Episode•April 17, 2023•36 min

EP110: Interview With Nicole Bass, Founder Of JoinTheTrades.com

Do you own a business and struggle to recruit technicians? Or maybe you have experience in a trade, but you need to find the right employer in your area? In this episode, Brad speaks with Nicole Bass of JoinTheTrades.com, to discuss: The struggles companies have in recruiting technicians Helping people she met on TikTok to start a career in the trades How her website is like an online career fair for the trades community The type of questions you will find on the job seeker assessment Different ways a candidate can find the best career path Providing specific and accurate earning data based on level of experience Reaching out to both employers and schools to get exposure Mentioned: Join The Trades Website Join The Trades Facebook Join The Trades Instagram Join The Trades Twitter Join The Trades LinkedIn Join The Trades Tik Tok Email: info@jointhetrades.com Service Professionals Website (HVAC Resources) Links to Resources: Get the skills and confidence to: Max out profits Get off the tools Have more freedom Get the business you deserve - Join the Profit Club Join the Free Facebook Group - The Contractor Profit Blueprint If you don't have it yet - Sales Accelerator Get Paid for Estimates - Free Guide Plan Your Profits - Profit Journal Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

0:00

A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner. And I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. If you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. Or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. All right, welcome back to the Hammer Grind podcast. I have a special guest today. I'm excited to have Nicole on here. And Nicole owns Service Professionals, an organization dedicated to training and recruiting in the commercial HVAC industry. including a four-year technician apprenticeship program approved by the Department of Labor. Recently, she launched the jointhetrades. com, a platform dedicated to educating on trades career paths and connecting people to local opportunities to get started. Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

2:14

Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me. That was a mouthful, huh?

2:17

It can be sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I'll get like, you know, a whole dissertation of someone's...

2:22

I tried just getting it down.

2:25

Well, thanks again for being here. I actually met you on TikTok. That's where I meet a lot of people. It's turned out to be a great platform. Hopefully it doesn't get banned. Hopefully. If you're listening to this in a few months, TikTok may be gone. Who knows?

2:39

You have to explain to the young people what TikTok used to be.

2:43

Yeah, for sure. But thanks for being here. And give us a little bit of background on what you do currently and how you got started with the jointhetrades. com. Yep.

2:54

So I own Service Professionals. It's an organization that's just for commercial HVAC contractors. We provide a software for their sales teams. We've got a talent development arm for their kind of office staff. So that's sales and dispatch and leadership and all of that. And then we have that apprenticeship program for technicians and a senior technician continuing education program. So all of that together is under that Service Professionals umbrella. And they've got their own names. The software is SP Connect and you've got SP Academy and SP Group. That's what I've done for the past decade. And in working with these companies, really excellent companies, I've been daily a part of their struggle to recruit technicians in. And it has been so confusing to me and to them just because, like here, they're offering a free education. They make these technicians make great money and they love their careers. And they're working for great companies who invest in their people. There's just a lot of reasons to want to start this career. And so the fact that they're struggling to recruit is just surprising to me. So I got on TikTok. That's where you and I met. Now that will shoot. Where are the young people? They're on TikTok. I'll go get on TikTok. I'll go tell them about it. And I made a couple of videos and the response was wild. Just the number of people are going, they do. They make what? Wait, the education is paid for what? And I'm just like, they don't even know about it. I've got at this point, I think it's like 85,000 followers on TikTok just from people going, they do what? You know, and so. I started expanding on that and saying, yeah, let me give you some more information. And a lot of people were hitting my DMs saying, can you place me at one of these companies? And that turned into a little bit of a full-time job where I'm like, yeah, let me make an introduction. So those introductions, you know, a lot of success there. A lot of people who got placed got hired, but it was a full-time job and I'm not. And so I stepped back and with one of my coworkers, one of my partners. I was like, what can we just make this into a site so people can do it? Take me, take the middleman out and just let them introduce themselves to each other. And that's kind of how we formed jointhetrades. com.

4:50

Yeah. And I saw one of your videos and you were talking about jointhetrades because I reached out. It's been probably a few months since I first reached out to you. And I know you were still getting the website set up and all that stuff. But yeah. So now it's a full blown, you know, its own entity. And so what is the jointhetrades. com platform? How does it work?

5:09

Yeah, it's really it's really trying to mimic what I was doing on TikTok, but in a better way. So it is it's a whole ecosystem for trades community. Years can get listed on it. Schools can get listed on it. Unions can get listed. And then career seekers, people who are looking, trying to figure out what they want to do. They don't want to go to college. But what are my other options? Then they can go read about all the different trades careers. Right now, we've slated 68 different careers that fall into the category of skilled trades. And we're trying to break that. That stereotype that a skilled trades career equals a construction career. I mean, and I come from what would I think be classified as one of the construction trades with commercial HVAC, which is a great career, but that's not the only ones that are out there, right? You can look at aviation or hairstylist coding cybersecurity. These are all trades careers that are excellent careers that just don't start with college. So we're getting all of them on there so people can take an assessment, find out. which career is the best fit for them. And we're going to give them a collection of them. We're not going to say, hey, this one is where you should be. It's like, hey, these top six seem to be the best fit for you. Go read more about them. We've linked it with our YouTube channel where we're doing interviews of tradespeople. And then once they've kind of narrowed it down to which trade they think might be the route they want to take, they can look in their area, just type in their zip code and find employers, schools, unions, anyone who can help them get started. in that trade and they can filter out by things that matter to them. Like, Hey, I want to go straight with an employer. I want to do the earn and learn route where I get a paycheck and they're paying for my school at the same time, but I only want to find employers who offer health benefits, right? They can filter out by that. So it completely wipes out the job posting model and just makes it way more self-service for that career seeker.

6:51

Yeah, that's awesome. And so is it free? Are you going to charge? Is there going to be a, uh, yeah.

6:56

So for career seekers, it's free. Yeah, it's 100% free for career seekers. For everybody else, schools, unions, and employers, we're making it a subscription-based model. And the reason for that is that I've seen a lot of initiatives out there that try to educate on trades careers. I don't think, I haven't really seen one that's as, I don't know, holistic as ours is, offering all these different, but they rely so heavily on sponsorship and on grants. And the problem with that model is that during hard times, you know, those funds dry up and they have to continually go out and try to seek funds for people to sponsor them. So we're trying to get away from that model and make it, hey, the whole community pitch in, right? If it's a subscription-based, so an employer pays, for example,20 bucks a month, right? Not breaking the bank here. We want to make it as accessible to the small mom and pop shops as you would to the larger corporations. It's based on location and yeah, subscription-based that makes it more sustainable.

7:50

So as an employer, if I, let's say I owned a plumbing company and I want to just go on there, fill out a form, you know, my profile, I guess, create a profile, sign up for the subscription. And then does that give me access to like searching a database of people or is it only the candidates can reach out to you? How's that work?

8:11

Yeah, for right now, only the candidates can reach out to the employers. And the whole model behind it is supposed to be that it's passive recruiting for the employers. So they fill out their profile and they just get to let it sit. Right. So they've got their page. It's basically think of a career fair. You go, you set up your booth, you set up your table, and you're waiting on these career seekers to walk up to your table so you can tell them about your company. It's the same thing. It's just online. So you set up your booth online, essentially. You get to tell about your company, all the perks you offer, what the earning potential is based on how many years of experience you have, and then wait for them to come to you. There may be a day where we flip it around, but as of right now, that's not really the model that we're going for.

8:49

No, I like that. Like you said, it's passive. So once it's set up, once you've got your information in there, you're just paying your subscription. That's it. 20 bucks a month is nothing, really. Right. I mean, we waste way more than that on Indeed ads and all the other stuff.

9:04

And they don't work. And they don't work. When you look at Indeed ads, and I'm sorry, I sound very soapboxy here, so bear with me. But the problem is... All of these ads are, if you're trying to recruit in somebody who is green, which I don't, you know, our jointhetrades. com is not intended to only be for green people, but also be for green people. Let's put it that way, right? People who are brand new to the industry. All of these job ads are written in a vernacular that only makes sense if you're already in the trade. Right. So that's problem. Number one, problem number two is that you can't really compare one ad to another because it's just so free form. So you can't. OK, so one person says, oh, we offer health benefits and we offer this, this 401k pension, whatever it is. And then you go to the next job ad and this employer didn't say that. Does that mean they don't offer it? So it's hard to it's hard to compare. They may just not have put that in their ad, you know, because it's so free form. So with join the trades dot com, it's all so structured, which means that you're able to compare. you know, one employer to the next and pick the things that matter to you. Some people want to work for a family-owned and operated business. That's the culture they like. And they're looking to get started that way. They know it's more of a family-like environment. And other people are like, nope, all I care about is growth opportunity. I want to be in a big corporation. It's okay if I'm a number whenever I start because it's a bigger, you know, it offers me options to relocate if I want to. You know, there's just different things that matter to different people. And you need to be able to compare them from one post to the next.

10:36

So you'll be able to like, you have like a box that says like, do you provide insurance? Kind of like yes or no. And then what does that look like if you do essentially? That's right.

10:45

Yep, that's right. And then the same set of boxes, like we try to make it as structured as possible. So those same, you know, for the career seeker, for example, when they create their profile, we're asking them a million questions too. Not a million, but there's enough just to kind of help us understand and help the employers understand who you are without making you write a resume. So then. When you go to reach out to an employer and say, hey, look, I'd like to interview with you, that employer receives basically your profile. It'll tell them, do you have a driver's license? What languages do you speak? What work experience do you have? What educational experience do you have? And they kind of get this template of information. It's all the information they need to know if they want to interview this person, including what are your hobbies, things like that.

11:26

Gotcha. And so it really is, I mean, this is a ground floor opportunity for businesses because, I mean, as you're obviously you're not. you know, widespread. People don't know about this yet, which is why you're on this podcast to help spread that. Right. But so if you're, if you're, if you're a, if you own a construction business or a trade business, now would be a time to join because there's probably not going to be very much competition. And so if someone in your city goes on there, you might be the only person in your trade that is on there.

11:55

A hundred percent. That's, that's absolutely right. So you're going to get the most exposure because someone's going to type in their zip code. And if you are one of, a very small handful that show up, then you're going to be able to get more candidates early on for sure.

12:07

As far as like the candidates going, so are you guys doing like outreach stuff on the candidate side for join the trades? How does that, how's that work?

12:15

Yep. And we're seeing lots of success there. So we do a lot of social media campaigns. We actually just kicked off the campaigns, but even without them, we were getting great traction with career seekers. It's a little bit of a catch 22 right now because career seekers, they come, there's not employers listed. Employers are like, how many career seekers are you getting? So, but it's building up. slowly, which is good. So we do social media campaigns. And then we're also going to be targeting in the next week, we're going to be targeting guidance counselors from all high schools and middle schools. We do think it's important to start looking at it in middle school. Just, you know, open your eyes up to the possibilities and getting their buy-in. We get a lot of attention from parents who are very interested in what we're doing and very supportive. So it's an easy outreach. You know, I think more so today than it was three years ago. There's a kind of a shift in mentality since the pandemic. And I hate to bring it, bring that up even, but it went from 72% of young people wanted to pursue a college degree to now 48% of young people do, which kind of opens up the ears of a lot of people for us to kind of plant that seed.

13:16

I wonder if the people, the reduction in college people is because like, I want to go instantly to TikTok and be an influencer.

13:23

I mean, there's, there's gotta be a healthy number of that for sure.

13:27

Speaking of middle school, I mean, I took shop class in middle school, you know, made, I made a little, I remember, I still remember making a little pencil holder, had our state, you know, carved out on there. And whenever they got rid of that for most schools, I just didn't understand that.

13:44

So you know what's wild is Ontario, just this last week, released this big news update that they're requiring technical credits for all of their high school students. So they have to go through some technical program, whether it's carpentry or they have to learn about engineering, whatever, HVAC, some type of trade technical credit. And the response has been so wildly positive. Like, what a brilliant idea that you have to make kids at some point in high school work with their hands. Like, why didn't we think of this? What? We had this for decades. And it just, when did it go away? The nineties.

14:17

And then they got rid of it.

14:18

And they got rid of it. It'll come back.

14:20

I, my, we built, they had a new middle school here locally that my daughter went to like, I think the seventh grade was the first year they had it open. And they had a brand new shop. They had a shop class in there with all jet. high-end, you know, equipment. And I think they had it for like two years and then shut it down. And I'm like, like they don't, they didn't have the classes for it. They don't have the people in there.

14:42

You didn't have people to do the, to train on it.

14:45

I don't know why they closed it down. I mean, this was my daughter's 26 now. So, I mean, this was quite a while ago, but I think it's. that period of time where people just weren't interested in, you know, would the shop class and all that stuff. So I still remember taking home economics, you know, learning how to show how to cook.

15:02

Yep. And do you know that if you don't take it very seriously and they make you make your own dress and you didn't take it seriously and your dress looks awful, they will still make you wear it at the, what was it? 4-H convention. You wear the 4-H, the, yep. On the runway. They still make you do it.

15:20

I didn't have to make a dress, thankfully. That's good. But I still sew stuff today. I have an old 1950s Singer sewing machine that I love sewing stuff on. If I need to fix something or make something.

15:32

I love that. I love that. You know, my in our household, because I didn't take home X seriously and I should have, but my husband was in the army so he can sew like it's no one's business. And so we have to mend anything in our house. I'm always like, hey, Austin.

15:46

That's the same. Yeah, I was in the military as well. And that's probably where some of that came from also. But yeah, I, you know, I'm the one that does like fixes all the all the stuff that needs to be sold. So son's got a, you know, he needs to have like a spider costume for elementary school. So I'll go in and I'll sew the legs onto the. sweater.

16:04

Yeah, that's awesome.

16:05

But I mean, that's just basic stuff that people will use, like even knowing how to light your pilot light. Most people don't even know how to do that. But you take a very simple class and learn some of those basic things. It's going to actually help you in the future in life. Yep. So I don't know why they got rid of it. I mean, even, you know, then when we have the apocalypse and, you know, everything's. Everything's not working.

16:34

I'm set for that. I've got an apocalyptic friendly husband. It's one of the reasons I chose him. I'm like, hmm, evaluate your options. This is a good partner to have. If the apocalypse happens, you want to be in my house.

16:47

We have some family friends and coworkers and stuff, and they always joke, if something happens, we're coming to your house, Brad. I won't be here, but you can come to my house if you want. So with the Join the Trades. Yeah. Now I know the platform is brand new. We were talking about this beforehand and that's going live. So by the time you hear this podcast, it'll be live to get on there and start doing your thing. Correct?

17:12

That's right. So it's actually live right now. The only thing that isn't live, but will be live by the time this is published is the assessment, which allows someone to take, you know, answer a few questions right now. It's 15 questions. Once we get all the trades on there, it'll be 20 questions and it'll let you know which trades would be the best fit for you. And it's questions that are preference based. It's not so much like, You know, what were your scores and science? Whatever. It's not that. It's more like, are you afraid of heights? You know, are you claustrophobic? Because that's going to nix some trades for you, right? How do you feel about working outdoors? Do you, would you like a healthy mix of being outside and inside? Do you only want to be outside only, you know, things like this that will make a difference on, on which ones might be a good fit for you. How much schooling are you willing to go through? Some of them require a lot more than others and that matters. So that's the only thing that's not that isn't live today as you and I speak, but will be by the time this is published. Everything else is good to go. We just rolled out schools and unions, so we don't have any on there yet. We're about to start a campaign to them to allow the first 100 on for free. So that's kind of an exciting endeavor. We have a lot of interest. It's just a matter of getting them on there. We have several employers who are already on there and we have lots of career seekers who have already created a profile. So just getting started, but already some pretty good traction.

18:29

Yeah, I think it's going to take off. I mean, big time. I can already see the benefits of it. Do you, and I was even thinking like, you know, as an employer, once you create your profile, I'm sure there's a, there might be like a link or something that you can maybe send out. Yeah.

18:45

Yep, absolutely. Everyone has their own unique link to their profile. So they could send that out and they can also decide to. Yep. And they can if let's say that they they set it up, they got some great candidates in and they need to kind of slow the roll on interviews and stuff. They can unpublish their profile if they want to. So they don't have to they don't have to take it down. They could just say, you know what, don't make it visible right now. And then whenever we're ready to bring in more candidates, we'll just republish it.

19:08

I don't think anyone's ever going to be checking that box.

19:10

I don't think so either. I don't think so either. Somebody told us, nah, you should have that. And I was like, okay.

19:16

Yeah. And then just so I understand on the people that are interested, if I come to the website, I hear about it on whatever. I come to the website. I'm an 18-year-old. I'm graduating this year. I'm interested in the trades. Is it set up to where I take the assessment to see which one? kind of which career would best fit? Or can I just go say, Hey, I want to be a carpenter and just like do that. Yeah.

19:41

You can, you can do, Oh gosh, it's every way. So you can go do the assessment. You don't have to, it's a hundred percent optional. You can also just go to a page called the trades and it lists all of them with like an image that goes with each one of them. And on that page called the trades, there's some filters. So you can filter out by things that, you know, what are the highest earning ones? Which ones require the most school? Which ones, you know, there's a few filters that you can, if you want to kind of do a self-service filter and search, or you can go directly to the employer's page and just search by, you know, maybe you're open to a lot of different trades careers, but what matters to you is in-house training, right? Earn and learn opportunities and medical benefits. And you're like, hey, what in my area? provides me those two things because I'm open to a lot of different things. I don't know what I want and I don't trust the assessment, whatever it is. Right. And so, yeah, there's a different there's a lot of different ways to find what might be your next route.

20:34

OK, and then you may have said this earlier, but so are you also doing like education pieces on that website as far as like if you want to be an HVAC, these are kind of what they do and like what that looks like.

20:47

Yeah. So each trade that we talked about that page is called the trades. As you want to dig in further, let's say you see HVAC, you can say, learn more about this one. It'll take you to a page that shows you what it is, a day in the life, pros and cons, and then you might be a good fit if. It also on that page will show the earning opportunities. Based on how many years experience you have, and this is another one of my big beefs with, I'm back on my soapbox again, but with job postings is that you average what the earning is for any trade career. What you'll find is you see a whole lot of like $60,000 a year, $65,000 a year. Well, yeah, if you include the 18-year-old apprentice with a senior chiller technician, the average, I suppose, would be about $60,000 a year. If you look at the average of technicians who have four years of experience, let's say five years of experience and over, that number bumps up to like 90,100,110 thousand dollars a year after four years of experience. And just to calibrate four years of experience means you're 22. Right. So so those averages don't really do these trades careers justice. So we break it down. It's zero to one years, two to four, five to nine and ten plus. those, those earnings are at those, those different years of experience. And then on that trades page where you're learning about a trade, a day in a life, pros and cons, all of that will show you the results of what the employers have put in zero to one, two to four, five to nine and 10 plus years.

22:22

So you're also, so you're, you're collecting the data from the employers and using that in those figures. Are you, is it, do you break, is it, is the numbers broken down by like each business or just does it average out then? Like the zero to one, you know, we had 25 companies that put in the information. We have the average of zero to one. Is that how that's figured out?

22:42

On the trades page, on that informational page for that one trade, it's going to take all those companies who have that trade and it's going to average it for zero to one. But if I go and look at ABC Mechanical, a company, an employer, I'm going to see their actual numbers.

22:57

Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot smarter way of doing it. I mean, as far as collecting the data, because...

23:02

It's just more accurate. Yeah.

23:03

Yeah, especially on like, you know, starting out five, six years,10 years in or whatever. So that's really cool. Anything else about the website or just the join the trades that I haven't asked you about that we need to be talking about?

23:17

You know, I think that the only thing that we haven't covered is just the language that we're trying to inject into the website and everything we do with the social media campaigns, with our other, you know, the high school campaigns and all of this. If you look at a lot of language around recruiting into trades careers, Our slogan somehow ended up being work hard and get dirty. Right. I don't know how we ended with that. So you get the army's got, what is it? Be all you can be. The Marines have. Oh, what is it?

23:45

The proud of you. Yeah. Yeah.

23:48

A few good men. All these great slogans. And I know that's the military. So I, you know, I draw a parallel there. But at the same time, if we're going to have a slogan, it's got to be a bit better. The language has to be better. Work hard and get dirty is not exactly a sales pitch or no slogan at all. But I think if you take that and kind of extrapolate it out across all of the messaging with trades careers, we're trying to turn it around, make it as attractive as these careers actually are, because I don't think that we do them justice. And a lot of the pitches out there and a lot of organizations like mine, you'll hear them say, we need trades people. I mean, imagine somebody who's trying to sell cars and they use that same pitch. We need to sell cars. We have a quota to hit. Like that doesn't sell anything. You got to make it attractive to the buyer. Right. And so you'll see a lot of that in our language is that we avoid things about like, hey, you know, if you come, you know, work in the trades, then you're helping build America. Like it doesn't that doesn't mean that's true. But it doesn't mean anything to that person who's looking for their career. Like, what does it mean for them? It's stability. It's guaranteed earning opportunities. It's fast tracks to entrepreneurship. Like, there's a lot of reasons why they might want to pursue one of these careers that is not really what we've been promoting up until now. So that's a huge effort on our part there.

25:05

Yeah. So, I mean, you guys are doing a lot of education with this, obviously. It's not just like a recruiting site. Like Indeed, I mean, Indeed does okay with finding people, but they're not out there actively educating the marketplace on what's available and stuff. And so you guys are, you know, specifically the trades. And so you're out there really doing a lot of education on what's available, which I don't think anybody else is really doing.

25:32

And there's some, you'll find pockets of it. You've got the people who are really educating on HVAC and why this is a good career or really educating on construction jobs and why those are good careers or really educating on this. There's not really one place that I, an 18-year-old or a 16-year-old can go to and say, okay, I don't really want to go to college. What are my other options? And that's what we're doing.

25:54

And you see girls in the trades trying to get women to join the trades, which is all good stuff. But then you're only talking to a small subset of the entire population.

26:06

We did add a filter on the trades to say which trades are fit for women. And if you click it, then our version of Rosie the Riveter comes up, the strong arm lady. And it says all trades are fit for women. Now there's certain trades that are not fit for somebody who doesn't have any physical strength, but that's not, that doesn't necessarily mean women. So, you know, it's, it was just kind of a funny joke on the site. I'm not sure a lot of people get it, but I love it.

26:33

I love it. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's most, most trades, you know, women can easily do. I mean, obviously there's exceptions to, like you said, the physical part of it, but, but yeah, no, I think that's great. I want to ask you, you were talking about like dirty being dirty and this is. completely off topic. And I think you know where I'm going. I know where you're going. Did you ever get to talk to Mike Rowe or what?

26:55

I didn't. I've talked to Mike Rowe works, the representatives there. And, you know, I'm one of, gosh, what, probably 3 million people a week who reach out with like this, Hey, Mike, I've got a great idea. You know? So, and they, they respond to super, super kind people. And they responded with basically that, like, Hey, we were sure it is a great idea, but he's very busy. So I think my strategy here is just keep building it. I think that once it gains real traction and it's not just a great idea from the one millionth person this week, then they may be a little bit more open to a conversation. I love what he has done with MicroWorks and the scholarships. And I definitely think that there is an opportunity to really hit the gas pedal on that from a scholarship standpoint at MicroWorks and getting people started, especially with a subscription-based site. I just think there's a lot of opportunity. And he's got a very great audience who know him and trust him. And so it's being able to take what he already does, do it kind of on a bigger scale. But yeah, no, I haven't heard back yet. I'm waiting on my dinner invitation, really. And I think he got lost in the mail.

28:07

I was watching your video. You were talking about speaking on stage. You were sitting in the front row. You had me going. I was like, oh, this is great. I can't believe you did.

28:17

Do you know what the worst part of that is? Here's the worst part. So if you haven't, so for those who haven't seen the video, I was telling this story about how I was at convention where he was speaking and I sat front row and he looks down at me and he's like, oh, you're the girl from TikTok. And I'm like, yes. And then he made this big shout out to the whole audience. And at the end of this TikTok, I told everyone that I'm totally lying and none of that actually happened. Wouldn't that have been cool? So like the feedback on that video is a lot of fun. Everyone's like, oh, you had me, you had me. I really thought that he singled you out. Well, I took that video and I posted it on Instagram and I tagged Microworks and I posted it as a reel, right? And I didn't know the Instagram reels have a time limit. So it never got to the point. Yeah, it never got to the point where I said, no, I'm just kidding. That didn't actually happen. So if they saw the video, which I know they're very busy, so they may not have seen it, but if they saw it, it looks like I just blatantly lied on social media about. My interaction with him. And they're probably drafting a restraining order right now.

29:18

You might want to take that one down.

29:21

I did. Oh, I took it down. I took it down. It's down.

29:23

Oh, I got you. No, when you were saying that and you were talking about, you know, I think it was your hair. You said something about your hair. I was like, man, this is really good. And you start talking about your hair. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't think Mike would say that. And then you were like, no, I'm just kidding. It slowly started to not be realistic. It was a funny video on TikTok. Speaking of TikTok, what's your handle? What's your handle on TikTok? Join the trades. Okay. I thought that was it, but I wasn't for sure. And we'll put all the links in the show notes. So anybody who's listening, who wants to find out about join the trades and get all of your handles. I know you got like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all those. We'll add those to the show notes for anybody.

30:04

Okay. Yeah. We kept them pretty simple. Let's just join the trades for all of them.

30:08

Perfect. Yeah. What questions should I be asking you, Nicole, about this?

30:12

I think you've done a great job of asking all the questions. Maybe because you've already asked indirectly, you asked about where we see it going in the future. You know, right now, what you'll see on the website is 15 different trades by the end of, we're going to be adding them every single day. We're working with interns at the George Washington University writing department and to help with those educational pages. And for us, exposure is the biggest thing for the educational part. You know, it's up to the employers in the schools to be there to catch once we bring people to the site. But for us, our focus, a lot of our efforts are going towards getting in front of high schools. Once we are generating enough revenue to support it, we would like to get people on the ground, boots on the ground to go speak at high schools and middle schools. And just to. drive the interest, tell the anecdotes, tell the stories, meet the kids. And then once they have the interest, then they can go to the site and go, okay, all right, I'm going to explore this now. What are my career options? But that's really a heavy focus of ours is the outreach, the exposure, the education. And that's really it. So it's kind of a weak way to end that. But yeah, scholarships will come eventually. That's where I've reached out to MicroWorks. They've already got that on lockdown. So I'd love to convert. the subscriptions into scholarships. There's just a lot that we can do with it.

31:32

Well, and that's something that, I mean, companies can like support. So if somebody is really passionate about this and they want to donate money to establish scholarships, that's something that's on the roadmap for you guys. Correct?

31:43

Well, no, I think we'd be donating the money because we'd have a subscription based platform. Right. So as more and more people get on it, that would, we would have then the revenue to convert some of that into again, attracting more people in through. through scholarships and donate because we really don't want to be dependent upon sponsorship and grants, et cetera, to make this successful. Just it's such a kind of volatile business model. So that's why that subscription base is really attractive to us.

32:10

Right. I guess I was thinking like the join the trades would, would donate sponsorships for kids who want to go through apprenticeships. That's where I was going with my mind.

32:19

Yes. Sorry. That is what I mean.

32:20

Yes. So like if, if, if a company wanted to donate to the, to join the trade so that you guys could allocate though, to a sponsorship for someone, that's where, that's where my brain was going.

32:31

That's a way to do it too. For sure. For sure. They're donating an apprenticeship. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

32:37

I'm really excited about it. And Nicole, I think it's great. I think there's a void there that you guys are definitely filling. I know you got a big hill of, you know, things to do. It's a grassroots effort because you're, I mean, this is not a, majorly funded, you know, venture that you guys are doing. So, and you're making it affordable. So I definitely want to, I'm going to share it on all my social media. And if anyone who's listening, who wants to just help out one thing they can do, obviously is your website or, you know, one of your handles on their platform, because they're going to want to, it's, it's like, you know, it's, it's double dipping because if they put it out there and somebody goes to it and then they go back to their profile, I mean, it only helps you not, you know. Why wouldn't you want to share is what I'm trying to say.

33:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I appreciate you having me on here to help get the word out because you're right. We are bootstrapping. We are grassroots. We're doing this all because we see a need and we know we can. The developer of the site is one of the most talented people you'll ever meet and is highly proficient at cybersecurity. So the ability to protect everyone's data and make sure that the site is just absolutely on lockdown. The things that we know that we've got. We've got a really great solution that can help a lot of people, not just young people looking for careers, but also the employers who need to recruit in their new talent. One thing that we don't have a lot of right now is just exposure. So this helps and that's how people can help us the most aside from directly utilizing the site if it's a fit for them. But yeah, just exposure.

34:05

Awesome. Yeah, definitely want to get the word out. I know you got to jump off here soon. I want to be respectful of your time. What is, I always like to ask this question, what is a book that you're currently reading or one that you recommend?

34:17

I highly recommend, I hate the title of this book because it sounds so, but How to Win Friends and Influence People. is, and you probably hear this a lot, but I think that's probably the only, one of the only books that I would read over and over again. I think it's just a study on humanity and what, how people respond to other people. And really just, I hate to say, you know what, let me say it this way, how to care about other people and how that impacts you as well. So I love that book. I think you should read it if you, whether you're in business or you're not in business, I think it's a great book. I wish they changed the title of it because it sounds kind of, yeah. The other book that I'm reading right now or the book that I'm reading right now is actually a fantasy fiction novel, man. I don't want to.

34:58

Oh, you don't have to say that then. I don't want to put you on the spot.

35:00

You got to get on. Yeah, you got to. I would love to sound super cerebral and be like, no, I'm reading the works of so and so. But, you know, seventh edition, whatever. That's not. No, I'm reading about some fantasy thing.

35:12

No, that's why I throw in or one that you recommend because. Yeah.

35:17

Sometimes people are like, I don't want to tell you what I'm reading.

35:21

Awesome. Well, what's the easiest way for people to find out? Just go to jointhetrades. com or? Okay.

35:29

Yeah, jointhetrades. com has all of our contact information. The email is info at jointhetrades. com. We're on every social platform that you're on and our handle is jointhetrades. So we're pretty easy to find.

35:41

Awesome. Well, Nicole, thanks again for being on here. Thanks for having me, man. Looking forward to see how this takes off for you. And guys, you know where to find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Hammer and Grind Podcast. Reach out if you have any questions. Make sure you share. Join the trades. com so we can help this out. And until next time, remember, profit is not a dirty word.

EP110: Interview With Nicole Bass, Founder Of JoinTheTrades.com

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