The CWB Association Welding Podcast
The CWB Association Welding Podcast
Episode 207 with Bill Myers and Max Ceron
The CWB Association brings you a weekly podcast that connects to welding professionals around the world to share their passion and give you the right tips to stay on top of what’s happening in the welding industry.
Discover the art of teaching in the welding field, where Bill Myers, Ancora Education’s National Program Director for Skilled Trades, reveals the intricacies of training future welders and instructors. He shares insights on aligning educational programs with regional industry demands, ensuring students are equipped with relevant skills. Learn how Bill's 20-year journey with his first employer shaped his perspective on the evolving welding industry, emphasizing the valuable balance between specialized skills and custom work as the industry faces efficiency challenges. Whether you're an aspiring welder or a seasoned professional, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge, encouraging listeners to pursue careers they genuinely enjoy while navigating the trade-offs between work and personal life.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ancoraeducation
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancoraeducation/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ancora-education/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ancoraeducation
Thank you to our Podcast Advertisers:
Canada Welding Supply: https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/
Canaweld: https://canaweld.com/
Josef Gases: https://josefgases.com/
There is no better time to be a member! The CWB Association membership is new, improved and focused on you. We offer a FREE membership with a full suite of benefits to build your career, stay informed, and support the Canadian welding industry. https://www.cwbgroup.org/association/become-a-member
What did you think about this episode? Send a text message to the show!
All right, I can check. Check, I'm good. So I'm Max Duran. Max Duran, cwb Association Welding Podcast, pod pod podcast. Today we have a really cool guest welding podcast. The show is about to begin. Attention, welders in Canada looking for top quality welding supplies, look no further than canada welding supply. With a vast selection of premium equipment, safety gear and consumables. Cws has got you covered. They offer fast and reliable shipping across the country. And here's the best part all podcast listeners listeners get 10% off any pair of welding gloves. Can you believe that? Use code CWB10 at checkout when placing your next order, visit CanadaWeldingSupplyca now. Canada Welding Supply, your trusted welding supplier. Happy welding. Hello and welcome to another edition of the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Ceron and, as always, I'm out there scouring this globe of ours for the most fantastic stories I can find. Today we have a wonderful guest coming to us from sunny Arizona, and this is Bill Myers, who is the National Program Director of the Skilled Trades. How's it going today, bill?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's going great. Max, how are?
Speaker 1:you doing? I'm doing fantastic. You know, I'm sitting in my steel mill here, my AI generated steel mill, but outside I got two feet of snow and it's coming down right now. Not like that in Arizona, I assume.
Speaker 3:No, it's a little sunny here. You know I won't tell you the temperature since you're looking at snow, but I think we're going to be in the seventies.
Speaker 1:So, bill, let's talk a little bit about you know who you are and where you come from. I I read on your bio here that, um, you know you're based out of the greater Phoenix area right now. Is that where?
Speaker 3:you're from? Is that your roots? You know where. Where did a young Bill come from? Young Bill came from uh Tolledo, ohio, the glass capital of the world, when I was there I don't know what- they are now um, I have been back in quite some time, you know, because of the two feet of snow on the ground thing.
Speaker 3:But, um, I started out going to a vocational high school. They didn't really do that anymore. I don't know why they got away from it I guess there's some here and there but I went to a vocational high school, took welding. Um, they had a great program there that, if you finish, because you took high school there for three years for welding- okay so you started out your sophomore or your freshman year. You went through welding machine shop and drafting back, when they still drafted.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a great program though.
Speaker 3:It was, yeah, it was. You went to welding after your freshman year. You picked one of those three to go into Went into welding. You go welding shop once a week for that whole week.
Speaker 3:The other week you went to the regular high school classes that you had to take. You know science, english, math, algebra, all that stuff. Uh, by the time you were a senior. If you finish everything with a high enough grade in welding, they put you on what they called co-opping. So you went to work for somebody for that week. You were supposed to go to welding and then came back to school and finished high school the other week.
Speaker 3:So it was a great way to get your foot in the door of a company when you were still going to high school and then, once high school was over, that company could, you know, keep you on as a full-time employee or cut you loose. So they ended up keeping me as a full-time employee and I worked there for 20 years before I relocated down here to arizona so 20 years with basically the first company that sniped you out of high school yep that is something that in itself is unheard of I know it's.
Speaker 3:You know people don't do that anymore. You know they'll leave a company for a quarter raise. Every now and then you hear about that and it's like like no, you didn't build up anything. You know you gotta, you gotta stay there. And um, I, I was always wanting to move to Arizona and I actually waited two years because I actually resigned on the exact same day that I started, 20 years before.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to put get that 20 years in at that company, you know, but I started out as a welder. Um well, we welded everything. You know. It's not like today, where a lot of people get into okay, you only a MIG welder, or you only a stick welder, or you only a TIG welder. We built things that encompassed all the welding processes, including spot welding, you know. So we did everything and you were handed a set of prints and said here, go make this. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's not like, hey, this guy's going to give you this part, that guy's going to cut that part. You did everything, from start to finish, and you learned a lot doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I mean, mean, those types of shops exist but they're generally in like that custom, you know, cost plus type of world of of manufacturing generally, like I, you know I've worked in shops like that where it's, you know, just plates of steel rolling and you got to build form, cut and do everything yourself. But I don't know if the world really builds like that anymore. You know it's, it's not efficient, like first of all, it's not efficient and we all know that at all right, but but there is something about custom.
Speaker 1:You know, as soon as you say custom or a one-off, you know it's going to cost you three times the money, but there's a reason for it to be custom, right oh yeah now for yourself what, what kind of stuff were you doing? What was getting built in that plant?
Speaker 3:well that that plant was basically um building stuff for automation okay so it was.
Speaker 3:You know that was in the 70s. I don't want to date myself too bad, but that was in the 70s, in the 80s, when people were ramping up to do exactly what you're talking about make everything automated to where you didn't have one person doing all of that job. You had, you know, a whole bunch of people that were involved in building something, whether it was one thing or whether it was a hundred things. You had a whole bunch of people, but we did all kind of automation for anheuser-busch, for, uh, libya, owens, ford, for all the glass makers, for anybody that was getting into automation, uh, goodyear, tire and rubber. There were so many companies back then that we were just so busy. One year we worked 360 days. Yeah, you know, if you wanted to work, then work was there, you know, and and it's still going it's just not as big as it was, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was like you know, hey, you got to get here, you got to do this, you got to do that. We did a lot of stuff for, uh, the nuclear industry back then was starting to take off you know, so we did a lot of work for babcock and Wilcox, which was in Cleveland, a big supplier of nuclear control panels and automation and stuff like that. So it was a good lesson in a lot of different areas.
Speaker 1:Well, ohio is a really neat state in terms of its capacity for manufacturing the space. It has a fairly low cost of doing business in the state um, and it's not have, like, not overly populated like lots of the other states are. So people can find jobs and I've interviewed a lot of people from ohio. Actually, I'm going to be in columbus tomorrow, but you know, it's um, it's um. It's one of those states where there's a lot of work, not a lot of people. So I always hear people finding jobs and kind of sticking around. You know what I mean, yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they do there's. There's quite a few people that you know I've run into in Ohio that have stayed at the same job for a long period of time. Now, it's usually the older generation, but even some of the younger generation. When they get into a good place to work in Ohio, they stay there, you know, because the companies treat them well, they pay them good. You know it's a, it's a unionized you know, state.
Speaker 3:So that kind of helps with that. Um. And then on the other side, you know you come to Arizona and people don't stay at a job, you know.
Speaker 1:So surprised at the difference between the mentality of how it was in Arizona versus what I came from in Ohio, Well, you know, you see that all around the world, based on the population, the industry, right Like in Canada where I live, we're in the prairies. You know I'm north of North Dakota, so you know we have agricultural, mining, you know we have a little bit of oil and gas. All those jobs kind of are lifer jobs, you know. You get into mining oh yeah, mining's kind of a forever job. You get into ag, that's kind of a forever job. You get out to the coasts and the work seems a lot more transient, right.
Speaker 3:Yep, and there are some of those. You know mining jobs here in Arizona. You know there's a lot of copper and you know they still pump that stuff out and a lot of people like to, especially in the welding world, like to run the shutdown. You know, when a lot of those power companies shut down and stuff, they go in there, do the repairs, move on to the next one because they can get paid really well. Six months out of the year and then go.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm going to wait to the next one, because they can get paid really well, we're six months out of the year and then go. You know what? I'm going to wait for the next round of shutdowns. And they follow the shutdown and they make a good living at it and you know work six months out of the year.
Speaker 1:Well, absolutely. I remember picking up shutdowns and you know you'd, uh, you'd have, uh you'd make enough money in one month. Take a couple months off, right. Enough money in one month. Take a couple months off Right Now. Now for yourself, you know, coming up in Ohio, uh, before you got into this kind of vocational program with your high school, did you know, or did you already have access to what the trades were? You know, was it in your family? Was it something you had seen, or did you just kind of fall into it?
Speaker 3:Well, here's how it was. You know I was in a one working parent household. My dad was a tool and die maker. So of course you know, you learn about trades, you learn about holding the light out at night while your dad's under the car trying to fix it. I'm sure you've heard that story from a whole lot of people before where you fixed your own car, you changed your own oil, you did all those things on your own and he worked at night and I seen him and I seen what he did at work and I wasn't really wanting to go into tool and die making, but when I was there I seen a guy heating up one of those dyes or one of those big presses to get ready to weld it you know, because it had broken and that just really kind of caught my fancy.
Speaker 3:And then when I got a chance to go to that school because it was one of those schools where you had to take an aptitude test to get in- make sure you were, you know, handy with tools and knew about safety and stuff like that. I really wanted to go into drafting.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:But then when I you know because, like I said, you go into drafting machine shop and welding your freshman year. And then when I got to welding. This is where I tell people the person teaching you is the most important person. That person can sway you one way or another and while I loved drafting and I went back to it when it, you know, became CAD and uh, pro E and followed works and stuff like that, that guy was dry. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you ever talked to a draftsman that used to draft but those guys are dry. But that welding instructor was so energetic and so captivating that it was like you know what? I'm going to stick with welding.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And then you know you had that, you know, a solid 20 year run. And this is something as a Canadian that sometimes I get a little bit confused of in terms of terminology in the US. But you know, you say that you're a certified welder and fabricator. Right Now, for myself in Canada, for me to become a certified welder and fabricator, it was three years of school for welding and four years of school for fabrication to get my red seals. In the U? S they don't really have those programs set up like that. So how does one become a certified welder and fabricator in the U? S?
Speaker 3:So there's really no certified fabricator thing. There's no you know, there's schools that you could go to to learn fabrication and people will hand you some little certificate that says you took a fabricating class but it's not like diploma that you can use around the world yeah, it's not like that okay, so but certified welder in the united states means that you went and took a test at a third party place. That person then tested that weld under whatever those guidelines were and you pass that test so that's how you become a certified welder.
Speaker 3:Now there's, you know, the aws api.
Speaker 1:There's you know all of them, yep all of those certificates.
Speaker 3:That's. The only way you can become a certified welder in the us is by passing one of those tests.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, cool. And then the shop you worked for, I assume, was probably under the guise of one of those companies, so it would have been like you know as me, or AWS D, one one, or something like that.
Speaker 3:And well, what we did was we had a certification company actually come to the shop. I see, okay, so whenever, whenever one of our guys would need certified for something, they would come to the shop. I see, okay, so whenever, whenever one of our guys would need certified for something, they would come into the shop, watch you do the weld and take those pieces with okay, cool, so you know. And then they would go test them and then give you the results and give you a paperwork when you were done now, in the 20 years you were there, I doubt you did the same job for 20 years.
Speaker 1:You know you. By the time you left there, it sounds sounds like you were ready to move on to the other side of the desk. So what was the progression like within that company?
Speaker 3:So it was you start out after they, you know, hire you um full time. Of course you're still going to get stuck with that same grunt work that you were doing as a high school student and and and it. You know. A lot of it has to do with luck. You know it's, you have the skill, but how does that person that hired you at 17, mind, you know that you have the skill to do that job Well, somebody kept calling out sick and then finally, they came over to me and said look this calling out sick.
Speaker 3:We know you went to welding school, let's see if you can weld this. And then, when you do that, and you do that again, and you do that again, the next thing, you know, the guy that keeps calling out gets canned and you take his place. That does happen it happens.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what happened you know it was no. You know there was no like. Oh you know, hey, right out of high school you're gonna go start to weld on these things. It was just my chance came a little earlier because that guy didn't show up to work. Yeah right place right time yeah yeah, and then what I did? What most people need to understand is pay attention to what everyone else there is doing because, you're going to learn so much from watching everyone else and what their job is.
Speaker 3:Do I now know how to do his job? Do I now know how to do his job? And pretty soon they're going. Hey, you're ready to start fabricating something, because you sat there and spent the time to learn what all these other pieces were to take now.
Speaker 3:Yes, welding school gave me the skills to oxy fuel cut back then, we still oxy fuel welded uh you know, we did wire welding, stick welding, tig welding you know the three major ones that are in school and you made some little things here there, but you didn't really learn fabrication as a whole yeah, you know, and you're not really ready to hone your craft.
Speaker 1:that comes with time, right.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So then it was okay, you know you've done really well at this, and I think that was only 26 or 27. And they said hey, we want you to be the night shift foreman. Okay. Yeah, that pays more money. I take it. Yeah, a lot more money. Okay, I'll do that. And then you know, you steadily get better and they go. You know what? We want you to be on the day shift now and we're going to put another guy on the night shift.
Speaker 3:Then the next thing, you know, you know, people start moving and leaving and the plant manager left. And then they came to me and said, how would you like to be the plant manager? And I was like, well, you know, my plan was to leave here in about six years, but you know, for six years I'll be the plant manager. So that's what happened.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting. You bring up the, that whole aspect of you know biding your time, and then you brought up night shift. That's actually come up on this program a few times. One of the things I hear from employers often is how the this incoming generation is less inclined to want to work shift work or weekends or evenings and stuff like that, and it's something that I have to always reiterate to the youth. I did eight years of night shift in order to break that ceiling and to get into management. Same thing yep, you want to try management. Try it on nights. You're going to be the night shift foreman until you're ready. Then you move to days, cause that's when all the headaches are right there you go Exactly.
Speaker 1:And so I did my time at nights and I had two young kids and I, you know, I did the whole thing. I even went through a divorce during this time, like it was not a great time, but you're telling my story I do.
Speaker 1:All welders have the same story so then I so then, you know, I ended up having to, and then I worked my way through it. Right, I worked my way through it and got to where I needed to be, and I I always find it so important to iterate to the young people that are coming in that you have to be willing to work the shift. You have to be willing to do either the switch shifts or the night shifts or the weekends. Basically, whatever you get offered, you take it and you do the best you can at it. That's the only way to get ahead, you know yeah, you're, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3:If you don't and and we'll get into it in the next half, but if you don't put in, you're not going to get anything out of right you have to see.
Speaker 3:What you're going to get out of something is what you put into it. So if you don't put in, you're not going to get anything out of it. Right, you have to. What you're going to get out of something is what you put into it. So if you don't want to move up, if you don't want to be a manager, then stay a welder. Let them know you just want to be a welder and you know you don't want to move up. But you know the people that I you know that you're talking about they always want that instant gratification where you know what. I'm good at this, I'm smart. Why am I not a manager? Well, when we ask you to work overtime, you don't work overtime. Managers sometimes work overtime because you know that's what the job entails.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, because we have to get the product out the door. So you know, if you're not willing to do any of that, there's nothing wrong with staying you know a welder your whole life, if that's what you want to do. But if you want to move up, you're going to have to make sacrifice. That's right.
Speaker 3:Because I made them. I had the same two little kids. I went through the divorce, I did the whole. You know it. But it's what you have to do if you want to move ahead in that field. Yeah, Because there's no other way for them to gauge you other than they're looking at you as a welder.
Speaker 3:You've got to prove yourself as a leader of these people, and we're going to start at night because, during the day everybody gets everything ready for the people that come in at night and just do some welding here some this there, there's no real, you know heavy management tasks being laid out. Yeah, there's no real, you know heavy management task being laid out.
Speaker 1:There's no phone calls ripping all the time yeah, all the forklifts are free.
Speaker 3:All the cranes are free right yep, nobody's asking you for delivery dates or anything like that. You know, because the phone's not ringing. You just have to manage the people that are there that's right.
Speaker 1:And and now for yourself? You know you get offered that plant manager job that I find that that step from supervisor to manager is a tough one, because that's the first time you actually have to start looking in terms of financial responsibility, right? Yep, Because up until you get to that manager position or plant manager position, you're just worried about man, hours and product. You know, like how many people are on, how fast will it take to get made, what are the problems? Rework, blah, blah, blah. Once you get to plant manager, it's now wages and deadlines and profits and losses, and Wages deadlines ordering to make sure it's there when you need it there.
Speaker 3:Then you know we were a union shop. So every three years you're now meeting with the bargaining unit to go hey, what are the raises, what are the benefits, what are this, you know, and it's like a whole different thing, but the the thing that I did when I got put on the days was I started watching what the plant manager was doing.
Speaker 3:What are his duties, what all is he have to worry about, you know. So that kind of helped in a way that you know a lot of people get thrust into that position and are not sure what to do. Where I was kind of watching what he was doing to make sure that, hey, if something happens, you know, I can fill in his shoes if he gets sick, if he goes on vacation. I wasn't thinking he was leaving, so it wasn't about that, but it was about hey, what if this guy's off for a couple weeks because he gets hurt or he gets sick or something?
Speaker 1:like that so, but yeah, you gotta pay attention and you want to be ready right like this, like I just was talking to a group out in Toronto last month and one of the questions from the audience was you know how do you get yourself ready for those improvements in your life or to move up to the next step? It's like find someone who already has that job and watch what they do.
Speaker 1:Right Like they're already doing the job you want, so pay attention and then see if you can do it better. Right, like that's kind of all you can do.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I wanted to learn how to run a press break yeah so after work as a welder, I stayed and watched the guy on second shift set up a press break. Figure out how it ran, figure how you know everything worked and then you know. That was one way of getting more information and more ways of learning how to do something without actually going to school. I could get my schooling on the job.
Speaker 1:And then, with this plant, you know you're at, you're at your 20 year mark. Now, like this is a serious investment in your life, right, yep? Did you have it in the cards to leave, or what was it that came up within this time that put the bug in your ear that it was time to go on to something else?
Speaker 3:the auto industry in detroit collapsed, starting to tank, yeah, yeah you've seen it, everybody's seen it yeah well, I've seen it too and I was like this was in 95 when I started looking and I was like, okay, so this is going down. There's, you know, people starting to get laid off here and there. Now, the 20 years that I worked, I would never laid off one time. We never had clothes, we never did anything.
Speaker 3:If you were good, now, we were like anyone else. We had our slow times. If you were good, now, we were like anyone else. We had our slow times. But if you were good at your job, they'd have you paint the walls and sweep the floor before they'd let you go, because they knew you could find another job somewhere, right, so they didn't want you to go anywhere, so they kept you on. But then, in you know, 94, 95, it was like, okay, well, the auto industry starting to move on from Detroit, things are starting to go, you know, another direction. I think it's about time I looked for something else, and if I'm going to do that, I'm going to do it in a climate that I like because I had visited.
Speaker 3:Arizona on vacation a few times. Yeah man, this is great, it's booming there's. You know, nobody was out here in 96. Yeah, now you can't you know I mean it's. You can't believe how much I've seen grown here in the last 26 years. Wow, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 4:But yeah, that was what it you know it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 3:But yeah, that was what you know. It was just looking at everything that was going around in that area and going you know what.
Speaker 1:I think it's time for a change all right, but I wanted to make sure I hit that 20 year mark yeah, and did you know what you wanted to do? Like it's not one thing to say I want to change, but are you looking for the same type of job? Are you looking to change types of career completely? What were you like? What were you thinking?
Speaker 3:No, I knew I was going to stay in the manufacturing field. You know, there was no doubt that I was going to do something in the manufacturing field that involved welding, because it had consumed 20 years of my life.
Speaker 1:That's what you knew.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wasn't going to go back to school and learn something. I was in the trade for good. So I had no idea where I was going to go, what I was going to do. All I knew is I was moving to Arizona, and then I'll figure out what the job is when I get there. That was it. And a lot of people wouldn't do that, but I was like you know what, Grow a pair. I'm a welder.
Speaker 1:So what was that first job that you got when you got there All?
Speaker 3:right. So the first job I started with a company that was an upstart. They were looking for a welding foreman. So yeah, I took a hit on pay. But but again, it wasn't about the pay at that time. It was about where do I put my footprint in? Yeah, you know what field am I going to get into? So it was a startup for building enclosures.
Speaker 3:Again welding and metal for the dot-com crate okay, okay so we were, we were building data centers okay at an alarming rate you know, from 96 to oh about 2005, when the dot-com crashed we were busier than all get out and those are like those modular data centers that stack together with the air conditioning in them. Well, more even down from that is there's an enclosure that houses all of those servers. Yeah, all of the servers and everything else. We were building those for inside great big data centers.
Speaker 3:I mean these rooms were the size of that background of yours, and they were. They were literally empty. And we built these cabinets that people would come in and rent from whoever that internet service provider was and put all of their servers in there to run their web services or whatever it was that they were running. And then we did some for individual companies like sprint.
Speaker 1:Um, just, telecom or whoever.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, apple was a big company that we worked for. You know all of those crazy people that were starting to get on the internet for everything and anything, and so you know, I stayed uh oh, I think the foreman of the wild shop for about three months until somebody figured out that, hey, this guy's a lot smarter than he's leading on. And then, the next thing, you know, I was the plant manager. Then I moved up to the vp of manufacturing within couple years.
Speaker 3:And then I stayed at that company for 15 years.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. So the first one was 20.
Speaker 3:The second one was 15. And you know I would have stayed there, but the company just went out of business because the dot com went out of business. Right, right we tried to do some other things and diversified, but it wasn't enough to keep that machine rolling you know we had a lot of equipment and a lot of stuff. We, matter of fact, moved some of our manufacturing to Mexico. So, I was traveling from Arizona to Mexico three times a week.
Speaker 3:Wow, From here it's only a two hour drive yeah um, the only thing I tell you about that is cross the border back into the us before two o'clock, because after that everybody and their brother's trying to cross the border yeah, yeah, it gets pretty backed up but yeah, chamberlain, uh, the garage door people, they do a lot more than garage door openers. Uh, they do do the entry gates for going into all those parking spots, like at airports oh, yeah, okay, yeah yeah, so they do that.
Speaker 3:Uh, we did a lot for otis elevator. Uh, they do elevators and escalators and stuff like that. Their plant is down there in mexico, so there's a lot of uh airplane, uh seat made in mexico. Okay cool. Yeah, it was. That was quite interesting. I mean it didn't last, but you know, there it was. That was the end of that 15 years so that okay.
Speaker 1:So then, what happened? So then, because at some point you start becoming, you start getting into education and you're getting pretty long in the teeth here already I know right.
Speaker 3:So what happened was the guy that was the owner of the company, the actual owner, owner you know, not the guy that you know comes in and says he's the president but really doesn't own the stock of the company. But the owner, owner, he goes. You know, for the last 15 years I've watched you and I don't know how you're so patient, especially when you were teaching people in Mexico how to do all these different jobs without knowing Spanish. I go.
Speaker 3:Well, it was a lot of picture taking, a lot of pointing and a lot of showing and he goes. You know, you got to think about getting into education and I took his advice and.
Speaker 1:I went into education getting into education and I took his advice and I went into education Now. Did that sort of signal the end of your time on the manufacturing floor?
Speaker 3:Well, that was 35 years. On the manufacturing floor, you do get burnout at a certain point. Oh for sure. Yeah, so you know, that was kind of like my cue to go. You know what, let me look into that. And then when I seen some of the places that you know we're starting to look for instructors back into education, I was like you know what this might be. Ok, you know, let me try it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. Well, we're right at the half hour mark. This is fantastic. What we'll do is we'll take our break right now and when we get back, we'll start down the path of education and all the roads that have led you down. How's that sound?
Speaker 3:That sounds great.
Speaker 1:All right, so don't go anywhere Anywhere. Anyone that's listening, follow along here. We're just going to take a quick break for our advertisers and our supporters here on the CWB Association podcast. We here on the CWB Association podcast, we'll be back right after this message. Looking for top quality welding machines and accessories, look no further than CannaWeld. Based in Vaughan, ontario, cannaweld designs, assembles and tests premium welding machines right here in Canada. Our products are CSA certified and Ontario made approved, reflecting our unwavering commitment to excellence. Count on us for superior service that's faster and more efficient than market competitors. Whether you're in aerospace, education or any other precision welding industry, cannaweld has the perfect welding solution for you. Visit CannaWeldcom today to discover why professionals rely on CannaWeld for their welding needs. Cannaweld where precision meets reliability in welding. Enjoy peace of mind with our four-year warranty on most machines. Conditions do apply.
Speaker 1:Josephgassesca, your one-stop welder's superstore. Whether you run a welding shop or are just starting your welding journey, joseph Gass, the welder's superstore is the best place for everything related to welding. Come to the site or browse our top picks of welders, helmets and welding supplies specific to your industry. Even filter out the items eligible for manufacturer cash rebates. Our intuitive search tool puts everything at your fingertips and checkout is always a breeze. Pay securely with your credit card at any time. If you are ready to streamline your welding supply shopping experience, visit josephgassesca that's Joseph with an F as in family. Start filling your cart with welder confidence.
Speaker 1:And we are back here on the CWB Association podcast. My name is Max Theron and I'm here with Bill Myers coming to us from sunny Arizona. Right before the break we were talking about your extensive, you know career working in manufacturing right From welding up to plant manager and all things in between. Now you got the bug in your ear for education and, as many of us who ended up in education, someone told us to get into it. Same with me. Before I became an instructor, someone said, hey, have you ever thought about teaching? And I was like, no, I haven't, but I am now Right. So for yourself, how did you once someone put that bug in your ear? How did you start pursuing that? How does, how did you become or get into educating from like the private sector of welding to educating from like the private sector?
Speaker 3:of of of welding. So you know it was kind of the same thing. You know the guy said hey, you know you might be good in education. I think you really would do well as a teacher. And at first I thought well, you know, I don't want to teach some subject that you know math or science or something like that.
Speaker 3:And then I started looking and I go hey, wait a minute there. And I didn't know this. I lived in Arizona for you know 15 years and had no idea that there were schools here that you know taught welding. So I just started looking at the you know Indeed and all those other ads and said hey, wait a minute, this school is teaching welding.
Speaker 3:their ads and said, hey, wait a minute, this school is teaching welding. It's, you know, not that far away, let me go see what it's all about. So you know, I filled out their application. They called me up and said, hey, uh, you filled out an application for a welding instructor. And I'm like yeah, and he goes uh, well, what can you meet tomorrow? And I'm like sure I can meet tomorrow. Now I'm going to tell you the truth, because I don't, I don't, and you know, if anybody at ANCORA is listening, it was before you guys bought ANCORA, so I'm going to leave it with that disclaimer.
Speaker 3:But when I drove up to the school now I had lived in Queen Creek, Arizona, my whole life. I traveled to chandler and to mexico, but I didn't know a lot about arizona. The place that I was driving to was 70 miles in one direction away from now. If you've ever driven in arizona, driving 70 miles usually takes a good couple hours, okay, because of traffic, yeah, so I, okay, let me go see what they got. I drove up there it wasn't in the nicest part of town. I drove around the block and came home.
Speaker 3:Oh really, it was pretty rough yeah, pretty rough yeah because I, you know again, it wasn't because I didn't want to do it, it was because I was kind of like no, I don't know, that looks kind of weird. You know kind of like, no, I don't know, that looks kind of weird. You know, that's the guy called me up and he goes were we supposed to meet sometime this week? And I go, I don't know where, we did you make an appointment. You know, I just played it off. And he goes oh no, come back in tomorrow. And I was like you know, I sat down and thought about it again. I go. You know what? That's not fair. I need to give them a chance. You know, I said I would be there.
Speaker 3:I, I'm going to be there. So I went there, took a tour of the facility and seen the welding shop and what they were going to do there. Now, it hadn't been I think it'd only been open for about a year for welding, and it's a well-established school in Arizona as far as automotive goes Arizona Automotive Institute and it's been there since 64. And they were always into automotive. They had a diesel program and an hvac program, but they were just adding welding and I was like, okay, I see some potential here yeah, you know they had some nice equipment, they had a good welding booth, and I go, okay, you know I'll come interview with them.
Speaker 3:And you know I took the tour, talked to him. He said, hey, what kind of welding do you do? And I go what kind of welding is there? You know he goes well, can you stick weld, wire weld and TIG weld? I was like, yeah, we've done all that. I go, I can weld on aluminum stainless. So he gave me this little welding test and I was like, okay, this is it. Huh, I mean, I've taken harder tests in high school but, all right.
Speaker 3:And then you know, two weeks later I started working for him as a welding instructor.
Speaker 1:Now you talked about taking a pay cut, moving from Ohio to Arizona when you first made that transition and I don't know if you want to talk about the pay cut you take going from being a welder to an instructor, because I don't know anybody in the world, myself included, that went from being a full time welder to teaching without taking a pay cut. Teaching don't quite start at the same. Was it like that for you, or were you OK?
Speaker 3:OK yeah, but remember when I was working at the last job that I had in Arizona I was the vice president of manufacturing. You're going to take a pay cut. You're going to go from six figures to mid.
Speaker 1:You know mid five yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that wasn't, but that wasn't, and I've never made pay my main focus of doing something. And. I try to tell that to the students and I go look, if you don't like doing this, which go do something else. Go do automotive, go do diesel, go do HVAC If you like doing this. Be aware that there are going to be times you might have to sacrifice a little pay for the love of your job.
Speaker 3:So, think about that. Yes, everybody has kids, everybody has a family to feed. But if you can feed your family and live comfortably with that job, stick with that job. The longer you stay at a company, the better that looks when you go to the next company. Because what somebody doesn't want to hire, and if I I've read hundreds of resumes If I seen on there that that person worked at a place one year, then six months, then one year, then six months, and he wasn't a traveling welder, I, that went right in the trash can. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm not hiring somebody that's not going to stay. So if I take a job, I'm going to stay there. Yeah, no but yeah, you take a good pay cut.
Speaker 1:Well, and I talked to educational vocational trade schools across North America weekly and they're all hiring, like I mean, right now people are dying for instructors, good welding instructors, fabrication instructors. You really talked about the fabrication not being offered in the US. It's still offered in Canada as a diploma vocation metal fabricator but there's so few people with that ticket that it's almost impossible to find instructors to teach that trade, instructors to teach that, that trade you know. And and I hear it all the time Like how do we get people to leave welding and join and become a teacher? And the first thing that comes up is wage, you know and that's.
Speaker 1:That's always one of the very first things that comes up and they, when I became a teacher, they sold it to me on, on. I guess the it's the way of life. You know, the summer's off, the shorter days, all the holidays included, and I had summers to go work, shutdowns, to make up the money to get back into six figures. So that's what I would do is I'd teach throughout the year and then I'd go do a couple of shutdowns at the mine in the in the summer when I'm off for my eight weeks, and I'd go make enough money to bring home. What I considered was the wage that I needed for my family, right, Um, but it is a tricky thing because you do fall in love with teaching quite quickly. It's, uh, it's not something that it's either you like it or you don't, and if you like it, you're kind of you, kind of like it forever.
Speaker 3:Yes, and you only like it, and I found anyways that the people that like it are good at it, that's right. People that don't like it are not any good at it.
Speaker 1:That's right, and not everyone can teach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not everyone can pass the information on. The biggest hangup that I see in some people is they want to talk to that student like they're talking to an employee and and you can't do that. They are there to learn not to be belittled or browbeaten or anything that you did to those people that were working for you. This is a different animal altogether. They learn through positive reinforcement, not some of the stuff you used to yell at your crew.
Speaker 1:We all a bunch of dummies over here.
Speaker 3:But yeah, you know it, it it is very rewarding, but I think it's rewarding for the right person. Yeah, not everyone is cut out to do that.
Speaker 1:Now, how did your path go? Was there any training that you had to take in order to become a teacher?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the training that I took to become a teacher I now give to the people that are going to be teachers. So we're accredited, you know, through all the different accrediting bodies. But we're also accredited through the MCCER, it's the National Center of Constructed Education and Research. It's big down here. I don't know if it's big in Canada or not. I know they're in a lot of other countries, but they have a specific thing that they want to pass on to people that are going to be craft instructors about. You know, hey, here's how you need to talk to people, here's how you need to do this, here's the teaching strategies that you can use. So it's, you know, a little bit of a coursework. Most people get it real quick.
Speaker 3:And those are the people that you can tell are going to be good at it, are going to be good at it. Everybody has to have a minimum of journey or technician level, knowledge and skill to be a craft instructor for them. Okay, that gives the students credentials that they can take with them. So back when we went to school, you got a piece of paper that says you graduated, you know, from this high school. And then I had a little card there that says you also graduated from the welding program at this high school. And then I had a little card there that says you also graduated from the welding program at this high school. This gives the student more than that. It gives them credentials that say hey, you passed oxyfuel cutting both the knowledge on test you pass you know 1g or 2g or 3g or 4g in you know 7018 or in uh flux core wire. So it gives them a little more than just that diploma.
Speaker 3:so that's why, we use them, and they're an accredited apprenticeship program too.
Speaker 1:So if you were running an apprenticeship program, you could log your hours the same you would use the same curriculum, just as an apprenticeship program, so it gives the students a well-balanced education.
Speaker 1:And do you try, you know, as an educational center, to produce students that are going to succeed in your local area, because every part of the world around a school has their own industry, because every part of the world around a school has their own industry Generally, you try to kind of prepare them for the work that's going to be within an hour or two from there, right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, so we don't do a lot of scratch start take. It's not used in Arizona. There's no pipelines running through here. There's no know oil fields in arizona.
Speaker 3:there's dirt and sand you know there's, you know a lot out of a lot of big and stick jobs yeah, but you know the tig jobs are going to be shop jobs, where you've got a foot pedal and you know you're just sitting there at tig welding. So, yes, in texas though, yeah, they have lift dark, you know, for tig, because that's big in texas but not in arizona.
Speaker 3:Same thing with you know for TIG, because that's big in Texas but not in Arizona. Same thing with you know all of our other programs like air conditioning. You know we have an HVAC refrigeration program. We're not. We use swamp coolers here in Arizona, sometimes in the summer because the humidity is really low. You won't find that in Florida or some of the other states, so we don't even bother teaching it right you know it's all about what's going on in that area.
Speaker 3:Now, it's not to say those people will travel, but they usually won't travel for a while yeah, until they establish their, their, their trade and get better, you know I was there 35. I didn't travel till. I was 36 years old you know, so, but I did it because of what I seen was going on in the area. Some people do it because you know they have family somewhere else, they have this going on or whatever, but they don't seem to move as much. As you know, trace people move for the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with all the money, yeah, yep. Now, in terms of the other accreditations that someone would come out of the college with, would they come out with like a few AWS certs, maybe an ASME cert or nothing like that?
Speaker 3:no, just one AWS. So once they're within three weeks from graduation, they have a form they can take to. An instructor Says hey, I want to go take this test. The instructor says okay, show me, you got to do it in front of me first. He does it. He passes, the instructor signs off and we send them to a third party to get that certification.
Speaker 1:Okay cool, they wouldn't come in-house and do it at the school.
Speaker 3:No, they don't do it in-house.
Speaker 1:No party to get that certification. Okay, cool, they wouldn't come in house and do it at the cool, no, they don't do it in-house, no, okay. So then, after your time with this college, are you still there? Or I'm still there because it sounds like?
Speaker 3:you don't like to move around so well, it's been 13 years, so I don't know. I'm gonna try to beat the 15th. I don't know if I'll beat the 20. You know, you never know how your hell's gonna turn, but it would be nice to beat the 20 too.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm adding this up a 20, a 20 and a 15. I mean aren't you retired at some point in there?
Speaker 3:nope, not yet you know, I people always ask that. You know. They say oh, what about retirement? I go, then what do you do? What do you do after retirement?
Speaker 1:I got a long list. I got no issues.
Speaker 3:I got everybody has that long but then I see them and they never do the list. They have the list but they don't do the list. So I'm like you know what? I'm having fun, yeah absolutely I enjoy who I work with. Why? Would you leave? That that's right. That's right when it becomes a burden. When it becomes you don't want to work with people, when you don't want to do that job anymore. That's usually when somebody leaves. Yeah.
Speaker 3:If you're having fun, if you enjoy what you're doing, keep doing it. Yeah, makes you live longer.
Speaker 1:If you enjoy what you're doing? Keep doing it. Yeah, Makes you live longer. So what are some of the?
Speaker 3:changes you've seen since you started teaching to now. You know, in the 13 years, not really a lot of changes in the industry. You know welding is welding.
Speaker 3:You know they make better welding machines than they ever did. Now they make. You know, the rods, the wires, the gases they all get better. The process doesn't really change a lot. I think the equipment is the biggest change. And then the next biggest change is the people going into the field. Right, you know it's like how do you get across to them that, yes, you're going to leave here and you're going to know how to weld, but that doesn't mean the person that you're going to work for knows you know how to wealth.
Speaker 3:They're going to see all that, but you're going to have to go in there and maybe make $15 an hour to start, and then you know, work your way up from there when they see what you can do. But you're not going to go out there and go. Well, I want to make $40 an hour. Yeah, it's not going to happen, right out the gate.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 3:And some of that is you know, hey, we still have some of the older people with the older mindset that are now, you know, running and heading those companies, you know, and they're not going to want to hear about you. Well, you know, my kid has to go to the doctor and this has to I. They don't, they didn't do that and it's not, it's not any fault of theirs, it's that their wife was at home. Their wife took care of all that, and you want to take a day off to do this, and it's a different world now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it. You know, and I see why students want to do that. They want to be more active in their kids lives and that's great, but at the same time, that employer wants you to see, wants you to be active in their business.
Speaker 1:So that's a fine line that I think a lot of students are missing out on yeah, and I think that's students I mean, or just people that are new to the trades. They get told a lot of bs2 coming into it.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of and I've seen this firsthand a lot of instructors being like yeah, you're gonna get into welding, you're gonna make a hundred grand next year and it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, like yeah, okay, we all get to the six figures, but it it ain. It ain't that first year, man I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1:Like you got to take some time. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta establish your reputation as a welder. You know how. How well do you work? How many days do you miss a year? All these things matter in your dollar value. So if you want to be and you alluded to this in the first half of the show you want to be more involved with your family, if you want to be home for the baseball games and for the suppers and the birthday game and the birthdays, all those things, then you're. You're probably not going to make as much money as someone who sacrifices those things, and I'm not saying that either way is wrong or right. You choose where you want to be, but don't be jelly of someone who's making more money because you don't know what they gave up to do that Right.
Speaker 3:Right, that's the that's the key is, if you want to do that great, you know you should stay home with your family. I missed a lot of stuff. You know my 27 year old son. I couldn't tell you what he did from the time he was born to the time he was 10. That was my choice to make that sacrifice. If you don't want to make that choice, that's fine, but don't expect to make the kind of money I was making either. Right, right.
Speaker 3:Because that's not going to happen. You have to be willing to make the sacrifice, and if you don't want to, that's great. I believe in both sides of it. But then go home, go to the baseball game and don't complain that you're not making as much as the guy that decided to drive to work today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or time and place. That's what I try to tell a lot of people yeah, time and place. Like I had kids, really really young. So I was.
Speaker 1:You know, my ex-wife was a teenager, she was 18 when she got pregnant and for us, you know, those really really formidable years when you got to work hard, your twenties and your thirties, where you're really establishing yourself, was the hardest time for me. But by the time I hit my thirties, my kids were already grown and I could devote all the time in the world to work. And I could work, you know, 60, 80 hours a week in my thirties and not miss anything because my kids are already teenagers, right? Yep, so it was. It was that was when. So I had a very slow, progressing career for 20 some years where I was welding and just making my paychecks and we're trying to do good. And then I hit that mark where I was like I got the. Now. Now I'm going to push into the management, now I'm going to go back to school and take some courses at night and I got this time to to work on myself.
Speaker 1:So it's not such a rush is what I try to tell young people like it, don't be in such a hurry to get nowhere. You don't even know where you're going yet. Let's get out there see what the skills are, see what. Even know where you're going. Yet let's get out there see what the skills are, see what you like. Maybe you're, because welding in school is very limited. You just see a piece of it. Once you get out to the field, you realize that there's a bazillion paths you could pick from.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, not only that, but I go. You know you're welding on 10 inches at a time. Yeah, you know. So it's going to be a lot different. You know, when you say, oh, I need another rod, no, what you need to do is burn the rest of that rod down to the stub till the numbers and then restart the next rod and go from there. If you don't learn how to restart, you will never learn how to weld yeah it's not just about running one bead with one rod.
Speaker 3:So we used to take them and get them you know bigger size pipe so that they would have to keep doing those restarts over and over and over again. And they were like, yeah, this is a little harder than I thought. Yeah, because you're not just welding on six inches of metal with one rod anymore.
Speaker 1:This is the real life right here yeah, I remember having uh foreman get mad at us for lifting our welding hood to get the next rod going. He said you should be able to get a rod in your stinger and onto that puddle before it stops being red. Yeah like I never pushed any right.
Speaker 1:Imagine well I know nobody like he wasn't a. I won't say he was a great boss, but you know what? It was something to be said about his way of looking at speed and efficiency in terms of what are you doing in between, between that little blue light burning away? That's when you're getting paid. That's what your boss is paying you for. Is that light, that rod burning? That's what you're getting charged with. That's when that's what your boss is paying you for. Is that light, that rod burning? That's what you're getting charged with by the hour. Is for that light burning? Whatever you do in between that light being on and off, is money being lost. And I remember thinking like this guy is such a hard, but I got pretty good at organizing myself, so I had the minimum amount of downtime at any given time in the day.
Speaker 3:Right, oh yeah, absolutely myself. So I had the minimum amount of downtime at any given time in the day. Right, oh yeah, absolutely well that's one of the first things you do in manufacturing, too, is you're going like okay, where can I put this so that it's closest to? The next job that you know is going to be done to it, so I don't have all this time wasted just moving it from place to place, that's lean, that's fundamentals of lean right.
Speaker 1:Exactly. The value stream right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and people don't realize it and they go. You know why I go? Because the quicker you can get that to the next place, the quicker I can get that done. Yeah. That means the quicker I can get that done, the more money the company makes. That will hopefully trickle down to everybody else.
Speaker 1:That's right. You don't know that for sure.
Speaker 3:But you know, hey, that's how it works.
Speaker 1:Or someone could just pick it up with a forklift and move it. Yeah, but what if someone else is waiting for that forklift? Now you're affecting two jobs. You know maybe you're affecting three jobs. You know your simple decision might affect dozens of people down the chain without you even thinking about it. As simple as where you're putting that part Right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's like I tell I was telling you know all the employees you know at the last place that I worked. I was like you know how long it takes to get something done. Well, I don't know, that guy gets that done in like 30 seconds. No, it takes as long as the slowest person.
Speaker 3:Right done in like 30 seconds. No, it takes as long as the slowest person, right. So whoever the slowest person is in this process, whether it's moving the material or that guy doing that particular task, that's how long it takes to get something done once you start this whole assembly line so once this gets going, you know how does ford crank out a car every minute yeah because that's the slowest job, right one minute. So they've got it down to somebody having to do something that takes one minute yeah, first in first out wild yeah.
Speaker 1:So what do you, you know in terms of your teaching? You say you teach a few things now, like you started off kind of as a welding instructor, fab instructor, but now you also instruct instructors. So you know what? What is it that occupies most of your time in your daily work life?
Speaker 3:probably sitting here trying to figure out what the next trade course is that we're going to offer someone, or visiting the campuses that you know have already launched a new trade program. We've come out with a couple this year. We started with plumbing, um, we're doing electrical now. Uh, welding and hvac were our oldest and then, uh, we started with electrical, then we moved into plumbing, so I don't know what we're going to do next. Um, it could be solar, it could be. You know something that?
Speaker 3:is on the horizon, yeah, yeah you know, but but not you know not that everybody needs so much, as when we graduate those students they can get a good job it'll be needed then because there's yeah, there's no sense in having any kind of education that you know. Hey, you know, I got this bachelor degree in basket weaving. Well, great, there's no need for basket weavers anymore. They have loons and stuff that make that stuff yeah pennies on the dollar, you know.
Speaker 3:So it's about making trade courses that people can take but they also can get a rewarding career out of well, I think we kind of forgot to just go there.
Speaker 1:So where is it that you work and teach and like, what do they do, what's their?
Speaker 3:we kind of been talking about it but we haven't actually gone over it well, when I taught, I taught at the arizona automotive institute up in glendale, arizona. Uh, like I said, been there a long time. Now I do it from the comfort of my desk in my room, so everything is virtual now. Yeah, you know, covid changed that landmark yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I switched from teaching. I left teaching during COVID because I was going crazy, sitting at home waiting to figure out if I had a job or not.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, a lot of people did. You know. We, you know, once they released a lot of stuff, we would bring students in in groups to do the-on portion so that there weren't too many people in the school at the same time. Yeah, a lot of the stuff was virtual. You know, we did a lot of virtual teaching, um, they took knowledge-based tests virtually, um, and it kind of changed that landmark for pretty much the whole company you.
Speaker 3:Now the teachers and everybody are back to all of the schools, but a lot of the management people are now back to virtually work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or a mix of something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I don't actually teach students anymore, I just teach instructors that are going to teach our students, and it's more about you know, hey, how to navigate the canvas course, how to navigate the ncc er site testing system and stuff like that. But, um, I would say that takes up some of my. That's not the majority, though I do order all the product for all of the schools and start a new trade program how many schools is there a? Startup 22.
Speaker 1:Wow, and they're all in arizona no no, no, there we have schools in.
Speaker 3:We have one in arizona, four in texas, uh, two in pennsylvania and and four in North Carolina. We're getting ready to do one in Georgia. These schools don't all have Trade programs. We're converting some of the programs that you know.
Speaker 1:People take.
Speaker 3:But just don't you know, there's no good jobs For them anymore and they're hard to hire. So with our accreditation, you have to remember that we have to place these students in a job that they took for while they studied, yeah so, yeah, if I, if I take welding in school, our that school has to place me in a job, you know, and if we fall below the benchmark they don't get to teach that course anymore.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 3:So yeah, sometimes we get rid of a course just because we can't place people anymore. That makes sense.
Speaker 1:What's the market?
Speaker 3:gets saturated.
Speaker 1:Well, what is the market like in Arizona? You know, for the people that are listening to this across the U? S and Canada, you, you know if they said you know what. He sure made Arizona sound nice with the hot weather and the sand and dirt. I want to come down there. Is there work? Is it looking good?
Speaker 3:If you want to come down to Arizona, I will tell you that there is tons of work in the electrical and HVAC field. Obviously because HVAC is in every house here, or you're going to cook to death, but welding is shop welding. So what I mean is you know what I mean. Manufacturing You're not welding out in the field a lot. There is some for building the shaded parking structures and stuff like that. There is some structural welding, you know, still being done down here because you know they still build buildings out of metal and beams.
Speaker 3:But Texas is, you know, booming. Yeah. If you want to weld.
Speaker 1:Texas is the place to go. Well, I know, like our company CW, we have quite a bit of investment in Texas. We got lots going on around there. But I do come across a lot of welders from Arizona and people that you know kind of come through there and I always wondered like how much welding work or what kind of would be the bigger you know types of work that you'd see there?
Speaker 3:The most is structural. Then you have the shutdowns like anywhere else, you know we have a lot of mining going on here, but of course those mines are in areas that are not.
Speaker 1:They're remote yeah.
Speaker 3:So you're going to either travel or you're going to live, you know, in your little camper for six months, and then you know, take off to the next place or go home, and, you know, wait for three months before you feel like working again. But, those jobs are here too. It's just the bulk of them are shop, you know, in manufacturing semiconductors, stuff like that, or you know out in the uh build trades in the construction trades.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and your school programs. There are they, are they growing? Are they like specifically the welding ones? Are they welding expanding?
Speaker 3:never has a problem with getting students yeah hvac never has a problem with getting students diesel and automotive. They don't have problems getting students.
Speaker 1:But less students want to take those kind of programs, you know yeah, I've thought about going back to teaching, kind of towards the twilight parts of my career, getting back in front of a classroom I think. I mean I worked with a few gentlemen that did that when I was teaching. They had kind of like retirement age substitute teacher If you need me, call me, I'll come fill in for a class and they were great. You know older guys who had welded their entire careers and I thought had welded their entire careers and I thought you know, that's a nice gig.
Speaker 3:That's a nice gig like yeah, you know someone wants to go to mexico for two weeks. You come and teach their class for a couple weeks perfect, that sounds awesome. Well, we did that for a lot of you know people that, even even if they're still working full-time, you know we have classes at night and and sometimes people go. Well, I don't want to, you know, teach fulltime, but I'll do a class If you have a class at night and our classes are five weeks long so they'll get a paycheck for that five weeks of classes and then sometimes they'll go.
Speaker 3:You know what. Sign me up for another one. Sign me up for another one, or they'll go. You know what. Write me out of this one and. I'll up in five weeks and you know, know. So either way, there's full-time and part-time work in the teaching there, especially in trade yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:There is now, in terms of, you know, the growth of welding in general. I've constantly seen these numbers of we need 20,000 welders, we need 100,000 welders. The retirees are going out the door. What are we going to do? Do you feel like we're in as bad a shape as everyone's kind of making it out? Are you worried about the number of welders or trades people we have coming in?
Speaker 3:well, I'm not worried about the number of trades people coming in, um, I think you know. I do believe that we do need, you know, more people into the trade, but I don't know that it's welding, welding is kind of gotten glorified in the last 10 to 15 years. You know everybody now wants to go out and be a welder but there's not that much hype about, hey, I want to go out and be an electrician or I want to go out and be a plumber. You know that, that new generation, you know you have those kids that grew up with those blue collar fathers that were welders and stuff like that, that are saying, yeah, I want to go out and be a welder. But then you have that same group of you know young kids that's seen their parent be a plumber and went no way. Am I doing that?
Speaker 3:you know so I think some of the trades are gonna suffer here, but I don't believe it's going to be well I hope you're right still yeah, it's still a well-paying job. If you want to make a career out of it and you pay attention and you do what you're supposed to do and you learn the trade the way you're supposed to learn the trade, you can make a darn good living as a welder, and you can for the other ones too, but the work I don't think has gotten as glamorized.
Speaker 3:As you know, being a welder, yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 1:It's a tough one. I remember in canada there was like way too many electricians for a time and then it seemed like we had electricians standing around at every corner, you know, looking for work, and now and then it switches to another trade, Then some other trade everyone kind of jumps into and we have, you know, then we, we have too much. But I don't know if I'll ever see that again in my lifetime, where we have too much of a trade.
Speaker 3:I think that maybe in general they're just not the amount of uptick as there was. Yeah, I don't, you're right, I don't think we're ever going to see that whole. You know. Oh, we have a whole bunch of electricians standing around.
Speaker 3:You know, because you know and I don't know about canada, but I do know in the united states the infrastructure is getting old. You know bridges are getting old, that you know piping and plumbing and everything's you know aging out, and if nobody's there to replace it, then we're going to be in trouble that's right, you know so I do see you know some trouble for people looking to hire trade people in the future.
Speaker 3:And you know one of the biggest things that I've always you know because we have PAC meetings- you know where we get the people you know from the community to come in talk about our trade programs, and the one thing all those employers constantly say is well, you need to train them to do this, and you need to train them to do that, and you need to train them to do this. And it's like we're training them as welders, electricians, plumbers and HVAC tech. We're not training them for your specific need.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's on you your specific need needs to come from you. Yeah, and here's the problem with trades right now, you're not investing in your employees' future growth. You're not. You're taking the money and you're saying, okay, we're making record profits but you're not putting anything back into training your employees or training the future employees for the next generation. You know you're not investing in your own workforce. You're expecting to come in and go hey, this school does. Hey, we need you to train them to also do this, this and this. No, that's specific to your field. We don't trade specific to your field, we train specific to an industry. So you know that's the biggest hurdle I see.
Speaker 1:It is a big hurdle.
Speaker 3:yeah, the workforce going through. I don't know about Canada.
Speaker 1:It's very similar, but at least here in the United States, it's the employers not doing anything.
Speaker 1:Well, and sometimes it's a disconnect. And I've had this meeting. Actually, last year we held a forum about it at Fabtech, where we talked about industry wants, but what does industry give? So let's say, for example, we have a large manufacturing plant and let's pick a city, you know, uh, ohio, somewhere in columbus. I'm going to columbus.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're in columbus and down the street is a trade school from columbus and that that facility is upset, that the trade school is not teaching the kids on how to run cnc brakes, because they want to hire these welders, but they also want them to know how to run cnc brakes and shears and stuff like that, because this company has all this equipment. And so I pose the question to the company. It's like well, you are aware that the funding is very low and limited for schools in North America. Oh, yeah, yeah, we hear about the funding issues all the time. All right, but you want them to teach you teach their students on a half a million dollar piece of equipment for you.
Speaker 1:Well, ideally, we'd like that. Well, have you ever thought about you buying the equipment, donating it to the school, getting your name put in front of the lab and saying this is the? You know the Columbus Ohio X companies. You know CNC lab, and then you know what? I bet that school would be more than happy to teach kids how to run that break press if it was donated from industry. You know at what point do you start actually getting involved with your educational outlets instead of just complaining about them, right?
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and that's the problem, you know, they just complain about it. But they have no solution other than to say, well, why don't you teach this? Well, why don't you hand me that piece of equipment? Because I've had that same conversation. There was a guy here in Phoenix that does stairs, you know, metal stairs for apartment complexes and buildings and stuff like that, and it was a specific round tube that a smaller round tube went in and he had a specific socket weld that he wanted made on that tube. And I go well, yeah, we can teach that, but we don't. You know, we don't buy that material. That's not material that we. Well, you should get that material. I would hire three people. I go I'll tell you what if I find three people that want to go to work for you, I'll teach them how to do that. You buy the material.
Speaker 3:that's right, and he said it and he said it and I showed those three people and they went to work for him. So then, at the next meeting I go see what happens when we work together yeah, when you communicate yeah, we yeah I go.
Speaker 3:We can't just assume what you need, you have to tell us and then you have to help us get it yeah and if you do that, then we're a partner. If you just come in here with demands and say, well, I need your people to learn how to do this, that's. That's not solving an issue yeah because I I laid out the curriculum. They do fillet, welds and they do plate and groove. Well, that's it. That's the time something special, then then provide the material and let us do it.
Speaker 1:We'll do it. That's awesome. That's very important, I think, for industry to hear. I preach it all the time. But get involved. If there's a college in your area and you somehow still can't find enough employees, that means that you're not communicating to the college in your area. Go talk to them. What are you doing? Go get them, or you're not willing to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right. Well, you know, bill, this is we're coming on the end of the podcast here. It's been a wonderful conversation. I love this. We've hit off a number of great topics. Someone that's looking to get into education as a welder Like you've been welding for a few years, or maybe a couple decades, and you're thinking, you know what, maybe teaching sounds cool For someone that made the transition, like yourself. What would be some great advice you could give to someone that's thinking about getting into teaching?
Speaker 3:So a couple things. First, if you're going to do it, don't do it for a school that is funded by a government entity. So I work for a for-profit post-secondary school. They pay better, they don't require a teaching certificate, which is hard for somebody in the trade to get. You know, because in the United States if you're going they call it CTE, if you're going to do that type of education at one of those type of schools, then you're going to need to get a teaching certificate. You're going to need to get a teaching certificate. The only reason I was able to get one was because of my experience as a plant manager and vice president of engineering, and you know the amount of time I spent doing that. And that's.
Speaker 3:You know you have to give them verifiable you know times. But if you go to one of these schools, they usually have their own training program. They usually were going to give you a test. You know, hey, if you're going to teach this, I need to see that you can do this. Yeah, and then, you know, start out slow, take it easy. If you don't want to do it full-time, they always have part-time classes yeah, and see if you like doing it. The biggest piece of advice I can give them is if you don't like doing it, don't do it, cause you're just going to goof up the next group of people that come through. Don't do that to the people trying to get an education. If you're not any good at it, recognize that and get the out of it and go find something else to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Groceries, whatever it is. But yeah, you know, if you want to stick with education, make sure you love educating the younger generation that may not think the same way as you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can't get frustrated, you can't get mad like yep, you gotta just well. Honestly, I think the students keep you young because they teach all the new lingo and stuff.
Speaker 3:But you know, absolutely you know I didn't know how to text before I started teaching. Oh no, let me show you.
Speaker 3:That's not true, because I worked in the you know dot com area for so long, but that's you know yeah, if you're going to teach, get some computer skills too absolutely you know especially you know, especially if you're at that retirement age where you know the only thing you know how to do is turn on facebook a lot of education is done now through Canvas and Blackboard and stuff like that and LMS system. So get some computer knowledge behind you, at least enough to navigate that.
Speaker 1:That's great. That's great advice and it's very true. I don't know a college anywhere in North America that doesn't use an LMS to do almost everything Exactly yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, even, yeah, even. You know, we don't even teach our trade courses. Some of them we do hybrid, where they come into school for a couple of days, cause they always got to do the hands on at the campus, but a lot of ours are, you know, a hundred percent on ground and they still use the LMS.
Speaker 3:Their textbooks are ebooks. There's no physical copy of a book anymore, so you have to have some computer skills to teach. You know, it doesn't have to be a lot, but it needs to be more than. Hey, I know how to turn up on, you know google let's start awesome all right.
Speaker 1:and last question for the students out there how do they sign up if they're in their zone area? How do they find out about the welding programs offered by Encorra?
Speaker 3:If they want to find out about any programs at Encorra, they can look online. We have an online presence. They can show up at the school and say hey, you know what I want to hear about your programs. There's admissions people there all day long. There's phone lines all day long. You know they can find Arizona Automotive Institute. You know on the website they can find Ancora Education on a website That'll take them to all the different schools. If they're not in Arizona, you know if they're in Texas or Pennsylvania, and they can choose whatever program they want, depending on where they want to go to school. It'll list all the programs at each one of those schools.
Speaker 1:Awesome, that's been fantastic, and thank you so much, Bill. You taught me some stuff today, and that's I love. I love to learn.
Speaker 3:Cool, mac, this was great. You know, it was a good time, awesome and for all. I wasn't sure at first what to expect, but you know it well, you never know. And then it's like, all right, cool, this guy's a welder. Because there's people that say, yeah, I'm a welder, but they're not really. Well, oh, I totally know what you mean.
Speaker 1:Two or three years or something. Yeah, no, I did my, did my time. I did my time you did yep awesome bill well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, like I said, for coming on the show and for letting us yeah, no, I did my, I did my time, I did my time, you did Yep, awesome, bill. Well, thank you so much, like I said, for coming on the show and for letting us know about your life and career path and and also you know, your workplace at Cora and the college there. Thank you for having me, buddy Awesome, and for all the people that have been following along at the podcast here. Thanks so much. You know, we had a wonderful episode today. Like you heard, if you're thinking about getting into learning to weld, now's the time, get out there.
Speaker 1:But also and this is a theme that we've heard quite a bit If you are an established welder and you've thought about it or maybe haven't thought about it, but we need teachers all across North America. I see postings all the time, even in my province here in Saskatchewan, where they're looking for a welding instructor right now. Like, I mean, it's everywhere. So if you've thought about it, think about it. You know, maybe go ask your local college if they want some part time help, because we need to get ready to empower this next whole generation and make sure to do that, we need good teachers. So you know, it's been wonderful. Keep downloading, sharing and commenting on the podcast. And also we have the fan mail feature on Buzzsprout if you want to send us a direct message. And, of course, you can always find us online on all our social medias. So until the next episode, take care.
Speaker 2:We hope you enjoy the show you've been listening to the cwb association welding podcast with max. If you enjoyed what you heard today, rate our podcast and visit us at cwbassociationorg to learn more. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions on what you'd like to learn about in the future. Produced by the CWB Group and presented by Max Horn, this podcast serves to educate and connect the welding community. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.