory and practical hands-on experience:

“We put the training online on demand, on their schedule... we have over 25,000 people enrolled in programs right now in the state of Alabama.”
[09:04]

Aaron underscores the effectiveness of simulators, comparing their use in construction to pilot training:

“The simulator thing... it's not to replace seat time. It's to make the seat more accessible to people, and two, to get people familiar with what it's like the controls are like.”
[54:29]

Challenges in Workforce Recruitment and Pay Discrepancies

A significant portion of the discussion addresses the disparity in wages within the construction industry, especially between regions. Aaron points out the economic incentives that deter potential workers from choosing construction over other industries like warehousing:

“How can you fault somebody for saying, I'm gonna go work at Amazon because I'm gonna make more money a lot of times...”
[38:17]

Chris agrees, emphasizing the necessity of transparent pay structures to attract and retain talent:

“We have to talk about that so we don't hurt people... it's crazy... $17 an hour versus... $70 an hour for the same job just based on region.”
[39:12]

Leadership and Culture Change

Drawing from military leadership principles, both speakers discuss the importance of trust, communication, and a culture that encourages learning from mistakes. Chris shares his experience with leadership debriefs in the military, highlighting their impact on team performance:

“We have a safe place to go. Hey, I almost turned a skid steer over today because I held the bucket too high.”
[75:07]

Aaron connects these principles to the construction industry, advocating for a culture where workers feel valued and motivated beyond mere paycheck incentives.

Personal Stories and Family Impact

Chris opens up about the challenges his military career posed to his family life, illustrating the personal sacrifices made by military personnel and their spouses:

“My wife... we have four kids. They did 18 schools in 23 years... It's hard to be a teenager...”
[84:11]

He underscores the importance of support systems and clear communication in maintaining strong family bonds amidst demanding careers.

Technology, Automation, and the Future of Construction

The conversation shifts to the role of technology and automation in both the military and construction industries. Chris discusses the potential and limitations of automated systems, drawing parallels between fighter jet simulations and construction equipment training:

“We gamify things... when me and you get a simulator class, we get a score... It's grading me if it's on the right arch with the right bucket tilt...”
[55:39]

They explore the balance between technological advancements and the human element, stressing that while automation offers precision, the intrinsic motivation and satisfaction derived from hands-on work remain unparalleled.

Conclusion and Future Plans

As the episode winds down, both Aaron and Chris reflect on the synergy between military training and construction workforce development. They express optimism about the collaborative efforts to inspire and train the next generation, emphasizing the long-term benefits of such initiatives.

“We could pool our resources and do it once to get to the 75%... it's a team effort.”
[34:51]

Chris concludes by reiterating the importance of passion and genuine interest in building a motivated and skilled workforce:

“It's just a genuine let's make the industry better... We're really doing the same thing. We're just trying to make it better.”
[104:42]

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Key Takeaways

• Early Engagement: Targeting young students to spark interest in construction through accessible training tools like simulators.

• Collaborative Training: Partnering with educational institutions and industry players to create standardized, scalable training programs.

• Cultural Shift: Fostering a work environment that values intrinsic motivation, trust, and open communication.

• Transparent Compensation: Addressing wage disparities to make construction a more attractive and viable career option.

• Leadership Principles: Applying military-style leadership and training methodologies to enhance workforce development in construction.

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Notable Quotes

• Aaron on Motivation and Training:

  “We're trying to help build a community that treated people the way they needed to be treated... we just need to get people around these machines once for them to get it.”
  [06:42]

• Chris on Workforce Innovation:

  “Alabama is number one in the nation for workforce innovation because of this. It really is.”
  [16:09]

• Aaron on Leadership and Trust:

  “The way they put it together is really remarkable. But the way I watched it was from a leadership standpoint... the level of trust and communication.”
  [80:15]

• Chris on Intrinsic Satisfaction:

  “A career is something that comes with a paycheck, but it also gives you intrinsic satisfaction... That's what makes me motivated about what I do.”
  [17:35]

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Conclusion

Episode DT 302 of Dirt Talk offers a compelling exploration of integrating military training principles into construction workforce development. Through the insightful dialogue between Aaron and Chris Stricklin, listeners gain valuable perspectives on building a motivated, skilled, and satisfied workforce capable of driving the construction industry forward.

Transcript

[A]

As you know, Ariat is the official Dirt Talk podcast sponsor, and at this point, we've talked plenty about their footwear, their workwear. But now it is winter, and boy, is it cold. It was 17 degrees this morning. I had to warm the truck up. But just because it's cold does not mean the work stops. So to get the job done, you need the best, warmest workwear possible. And Ariat has a long list of outerwear, amazing jackets, pants, and other goods available now. You can shop at their website, ariat.comdirttalk that is ariat.comdirtttalk there's also these misnomers that you have to enjoy everything for it to benefit you. I don't. I don't at all think that's true.

[B]

I'm with you.

[A]

Like, I didn't. I didn't enjoy college. Honestly, I. You couldn't pay me to go back and get a second degree with, like, there's no. There's no amount of money you could offer me to go for me to do that for another four years.

[B]

Whereas there was. There's people that would be students for their entire life.

[A]

Yeah, but I. But I'm so glad I did it. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I wouldn't do it again. I didn't have fun, but that's what I've learned with an ultra marathon, for example, you don't go into it thinking, I'm going to have a bunch of fun. This is just going to be awesome, man. It's going to feel nothing but good. We're just going to be smiling the whole time. This is really going to be a great time. And yet you sign up for it because, you know it's good for you. You know, doing something that hard gives you this confidence that you can't and pride and pride that you can't get in another way. So that's. So it's. What. What did you do for athletics?

[B]

I did different things across all four years.

[A]

Oh, okay. You can switch around.

[B]

I mean, if you're like, if you go there to play football, you play all four years. If you're not one of the collegiate athletes, you have to do intramurals. I mean, everybody has something they can participate in.

[A]

Do the Air Force kids have a chip on their shoulder because they're not as talked about like Navy and Army?

[B]

We have a chip on our shoulder because we're better than Navy and Army. You'll hear me say next week, I'll ask people, how many people have seen the Thunderbirds fly and Then I'll say something to the line of, okay, who has seen the second best team in the nation, the Blue Angels, fly? There's always competition. That's what makes it fun. Sure.

[A]

And then there's the poor old Coast Guard Academy, just way over here.

[B]

Coast Guard Academy is the number one way to become a military pilot.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

Because most people don't go to the Coast Guard Academy to fly. Whereas if you want to fly, you tend to go to the Navy or the Air Force.

[A]

So it's less competitive. Quote, unquote.

[B]

Yeah. There's just.

[A]

Your odds are better.

[B]

It's a volume number.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's what I've always heard.

[A]

That's interesting.

[B]

It's actually a cleaner path to become. I'm not gonna say easier. A cleaner path to become. Like I said, we graduated. Over 900 and 200 people were sent to pilot training. Those are not good numbers.

[A]

Was the goal while you're at school? Always pilot training?

[B]

Always. From the time I was 12 years old.

[A]

Okay. And so. And not just go fly cargo aircraft, but fly the best of the best.

[B]

Fly f15s. It was always f15s.

[A]

It was always F15s.

[B]

This actually started from a popular mechanics magazine in 1986.

[A]

Like any good story.

[B]

Like any good story. And I don't know where I found it, where I was looking at it, but I opened it up and. And the COVID page said, life begins at Mach 2. And one of the reporters from Popular Mechanics went and flew in an F18 with the Navy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he wrote this whole story about how much he hated it, how horrible it was on his body, how he don't know how people could do this. He wanted to throw up the whole time. And I read that and went, I'm in. That's what I want. And so literally, I cut that headline out, life begins at Mach 2. And I put it on my wall. And every night before I went to bed, I looked at it. Every morning I looked at it from the time I was 12. It's everything I focused on for my entire life. I still have it to this day. But it's back to what you said earlier when we were talking. You never know when there's a spark of motivation that comes from the most random place. Like the first time you were around heavy equipment or the first time I got in an airplane. But that headline made me drive toward wanting to fly fighter aircraft.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, too, people always want it to be like this. This bigger thing. They're like, you know, why did you love it so much. Like, I don't know, a big excavator to 17 year old Aaron was really cool. So that's why I got a job working at that company. Because I could be around that big excavator all day long. It was that simple in my mind. Like I feel like young male math is not very complicated.

[B]

And we're not. It's not a complicated world.

[A]

No. Like there was no big picture here. It was just like, that machine is cool. I want to be around it all the time. How do I do that? Get a job cool, easy done.

[B]

For me, coming from small town Alabama, the best thing I had going for me is I didn't know how hard it was to get into an academy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I didn't have the Internet. I didn't know who the odds were stacked against me.

[A]

You didn't know anybody that had ever gone to the academy?

[B]

No. Yeah, I knew nothing. I just wanted out of Alabama, back to my dad, worked in a quarry and I didn't want to do that at the time. Which is why you and I do what we do. Right. I came back to construction because I wanted to help build a community that treated people the way they needed to be treated, they should be treated. Not the way my dad was treated. And that's not a dig against his company. That was just construction in my mind from my younger years and you know, build wit. What do you guys do? It brings back the cool side of construction when you're out. I saw one the other day with the biggest dump truck I've ever seen. I think it was in Vegas rolling in and out of the convention center. And it was fascinating just because it was a big truck rolling into a building. It shows the cool side of construction in Alabama right now. The governor gave some money to a program. We're going to buy simulators to put in all eighth grades around the state. Really? We're calling it career exploration because we don't. And I love construction. But we don't want it to be a fallback career. We want it to be a motivated career. We want kids at age 8, when you're trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, you're looking for that spark like you had in an excavator to go get in this video game that happens to be a simulator for a piece of equipment and realize this is really cool. I really love this.

[A]

And this is where I differ a little bit from the conventional wisdom. Like, all right, cool. If we want to get the Next generation excited about the dirt world. We need to like, how are you adjusting the curriculum of grade schools to get into the curriculum, this and that? It's like, that's great. That's noble. That's awesome. That's not really my thing. That's not scalable. And I don't think that's necessary. Big picture, how can we create that spark, that accessibility first? That's the world I'm in. How can we. We just need to get people around these machines once for them to get it and right now or to know.

[B]

They don't want it. That's fire, too.

[A]

That's it. That's exactly it. Yes. Yeah. We just need to get. To get them around it. And there's a bunch of different ways to do that, but I think that's step one. Like, I don't. It is a complex issue, but it's not that complex at the same time. It's just the construction's been that fallback career where construction, like, to me it was inaccessible, which is, which is crazy. I could, I could go to a law office. I could go, you know, a friend's dad owned the Diamondbacks, you know, professional sports team. I could go to, you know, see the professional sports team.

[B]

But you couldn't walk in a construction company with the same.

[A]

I could not. I legally could not go onto a job site because I wasn't 18 years old.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, if you ask somebody, how did you get into the industry? Nine times out of 10, I would say, anecdotally, I knew somebody in the industry. My dad was in the industry, my uncle was in the industry. Somebody was in the industry, and they were around it when they were younger, which right now is illegal.

[B]

Let's talk about that, though. I'm gonna pull on that one, please. Because when I started, I heard the same thing. It's against federal law. You can't put anybody less than 18 year olds on a piece of equipment. Right.

[A]

That's what they say.

[B]

100% not true. Because I work a lot with not only Dunn, Dunn allows me the time to go build our industry. So I sat down with the community college system of Alabama and we started talking about this. And I said. They said we couldn't do it. First of all, people don't have time to train on equipment. Let's be honest. Most construction companies. How do you learn to drive it? Here's the keys. Don't mess it up.

[A]

Without a doubt.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

Yeah, Jerry. He's not. He's sick today. Sick. Wink, wink. I had A little bit too much to drink last night and. But we need this machine. Can you do it? And young kid, of course I can. Hell yeah, I can do it. Yeah, absolutely. And then you're just. Your butt so puckered that whole day trying not to.

[B]

And it's a liability for the company.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So we took this and we said, how do we get to the next generation? We need to target them where they like to be targeted. Right. You don't have to learn like I learned. I'm old. You need to learn like that. And it needs to be accessible to them. So we put the training online on demand, on their schedule. And that way they take their 35 hours of theory filmed by actual industry experts, but put through the community college. Once you finish, you go to your practical portion where we require eight hours in seat and eight hours watching on every piece of equipment over two days. And you get a certificate from the Alabama community College system saying you're now qualified in a skid steer, you're now qualified in a loader, in a bulldozer. Like I told you earlier, we have over 25,000 people enrolled in programs right now in the state of Alabama. And we've trained 3,000 CDL operators and 3,000 heavy equipment operators in the last two to three years.

[A]

How did you find all these people to go into the program?

[B]

They found us. That's where we flipped the dime. Because we were going out and trying to find them. We decided to build something they would come to. If you make it big enough and tractable enough, then they will come to you. Right now there's a waiting list to get in almost every program really. We went. So in the beginning, in the beginning we had the companies. This was multiple companies. It wasn't just done, it was multiple companies. We sat down, we were actually in a meeting in Montgomery, let's just call it a government meeting. And we were in a three hour meeting to have a meeting about developing a meeting to develop a plan to not do anything in five years. You know what I'm saying?

[A]

I love that.

[B]

And I'm military, so I tend to be a little outspoken. So I was getting a cup of coffee and voicing my discontent in being there and how I wouldn't come back. And somebody heard me and they said, I agree, we're wasting time. Let's go make a difference. And so we had about five companies. Albom Community College was in there and four other industry companies. Some of them were our competition. And we met once a month for about four months. And we would lock ourselves in a room for four hours, nothing but us and a whiteboard. We didn't know what problem we were solving. We were just going to make a difference. Now, we agreed when we walked in, there was no competition. We're here about the future generation, which is not about us. When we train them, we walk out. I'll fight you for them, right? I'll bring into my company. But while we're in here, we're all on the same team, because if we don't build a better workforce, we're not going to have anything to work with. And so that's where this idea came up with of virtualizing it, of filming it. And so the film crew comes out to Dunn. I remember one I filmed. We were on a paving site, and we pulled the superintendent, we pulled the foreman off the paver and said, hey, come out and tell them what you're doing. That turned into one of the most popular videos. Now, there was a background on it, right? There's, there's classes, it's online, you're taking quizzes. But I tell you all that to go. We still haven't met that challenge of it's illegal, right? So the first class the Alabama Community College system taught was at a high school. And it was a big deal because we did the research and we found out you can legally put less than 18 on a piece of equipment. You have to have both parents consent. So we had the paperwork, we had these kids coming in, and I wasn't able to go. So I called, I called and said, did the parents all sign the consents? And the answer was, not only did they sign the consents, they stayed and watched the class. And the kids, grandparents were there. And at the end of the two days, every one of those students who got a certificate had a job offer in writing, $5 an hour above minimum entry level, working, waiting for them when they graduated high school. I mean, it's amazing.

[A]

And how can't a parent get on board with that?

[B]

The parents were so excited. So going back to why we're targeting 8th graders, originally, this group said we have to target the kids, right? We need to change their minds. And so they were going to go toward 11th and 12th graders. And in my opinion, people have already.

[A]

Too late.

[B]

It's too late. And I also said, we don't need to target the kids, we need to target the parents. So we need to get a simulator out there, get the kid in the simulator. So when that kid goes home and talks to his parents over dinner, we're starting to shape their mind in that it's okay to go to construction. There's good money in construction. There's intrinsic satisfaction in construction.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so that's the reason we chose that age group is because it's early enough that the kids can get a spark and also they can start talking to their parents so that we can change that attitude about construction that I think is out there of. I mean, I told you my rule in my house for micro4kids is you go to college, I'll pay for it, you have to go. That's a rule of the family. I got into construction. My youngest didn't go to college. He has a skill working in construction and he's killing it because it's a usable skill, not just a four year piece of paper hanging on the wall.

[A]

I think the, like, one of the fundamental flaws of a lot of these quote unquote workforce development programs are that it's a bunch of typically old guys. Not, not referring to you.

[B]

No, it's okay. I know I'm an old guy.

[A]

But typically old guys in a room talking about, talking about the problem from their perspective. But my, my, my problem with that is you're not the target audience guys. You're not who we're attracting here. And the world in which you came into this industry is a long ways away and is.

[B]

And very different.

[A]

Very different. And that's not bad. That's not good. It's just reality. It's just different. We need to break this down from like, who is our target demographic? 8th grader. What does an 8th grader want to see? How, how do we get an 8th grader excited? What do we need to, how do we need to get the 8th grader to feel so that they go home.

[B]

To their parents and talk about it.

[A]

And talk about it and it's like you reverse it. Wait, wait. This isn't at all about us. This is about the eighth grader. And then once you like Dunn, it works.

[B]

Apparently it works out. We change our career fairs. When Dunn goes out to career fairs, one of our companies always gets one of our drone pilots to go because we have a drone program that we built over the last couple of years. It's amazing and it's something we couldn't operate without. Well, instead of just having a table with some pamphlets to hand out, now they have a quadcopter sitting out there with the video of it in the background flying. We get more attendance at our tables than we ever have because there's something there that Sparks their attention.

[A]

You mean pens don't get 8th graders excited?

[B]

Pens don't. And sticks of chapstick.

[A]

Oh, man. I know, I know.

[B]

There's the marketing. People are going, don't say that.

[A]

No. The chapstick salesmen are like, no, no. Now we've been outed. Yeah.

[B]

But as you look at this in Alabama, I'm so proud of it. Hopefully you can tell how proud we all are of it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because Alabama is number one in the nation for workforce innovation because of this. It really is. Like I told you, I have the opportunity to go speak to other places. I'm going out to Kentucky to speak about it. We just spoke out in New Mexico about it. And the speech I give is about the recruiting problem, and it's titled Workforce Worries, People Solutions. And the path I build is going back to my flying. Right. I'm always going to work in flying. Let's just be honest. There's always going to be a plane. I love them. And so I start out showing a fighter pilot flying and ask the questions of, do you think they do it for money or because they love it? Do you think they do it because it gives them, you know, things they can buy or because it gives them intrinsic satisfaction? And for some reason, people look at us pilots and go, obviously they do it because they love it. And I show them a picture of a road in Alabama that my company paved, and I go, do you not think the superintendent drives over that with his family and says, hey, I paved this road. It's the same intrinsic satisfaction. But we need to stop trying to put a hammer in people's hands and put the spark in their heart to get them intrinsically motivated and satisfied. I want a career. I've never had a job in my life. A job is something you work for a paycheck and watch the clock. I'm fortunate I've never had one. I think you're probably the same way. We love these kind of things other than when we were kids. Right.

[A]

Really kids.

[B]

But a career is something. I look forward to going home with my family on Friday. I look just as forward to coming to work on Monday. That is something that makes me motivated about what I do. That's what we need to get in our people working in the field is that pride. Our metal building company, they drive past things they put up, and they're telling their family, hey, I helped build that building. That's the pride that construction really yields. And, oh, by the way, it comes with a pretty good paycheck.

[A]

It does. Yeah. And that, I guess that's. I'm glad we're talking because this is the message. I'm always. I'm. I'm always going down. I just think, like, the overall workforce development message of the industry in a lot of ways, I think is completely off base, which is why it's ineffective and not working.

[B]

It's targeting the wrong demographic.

[A]

Yeah. And appealing to the wrong motivations and not exciting. And this is where I struggle with people. Like, they always say, like, oh, you're making all this cool again. It's like, I'm not making anything, anything. It is cool. It's already cool. Like, I'm not.

[B]

You just didn't know.

[A]

Yeah, I'm not. I've never staged anything. Like, I'm just capturing what the heck is going on on job sites around the United States, around the world. This happens every day of the week, 24 hours a day, a lot of times, everywhere, because that's how society works. So if there's people there, there's this industry there making those people's lives a reality. I'm just capturing it. And I think it's being approached as an external problem, not as an internal problem as well. And for you, for example, you grew up watching your dad be miserable and never wanting that. But why that shouldn't be. Shouldn't we, as an industry? Shouldn't the ideal outcome be. You see your dad and how proud he is about what he does every day, and he brings that home with him. And you say, man, I want to do that too.

[B]

I want a piece of that.

[A]

Yeah. Like, why did you want to run from it? That's the problem. That's where we need to dig in. Because our biggest recruiting arm as an industry is the existing workforce. Why don't we leverage the existing workforce? And first off. And you have to do things in tandem. It's not just do this, do this, do this, step one, step two, step two.

[B]

It's all gonna happen at the same time.

[A]

You have to do it all. But I think the biggest piece of the pie that is missing in a lot of regards is what does our workforce think about what they're doing and their job? How do they go home to their families? What's the message that they tell their kids? Is it positive? Is it negative? Is it non existent? If it's not positive, if it's negative, or I think, worse, in a lot of ways, non existent, how do we solve that problem? Because if we can solve that problem now you have.

[B]

It's easy after that.

[A]

Yeah. Now you have millions of people recruiting for the industry.

[B]

So back on our classes, if you Google up the Alabama Community College System Innovation center take you to their website and on their homepage it has a picture of somebody standing there in a done workshop. And he was one of the first videos we made. And he was out on his job site. We had a camera crew and we said, hey, will you just teach us how to run a skid steer? And I mean, he was our best operator. He was awesome. So he just gets out, he teaches how to run it. You know, it was an inconvenience for him because it was taking him away from his job. And after we finished, I was out there talking to him and I said, well, did they tell you what that was going to be used for? And he goes, no, my boss just told me to do it. We didn't explain why. And I said, well, let me tell you why. We just filmed that. The community college system is going to put it in a class and your instructional video is going to be used all the way across Alabama. And everybody that takes a skid steer class. And he's like, what? But I'm just an operator. I said, but you're a good operator. And you just taught them how to run it from an operator's perspective, right? Not from the manual perspective. It was just the plain English unscripted how to run it. He stood a little bit taller and he went, I'm going to go home and tell my grandma Monday night. He was so proud of what a difference he had made. We just hadn't taken that time to tell him what he was doing. And that spread like wildfire after that. Everybody wanted to be a part of it, everybody wanted to film, everybody wanted to contribute. And the way the community college system still runs it to this day, cause it's kind of self sustaining. It turned into the Innovation center, the Skills for success program in Alabama. And so when they get a new class, they send an email out to their industry contacts and they say, hey, one went out this week. We're gonna teach people to be a screed man, screed woman. And so industry just goes, I'm interested in that. And they pull together a board that meets virtually like two or three times, that sets a syllabus of what the requirements for that person in that job set.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then they go film it and it's done. And it's a class, but it's all from people who are not paid, who are passionate about training the next level. And they get nothing but Intrinsic satisfaction out of it.

[A]

Yeah, we haven't. I mean, at this point, we've created 15, 1600 training videos.

[B]

Have we showed you.

[A]

Have we showed you guys training? All right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there's probably some of the stuff that overlaps. I'm sure.

[B]

I know it does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We need to find time to. We talked about it early in development. We haven't talked about it lately.

[A]

We need to talk about lately because it's. I mean, we're moving so fast, too. It changes every few months. But there's a bunch of stuff that I think you all could use that we could just.

[B]

And there's. I appreciate that.

[A]

Take it.

[B]

I love that. Because it's team effort. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is not corporate competition, but we've.

[A]

I mean, we've done it, you know, 1500 plus times now. We haven't struggled to find people that are excited about it.

[B]

No, we have. That's amazing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And that's. You know, this is where I think younger people, they struggle a little bit. Cut my hand on something. They struggle a little bit with the previous generation because they learned differently. But once you start to realize how to approach that older generation, if you approach them with a genuine sense of curiosity, I. Very rarely. I can't. Out of the thousands of people I've come across, probably just this year, I can't think of a single negative experience with any one of them. Because if you come at them with genuine curiosity, they're not gonna be. They're not gonna be like, no, I actually don't wanna talk about me. Like, no one is gonna say that. They want to talk about what they're proud of. They want to talk about what they've poured so much of their time and energy into. And if you. If you appeal to that in a genuine sense, these people just pour what they know out of that they love.

[B]

Most of them love to. I'll give you one example. When I first started, I was on a roller and I was learning rollers. Right. The way you learn it, you go out there and get on it, talk to the people that do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I'm up there watching. This guy's really good. I mean, that can screw up the mat. Like you said, it's one of the most important pieces. And he's really good. So I'm like, how did you get so good? And I look and it's a really clean roller, but it has paint marks. It has a paint mark on the front left, right, and behind him, because he goes both directions. I Said it was deliberate enough that I had to ask, like a paint pen. And I said, why is there a paint mark there? And he goes, oh, let me show you. He goes, that paint mark is so I can roll curbs perfectly. Because if I put the curb right on that paint mark, I can't see the edge of it, but I know it's perfect. And that's how I get. That's how I'm the best. He was so proud of it. And I said, that's awesome. Have you taught anybody to do that? And he goes, well, why would I do that? I said, what do you mean? We need everybody to know that. And he goes, first, nobody wants to hear from me. And second, if I taught anybody else to do that, then you wouldn't need me because I wouldn't be as valuable anymore.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But it was getting past that mindset. Cause it is there in some people. Some people are. And I find that to be. As you go up, like foreman, superintendent, they're ready to share. But when you're an operator on a piece of equipment, you're still trying to get your niche, right? And so that was the first time I went, why wouldn't you tell everybody?

[A]

Well, and I've realized too, people have been abused by past employers. It takes sometimes a long time to knock that abuse off and to teach people in a different way, like, hey, we're not gonna screw you here. I know you've been screwed in the past, and I get why you're not trusting or whatever it is, or you're not open to share, but this is us. That's not. Yeah, that's not how this works. And you're actually more valuable the more people you teach, the more you educate the people around you, the more valuable you are, which is gonna open up more doors and allow everybody to win. It's funny, you use that example I was in. Where were we? New South Wales, Australia. And we were with these guys that they, they, they clean up after the forest fires and they run these dozers. They're some of the most custom built dozers I've ever seen. They buy these machines and then they put like another $400,000 into these machines in stuff in additional modifications. And it's already a waste package machine. So these things are just armored. And the windows are Lexan and they're really, really thick. But on one of the windows, they had a band aid on, on the window. And I'm looking up at him like a band aid. And I asked because it's, it's just put in a deliberate position. He's like, oh yeah. So when you're sitting in the cab, if you're, if your blade is at that band aid, you're going straight.

[B]

Same thing. Yeah.

[A]

It's like, hey, if it works, it's not stupid.

[B]

Like that's, that's a million dollar band aid right there because it makes the equipment run. Yeah.

[A]

So they have, yeah. This million dollar plus piece of equipment. You can have all this technology but it's the band aid on the window.

[B]

That gives them precision, that brings it together.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we have to, we have to convince people that telling everybody else those secrets, it's like you offering to give content to the community college system.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Knowing you, I didn't go, what's he going to want back? No, no, no. It's just a genuine let's make the industry better.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's back to Dunn when they, when they were making an offer to me and we talked about this earlier, I couldn't see myself back in construction. I love teaching leadership. I love working on people type things. And I looked at the company and we have founded in 1878, family owned company, been around forever. But I looked at the company now and we have multiple employees who have been employed over 55 years. 55 years. We have three generation families. So not only did the father get their son in the industry, they loved it so much they got the grandson in the industry and I go anywhere that has 55 year plus employees and three generation families, I've got to have a piece of that to see what's to it.

[A]

As you guys have worked this out though, into the industry, I'm sure you've, we've, we've gone up against this lack of trust. Like I'm not, like you said, I'm not trying to pull the wool over your eyes here. We're just trying to help. But I'm sure that it's taken a little bit for you guys to build trust with the overall market to, to, to suggest, hey, this isn't, there's no ulterior motives here.

[B]

We're, it was brutal.

[A]

We're trying to build the industry, I'm sure.

[B]

Yeah, it was brutal in the beginning. So I told you, all those people that have been trained, they have been trained on grants, none of them have paid for the training.

[A]

It's amazing.

[B]

It's amazing. We're touching people that don't have the ability to get that type of training to enable that future. It's through the State. And we went after every grant we could. But when we started this the first year, we were so excited about it. We're like, how could we not get the grant? We wrote the first grant. You know, it was a very small grant, and we didn't get it. And I think it was due to skepticism. And what are you really trying to get? Sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I'll tell you the truth, I was pretty upset. We didn't talk for three months. Literally, we just went, let's take a break. And for three months, our group didn't talk. And then we came back together and said, we're not gonna let them put us down. This is such a good idea. We're gonna do it. And the companies in the room, remember, it was only a couple of companies. We agreed to the chancellor of Alabama. If we don't get the grant the second time, we will divide the cost up and we will write a check for it. We will just make a donation because it's that important. Luckily, we got the grant, so we didn't have to write a check, but it took that of going, here's your guarantee. And then in the beginning, we had to guarantee students. The community colleges come out for a letter of interest, a letter of intent. Hey, I think I'll use your class. Which I'd say really means nothing. So for us, they were so skeptical, they said, we need a letter of assurance that you will put a certain number of people in each class. So we did. We filled the first classes from the companies involved. And then after everybody started seeing it, it changed to other people wanting to film classes. I told you, there's a waiting list for every class. There is. For the practical portion, just because we like you, we can't build it fast enough. We can't find the instructors fast enough. Because this is not just another thing we did, is not everybody can be an instructor. It has to be a motivational instructor that's passionate about construction.

[A]

Yeah. And just because you know everything about the industry doesn't mean you can teach.

[B]

It or be motivational about it.

[A]

Yeah, it takes a very. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You idiot. You know, there's. Yeah, there's a lot of that. And that's. That's been good for me to learn that way. But it's not the most effective teaching style out there.

[B]

It's not very motivational.

[A]

It's not very motivational.

[B]

Yeah, but that's. So we had to get past that. And I was blown away that there was no. There was actually trust that we were Trying to do something to get something from, if that makes sense.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

It was trust of you're doing something that's going to benefit you somewhere down the road. No. The people that built it were all volunteers. We get nothing, and if anything, we go out and talk about it more. So it actually cost us time and money to go out and speak on it, Right?

[A]

Yeah. But you. Yeah. So you had to, you had to put your money where your mouth is.

[B]

We did.

[A]

And say, hey, this is.

[B]

We'll pay for it. If we don't get a grant, we'll pay for it. That's how serious we are.

[A]

I think, I think this is the only way the industry makes it long term, too, is there's, you know, a lot of people say more kids need to go to trade schools. And everybody's like, yes, absolutely. And then my next question is, where are the trade schools? Where are the programs? I don't see very many of them. And we need. If we need, say, construction industry needs half a million people. So we have half a million seats in trade schools available right now to meet that demand. It just doesn't like the math.

[B]

We also got to do the math. If we need a half million people, we probably need a million and a half in training.

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah. So it's well beyond that. And in a lot of ways, higher education has killed trade schools in America because education is a business. I know it is. I know we don't like to think about it that way, but 100% of business. And so I think these community colleges, great programs, but they, they need, they're. They're not going to be the, the trade schools aren't going to be the ones that just like, hey, here's the solution, everybody. Community colleges are not going to be like, hey, here's the solution, everybody. It's going to take. It's going to take time and investment from the private sector as well, but it needs to be collaborative effort.

[B]

It also takes support on the nonprofit side.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So with us, Chancellor Baker in Alabama, who is phenomenal, he trusted us to say he was going to do it. And one of his presidents, we sat down to build one of the first classes. She brought her experts in the room and everything we industry said, one of our experts said, oh, we already got a class for that. Oh, we already got a class for that.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so finally, as the president, and I'm going to say which one it was, because it's pretty aggressive talk, she goes, I'm going to need you to listen. If we had the answer to their questions, we wouldn't be having this meeting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So our answer is not addressing their needs and their questions. So throw our classes away, we're starting over.

[A]

But I think it, I think it needs to be that collaborative effort between state, community college, private sector industry.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It has to be. Because I also see a lot of industry. Like you could have just built your own university, done university and just kept.

[B]

It done purely for our company.

[A]

Yes. Build the, build the wall around it, brand it, it's just for us. But I, I, that's fantastic. There's a lot of companies building their own programs. That's far better than nothing. But I just don't see that as the scalable solution either. I think it's private, private industry working at the state level to build out these programs that are more encompassing than just these one companies in one company, one region or whatever it is. It needs to be bigger picture than that, I think, to work well.

[B]

Is it a self focused solution? Right. If I'm building it for the company, it's self focused.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Or like our owners gives me the opportunity to go work in the industry and make the industry better, which I.

[A]

Think is more successful long term.

[B]

It's more successful because they're playing the long game, not just training the people we have. We're trying to inspire a new generation. And like I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to go testify on this concept to Congress on how we reduce unemployment insurance.

[A]

Yeah. So what do you tell Congress? Because I'm starting to see like it's starting to get picked up more and more. Like Wall Street Journal wrote a big article that's been referenced everywhere that was okay. You know, there's some other stuff happening. I see Congress talking about it every once in a while, Senate talking about it every once in a while in presidential election comes up every once in a while. It's starting to be noticed because it's starting to have a real effect on the economy, I think.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So why do they bring you in and what do you say?

[B]

So I was on a panel, I think there were five of us talking about different initiatives to reduce unemployment insurance.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And I'll tell you, when I found out that was a topic, I went, oh my gosh, I'm a workforce guy. How am I going to tie into unemployment insurance? But it ties directly to it. And what I presented to them is if we build people who have an intrinsic motivation to do what they do and we give them careers, not jobs. This is back where I said, stop putting hammers in people's hands. I don't need somebody to work a drive through or hand or a hammer. I need them to have a skill set that they can build a career on to earn a livable wage on that they can see career progression on. Right. If I'm at a job where I have nowhere to go and no upper mobility and no promotion, I can't stay motivated that very long. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Especially if I'm not at a livable wage, which a lot of our minimum wage is not. And so that's what we talked about, especially in the south. And they were very receptive to it, much engagement after the testimony was over. Because for too many years, we have focused on getting them a paycheck right now and not worried about training them for a career down the road. And those are two very different things because.

[A]

And not. Not to fault industry, but it's like we just need, I've heard, like asses in seats, if I use that term. We just need a labor, a truck driver, a dozer operator, whatever it is. We just need that to do this today. But it's missing the bigger picture.

[B]

That's pretty short sighted.

[A]

It is.

[B]

Because, I mean, there's been a lot of leadership talk about I not only need the right people on the bus in the right seats, I also need the wrong people off the bus.

[A]

Yeah, Right.

[B]

So sometimes I just need a person. But more often than not, I need a skilled person that enjoys their job. Because if you just get a person that. And we use some temporary help in places, they come in unskilled, they're not qualified to do what we need them do, and they're not happy about being there.

[A]

Temporary help's brutal. What good does that do to us, man? I've seen it enough times to know that.

[B]

We have to use it.

[A]

I get it. Yeah. But that's a band aid at best, is my opinion on the temporary.

[B]

And until we fix the industry and the workforce, it is a long term band aid. Yes, it's a long term band aid. And just because we pay an excessive amount for temporary help does not mean that person is getting a good salary. Those are two different things.

[A]

Well, and that's the problem. A big problem in the South. Is that. So you're gonna pay me $18 an hour to go bust my ass all summer in that ditch when I can go get $20 an hour working at this fast food restaurant, air conditioned place, Amazon in air conditioning in a warehouse. Can you explain to me why I would be in the ditch and it's like, well you're gonna feel more proud and okay, that's, that's, that's cool. It's hard but that, that's not gonna feed my kids. So I'm gonna go work at the warehouse. You can't fault people for that. And it's the, the, the discrepancy between, and I know this is economics, the discrepancy between wages in like a Mississippi for example, where I'm making $17 an hour versus like Chicago where I'm making $70 an hour for the same job.

[B]

It's crazy.

[A]

It's, it's wild that you can have that big of a range in the same industry for the same job just based on region and this and like, and so I don't, I don't. But if you were going to do this like, I think all of that is to suggest that the south is probably the hardest place to develop the workforce in a lot of ways.

[B]

Well, let's look at just pay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, from being around. We don't talk about pay.

[A]

Uh huh.

[B]

You stop at the BUC EE's just south of here, they're talking about pay. When you drive up, what do you see? Their whole paychart.

[A]

The whole thing. And then, but in the whole paycheck. Here's where you can start. But then here's what a manager can make and it can be $150,000 plus.

[B]

And oh by the way, this may be a 50 hour work week. It's right there. But in construction we don't talk about it. Yeah, we just. And I don't have a solution to that. I'm just saying we don't talk about it. When I came in I went, how about if we need CDL drivers, let's go tell people how much they can make and be home every weekend and be home every night. Because our tri axle dump truck drivers are home every night.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But yeah, we're not open about pay.

[A]

No, I. Large contractor in Alabama. I'll never forget this large contractor in Alabama guy owns the company, big company. And I remember him asking me and I was like, I don't know, like 24 years old at the time, 25 years old at the time. Hey, so what are like what's the pay scale up in Tennessee? And this is, you know, it's a.

[B]

Few hours apart, two hours apart here.

[A]

And I real, I remember in that conversation like he has no idea what's going on outside of this bubble. Like he's king of the castle here. But the everybody Is so siloed that he doesn't even know the pay scale up the road, which is crazy. Like, if he doesn't know the pay scale, how does anybody know the pay scale?

[B]

Like, try to do industry averages. It's hard to get them.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I think you can't talk about workforce development without pay being a significant piece of that.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

I think we're. We're kidding ourselves if we don't talk.

[B]

I want them to have a career that happens to come with a paycheck. But you have to talk about the paycheck.

[A]

You have to. Yes. And like I said, I cannot fault somebody for saying, I'm just gonna go work at Amazon because I'm gonna make more money a lot of times, and I'm gonna work in the same place every day. That's 23 minutes from my house.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't have to think about where I'm going, where I'm coming from.

[B]

Not trying to find which road we're paving today in which city.

[A]

Fixed schedule. I can go there when it's raining, when the sun's shining. When the sun's shining, when it's really hot, it's air conditioned. Like, how can you fault somebody for saying, I'm gonna. I think if you put those two options in front of anybody, most rational people would be like, I'll take option A. I'll go work in the warehouse.

[B]

That's why we have to inspire them.

[A]

Which is. And I'm saying that because it's a huge shame, because the warehouse. How. How inspiring is that? Not. Not that inspiring.

[B]

I'm sure it's inspiring to some people.

[A]

Hey, some people might be just that absolute warehouse hound. I get it. I'm all for that. But building roads is a lot cooler for most people.

[B]

Running equipment is a lot cooler.

[A]

Moving dirt. Yeah. Pouring concrete, paving asphalt, putting pipe in the ground. And.

[B]

Well, it's also like. I mean, my wife makes fun of me for this all the time. I get time. I did it last weekend. I finally got off the road. I had some time at home, and I cut my front grass. It's about six hours to cut my yard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And afterwards, the next morning, I fix me a cup of coffee and I go sit on the front steps and I drink my coffee for about 30 minutes. Just so proud of my accomplishment. And she comes out and goes, why do you always do that? I go, because I can see what I did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So often what we do at the end of the day, we're Having a great conversation. I can't see what we did.

[A]

No.

[B]

But when I cut grass, when I do construction, when I move dirt, there's a tangible thing I can see at the end of the day.

[A]

My mom's coming to the summit next week, and I am so excited because she has no idea what I do because I haven't had anything to, like, here's what I do. But I know once she walks into that room, she'll get it. It'll make sense as soon as she walks in the room. But it is tough to have a job where you don't have that satisfaction all the time when you have had that satisfaction before. Because it's. I think it's just so human. That's just how humans. And I'm talking more and more about this. I think construction's so appealing because it's so aligned with human nature. We didn't grow up in this weird virtual world. It's the whole virtual world that we're living in that we think is reality is very new, is a blink in the. The spectrum that is human development.

[B]

And time.

[A]

Yeah, and time. Well, if you go to time, it's nothing. And so for almost the whole duration that human beings were a thing, we were working hard. We were manipulating our knowledge, making things. We were making things alongside other people who were making things, like how we're working with human nature here. And so how can't we figure this out? How can't we win? I like, I. That is why I'm so optimistic. If I was selling, like banking, I'd be a little more. I'd be a little more nervous because I would. I'd have to be a little bit more manipulative and clever with my language.

[B]

Easy sell. This is easy.

[A]

It's an easy sell. It's big trucks doing cool stuff.

[B]

But along those lines, I always. When I go out on job sites, I'll ask them what they're doing. And if they say, well, I'm just laying this. They don't understand the big picture.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They have to understand that we're laying one. We're widening the interstate, and here's why. Because Alabama has grown. We did a widening project on I65 just south of Birmingham a couple years ago. But they have to understand the suburbs have grown so much that it hurts everybody else when they can't get to work or get home from work.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

So, yes, we're on contract to widen it. But what you need to understand is we're making all of their lives better because we're getting them more time at home, more time with their family. Whatever's important, construction enables other people to do their job. Yeah, we build the building that those bankers can go bank in.

[A]

Right. We.

[B]

We blast our company up here, Civil constructors, right down the road from you. I love coming up here because Nashville is not growing out, it's growing down. Every building seems to be going deeper and deeper in the ground. And Nashville's all rock.

[A]

It's ridiculous.

[B]

Which means we get to blow stuff up in downtown Nashville. You need to come out and hang out with them.

[A]

It's just amazing. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Now we cover it in blankets so it don't blow things everywhere and hurt things around you. But you know, when you load them explosives up, if you've never been around it, people don't understand. You feel it in your core.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's awesome. That's worth the drive up here just to blow something up.

[A]

Well, they, yeah, they blasted. I mean, it must have been a quarter million yards of rock excavation right next to us. Quarter million yard basement. Big basement under this apartment building next door. It was a different company doing it at the time.

[B]

The whole, like, there's enough for everybody.

[A]

Yeah. But the whole vibration monitoring thing hasn't caught on around here, I guess.

[B]

Or with that, on our sites we do.

[A]

Yes. That's what you should do. But this building, I'm amazed it didn't just fall in on itself. It went past the cool factor every single day. They were just ripping it over there and I was just thinking, I was like, man, in another place that would not fly.

[B]

So I was up here a couple of weeks ago and we were blowing a basement like that. And we sound the horn so everybody around will know. Right. We want everybody to be informed. And I literally look up at one of the buildings right beside us and when we're starting to blow the horns, I see them all getting up from their desk, coming to the glass.

[A]

Yeah. They know it's about.

[B]

And they're looking out going, okay, look, they're gonna blow that up.

[A]

Yeah, nice.

[B]

That shows you we're in a cool industry.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like civil's doing a lot of work at the airport.

[B]

Yep, Airport work.

[A]

I'm telling you, like my inner 6 year old. We were just at Charlotte International the other day. They're building a new fourth parallel Runway. And we were out there on. They're moving the dirt right now. And you've got, I mean, every minute and a half, plane taken off at the other Runway. The other Runway right next to you. And it is just. You're just enamored by what the heck's going on. You're like, I've got a big excavator right here loading trucks. And then I've got American Airlines 777 taking off to Europe right there, right in front of me. Like, how cool is this? And it's night work, too. So you're having all these.

[B]

Cause you're working around.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And then the big issue that night was, oh, you know, Trump just landed and shut the airport down. And then they shut the. They shut the roads down for him to go out to this rally. So now we can't run the trucks.

[B]

So now they shut down construction.

[A]

Well.

[B]

And didn't even know.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But now the problem is, okay, so what's the alternative route to run our trucks? Because we. The trucks are here, the drivers are here. We got to keep the dirt.

[B]

We've still got a timeline.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's just like, oh, that's a. And they can't tell you when he's coming. So that he just shows up. When he shows up, shuts the whole thing down. But it's just like such a unique problem that you have to solve that you want to solve.

[B]

And there's always a unique problem. Always. That's what makes it fun.

[A]

Always. Yes.

[B]

There's always something.

[A]

Yeah. Cause there's nothing in a controlled environment, which I think is so cool. And I think that's what, like, warehouse versus construction site. I think that's the biggest difference in a lot of ways. Warehouse, a controlled environment. You know? Exactly. I walk into his office, I know exactly how it's going to look. It's going to look how it looked when I left the last time.

[B]

Construction is not monotonous.

[A]

No, no, no. It's not always fun, but it is certainly not. Just watching a sight change is just so, like, you're literally. You're manipulating the earth. There was a hill here.

[B]

Now there's not.

[A]

We can't build a building on a hill. We gotta get rid of the hill. We get rid of the hill. How cool is that? Going back to. I'm actually. Let me run in the bathroom real quick so I can focus here.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then I'm gonna go back to the military stuff.

[B]

Sounds good.

[A]

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I'll always.

[B]

Talk about the military.

[A]

And we're back. My first very important question for a fighter pilot. Do you have to have a mustache to fly fighter jets?

[B]

Only in March.

[A]

Only in March.

[B]

Only In March.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Mustache March?

[A]

Is that really.

[B]

That's really a thing. Really, Really a thing. Fighter pilots grow a mustache every March.

[A]

Huh. Interesting. Okay.

[B]

You didn't think you were gonna get that specific of an answer.

[A]

I didn't think I was gonna get that specific.

[B]

Mustache march.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. I've just always seen them with mustaches, so I figured that was just a fighter pilot thing.

[B]

Yeah. Most of time we're clean shaven.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, in March, almost every fighter pilot in the world grows a mustache.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Goes back to Robin Olds, the ultimate fighter pilot of all time. So he had a mean mustache. So there's a whole tradition of going back to him of why we grow mustaches.

[A]

New information you go to, you go to school, you probably have to be really good at school to then get into the select group that potentially becomes a fighter pilot.

[B]

So I went to Air Force Academy.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you're rank ordered in the military. You're rank ordered for everything.

[A]

Everything. So you have to be good and.

[B]

So you have to be in the top. Like I said, we only sent 225 people out of my 900 graduates. So you had to be in the top. 225 people that both qualified for and put. They wanted to go to pilot training.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because they won't force you to fly ever. It's optional. And so then you get picked up to go to pilot training, which is called specialized undergraduate pilot training. And so you go fly the initial trainer for about five months. Right now they're T6s, Texans Prop. And once you finish that, you track select. So that means you again are rank ordered in the class. And if you're in the top of the class and you chose fighters, you go fly T38s.

[A]

So this is the first step though, is this is where they're teaching you how to fly a plane.

[B]

Where they're teaching me how to fly a military aircraft.

[A]

You don't fly a plane while you're at the academy.

[B]

You do.

[A]

Oh, you do.

[B]

You do. Oh, okay. I flew a Cessna. There's a screening program you have to go through.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

Now there are. I think they're diamonds. They fly out there. But it's basically like a two week class because some people just can't fly. Some people get airsick.

[A]

Yeah, those type of things. Terribly airsick.

[B]

So these are the kind of things that before you make the cause it cost a million dollars to send somebody to pilot training.

[A]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

So before. And once they're in that seat, you can't get the seat back if they don't make it through.

[A]

Yeah. And it sounds cold, but it's like, especially when you get into the upper echelon, like special operations pilots, so on and so forth, that pilot is an asset. Cause you're putting that amount of investment into the asset you need to get a return on investment.

[B]

So you asked me about working at the Pentagon.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was in charge. I was the rated program manager. And so every rated person in the Air Force, it's a business, it's an asset. Sounds bad. Everybody has a dollar figure on.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so for a fighter pilot, at the seven year, seven and a half year point of your career, you're valued at seven and a half million dollars because of the training.

[A]

Yeah. And you're. So you're probably one of the more valuable people, quote, unquote, in the.

[B]

In trainers.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In training.

[B]

Because it cost over a million dollars to go to undergraduate pilot training. It cost over a million dollars to learn to fly an F15. I mean, it adds up. Quick.

[A]

How. How do they teach you how to be a fighter pilot?

[B]

That's a broad question.

[A]

It's a broad question, but.

[B]

So it's the same thing we teach anybody else. How do you teach somebody to run a skid steer? You teach them to be familiar with the books. Right. Same thing with a plane. You teach them how to be familiar with the books. Then we put them in a simulator so that we can have what we call a safe place to fail. And you learn ground operations in the simulator. You learn basic flying in the simulator. And then when you go out and get in the aircraft, you've already been in the simulator for a month. And so when you get in the aircraft, now we've just got to introduce actual flying. But the motions are all the same.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Right now we get out in that plane. Now is when we have to deal with G's on the body. The G forces on the body, especially in fighters, you're almost never right side up. And so the otolith organs in your ears get so tossed. We have to know that your body can handle that.

[A]

The simulator thing, to go in between that and construction. I think people misunderstand the simulators in construction, too. They're like, oh, that doesn't replace seat time. It's like. It's not to replace seat time, you dummy. One, it's to make the seat more accessible to people, and two, to get people familiar with what it's like the controls are like, so that when they get into the machine, they can Be more effective. Say so on and so forth.

[B]

I think we're at a point it can. It doesn't. But it can replace seat time. So in the military simulator, time replaces some seat time.

[A]

I know pilots, the major airlines. Yeah, airlines for sure.

[B]

They train in the sim. They get certified in the simulator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One thing that we don't like to talk about in the open, you know, the first time a major like Delta, American. That's what I mean by the majors. The first time they fly a real aircraft is loaded with passengers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All their training's done in simulators.

[A]

But they have that good looking uniform.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It makes them rest, makes them look professional, makes them look legit. But they were probably drinking last night.

[B]

But it's the same concept. It's the same concept as flying from the military that we started. Me and you talking about simulators in construction.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Why wouldn't we offset the hazard? Because if you get on an excavator on a job site, there's an inherent hazard. That big dump trucks running around.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's other people running around. Why wouldn't you learn the basics in a simulator which are very accurate. Now we gamify things. That's what I love. Our simulators gamify it. So when me and you get a simulator class, we get a score. We're not only operating an excavator to move dirt, it's grading me if it's on the right arch with the right bucket tilt and everything else. And at the end I go, Aaron, I killed you.

[A]

Yeah. Well, Ten Star gave us one of their simulators for a little bit. And there, there's a remarkable.

[B]

It's actually met their CEO at your event last year.

[A]

Freddie.

[B]

Freddie.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Spent a lot of time with Freddie.

[A]

It is crazy what they're doing. But yeah, I thought I was doing one of their things in an excavator and I thought I was like, you know, I'm pretty good excavator. Yeah. I'm doing pretty well. And then I got my score at the end and it was terrible.

[B]

And he didn't offer you a job, right? No.

[A]

Because it's like. And even if you get it right, it's based on your speed and efficiency too. Like you were doing all these dumb movements that you shouldn't have been doing or you were just slow. So that lowers your score. It's amazing. The scoring system as well on those.

[B]

But you look at his, the beauty of his simulator and he's so passionate about it.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I love People who are passionate about their job.

[A]

Yeah. He loves it.

[B]

And Freddy is so passionate about it. But his simulator is at a lower price point than a specific simulator.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Right. The specific centerminator teaches one piece of equipment for one brain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Freddy's can teach you to drive a CDO class, run an excavator and a backhoe.

[A]

It's wild. Yeah.

[B]

That does not make one better than the other. We have to find the one that's situated. So we're actually looking at his for the community college system. Oh, good, good, good. Because we were looking at this specific one. But then they only get to experience one piece of equipment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where his is less. I hate to say less authentic. It's not pure to resemble the exact cockpit of one piece of equipment. It simulates all equipment. But when I can simulate 15 different. That's what I need for career exploration more than a perfectly accurate one. Equipment simulator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But there's a place for all of that in our industry.

[A]

It's. But then. Then you start to run into the previous generation and like the pride of how they came up. Like, no, you need to. You just need to be in the seat. You've got to do the time, so on and so forth. Which there is some truth to that. But I think people then, because they came up a certain way and learned something a certain way, they want the people after them to learn it how they did, even if it's completely unreasonable now or not economically viable or whatever it is, is that. Have you run into that.

[B]

Yeah. In the military, we call that obe.

[A]

Obe.

[B]

Obe. Overcome by events. That means you may have learned that 40 years ago, but events have changed. Your experience is obe. Now we got to learn the new one. And so let's tie it back to the military. The reason your military is so good is because the first thing any commander does when they sit down to take command is they start a journal. This is what I wish I would have known when I took over. And their whole two years in command. First of all, they have the book from the person in front of them and they add their comments to the book from the person in front of them.

[A]

Really.

[B]

Because as a military leader, I only get command because I had the right training, I was in the right place at the right time, and I have the right skill set. There are a thousand other people that could do this job just as good as me, and we know that. Right. But my goal of being a commander is to make a book that will prepare you to be a better commander than I Ever could be. That doesn't take. You have to have security in what you do. Right. I'm confident in my abilities. I'm also confident that I can help you be better prepared than I was, whether it's in the military or on running a piece of equipment. But you have to let go of I'm special and unique and go, I'm good with what they gave me. I want to make it better for the next generation.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that also applies to construction companies as a whole, too. I've seen every company thinks they're more special and unique than they really are in the grand scheme of things. It's like if you're in the state of Alabama, you're building off the same specs that everyone else is building off of. So how. How special can you be? Like you.

[B]

You live.

[A]

You cannot be that special. You have to build the exact same road that company B would be building.

[B]

Otherwise, you don't pass the contract.

[A]

Other. Otherwise you wouldn't have the contract. It's like, it's so funny that it's so. Well, we're. We're really special here. It's like, I. I get it. You've got this special culture, so on and so forth. You've been around since 1800s. Understood. But you're not from a training standpoint on how to teach someone how to use a skid steer. It's the exact same thing no matter where that person is. Sure, there's a hundred different nuances. Understood. But we're getting to like, 75% and it's the same thing. And you're like, the companies do themselves in the industry a disservice by thinking they're more special than they are because it's like, hey, again. And then they go off and try to go make their own videos in their own school. But that doesn't end up doing all that well. Nine times out of 10. Because they're better off. Like, why don't we just pool our resources and do it once to get to the 75%?

[B]

You were asking me about the challenges when we started this community college thing in Alabama. One of the biggest challenges you just hit on. So we're going to teach people to run a back. And when we sat down. First of all, there are no. There are standards for building a project. There is no license to run a backhoe.

[A]

Yeah. Which blows people's minds when I.

[B]

So there is. That means there is no universal standard of how to run it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, you can get trained by the company. You buy it from that. Still don't make it a license.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so when we started this talk, the biggest pushback was, well, I'm in concrete. The way we use. It's different. Well, I'm an apsolist.

[A]

They just don't do it how we do it.

[B]

And so finally, we called a statewide meeting, had no authority to do it, no backing from anybody. We said, if you're in workforce, come into this meeting. And we had everybody that, first of all, almost everybody in Alabama that does any workforce stuff dialed in, and everybody shared what they were doing. And we talked about this and said, a backhoe is a backhoe is a backhoe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

101 of how to run a backhoe is the same on every job site. Now, when you get into the PhD level, it's different in concrete and asphalt. We're not trying to teach that. No, you teach that. So all of our classes are designed to teach the first two weeks on a job. Think about the simplicity of that. I want you to know how to wear a safety vest. I want you to know how to wear a hard hat. I want you to know what PPE is required. I want you to be able to do a walk around on the equipment, check the oil, make sure everything's good to go. And I want you to get in it and do basic operation of it.

[A]

Yeah. The pedal and the dozer, you're not good. Slows it down, right? Yeah.

[B]

Right. A skid steer is called that because you actually skid to turn.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I need those kind of things. You're not a good operator. You're a safe operator. Now, when they take that certificate and your company hires them now, you teach them to operate it the way you want it operated. Sure. But the basics are the same. And it's so hard for the construction industry to realize that. My example was when I'm qualified to fly an F15 in Florida, I'm qualified to fly an F15 in Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere else in the world. They're all different squadrons. They all have different uniqueness. It's the same plane. Why is a backhoe any different?

[A]

And if I were to ask, like, Billy the backhoe operator, Billy, how many companies have you worked at? Oh, like eight. Most everybody's worked for everybody.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's the other thing.

[B]

It's like, it's true for most companies, just not for ours, because once they.

[A]

Get in, I know you're special. I know. I know you're special. But that's the other reality is people are trading people they are all the time. And so to think that your workforce is trained your way, it's not realistic. You're doing yourself a disservice to think that because. Yeah, it's not. You're completely ignoring the reality of the situation. Um, and the reality situation is. Yeah, we, we like every company trades, every company has turnover, every company has people coming in.

[B]

Let's be honest, at the lower entry level jobs, they will jump for a quarter. Yes, they will jump for a quarter because it means more.

[A]

And I don't blame them.

[B]

Yeah, we just try to build a culture that is worthy of and pay competitive rates. But the reality is, like you said, Johnny's worked for eight companies because he probably jumped for a quarter here and a dime here. And to get his pay up, to get it to where he needed for his family. And that's okay.

[A]

Yeah, the. To go back to fighter jets because I'm just so, so. So is flying a fighter jet as cool as it as someone would think it is?

[B]

So much cooler.

[A]

I bet that so much.

[B]

So you asked me if I flew in retirement and I don't because every day that I got in a fighter. So think about this. I get in an F15, $250 switching engages. Every one of them is in a different location with the different shots shape. Because when I'm in combat at night, I turn all my lights off.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

So I have to operate everything in the combat in the cockpit without looking at it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like 20 miracles just to get this thing started when you're a student.

[A]

So do they test you like.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Called a blind cockpit. Blindfold cockpit test.

[A]

That's incredible.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Trump just told the story the other day about how he flew into, I think it was Iraq or somewhere like that in Air Force One. And they had to turn all the lights off. And he was up in the. Up with the pilots and he kept asking him like, are you guys good? Like, are we good? Yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

[B]

We're good because we trained for it.

[A]

Cause he was like, I couldn't see a single thing. And then all of a sudden we hit the ground as smooth as can be.

[B]

Because our pilots are the best in the world.

[A]

That's what he said. It's like, I didn't even think of that. You turn all the lights off.

[B]

Well, think about it. When I go into Iraq, I went into Iraq with a 12 ship wall of F15s. So they're each two to five miles apart. So we cover and we usually Go in. In the cons, you know what contrails are. So you get up high enough, the air vaporizes behind you. It's when you see an airplane and you see trails behind it.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

So we like to put our 12 ship in the cons so you can see us coming.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then as we enter the country, we'll drop out of the cons.

[A]

I see.

[B]

If it's during the day or at night, when we hit the country line, we turn all our lights off. So you think just turn the outside lights off. Well, think about a cockpit. It's covered in glass.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If all my outside lights are off, but I'm lit up like the star on top of a Christmas tree. You're going to see 12 stars on top of Christmas trees. Yeah, it is. It's really that dark at 50,000ft in the middle of the night over Iraq?

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

But we train them to do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We don't expect them to do. This is another thing. When I got into construction, when we started our drone project program, we trained everybody before they were expected to fire a drone. And I heard, well, that's the first. Usually I'm expected to do it. And then I learn on the job.

[A]

Yeah, crash it a few times.

[B]

Yeah. No, that's not the way you train. You train people first, and then you hone their skills on the job. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Our pilots are awesome. And, yes, flying fighters. So getting back to that, after I get it started, I pull out on the Runway, and when I light. So the F15 has five stages of afterburn. So it's five different afterburners. You can feel all five light. So when I push the throttles up, you go to 100% power, which is everything she's got. And then you push it into five stages of afterburner, which means you literally get pushed back in your seat five times. It feels like a top fuel dragster when you let go of the brakes. That's how hard the acceleration is. I take off, I pull my gear up, I fly about 25ft off the ground to get a little air speed, and then I stand it on its tail and accelerate. The F15 accelerates going straight up.

[A]

And that's a. Is that an unrestricted takeoff?

[B]

It's an unrestricted climb.

[A]

Yeah. I was just watching videos that the other day, and it's like.

[B]

So we take off, getting ground effect, accelerate to 500 miles an hour. We stand it on its tails, and then we keep accelerating, go up. And at 18,000ft, we level off because Then you enter the highway system of the air. So we can't shoot above 18,000ft.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Without a lot of work.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But. So when I used to take people up in the F15, the coolest thing is it's a. It's about a 4G pull to get pulled up. So four times the force of gravity, but it's pretty quick. And then when I get it in the vertical, I would say sit up and turn around and look behind you, and you look behind you and there's two vertical tails. The F15, you can see directly behind you. And all you see is the world just falling away.

[A]

Because there's two seats in the F15.

[B]

There are two seats in the training model of the F16. So the F15C is combat. The F15D is a trainer, and it has two seats.

[A]

I see. So the combat variant has just one combat variant.

[B]

We take the back. The back seat is not there. And we put some other really cool stuff back there. For combat.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And we go into combat. Single pilot.

[A]

Wow. Has the F15 been. Is the F15 still flying with the fancy stuff now around? It is really.

[B]

It is.

[A]

It's an old plane in The Grand Sea.

[B]

1972.

[A]

1972.

[B]

It was built on Commodore 64 technology, and it remained one of the top fighters in the world until we got the F22 and F35. And they are leaps of bounds above it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because think of what technology's changed between 72 and 82.

[A]

I've heard with fighter jets, future state, they're going to be able to automate a lot of stuff. How do you feel about that? Like automated fighter pilot.

[B]

Well, let's use an example of that.

[A]

A fighter pilot.

[B]

We talked about Global Hawks.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's size of a 737. It's a reconnaissance aircraft.

[A]

It's a drone.

[B]

You call it a drone. We call it remotely piloted aircraft.

[A]

It's gigantic.

[B]

It is 737.

[A]

Yeah. It's ridiculous.

[B]

Every time I took off on a Global Hawk FL, there are 200 crew members supporting that flight on the ground. 200. So that's why we don't use unmanned or drone.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because there are 200. It doesn't matter if they're in the plane or not. They're dedicated to that flight.

[A]

That is remarkable.

[B]

Now, I took off. I operated my aircraft from a shipping container in California. We put the cockpits in shipping containers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so literally, there's a field of shipping containers out there. And so the flight. I would be. I Mean, I was flying in Syria, I was flying all over the world in Global Hawks. And when I bring one back into land, it flies over the airfield at 10,000ft. I fly it with a keyboard and mouse. There is no yoke, there is no airspeed indicator, really. I've flown one around the world and I actually talk through the aircraft to the controlling agencies. Like I was really there. They don't know that I'm not there. So the FAA had problems with that in the beginning. They go, what if you lose communication? Well, first of all, if I lose communication, it's more predictable than a human, because if you lose communication, you know what they should follow, but you don't know what they're going to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That aircraft only does what I tell it to do. So if I lose communication, I'll still off time and make its calls around the world until it gets here and it will land.

[A]

Yeah. The autonomous minds, they say the problem aren't the trucks, the automated trucks, it's the, the people driving around the mine, they're the ones that muck it up, right? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And so 10,000ft over the field. Here's a secret to how you land a Global Hawk, right? You're in a shipping container. I take a mouse and I put it over this button that says land and I click it.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

It shuts the motors off and it spirals in and it lands. You know what the biggest problem with Global Hawks was around the world? I would have airflow managers calling and going, hey, I built a Runway based on normal pilot errors. And the problem is your Global Hawk lands at the same place every day. So you're wearing my Runway out. Can you move your land point? Yeah, because when we're hand flying an aircraft, you're calculating winds and everything. Look at the Runway next time you go in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There's not one touchdown point. There's black marks all over the end of the Runway.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A Global Hawk lands in the same place every day, every time, regardless of winds.

[A]

Well, with the mining trucks, they've had to program variants into how because they were wearing the haul roads so easily.

[B]

Same thing.

[A]

Yeah. They were just wearing rugs, ruts into the hall roads because they don't move. Yeah, yeah. They're so accurate, so they've had to program every time they drive a slightly different road.

[B]

This is something we didn't see being a problem because we as humans are not that precise. I trust an automated aircraft more than I trust a human aircraft.

[A]

Yeah, I've heard they're going to automate probably cargo aircraft first because there's no people involved from a commercial standpoint, because they've already automated aircraft.

[B]

I think it's the politics and the thought of it that we're gonna have a hard time. We have the technology.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah. I've heard technology, like, perfectly fine. You're better off having a machine fly your commercial aircraft, fly your Southwest Airlines flight. It's the public perception, which is why they've. I've. I guess you probably know this better than I do, but that's why I've heard like. Like FedEx or something like that. That'll probably go automated first because.

[B]

Because there's no passengers.

[A]

There's no passengers associated with it. Yeah, Yeah.

[B]

I mean, look at what our cars are. I just got a new car. Well, Birmingham to Nashville is I65 with no turns. So my wife was with me. She hates this. I get on the interstate, I put it on auto drive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I did not touch the steering wheel for three hours.

[A]

What kind of car is it?

[B]

It's a Chevy.

[A]

Really?

[B]

It's a Chevy Traverse.

[A]

Nice, Nice.

[B]

It changes lanes on its own.

[A]

Does it really?

[B]

It does. It will vibrate the seat and tell me I'm changing lanes because this guy in front of me is doing five miles an hour slower than you want.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Three hours. I didn't touch steering wheel.

[A]

A little different than F15, though.

[B]

Same concept, though.

[A]

Same concept. Yeah.

[B]

Same concept. Because it's actually using radar to see things and operate around them.

[A]

Sure. Does watching a movie like Top Gun drive you nuts or can you enjoy it?

[B]

So I don't want to give the Navy any credit, but they always get better movies than the Air Force. They get better movies and Top Gun. I mean, the original Top Gun, obviously, was awesome because it was the first time we kind of got a sight into what it was like, and it was completely unrealistic. The new Top Gun, they had great advisors. It is so realistic. I mean, the way they treat each other, the way they talk on the radios. As a fighter career fighter pilot, I watch it and went, dang, Navy. They got it right on this one.

[A]

Yeah. The fighter pilots talking shit to one another on the radios all the time. Yeah. Yeah, all the time.

[B]

It depends if other people can. So we usually have a radio that's internal. Sure. And a radio, it's external. We will always be professional in the external radio.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The internal radio is just for abuse of each other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's how we make each other better. That's the other thing.

[A]

It's a, it's a big piece of it.

[B]

My wife always said if they didn't know you were friends, when they see you out with your fighter pilot buddies, they would think you hated each other.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, but that like, that's, that's what, that's why I struggle with some of the like big corporate people that are just in the office. They don't understand the job site or the mine or something like that. It's like, no, no, no, you can't remove that. That's an, that's like a critical piece of the culture. And so if you try to sterilize that, it removes the humanity in a way and then just makes it a job.

[B]

Let's talk about one thing that makes fighter pilots fighter pilots. On Friday afternoon, everything given. We don't fly Friday afternoons. We have meetings. That's our time to get the squadron together. And one of the things we do at the end of all the other meetings, we have a roll call. And so everybody's there. You're either there or you get assessed to fine. Right. So it's not a. You're going to get disciplined. This is more into the fun side of it. So literally, if you're not there, you owe $5 to the snack, which is where we buy all our beverages and everything. And after we go through roll call of who is there? It is nobody but fighter pilots in the room. Nobody's allowed in. And here's why. We go around the room and I go, here's what happened to me this week. Because we're flying a danger, it's a dangerous job. And so we're honest about what happened, about when we almost hurt ourselves or almost did something wrong. And we talk through it as a group so that other people can learn from our mistake or experience. Industry don't do that. Yeah, they don't. We're too close. Hold. I would never tell you I made a mistake because you might discipline me or hold it against me. But you've got to have that nameless, rankless, safe place to go. Hey, I almost turned a skid steer over today because I held the bucket too high.

[A]

Yeah. And we're. That's something we might be able to address with our software that we've discussed is if you can make incidents more anonymous. That's what we'd say. No, in an ideal world it shouldn't be anonymous, but. But that's completely dismissing reality. But if you can make it anonymous.

[B]

Can you have make it non retributional?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, but even between companies, like, a company's not gonna say, yep, rolled the haul truck last week. They're not gonna broadcast that. No, but everybody's rolled a haul truck. Like, they're called wiggle wagons for mixer trucks.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Wow. Mixer. That's a bad day.

[B]

You know, they're very top heavy.

[A]

They are top heavy.

[B]

We need to talk about that so we don't hurt people.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw a documentary not long ago about Blue Angels, which I know is the lesser.

[B]

Yes. Number two. Next.

[A]

Yeah. According to. Yeah. Lester team. But it was. It was really. It was really well done. Have you seen this?

[B]

I have not. I just heard it hit Amazon. It's on Amazon. I told my wife we're gonna watch it this weekend.

[A]

They did an amazing.

[B]

But I heard they took you in debrief and everything.

[A]

It was spectacular how well they did this. And yeah, they went. They went in. So kudos to the Navy for giving that access.

[B]

I told you, I give. Navy always gets the better shows.

[A]

Yeah, well, they gave them the right access. And then the shows. The show, how they put it together is really remarkable. But the way I watched it was from a leadership standpoint, because that's how I watch a lot of stuff now is like, how are they? And the number one thing I thought was most impressive was just the level of communication they had and the level of trust. So that. And I'm sure you can. This was how it was for you guys, too. They. They had. They had people that would get the planes ready so that when the pilot got there, they just get in. They don't double check anything because they have total trust of whoever's getting that plane ready.

[B]

So the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are the only pilots in the entire military that don't pre flight their own jets. Because it's part of the ground show. Is part of the show.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And so it's the only place where I walk up as I get to my jet. My crew chief's right there, and my crew chief was named Max.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And as I'm putting my G suit on, you're watching all this because it's part of the show. I would go, max, is she ready? And he'd go. He'd go, yes, sir. She's going to take care of you today. That was our official exchange for, I did your walk around, I documented everything, and I signed your forms and you're ready to take off. And that sounds very informal, but that was our informal way of. Did you walk around for me. Is it ready to go? Yes, sir. She'll take care of you. Okay. Not get in and go fly.

[A]

I thought that was. I think that says everything about the organization. Just that alone. And then second. Yeah, they. The debriefs I thought were brutal. Were. Mark. Yeah, they, they were. I mean they. You could tell it was intense and you could tell the new guys especially were just nervous as could be going into these.

[B]

The new guys, think about this. They are 10 year combat proven instructor.

[A]

Pilots, best in class. Yeah.

[B]

But they're the new guys there and it shows you. We're still nervous, we're still outside our comfort zone.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And throughout the season, they follow the whole season and they were talking too about like how the formation gets ideally tighter. Tighter and tighter and tighter as you go through the season and as you build that trust in those reps and those. It's largely through just the communication, just the debriefs of everything. And trust. And trust. Which I thought was so. Because they're all such talented pilots. These are some of the most talented pilots in the world. So it's not really. Yes, they're doing. It's totally different. You've done it. But it's not anything out of the ordinary in the grand scheme of things. It's just the trust between people and the level of communication that they have over a prolonged.

[B]

There's one other difference. So the wide formation at the beginning. So first of all, what everybody hears is if you get a chance to go at the end of the season, always go at the end of the season. Yeah, they're always tighter and better. Just reality. But every fighter pilot in the world flies formation at three feet apart. Everybody has to be able to do it. Now they don't fly it upside down, they don't do rolls, but they fly formation at three feet apart.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The difference is as they get in Thunderbirds and Blue Angels, they get to 18 inches apart. So at 3ft apart, I see what you do and I react after you do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At 18 inches apart, I can't react. We have to put the changes in the control at the exact same time. So I have to predict what you're going to do.

[A]

Yeah, it's.

[B]

It's more proactive and less reactive, if that makes sense.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because we. At three feet, if you hit the brakes and I fly by, we're not going to hit. At 18 inches, you don't have wing temp clearance anymore. You're going to touch parts of the plane. But that's a difference in I'm not reacting to you at three feet. I'm projecting what you're going to do at 18 inches.

[A]

It's perfectly synchronized and it's perfectly synchronized.

[B]

And like there's a script, they follow. There's a script that has to be read during every air show and you can't change it. When I was doing opposing work with my other solo, we start 12 miles apart, accelerate to 1400 miles per hour, drop 75ft above the ground. We point right at each other and just before we hit, we pass 50ft apart. The only way I knew if he was early or late was not in the words he said. It was in the inflection of his voice. I knew him so well to know if he was early, I knew what that sounded like. If he was late, I knew what that sounded like. And I'm setting my power off the way he speaks. That's how well they know each other.

[A]

That in that level of trust like you were at that point, you are trusting that person with your life in the most literal sense.

[B]

Now I'm gonna pull back on that. It's not Thunderbirds and Blue Angels like that. When I rolled outside the wire in a convoy with the army in Afghanistan, we got three cars, four people in each car. When we roll outside the wire, I'm trusting all 11 of those other people with my life every day. That's a multi. It gets exposed to Blue Angels and Thunderbirds, but that's every mission in the world. It really is. That's the trust of shared experiences, shared development and every military person when we go into combat. I trust you with my life. This is why fighter pilots are so hard on each other. Because I need you to be your best if you're going to watch my back. And I also have to step up and be my best to watch your back. Yeah, it's high. Performing teams make you perform even higher. That's why some of the best pilots in the Air Force and Navy go into the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds and they come out exponentially better. First of all, it's reps, training seasons. Three flights a day, five days a week for four months straight.

[A]

That's incredible.

[B]

You just get better because you're. I was airborne more than I was on the ground.

[A]

It felt like wow.

[B]

But I was also with the same five people every day. I knew how they thought, I knew how they functioned. And I trust them to know that nobody is. A perfect example is somebody hits a bird up there. We have practiced every maneuver to get us into a Safe space. Because if somebody hits a bird and somebody moves unpredictably, when the six aircraft are flying together, you'll take out all six aircraft. You have to trust the other person to have the confidence in their skill to not flinch when they should. I mean, really, if you flinch, you just move the jet 30ft.

[A]

Yeah. Because you're going so fast.

[B]

Because you're going so fast and it's that sensitive.

[A]

It is amazing though, the world we live in, how you can watch these dynamics within a television show. And I know it's a television show, but I love being able. It still gives you a taste, it really does. And I love being able to learn leadership from the highest as far as high performing teams are concerned. Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, those are high performing teams when it comes to high performance. And to be able to, to be a fly on the wall in even a small sense, I think is so remarkable, especially for a young person like me. I have that access now through television technology. I think it's incredible how you have this whole very demanding career. I think construction is oftentimes a very demanding career. How are you still married?

[B]

I have an awesome wife who was, as we talked about, my high school sweetheart. We've been married 30 years this year. And in the military. I mean, let's be honest, the divorce rate in the military is higher than normal society.

[A]

Sure. Because I would argue it's higher in construction too.

[B]

Then I would say construction is higher too. But you look at this. When she had our second child, so she had a toddler and a newborn and we were 25. And I got in bed one night at 9:00 and I got a phone call that said, get back to squadron, you're deploying tomorrow. And I left. I couldn't tell her what country I was in or where I was coming home or what I was doing. And she was in a town, she knew nobody because we were new there with a newborn and a toddler. Talk about stress on a marriage. Because she's the only parent. She's my side, her side. And she's dealing with the stress of me being in combat. Yeah, I mean, it takes an amazing woman or man to be a military spouse. And I talk about this a lot. We get a lot of people say thank you for your service. I mean, our country really loves the military for the most part. But what gets overlooked are the families. I have four kids. They did 18 schools in 20. I mean, they did 18 schools in 23 years is how much we moved. And my older two kids did 11 schools in 12 years. So think the first 12 years of school, they moved every. We were fortunate. We only moved in the summer. They did 11 schools in 12 years.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

Think about the demands on a teenager. It's hard to be a teenager.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. And then. Oh, by the way, then I leave to go to Afghanistan when my oldest two are in high school, and my wife has to deal with all the drama of kids being teenagers. And she's awesome. She's amazing. And she. She was a nurse. So when I started flying, we always joke, she made more money than I did, but we decided to pick a career when we had kids, and so we picked my career. She stopped being a nurse, and she decided to take care of the kids in my absence. And it was the best decision we ever made because the amount of money we would have gained. We were in a position that we could live off my salary so that she could raise the kids when I wasn't there. But she also gave up a career. She had went to school for a long time to get right. That was a sacrifice on her part. And now I'll tell you the payback. She supported me flying through the end of my career. Now, mind you, I know this is probably gonna get released after Dirt World next week, which I'm really excited about, but we're gonna talk about my crash out there, right? Being a Thunderbird is awesome until you crash during an air show.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so she went through that. And, oh, by the way, the Air Force decided to call her and tell her I was dead. Right. Think about the stress of that. And of course, that's not what they said, but that's what she heard. And all that matters is what she hears. And so after that, she agreed to continue to support me through my career with the agreement that when I retired, I wouldn't fly anymore. So I don't fly. I fly Delta. Right. I fly like you do to go to places, but I don't fly private anymore because that's a risk we no longer need to accept. And I'm not saying flying's not safe. That's just. There's no reason to. I don't get to jump out of planes anymore. I don't get to fly anymore. And I don't feel bad about that. That was our agreement that we were very clear about.

[A]

Yeah. I guess she was waiting that whole two decades for that phone call that.

[B]

Hey, every spouse is every spouse. So the way we say it is in the Air Force, we call them Blue Steelies. They're blue cars, four door sedans. I don't even know what brand. It doesn't matter. They all look the same. And so in the fighter world, I hate to say that our livelihood is not that of other people because it's a dangerous job. And so every spouse's fear is that blue car pulling up because they don't tell you over the phone unless somebody violates rules. The blue car pulls up and it has the commander in dress uniform, a doctor and a chaplain.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that's the notification team.

[A]

So there's no secret. Yeah.

[B]

And so we always say you don't need to notify because when that car pulls up, you just notified.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And that is. I mean, when I started working construction, she said I didn't know in the real world that I can expect you to come home every day. Because in the flying world, that was not a given. That was not a given every day. And because that's a real world of flying, it's the danger of flying. So I have so much respect for her and all the spouses that do that because they serve our nation as much as the military person does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because like you said, she hung in there with me, dragging her out. Now, for us, we made everywhere an adventure. I told you, coming up here to talk to you. We're going to the art museum after this is over. Why? Because we're here and we make the most of everywhere we go. But it's a tough job on spouses in the military everywhere, I'm sure.

[A]

I think it can be, like I said, I asked that too, because it can be tough in construction. There's a lot of companies, a lot of jobs where you're not.

[B]

You're in a hotel. Yeah.

[A]

You're working away from home.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's a big part of the industry. And it's like, as much as we want it to be, like everybody's local all the time. That's completely unreasonable. We can't build the infrastructure we need if everybody's home all the time.

[B]

But it goes back to, you need to find what you need to work in your life. And if you need to be home all the time, you can find a construction job that's home totally every night. Or if you're okay being gone, you can find a construction job that has travel that aligns with your family needs. Too often people are taking jobs that don't align with family needs. And we're not honest. I mean, luckily me, because I grew up with my wife, we were always very honest when we, when we got married, we sat down and said, what traditions are we going to make for our kids? You know what, how now I have a rule. She has a rule, we both do. Of how many nights I can be away from home without her being with me because we're in a place that I can own my life again. In the Air Force, I couldn't. And so if I have to leave for more than that number of nights, she goes with me. Because our kids are older and she can. But we've been very specific. Maybe it's my military mind, my kids joke. One of the things I used to consult on is when my kids go to Disneyland Disney World. It is a military operation. We pre flight plan it, we brief it, we execute it. And then the joke is we would get back on the paddle boat to come back to the hotel and my kids would go, okay, dad, how do we vacation harder next time? That's not a made up story. That's the way my family runs. It really is. I'm going to get my money's worth when my Disney World is not a vacation. But that can translate into all of your life. There's a job out there for everybody if you're clear about your expectations. What I tell people is you have to understand your why. You can't find satisfaction in a job if you're chasing a paycheck. You have to stay. Understand what your why is in life. Why am I here? And it's not professional or personal. It's all together. You're the same person 24 hours a day. And if you determine what your why is in life, then you ask yourself, it's what I'm doing aligned with my why. I teach leadership. I help build a better workforce because I want to make a difference, like I told you, to make it a different world from what my dad lived in. That's why I'm here. First day on the job, the first job site, my dad's not with us anymore. My first day in a job site at Dunn, I was wearing his last pair of boots. I think that's pretty cool. Nobody knows that now.

[A]

They might.

[B]

Nobody knows that. But that was very meaningful to me because it meant I took where he was that I hated so bad and turned it into something I'm proud to put my time into.

[A]

You brought those boots.

[B]

I carried them all over the world.

[A]

All over the world, huh? It was one of those.

[B]

And I didn't know why.

[A]

It's like, why do we have this box? Why do we have these boots?

[B]

I Didn't even know why I was keeping them until my first day of work. And I went and got them out and I wore them.

[A]

And then you got a proper pair after that.

[B]

And then I got a proper pair because they were really uncomfortable. Boots have come a long way since then.

[A]

Yeah. Do you get to. Are your flight suits. Are they US Military property? Do you have to turn all that stuff in? Do you get to keep anything after?

[B]

In theory, they get turned in.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Understood.

[B]

So I have all my helmets. All fighter pilots keep their helmet.

[A]

Oh, that's cool. Oh, okay.

[B]

So. And you walk into my bar area of my house. I have my combat helmet on one side, my Thunderbird helmet on the one side. And my wife convinced me because we've been retired a couple of years now, so it's okay to be cool again. So I put all the patches of all of our assignments across the. Across the shelves. And it turns out it's a huge talking point when people come in the house because apparently that's not normal. Really? I mean, it's normal to us.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

But people come in and are fascinated by that. And then right at the end hangs my. My retirement flag. And she received a retirement flag. And so those, you know, those hang at the end of it. But it's one of those things. We're really proud of that. When I first retired, we boxed it all up and said, I don't want to see that anymore.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But now we're starting to realize we had a pretty good adventure that I called a job.

[A]

Pretty cool. Yeah. That's an idea I've had from the military. It would be really cool if different construction projects had different. Even just stickers and designs for people. So they could almost collect, like, all that. The projects that they've been in one place. I don't know how to bring that to life, but I've seen it a little bit on the GC side. But they do it from, like a safety standpoint. Like you went the safety orientation at so and so project.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is like, okay, that's cool. But I think you could almost do that. Similar concept for construction projects.

[B]

I'll pull a little bit different direction. The way we do it in the military is not just stickers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We have round metal objects. Have you seen those?

[A]

Oh, the coins.

[B]

Raw metal objects.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So here's. Here's the reason I say that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because if you're in a squadron and you're combat certified in that squadron, you earn One of those. You're required to keep it on you at all times. At all times. So if you and I were in squadron 10 years ago, then I could come in and. And knock my real metal object on the table. And if you didn't have yours, you're buying drinks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If I. If you do have it, I'm buying drinks, yeah.

[A]

The challenge. Challenge coins.

[B]

Now, the reason we call them round metal objects is because once you're on the inside and you have them, if you say coin, that's a challenge right there. So it's the same thing as you pulling yours out. So if you say that word and you don't have it.

[A]

I see.

[B]

Now, as you get to be more experienced, we won't call it old. Realize I moved 18 times. I've got a round metal object from every place I've been. So now as I travel, I have to go, who might I run into? And so I have a bag with them all in it, and I go in there, try to predict who I might run into. Because even in retirement, I'll get called in an airport because it's one of those pride things. That's what you're trying to get is we may have served together 15 years ago in Iraq, but we have so much pride that we still have that coin, Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's what we need to get. Whether it's a sticker, you know, because eventually people get experience, their heart attack gets filled up, or, heaven forbid, they get a new one and they lose the stickers. But what about. What about a coin?

[A]

But something like.

[B]

Something like that is meaningful. Yeah, same concept. It's just different ways.

[A]

And I know companies do it here or there, but I think you could develop a system within your company to do that, and I think that would go a long way.

[B]

Like a recognition program.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I will tell you, when I was the chief of safety back in the Air Force, I had a specific coin made up that was only given by the chief of safety. And if anybody called in a safety situation where we avoided a mishap or an injury, I went out and gave them a coin. The only way you could get it was by preventing a mishap. That's the only way you could get one. And then I wrote a note to their commander and told their commander what they did. Yeah, it became. I mean, our safety hotlines lit up. We had people reporting everything. Okay. So I went through a lot of coins, but it was the right reason. And all it took was a little $8 piece of metal to make Them go, well, if I call this ink, I would really like them just to call it in. But let's be real.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All it took was that to make. I mean, we were the safest base there was in the Air Force.

[A]

Over that little thing with the construction. Yeah. Safety programs, they're like, yeah. You know, anybody can call anything in at any time. And I just rolled my eyes. I'm like, yeah, right. No one's doing that. Like, no one's going to be that guy. But if you incentivize it or if you build that culture around it.

[B]

Yep. Let's go back to the debrief you talked about from the Blue Angels. So my mishap happened in mountain home in 2003. My wife and I have not been to an air show to see the Thunderbirds fly since then. Until last month, we decided it was time the Thunderbirds hosted us at Columbus Air Force Base. I mean, it was awesome.

[A]

So you got VIP experience.

[B]

Yep. Yes. And so to the point that the commander asked me and my wife to come in to debrief, which is not allowed. When I was at Thunderbird, she didn't get sit and debrief. So we sat through the whole debrief, and he said he wanted me to see how much safer they were now than when I was on the team. Part of it was a result of my mishap, and that was amazing. And afterwards, my wife, we're driving home, and she goes, I've never seen a debrief. And she goes, you guys really are brutal on each other. Even the commander is brutal on the right. We call it nameless and rankless. When you close the door, it stays in there. But the commander, you set the tone. So in the beginning, as the commander, I say, team, here's what I messed up and what I can do better tomorrow. Then once the commander says, that gives everybody permission. Everybody has permission. Not just permission. Hey, you can call in anything. He set the example of how it's going to be done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because in the business world, too often people don't make mistakes, at least in the open.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That they'll admit to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, that creates a culture. Nobody else is going to admit to it either.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

Everything that in the military translates to business at large. It really does.

[A]

Well, that's. That's what I love about the military, is that it. It's. It translates. So I've never been in the military, but I've talked to enough guys that have been in it where it's like, yeah, that's kind of how it works over here, too.

[B]

Here's the irony of it. When we get out of the military, we don't realize it translates.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Until we get in the real world and go, like I told you, I'm in charge of it because I'm the leadership guy, not because I'm an IT expert. Leadership is leadership, whether it's in construction, in banking, or the military.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're doing different things. But leadership principles, that's the reason they translate. Right. That's the reason so many leadership consultants are former military.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because they learned how to translate our skill set there into the real world.

[A]

Well, there's. If you look at, on average, how many people are having into the summit or coming in, in general to speak to people, I'd say half are military. Not by accident.

[B]

Yeah, it's not by accident.

[A]

And it's from a lot of different groups now. We've got people from all over the military now. I mean, we've got you. We've got Nick Lavery, Special Forces Jocko Echelon.

[B]

Jocko and his team.

[A]

A lot of Those guys, former SEALs. We just signed up Mike Abrashoff, I think he was. He was a Navy captain of a destroyer. So we're pulling in from all different corners now, because it's all the same, but different in a way. And it is cool to hear from Air Force, then from Navy, then from army, and how similar principles, but applied very differently.

[B]

That's right. And now it's in civilian world.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's in construction. It's in everything.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that's awesome.

[A]

How many aliens did you make along the way?

[B]

You know, I can't answer.

[A]

I know that's part of it. Yeah. They probably make you sign the NDA. Hey, can't talk about the alien stuff.

[B]

I'll tell a funny thing about my wife. So I finally retired, and. And when I was. I mean, I had a couple of clearances.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so I finally retired. And she goes, finally, if you're a darpa, yeah, you can work for darpa. I'll leave it at that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She goes, finally, you can tell me everything. And I said, babe, it don't work that way. I mean, this is. This is even more important than marriage because it's till death do we part, except I go to jail for anything I say.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And so. Yeah. So her.

[A]

And it's not the jail. You can come visit me at her.

[B]

That's right. Her. I told you she got a flag. When I retired for being a military spouse, that's cool. Her flag. And it's usually flown in combat. And so they gave her a flag and they said, we're going to give you this flag and tell you it was the most meaningful flight he ever flew on. We can't tell you what aircraft or where it was. Thanks for serving.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And I mean, that was a point of contention. She's like, that's when she said, okay, you can tell me now, but I can't. I actually can't. And we don't talk about when we lived in Turkey. So when we lived in Turkey, I had a place I could go get U.S. intelligence. And there are. There are factions in Turkey that are not good.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so if something started happening, our agreement was, she'll go, if I'm starting to be uncomfortable, I will ask you to go to work and come back home. And I will only ask you one question. She said, I want to ask you what you found out, because I know you won't tell me. She'll go, I'll say, are you comfortable or not? And that was our way of working around it without me violating anything. And she goes, if you ever say you're not comfortable, I'm going to grab the kids and go back to the U.S. wow. But that's her living within the rules, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Well, I had to ask that again. It's like I have to ask all six real questions.

[B]

You gotta ask the six. That's what makes it fun, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You gotta ask that.

[A]

I don't have to answer aliens. Yeah, I think I've checked the checkbox.

[B]

Any others you want to clear up before we wrap up here?

[A]

I could sit here for 12 hours and ask you ridiculous questions. You know what I find a really, really amazing plane. Fighter jets. Cool. Global hawk, cool. The C5.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

That is a very underrated US military asset. And the more you look into them, you're like, that is such a ridiculous machine in so many ways.

[B]

Here's the reason I had that reaction. So I flew the F15 in combat. I flew for the Thunderbirds. I think I've done some pretty cool stuff.

[A]

It's pretty cool. Yeah.

[B]

My wife's favorite airplane is a C5.

[A]

Really?

[B]

We go at an air show and she goes, you're taking me on that C5 for the same reason you just.

[A]

Said, it's just silly. It's so silly.

[B]

And I'm like, hey, can we hang with the fighter? She goes, nope, I'm going to look at that C5.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, let's go. Yeah. Her favorite plane in the world.

[A]

Because it's, it's just ridiculous.

[B]

The nose opens, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's a football field inside. Yeah.

[A]

You could have a, I mean, yeah. Football game inside of this plane. It's so ridiculous how big it is. Yeah, yeah. I've never actually, I've only seen him flying. I haven't actually got to.

[B]

We need to get you in your air show.

[A]

I would love to go to. I've never been to an air show and that would be. Man, that would make me a very, very happy camper. Yeah. So I guess I'll talk to you about that.

[B]

Let's talk about that.

[A]

I would love, I would love to. It's just like I am, I, I think wife is good when you can just Channel your inner 6 year old and if that goes away, you're in big, big trouble. So it's like I love big trucks, I love big boats, I love trains, I love planes.

[B]

All the six year old stuff. Right.

[A]

I love all the dinosaurs. All the six year old stuff I am so stoked about. And so even though I don't really understand aircraft, I have just a massive respect for aircraft. Big machines, the engineering, the logistics, like even, just like the logistics of the US Air Force. Like the US Air Force. Yeah. Okay. They drop bombs, they collect surveillance. But like the leg, the biggest.

[B]

But you gotta replace the bomb when I drop them. Yeah.

[A]

But even just like getting people places and getting stuff, just the logistics behind the US military. It is wild, the complexity of it all.

[B]

So when I was flying, my, my wife would always say, eventually you're going to retire and you're going to have to grow up because she said we were all six year old boys.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then I retired from the Air Force and now I'm in construction.

[A]

Construction. Yeah.

[B]

And every time I go out and I go, I go to a job site if I get bored and jump on a piece of equipment, she's like, great, now you're in construction. You're actually never going to have to grow up.

[A]

Yeah. You found the cheat code there.

[B]

I found the cheat code.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I can stay a six year old forever.

[A]

Well, I will let you get to the art museum, but I appreciate you coming up here. I'm glad we could have this conversation. I'm excited to hear you next week and I think there's a lot more we ought to talk about.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Thanks for what you do because your company gets the pictures out there to make it cool again.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And I think we need more of that. And I love your partnership with what you do. Just like offering to help the community college systems. There are very few companies that look at the long game.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like we have always done. Like, like we talked about before we came in here of. I talked to your company when you were just starting your company and I was starting Dunn University because we started round about the same time. Sure. And we're really doing the same thing. We're just trying to make it better.

[A]

Yeah. And I have to play long game because I'm 29 years old. So I don't have a choice.

[B]

My long game's a little shorter than your long game.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't. I don't have a choice. Like that's the only game I have to play is.

[B]

But it's awesome.

[A]

30 year career ahead of me.

[B]

You got to make fun of it. Everything you do here is fun.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Everything I do is fun. It's a blast. So thanks for. Thanks for having me up. Thanks for telling people stories through things like this and just having this. Like I told one of your people coming in. The beauty of this is we came in and sat down and had no idea what we were going to talk about.

[A]

No.

[B]

There was no plan.

[A]

Everybody's always like, what are we going to talk about? I'm like. And I'm not bullshitting. I'm like, I don't know. I. We just have to start talking. It's like any other conversation.

[B]

Do you go in just a conversation.

[A]

Conversation with your friend? Like so. So. All right, let's look at the agenda before we have this conversation. It's not how it works. That's not how life works. It's not. It's not all scripted. So just trust me. We'll just go for a walk. We'll have a conversation.

[B]

And it just happens to be recorded. So thanks for that. Thanks for. Thanks for having done up here. Thanks for helping the community college system and everything you do. So we will definitely get you to an air traffic show next year. Yep.

[A]

Sounds good.

[B]

Thanks, Aaron.

[A]

Thanks.