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Sweethearts & Heroes - Brian McKeon · Aired Out

• 0:31
  Speaker 1: He came and him.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Later.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: How about that intro music. I had to go. I
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: had to go drama this morning because it's Sweetheart Sinning
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Heroes Day today. And as you know, anytime that we
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: talk Sweetheart Sin Heroes and we talk about the world's
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: number one youth leadership team, it's a big freaking deal.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Brian McKeon is with me in the studio this morning.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Good morning, my friend. How the heck are you, dude?
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I'm so glad to see you again, Always glad to
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: see you. Jd How are you man?
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: Doing good? Doing good?
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: You're running ragged? Huh.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gearing up for a wild summer.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Here, a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, and we're
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: going to talk about some of it. First though, Look
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: at this beautiful day ahead of us eighty two later
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: today with sunshining Lily, you'll be out on the dirt
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: bike this afternoon. I have to wait until July before
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: I can swing a leg, but it's going to be
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: just a beautiful day. Please get out and enjoy no
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: matter who you are, where you are, what you're doing.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: This is a this we don't want to pass up
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: days like this. Is not the day to be inside
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: cleaning the toilet is what I'm saying. Get outside, enjoy
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: get some fresh air, and do something for yourself. Yesterday
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: it took a little while and just cleaned the car
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: mats in my truck and it was just I don't know, man,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, it just felt good to do something for myself. Yeah,
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. Oh yeah, here, tiny little thing.
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: You give most of your time away to other people
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: and stuff.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: I give a lot, man, that's good, but it was
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: nice to just give something to myself. Yeah, just for
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: a little while, you know what I mean.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I gotta clean my car out after that long winter,
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it was. It was a tough job. Listen, man,
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: we're we're going to dive into some of the things
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: that you got on the horizon here, and we may
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: hear from from Tom who might check in on one
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: of the big ticket items that's that's happening, that's actually
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: underway and is going to be ongoing here for for
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: quite a while. Have you seen the guests lineup? I
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: had Kyle Turner on from Buck the other day. Yeah,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Jake Cummings from from People's. I mean, this is just
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: leon Is.
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: He's been getting him, man, he's been getting him on
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: the horn here.
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Toots to Leon. Man, he is like an animal. I
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: told them this morning. I'm like, he's he's got sweethearts
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: and heroes guests booked, Yeah, like right on through.
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: Man.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's awesome those Yeah, it's great to have those
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: outside guests come in and talk about it and get
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: to watch those. So yeah, they're really fun.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Who else is next here? I'm just looking here,
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Jay Cummings, we just had There's just so many branded
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: brute messo. Did you see that that show?
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: I think I watched Allen. Yeah, man, that was a
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: great one.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: What you guys are doing is really incredible stuff. Man. Yeah,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: this was not your intended career path to be doing
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: what you're doing these days.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: No, that's that's for sure. I Mean I never really
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: had a well mapped out intended career path, so but yeah,
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: I totally just kind of fell into the stuff I'm doing.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Now, what did you want to do? What were you
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: going to school for and all that?
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: Guys.
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: You know, when I got to high school, I wanted
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: to be a writer. So I mean, I guess I've
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: really kind of followed that path just an entirely different
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: way than I thought I was going to because I
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: do a lot of writing every day. But yeah, so
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: writing was kind of the main thing. And then I
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: went to school for paralegal studies because I know, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: was just getting a general education degree. And then my
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: dad taught at the college and was taking some classes
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: on pair of legal and was like, hey, dude, there's
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: a lot of reading and writing here. You might like this.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, how what's that for you?
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: You know, it was good? I mean I did, I
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: did fine. I didn't really. I didn't really go to
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: college though. Like I tell you, I never went to one,
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: not one single party in college for four years.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: I just was the boring kid who went to class,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: went home and.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Studied, you know, believe it or not. Same story with me.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: I went well, I went to one. I went to
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: one and it didn't go That was good. Was good
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: enough for you? That was it didn't go well for me.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I was sick for like a week. Dude. It was horrible.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it was the same way.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I just I just went to class. It
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: was good. I mean, once I got into my internship
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: and like the third year and I got to like
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: I was worked for a magisterial district judge. Yeah, so
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: I got to sit in a lot of hearings and stuff.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: Once I kind of got the feel of what that was, like,
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: I'm like, ah, just it just really wasn't for me,
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Like I didn't see myself being a lawyer.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: So how did you How did you get involved with
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: sweethearts and heroes? What happened?
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, so it was after college. I went to
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Ireland for a few months after that, and then I
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: came back and I just didn't really I went to
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: an interviewer two for something with related to paralegal. Again
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: just didn't really jive for me. And then I just, uh,
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: Tom knew I wanted to be a writer and was like, hey,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: you want to write this play based off of this,
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: you know message. That was kind of how Star started man.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: And then slowly the next project we worked on was
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: Thirteen Pillows, and slowly after that I just started getting
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: handed these little tasks, write this, do that, track that,
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: And now I'm like meshed.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're you're you're vested. Yeah, completely what Thirteen Pillows
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: just a brief, a brief hit on that. That's a
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: book that you wrote you kind of co wrote with.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Tom yep co wrote with Tom. It's really based
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: off of his and Rick's past. At the time, it
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: was like fifteen sixteen years they were doing it, just
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: like these thirteen principles on you know, we said it
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: was for teachers, but we ended up realizing it set
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: for everybody. Students started reading it enjoying it. People that
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: just weren't teachers read read and enjoyed it. So you're
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: just like these thirteen different principles for life that we identified,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: and yeah, it's just it's it's it's about this guy who, uh,
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: this physical education teacher who just lost a student to suicide,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: and he's kind of just ready to quit. Like he's
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: brand new to this thing, and he doesn't know how
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: to deal with it. You know, he had to like
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: confront you know, not he had to like you know,
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: talk to the parents and stuff and like just the
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: community in general, and he just doesn't know how to
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: deal with it. And he's just like, this isn't for me.
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: I'm going to resign, And that's kind of how it opens.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: But you know, as he's reading his resignation letter to
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: himself out loud in the in the gym. This janitor,
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: kind of this new janitor that just got hired steps
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: down of the shows and is like, you know, starts
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: taking him under his wing because he's like a former
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: educator and like an inner city type situation. And yeah,
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: he just he just is kind of like that old
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: wise Yoda Miagi type character that comes into this guy's
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: life and helps him figure out, you know, not just
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: how to teach, but how to connect with kids. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: that's what you know, it's we're all about. It's like
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: building connection, you know, connection over come and that's one
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: of the pillows. And so yeah, that's just how it
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: kind of starts.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: We say pillows because a lot of people are like,
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: don't you mean pillars?
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: Uh?
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: But pillows because when your head hits the pillow every night,
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: there's there's a couple of things that you should ask yourself. Yeah. Yeah,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: we call it. It's called the pillow test.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: So that's why we call thirteen pillows instead of pillars.
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: And basically it's like you lay your head down at
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: night and you can ask yourself two questions I wish
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: I had or I'm glad I did. And the goal
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: is to kind of just have I'm more I'm glad
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: I did than I wish I had, you know, and
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: you're not going to be perfect every night, but yeah,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: that's the that's the gist of it. And and you know,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: it's just really like a self reflection exercise. It doesn't
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: have to be while you're laying your head down the pillow,
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: but you know, we're so everybody so distracted and overwhelmed
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: and busy today, it's like often it might be the
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: pillow where you get your last quiet thoughts.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: So if we're lucky enough to have another day, we
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: can turn the the wish I had into yeah, I'm
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: glad I did.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I think it's definitely. But both are important,
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: you know, because you don't wanna you don't want to
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: always have the I wish I had and not recognize
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm glad I did, right, So yeah, it's
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: it's just a way to reflect at the end of
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: the day.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: You guys always have a new book that's coming out,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: you got a new project that's coming out, you have
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: new trainings that are coming out, you got stuff going
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: on with Lineman, you've got stuff going on with schools,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: and now you've got this week long hope through Art tour. Yeah,
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: of five schools in the North Country. Yeah, what in
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: the heck is this about? So gosh, I.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: Can't even I don't remember exactly how Tom Murphy got
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: connected with this guy, Tom Verano, who was actually from
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: I think New York. He lives down in Texas now,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: but he he does kind of a similar, uh not
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: not the same kind of stuff we do, but he
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: travels around to schools uh and and organizations delivering his
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: presentation emotion into art. And I haven't had the privilege
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: of seeing the performance live, but I've seen his videos
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: online and he just he's a it's like performance speed painting,
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: where like paint these canvases live up on stage while
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: he's like going through some kind of message, like an inspirational, motivational,
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: uh you know, hope filled thing. And we're just like
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: it just kind of meshed perfectly with what we do
• 11:49
  Speaker 4: as well. And so we just had this idea of
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: like teaming him up Tom Verano uh and Rick yarsh Uh.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: That's famous. Yeah, he travels all over they like that's
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: his full time gig. And yeah, he's just got as
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: much passionate about what he does as what we do
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: and it was just we just saw an idea. And yeah,
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: this week has been the launch of it. We started
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: off in Tykwonder Roga and Crown Point on Monday they
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: saw the presentation, and then yesterday was at Salem School District.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: Today we are at Oees j Appenheim in New York,
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: and then tomorrow will be up in Saint Regis Falls,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: New York, and then ending the week in Peru, New York.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: And I've I've heard it's just been incredible the presentation.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is this is a really you know. And
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: and I remember when Tom called me to tell me,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: I don't know, so walking across some parking lot somewhere,
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: and he was telling me on the phone that you
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: guys were gonna do this, that it was in the
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: making and it was gonna happen. Yeah, and this is
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: this is so it's so Tom, for sure, but it's
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: also just so sweethearts and heroes. I mean, this is
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: like a perfect perfect marriage.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, it's cool. It's the way it happens is
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: I think Tom Verano starts and he does like a
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: sixty minute presentation where he's painting these things, delivering you know,
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: his stuff, and the last one he paints is Rick,
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: but it's Rick before his injury. And so at the
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: end here Rick comes out for like thirty minutes, obviously
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: looking much different than he does in the painting, and yeah,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: it just kind of ends with this message of hope,
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: you know, message of you know, embracing your the adversity
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: you've gone through because that's your strength.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I want to show this something on this screen here,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: this is I'll read it right here if you can't.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Too powerful missions one Unforgettable experience uniting art heart heroism
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: to ignite confidence, strength, and endless possibilities in every student.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: And some of the themes overcoming bullying, rising above adversity,
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: becoming the best version of yourself. This is really something else, man,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: And we've already had how many how many of these
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: have taken place?
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Today is the third one, and then they got two
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: more for the rest of the week. So yeah, we'll
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: just have five shows right now. But this is kind
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: of like our our pilot run to see at work,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: because you know, Tom and Tom Brown and Rick have
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: never done anything together before, so but I've heard it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: just been incredible, incredibly awesome, And where the next one's
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: going to be We got one tomorrow at Saint Regis Falls,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: New York. So that's up in Northern New York, and
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: then Peru, New York again, right up in Northern New
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: York there on Friday.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: On Friday's okay, is there one Saturday too?
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: No? Nothing said?
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, wow man, Yeah, this is really really cool.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: Inspiring the next generation together to be better, to do
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: more live painting, inspiring storytelling, real life lessons, lasting impact.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's it right there.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I've seen his stuff online tom rounds and yeah,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: it's just it's really cool man.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: And he's out of Where'd you say? Texas?
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Texas? Got I can't. I don't know if it's
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly where, but he was.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: I think he's originally from New York. Okay, so yeah,
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: he just I don't know when he moved down to
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: tex That's it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: That's incredible. Yeah, I would love Will this come to Vermont.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: We're we're hoping to do something hopefully in the future.
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: This was kind of just our pilot run to see
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: how it's how it went. Obviously it's gone incredible. So yeah,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: it's just figuring out logistics is usually usually the thing
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: we at the work on. But you know, man, if
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: we see an opportunity to do it, we're going to
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: do it for sure.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: This this fifth Wire Hope series has been really impactful
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: for linemen and folks in the in the trades, especially
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: the construction industry everywhere. But it all has also resonated
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: quite strongly with folks in the emergency medical field first responders. Yeah,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: from police, firemen, EMTs, paramedics, whatever. Yeah, this is really
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: tell us what it is.
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, it's really the same thing we've
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: been doing in school, so the last fifteen sixteen years.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: It's our message of hope and action, and we just
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: it's tailored to you know, the groups that we talked to.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: We've been doing them in front of police officers, in
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: front of linemen, in front of military, so we kind
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: of just tailored the the presentation to that. And you know,
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: those those industry struggles, you know, the linemen in particular,
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: the construction industry that area. It's like the suicide rate
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: is you know, up to like sixty eight per one
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: hundred thousand, which is just insane. Like the Marines are
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: at like thirty four point something. You know, you hear
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: about the twenty two a day in the in the military,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: of the veterans that you know in their own lives,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: and so it's it's this war on hopelessness that we identify. Man,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: it's everywhere and it's hitting everybody. But you got those
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: high risk industries like you know, the police and military, linemen,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: you know all that. Like it's just crazy high man,
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: you know.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And I was listening yesterday to the sub stack of
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Beware the Trades A wolf in Sheep's clothing, and as
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: I'm listening to it, I'm thinking, gosh, you know, I
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: guess I kind of knew that, but not really. But yeah,
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: I'm not surprised. I mean, you know, Toms is going
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: into some pretty grave to tail about the life of
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: someone in the trades. Yeah.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: Man, it's freaking it's freaking tough. Like those guys, first
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: of all, are like some of the toughest guys out there.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: I can't imagine. It's like, while we're sitting home and
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: you know, negative degree weather, waiting for our power to
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: come back, they're the ones freaking up there climbing the
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: pole and trying to fix it. In the freezing rain,
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: freezing rain and the freezing cold like everything, and yeah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: that that article in a gist. You know, it's like
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: for a long time. Obviously it's been you know, you
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: go to high school and usually the next step is
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: you go to college. But obviously in the last I
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: don't know how long, but you know, the last five
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: ten years, maybe people have been trying to get kids,
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: you know, also transitioning more into the trades. But you're
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: kind of you know, and this isn't like a you know,
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: a mean critique or whatever. It's not intended to be.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: It's kind of just trying to identify the reality that
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: we're in right now. A lot of the ways that
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: those individuals in the educational system are trying to funnel
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: kids towards this stuff, towards the trades, which of course
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: we need more trades to need it's huge, totally, absolutely,
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: But the the culture and the type of type of
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: grind that they got to go through is very different
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: in the actual industry versus what they're kind of being
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: shown in an educational sterile environment. You know, where you
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: go to class and stuff, Oh you should go into
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: this usual but then you know, you graduate high school
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: and they say, oh, you're gonna get a bunch of money.
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: You want to go into college dead, you get your
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: two hundred thousand dollars a year, your truck, your house.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: All that.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: Yes, but dude, it's like you're you're you come in
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: as the lowest man on tonopole. Obviously you got to
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: put in I think it's somewhere between like eight and
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: ten thousand hours maybe over like three to five years
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: to become a journeyman.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's insane.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: It's insane.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: And and the man, we're all chasing the buck though, dude.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: The buck. Yeah, we are all chasing. But the other
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: the other part of that is, you know, you get
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: the bucks, but there's no financial literacy taught. You know,
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: like how do you manage your money? You know, it's
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: a big problem with you know, sports guys too. You know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: it's like you're never taught how to manage that. So
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: you get yourself into a bunch of debt. And then
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: you have to work, you know, and you're working like
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: seventy eighty hours a week sometimes insane, right, traveling all
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: over the country away from your family. And so we're
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: as we're guy trying to guide young people into the
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: trades more. We're not revealing to them this culture that
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: exists where you're gonna get like this hazing, you're gonna
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: try at the bottom of the pole, pushing a mop
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: for all these So it's so that's kind of ties
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: into what we do. We're about fixing. We're not about
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: fixing your organization. We're not going to solve your organization's problems.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: We're there to fix your humans. And that's what our
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: program Fifth Wire is about.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Tom Murphy on the line with us, Tom, good morning.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: Hey, what's going on right now?
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Hey, I'll tell you what's going on right now? We
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: got a guy that's sitting on the couch that you
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: said he is a wicked introvert. He'll never get on
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: the air on the aired out podcast, and he's kicking
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: ass man.
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: Well, well, gee, what we got is to guys sitting
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: on a couch not doing any real work, is what
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: we got?
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: Is that what it is?
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: That's what we got. Probably got a box of cookies
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: there with you too.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I do you like cookies?
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Tom?
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: What's going on today? D my?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: We were just talking about hope through art, which we'd
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: love to uh, get get your thoughts on that. But uh, first, man,
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I mean we're talking right now about your sub stack yesterday,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: which you guys wrote, and it really, uh really hit me.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: My my nephew just graduated, uh from uh with from
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: a school in in in New England here it doesn't matter,
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: but he got a degree in construction management. And a
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: week later, which was this past Saturday, he moved out
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: to Syracuse and Monday was his first day on the job.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: Today's his third day on the job. And when I
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: heard your sub stack yesterday, I mean, it just I
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: don't know, man, it just really hit me. What what
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: advice do you have for.
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: Oh there's a lot to say about this.
• 23:14
  Speaker 6: JD.
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: Brian just said some great stuff too. Man.
• 23:20
  Speaker 6: Yesterday I finished my day at Vermont Construction Academy, the
• 23:27
  Speaker 6: Vermont Construction Academy, and I just hit up this guy Ryan,
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: who really spends He's one of the the gatekeepers, one
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: of the guys.
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: That has made this happen.
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: And I'm trying to get him to how many people
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: can you have on the on the air.
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: At a time.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: See, that's like the Tom Murphy question, right, pushing the
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: boundaries when it comes to pushing the boundaries.
• 23:52
  Speaker 5: Man, Listen, I asked you a question, just asked the question.
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: We've got work to do.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: For you, Tom thousands can seriously is.
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: He called in right now? Could he join us?
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah, he would, he would have to call He
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: would call you and and join in with you. Yeah.
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: Really yeah, let's see here, let's see here. Can you
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: call my I think this is funny. I'm doing this
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: like we're on the air, and I'm doing this right now.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: I'm just making it real.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: JD.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Is he are you asking him to call me?
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: Well?
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: I was going to, but you're being a baby and
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: you can't get him on with us. So I gotta
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: get him. I gotta patch him in like I don't
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: know what kind of cobbled up spaceship you got. You
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: got the millennium fulk dude, the faults are falling off,
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: and see your hyper drive is broken. God.
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: All right, listen, let's get to this man.
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: If he calls my phone, I'll patch him in here
• 24:51
  Speaker 6: and I'm gonna put him on the spot.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: This guy is I won't try to stop you.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: Tom Well, this guy's incredible.
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: You gotta have him on the show here because he
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: is doing something in the construction world and the way
• 25:02
  Speaker 6: the universe works.
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: It's just mind blowing.
• 25:05
  Speaker 7: Dude.
• 25:06
  Speaker 6: I didn't plan on going down having this great conversation
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: with this guy yesterday.
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: Right on the heels of this article we put out.
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: But you want to talk about this article, and anybody
• 25:17
  Speaker 6: listening needs to.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: Hear this, Brian Bright.
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: You know, in New York State there's a brand new
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: trajectory for students.
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: It's called Portrait of a Graduate, and it's good.
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: There's been a lot of things that have been done
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: in education that are very questionable, like why are we
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: doing this to kids? Why do they have to take
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: all these exams and standardized tests and regents?
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: And I think we're above this. And there's a.
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: Certain segment of the population that says, this is the
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: way it has to be, this is the way I
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: did it, this is the way kids should do it today.
• 25:52
  Speaker 6: And I always say to those people, oh, man, can
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: do you get your flint and steel in your pocket
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: that you made your pancake with this morning? And you know,
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: people laugh at that, but and I'm trying to make
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: a bit of a ridiculous comparison. But there's stuff, and
• 26:09
  Speaker 6: we have another subsec article about calculus being dead and
• 26:13
  Speaker 6: stuff like that. But there are things in this world.
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: And you remember this when you were in school, JD.
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: Where people looked at you and said, you're not always
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: gonna have a calculator with you, so you have to
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: know these things when you were a kid. But funny
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: thing is every human being on earth has a calculator
• 26:29
  Speaker 6: with them in their pocket. Now sure, and then you
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: got all these other things. So as we've kind of
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: seen this unfolding of information, the information free age, where
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: every bit of information is free.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: And you don't really have to know anything.
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: I mean, there's a really funny story I think Brian
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: wrote about this in an article once that Einstein somebody
• 26:55
  Speaker 6: asked him for his phone number and oh, hold on,
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: I got it.
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: Now he's calling me in now hold on right, hold
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: on one second.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: This will be interesting. I love it.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: Tom Hijacks he likes to throw a monkey engine.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what he's doing.
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: Ryan, you're there, Hey, you there?
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is super this is so high tech. Right now,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: this is ridiculous.
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: Jajoe, Ryan, I am giving you. You're speaking to j D.
• 27:33
  Speaker 7: Now.
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: JD is not only a loose cannon, but.
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: He's probably one of the most questionable individuals I've ever
• 27:39
  Speaker 6: met in my life.
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: He's he's uh, he's got a he's.
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: Been thirty one years in radio and he's he's just
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: he's a little off.
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: Kilter and it's kind of screwed up. Anyway, you're live
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: on his show right now.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: We should be working for NASA. Why are we not
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: working for We should be on Cape Canaveral right now,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: all all of us.
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: I like the scripture.
• 28:02
  Speaker 7: It sounds like my kind of people. So yeah, let's
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: let's fucking go. Let's go.
• 28:06
  Speaker 6: But we're gonna get you on this podcast anyway, Ryan,
• 28:09
  Speaker 6: because my buddy Brian, who does some writing for us
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: and a whole bunch of other stuff, is actually live
• 28:14
  Speaker 6: on the on his couch right now. JD likes to
• 28:17
  Speaker 6: get people and snuggle up with him on his couch.
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: But anyway, he's from Barry. I lives in Barry. He's
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: got about ten thousand plus followers. But he does all
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: things Vermont. And you know, he got a hold of
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: our article that we wrote, a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: the Trades, and I was just in the middle of
• 28:38
  Speaker 6: explaining to him that education has changed I was like
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: finishing a story about Einstein and the punchline JD and
• 28:47
  Speaker 6: Ryan just give me a second. I'll set this up
• 28:49
  Speaker 6: and turn it over to you here in a second.
• 28:51
  Speaker 6: The punchline here, JD is Einstein. Somebody asks him for
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: his phone number and he turns and asked a phone book.
• 29:01
  Speaker 6: This is a true story. You can look this up.
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: And the person was like, you're Einstein. What do you
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: mean you don't know your phone number? And he said, well,
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: it's in a book. Why do I have to memorize it?
• 29:12
  Speaker 6: Like that's ridiculous. Why don't I save that capacity, that
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: brain power for real things? And so as we come
• 29:19
  Speaker 6: into this information technology age and things are changing.
• 29:23
  Speaker 5: You know, if I asked Ryan, hey, do you.
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: Still carry the same tools you carried on your belt,
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: you know, twenty years ago in construction, he'd say no.
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: So then why are we making kids do the same
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: thing they've always done in school twenty years ago because
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: we had to do it?
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: we have the tools where we don't need to do
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: those things. Now, we can debate what things kids need
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: to know and what things they don't need to know.
• 29:49
  Speaker 6: And that's good to have that debate. But one of
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: the great things about education, and there's a lot screwed
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: up with it, and I try not to live in
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: the deficit. I try, and you know what's the strength
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: of the people and the systems around me. And one
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: of the things about education is we are realizing that nobody,
• 30:09
  Speaker 6: not everyone needs college. Years ago, New York State had
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: college for all, and then we said, wait a minute,
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: there's different pathways for people.
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: Why does it have to be college for all?
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: So then the trades spring up because we have an
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: explosion in building and explosion in all kinds of areas
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: of construction and resource development. So the trades spring up,
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: and all of a sudden, what you can make in
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: the trades goes through the roof as well. And so
• 30:37
  Speaker 6: people are saying, we need more kids for the trades.
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: And you got guys like Mike Rowe out there who
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: are doing a beautiful job saying, don't make them wait
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: till they get into eleventh their twelfth grade. Introduce them
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: to the trades in middle school. And I agree with that.
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: But being in this electrical contracting world for the last
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: two and a half years, there's a dark side.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: And this is not me.
• 31:06
  Speaker 6: Dumping on the trades, because man, I want my own
• 31:10
  Speaker 6: kids to go into the trades. You know that the
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: satisfaction you get from building something, from completing something, from
• 31:19
  Speaker 6: you know, donating your skill and your time to building
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: things for people that are less fortunate, those are just
• 31:28
  Speaker 6: beautiful things skills for human being to learn. But there
• 31:34
  Speaker 6: is this insidious underbelly that when you get into these trades,
• 31:40
  Speaker 6: some of the culture is broken. And you know, it's
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: like the restaurant industry. It's part of it's riddled with
• 31:48
  Speaker 6: alcohol use. Part of it's riddled with drug use, prescription
• 31:53
  Speaker 6: drug use, people trying to manage their physical pain after
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: years of you know, carrying stuff and all that kind
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: of stuff.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: And so there's this underbelly that I have seen firsthand.
• 32:06
  Speaker 6: When you go to you know, show ups and they've
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: got beer refrigerator and it's the first thing they do
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: and they're not even off the clock, and they're you know,
• 32:14
  Speaker 6: opening up a can of beer. They go to the
• 32:16
  Speaker 6: hotel parking lot and they just sit on the tailgate
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: until ten o'clock at night drinking beer.
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: And I'm not.
• 32:21
  Speaker 6: Saying everyone's like that, but you have very impressionable young
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: people that are going to look up to older people.
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: And if that's the adaptive cultural norm, a lot of
• 32:34
  Speaker 6: young people are gonna slip right into it. And then,
• 32:37
  Speaker 6: just like in the restaurant business, you wake up one
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: day and you're like, dang, man, I've been doing this
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: for ten years, and you know, I'm just what happened
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: to me? So yesterday and so Ryan, I'm just setting
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: up this article that we wrote and I know you
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: read it. Ryan actually gave me some great feedback.
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: But just the way the universe works, JD.
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: I end up at the Vermont construct Academy in Wenuski
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: yesterday and I meet this guy named Ryan, and I'm
• 33:07
  Speaker 6: gonna turn it over to him here because I think
• 33:09
  Speaker 6: he really needs to tell you about what he's doing
• 33:13
  Speaker 6: that's different than what the public school system is doing.
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: Because we're getting ready to dump billions of dollars into
• 33:20
  Speaker 6: these facilities, and we're gonna give these kids this nice,
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: rosy picture of the trades and we're gonna, oh yeah,
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: we're also gonna say oh, and don't be careful, you
• 33:29
  Speaker 6: don't get sucked into some of these negative aspects of it.
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: But this guy, Ryan Man I'm telling you, I got
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: goosebumps because if he told you his whole story and
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: you got to get him on the air here, he
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: blow your mind because you know, his father passed away
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: when he was a kid. He found building and it
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: just became his heart and his soul. And he was
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: poor and grew up, you know, in the city, and
• 33:57
  Speaker 6: he just started building for his mom and his brother
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: and just fixing up their place. And now the guy
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: is a stud muffin and he thinks he can do
• 34:07
  Speaker 6: a little jiu jitsu. But I choke him silly. But uh,
• 34:10
  Speaker 6: my point is this, we have a man in the
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: state of Vermont that is doing an unbelievable amount of
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: beauty for young men and young women that want to
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: get into the trades.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: And uh, go ahead, Ryan, give it away, man, tell us.
• 34:27
  Speaker 6: About Vermont Construction Academy. And and don't be humble, man,
• 34:32
  Speaker 6: You're way too humble.
• 34:33
  Speaker 7: Man. Own this well, Tom, you got me blushing here. Wow,
• 34:36
  Speaker 7: Thank thank you very much. Man.
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: That was a That was a nice setup.
• 34:39
  Speaker 7: I so yeah. I have a passion for educating.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a builder. I didn't think I would be in
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: this in this seat today. I look at myself as
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: a builder. I still look at myself as a carpenter,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: but now I just build teams that build things. That's
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: essentially my main focus. I'm in a privileged position where
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I get to see teams across multiple states.
• 35:05
  Speaker 7: Interact with one another.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So it's a social experiment on all different levels. And
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I came up to the trades, I had some unbelievable mentors.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: They weren't all drinking beers in their back seat, back
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: to the tailgate. Some of them were telling me amazing advice.
• 35:21
  Speaker 7: Growing up, I.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Didn't have a father giving me all the advice, so
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: there were some very strong men that I interacted with
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: as a young man that gave me amazing opportunities and pointed.
• 35:33
  Speaker 7: Me in the right direction.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So there are certainly flaws in this industry. They are blatant,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: they're out there.
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: There's, you know, some sad.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Things going on, but there's also some beauty that I
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: you know, when I read that article, there's a lot
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: of truth in it.
• 35:50
  Speaker 7: I also want to look at the benefit of that.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Some of these hardships, some of these challenges, young men
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: take pride in and they actually make them feel really good,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: even though the work may be physically painful. It it
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: changes you as a young man. It certainly changed me.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: So when I look at the industry, one of the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: things that I got out of Tom's article that was
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: amazing was the false advertising. The I call them briefcase managers.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: These people that come in to the schools, to the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: training facilities and even some of the existing training facilities,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: and they paint this beautiful.
• 36:28
  Speaker 7: Picture that is false. You will never hear me painting
• 36:32
  Speaker 7: that picture.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: It's I invite people in that I get to work
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: with these young men and I tell them I'm going
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: to challenge you physically and mentally. If you want the challenge,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: come aboard. But this is not going to be easy.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: So the idea of light duty, of warm climatized or
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: cool climatized areas, it's not a thing.
• 36:56
  Speaker 7: The people that are attracted to this business, they have
• 37:00
  Speaker 7: of that burning desire.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Inside to go out and create something and do something hard,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: and that I think cure is a lot of the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: ailments of young men. I'm saying young men because that's
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: who I work with, That's the bulk of who I
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: work with. So, but they're actually yearning for this. Whether
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: you call it a hardship, challenge, whatever it may be.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: But you can't sell them on a false idea that
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: you know, year two you're making six figures and it's
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you're driving in this fancy truck. Now, your
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: first three years are gonna be brutal. They're gonna be physical,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: they're gonna be You're gonna be doing all the stuff that.
• 37:38
  Speaker 7: The older guys don't want to do. Uh.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: What the Vermont Construction Academy offers though, is while you're
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: learning in those early years, you get educated.
• 37:48
  Speaker 7: You continue education.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: So all my guys that give Friday off, they go
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and they learn the high skill stuff that the foreman
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: the superintendents already know. So even though they're doing the dirt,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: they're putting in their time learning, they're earning good money
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: at the same time, but they still get to continue
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: with their education.
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: And the culture is hard.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: The way that these young men interact with each other
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: is different, and it's not like an office environment and
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: it's you know, if you want to call it hazing
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is, but essentially, this is a business
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: where you can get yourself killed, you you know, so
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: they want to understand. You know, Tom and I were
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: talking a lot about trust yesterday. They need to know
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: they can trust you when you're running the forklift and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: you got ten thousand pounds that could potentially fall on them,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: or if you're rigging something up that's about to go
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: open the crane, or if you put the brace on
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: the wall. It's stuff that can actually kill you. So
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you don't necessarily want people you can't trust and aren't
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: going to carry their own weight, and that's something that
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: they take pride.
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: You have to trust the guy to the left and
• 38:55
  Speaker 7: right of you. So it's very complex, the culture of it.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: But I feel like a lot of people now talk
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: about it as this toxic culture, but they're missing the
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: point that the work these people are doing is hard.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: There's no easy way to do it. The bridges, the buildings,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: it's all hard, heavy stuff. There's no air conditioning. A
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: lot of times there's no heat. It's challenging. So the
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: marketing bowl that I hear NonStop, it drives me nuts.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: It's leading people astray. But there's also this bigger industry pitcher.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: So over the last ten fifteen years, the industry has
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: continued to constrict on timelines. The timelines get tighter and
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: then the leadership teams, many of times have never done
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the work.
• 39:43
  Speaker 7: So there's a disconnecting perspective.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Here where you have the leadership which may have come
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: strictly through academia, discussing leading people that they don't actually understand.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: They've never actually worked ten hours in ninety six degree.
• 40:00
  Speaker 7: They've never done it. They've never frozen, they've never run
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: a nail gun that weighs.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Fifteen pounds for eight hours, and then you can't feel
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: your arm at the end of the day because your
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: shoulder's numb.
• 40:11
  Speaker 7: So there's a disconnect.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: But that's my little The reason I'm here is I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: started doing this educational thing eight years ago.
• 40:18
  Speaker 7: I fell in love with it, and I can't even
• 40:21
  Speaker 7: really describe why I do it. Tom asked me, yes,
• 40:23
  Speaker 7: say why I do it?
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 40:25
  Speaker 7: It feels better than anything I've ever built. I can
• 40:27
  Speaker 7: build you anything.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: You want, a hospital, school, whatever complex physical component you need,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I can build. And it looks cool and it's great,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: feels good at the end of the day, But it
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't feel the same as when you're looking at a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: twenty four year old that changed his life over the
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: last four years.
• 40:43
  Speaker 7: He's got a nice truck, he's healthy, he's doing his thing.
• 40:47
  Speaker 7: It just feels different, and I don't know how I
• 40:50
  Speaker 7: ended up here.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I feel blessed every day when I roll out into
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing.
• 40:56
  Speaker 7: So that's kind of my story. That's my rough idea,
• 40:59
  Speaker 7: but it's grown into something major.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: We got programs running non stop here and we're looking
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: for people, you.
• 41:08
  Speaker 7: Know, Tomson. Number.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: My number one aspect I looked at people is humility.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking for students with humility because they can
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: learn and they can acknowledge their weaknesses so they can grow.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: So the students I'm looking for at the school, the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: number one piece.
• 41:22
  Speaker 7: They have is humility. And then the second thing is
• 41:27
  Speaker 7: just show up and be ready to work, work your
• 41:29
  Speaker 7: ass off.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: And get after it. So, uh, that's my spiel. I
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: want to hear you guys.
• 41:34
  Speaker 7: So that's that's who I represent. I come from the trades.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I had the blessing to go to school and get
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: a degree because my father was a veteran. He died
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: related to war, So I got the privileges of education.
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: But I don't necessarily recommend it for someone. But the
• 41:51
  Speaker 7: one thing education did do for me is it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Got me out of the circle of chuckleheads I grew
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: up with, meaning the neighborhood I grew was not a
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: neighborhood you go.
• 42:01
  Speaker 7: To unless you're from there.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: It's a long story, but what it did was it
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: put me around people that had, you could say, a
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: more positive outlook on life and more opportunities.
• 42:14
  Speaker 7: So it wasn't what I was learning in school.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: It was the people that were around me that had
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: a less criminally minded outlook on life.
• 42:24
  Speaker 7: So that's.
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Wow, Tom, Brian, that's a lot right there. I mean,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: that's amazing.
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, uh, incredible, Yeah, that's awesome.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Tom, You with us, Yeah yeah.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 42:41
  Speaker 6: One of the things that really is neat about Ryan's program,
• 42:45
  Speaker 6: and maybe can chirp in on this too, is you
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: know when they have people come and teach and this
• 42:51
  Speaker 6: is not I have some really dear friends of mine.
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: If I didn't have Bruce Clinton in my.
• 42:55
  Speaker 6: Life growing up, who was my shop teacher, I don't
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: know if I would have made it through school.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: You know, that was my place to get away. You know,
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: I had to move.
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: I couldn't sit still, so for me just to go,
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: you know, get behind the curtain, throw a welding helmet,
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: on and just weld a couple of pieces steel together
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: for twenty or thirty minutes. That was really important in school,
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: But Bruce never taught me what it was going to
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: be like to be on a job.
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: He just taught us some skills, and that was important.
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: But the neat thing about Ryan's program is, and as
• 43:28
  Speaker 6: I left yesterday, he has people that are actually in
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: the field, that are professionals that come in and teach
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: these young men that are not just giving them the
• 43:43
  Speaker 6: the physical skills, but they're giving them the whole package.
• 43:47
  Speaker 7: Is that right, Ryan, that's right, that's right. Yeah, So
• 43:50
  Speaker 7: it's twofold.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You get the technical competencies how to put a building up.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: But then we also run a night program where it's
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: all the things surrounding that usually go self.
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: The people, Like we talk finance, we talk health.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: We talk relationships. It's not like we're all hugging each
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: other and singing songs, but it's it's another area that
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: we meet up away from the job site that you
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: can kind of let your guard down and.
• 44:16
  Speaker 7: Let it fly one of the things, you know. One
• 44:19
  Speaker 7: of the parts of the program was also a.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Ten week jiu jitsu challenge to get them into an
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable place that's still safe out and but you see
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: a transformation fast. And a lot of these young men
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: in construction don't actually have male mentors. They're just not
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: in their life. And the people they learned from, you know,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: public education, they weren't really guided in this direction.
• 44:49
  Speaker 7: And a lot of whether you call.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Them masculine traits or whatever it may be, they were
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: kind of put down for being their natural selfs as
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: young men.
• 45:01
  Speaker 7: So it's that stuff is kind of outside the construction competence.
• 45:06
  Speaker 7: It's a little different.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're construction, you you got to be thick skin,
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: you gotta be tough, you got to be able to
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: handle criticism. You've got to be able to work long hours.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: You got to be able to uh smash your hand
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: with a hammer and and stay on the job site.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's yeah.
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: A JD. Let's let's I'll let Ryan go here.
• 45:29
  Speaker 6: I just I like putting people on the spot to
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: see how they really uh are under pressure.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: And that's uh Ryan, Actually, what do you call that? Ryan?
• 45:38
  Speaker 6: That you call it engineering? What did you call engineered diversity?
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: Synthetic hardship, synthetic hardship?
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: I like that he was talking a big game yesterday
• 45:50
  Speaker 6: about the synthetic hardship that he, you know, puts kids through.
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: To just you know, give them a simulation of life.
• 45:58
  Speaker 6: And you know, some people to walk a big game,
• 46:00
  Speaker 6: they could build all kinds of stuff. But I wanted
• 46:03
  Speaker 6: to see if this guy had the temerity to uh
• 46:07
  Speaker 6: to to.
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: You know, everybody talk a big game. So I'm messing
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: around right now, Ryan, I mess around a lot, so uh.
• 46:15
  Speaker 6: But anyway, I just I wanted to put him on here, man,
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: because it's just the way the universe works. To at
• 46:20
  Speaker 6: Brian and you bring up this article, and I figured, man,
• 46:23
  Speaker 6: let's see what this guy's got. So uh, I'm gonna
• 46:26
  Speaker 6: send a note to Leon and try and get him.
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: Uh maybe, I mean he's a Vermonor man. Maybe he'll
• 46:30
  Speaker 6: even come down and I would bluggle up with you
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: on the old couch.
• 46:33
  Speaker 7: Uh JD.
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: That would be so great, man, that would be so great.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: And by the way, and I said to Brian earlier,
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: Leon is just smashing it, dude. He is. He's like,
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: he's got so many people lined up to come on.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I'm serious, man, the guy.
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: You can't get him. If you can't get him on
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: the podcast.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about I can't hit leon on.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: He's the only one I know.
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: All right, let's get to business here, Ryan, thank you, man,
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: I thank you.
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna connect jug with us.
• 47:05
  Speaker 6: But we gotta we gotta get a full podcast with you,
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: whether it's just you know, through zoom he'll he'll zoom
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: you in if you.
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: Can't make it down to Barry.
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: But he's got about ten thousand, like great followers in
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: the state of Vermont. And and uh, and other people
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: need to know about the work that you're doing because
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: well it's just so important.
• 47:28
  Speaker 7: Well, I'll reach out guys. Let's set something up. I
• 47:30
  Speaker 7: like in person meetings. So yeah, having me on, Well
• 47:33
  Speaker 7: we'll talk soon.
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: Keep up to go work great.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: Thanks Ryan, and and Tom you you and and Rick
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: and Chad and Brian was just telling me a little
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: bit about this as we were getting ready to go
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: on the air. Uh. You guys just got back from
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Alaska and you're you're booking more more flights to Alaska
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: at the end of this month. You're gonna be back
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: out there dealing with Lineman.
• 47:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 47:58
  Speaker 6: Bro, this was supposed to be about Brian today, not
• 48:01
  Speaker 6: about this stuff.
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: Brian, all right, and I'm just kidding.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: I'm just kidding, Brian, he is so swollen.
• 48:13
  Speaker 6: Well, listen, when I get off here in just a
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: minute or two, get into something good with him, Get
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: into something metaphysical.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: Talk about dude, we did last time hardcore?
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: Listen me, I mean, go ahead.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: Can you see are you looking at your monitor right now?
• 48:31
  Speaker 7: Yeah?
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: But it's a little behind.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: All right, Brian tells me. Uh, this guy is so
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: inspirational and so positive. I love having him on. He
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: was telling me about this book that I had to get,
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: and there it is right there, How to Connect?
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: How to Connect?
• 48:52
  Speaker 7: Oh?
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, are you familiar with this? Tom?
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: My wife suggested that.
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Your wife that one. Yes, I thought you told me
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: that to get that.
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah. She's having me read it too, because
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: it is good.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Tom.
• 49:06
  Speaker 6: You gotta yeah, I just I just I worry that
• 49:09
  Speaker 6: there's not enough pictures in it for you.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: Tom. You gotta read this spot, okay in your hotel room.
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: You gotta got put it.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: We see it, man, Just put down right there? Can
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: you see it?
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: Are we gonna talk about Alaska?
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: I got you?
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, I'll.
• 49:30
  Speaker 6: Show you how to connect. You strangle him? Man, and
• 49:32
  Speaker 6: you choke him and make him pass out. That's how
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: you connect with him. Man, I'll show you how to connect.
• 49:39
  Speaker 6: So listen, here's the thing about wrestling. I shouldn't say
• 49:44
  Speaker 6: this on the air, but.
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: I can't say it. I'll get in trouble.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah you will.
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: I'm just saying, man, like, it's funny. I had a
• 49:52
  Speaker 6: friend of mine who is a police officer and his uh,
• 49:57
  Speaker 6: his wife. I saw her and she was with her girlfriend.
• 49:59
  Speaker 6: She really mad at me for this. I said, hey,
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: i'll leave names out. I said, you know, it's really funny.
• 50:04
  Speaker 6: You and I have something in common. And she's like
• 50:06
  Speaker 6: what I said, Well, I've had my hands over every
• 50:08
  Speaker 6: inch of your husband's body.
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: And she didn't think that was very funny in front
• 50:14
  Speaker 5: of her friends. But it's just true.
• 50:15
  Speaker 6: When you wrestle with somebody, you touch one hundred percent
• 50:19
  Speaker 6: of their bodies.
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: And I'll let your mind wander about that.
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: And sometimes there's an oil checker too, accidentally. So anyway,
• 50:29
  Speaker 6: probably that's the just crash the whole podcast, didn't I Oh?
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: Anyway?
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: So Alaska, yeah, yeah, man, it was great. We met
• 50:39
  Speaker 6: a woman about two years ago in Iowa.
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: Her name is Melissa Carress. You got to get her
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: on the podcast right from.
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: Alaska to She's Alaska is a tough, rugged place, man,
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: It's a tough, rugged place.
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: Their suicide rate is double the national average.
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: It's in the twenty four out of undred thousand or so,
• 51:01
  Speaker 6: the national averages between twelve and fourteen. The conditions, the climate,
• 51:06
  Speaker 6: the weather, it's difficult up there. It's hard to make
• 51:11
  Speaker 6: a living in Alaska. And so they've got all kinds
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: of challenges. And I met this woman who her name
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: is Melissa Carress, and she runs the JATC, which is
• 51:21
  Speaker 6: the training center for the Union fifteen forty seven and NIKA,
• 51:28
  Speaker 6: the National Electrical Contractor Association. And so she sat in
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: a circle with me in Iowa a couple of years
• 51:37
  Speaker 6: ago and we became friends.
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: She brought the message to her board. They brought us up.
• 51:45
  Speaker 6: We had a menagerie of people from big contractors to
• 51:51
  Speaker 6: apprentices mostly, and they were so blown away that I
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: don't know, I guess I can say this a true
• 51:59
  Speaker 6: gas electric which is about four hundred and fifty people.
• 52:02
  Speaker 6: They run a lot of the electrical grids up there
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: in Alaska. They were so blown away that they said,
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: we need to bring this message to all four hundred
• 52:11
  Speaker 6: and fifty of our people. And so we're going back
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: June twenty second. We're going to do a whole series
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: of keynotes because they can't get four hundred and fifty
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: their electricians and employees in at one time, and we're
• 52:25
  Speaker 6: gonna go up there. We're gonna do a series of
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: keynotes and a whole bunch of circle with these men
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: and women, and then hopefully we're in discussions with them
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: to go back to Alaska once a month for a
• 52:38
  Speaker 6: week for the next six months after. Because the thing
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: about this message, the fifth Wire we've developed, it's not
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: a speech, it's not a feel good message. We have
• 52:50
  Speaker 6: an electrifying keynote that just mesmerizes people. But the most
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: important thing is we've brought it into a system that
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: can do exactly what that book is that you held up.
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: We've devised the system that we've been doing for sixteen
• 53:09
  Speaker 6: years with students, letting them know that they're on the
• 53:12
  Speaker 6: front lines, that they have to become the change. It
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: was Leo Tolstoy that that everybody wants to change the world,
• 53:19
  Speaker 6: but nobody wants to change themselves.
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: And if you take the responsibility.
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: To change the environment around you. Other people will fall
• 53:32
  Speaker 6: into line, especially if you're doing good, you're helping people,
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: and our circle gives people an appropriate time to work
• 53:41
  Speaker 6: on a lot of the skills on how to do that.
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: And that's really the beauty of what we've devised. And
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: you know, if somebody is going to bring you back
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: to Alaska, which is not cheap, and spend the next
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: six months with you, it can't be a bunch of
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: hocus pocus and a bunch of feel good, touchy feely stuff.
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: There's no electric company that's gonna bring you back and
• 54:04
  Speaker 6: pay for that, you know, just because you're as cute
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: as I am.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Tom, Yeah, give me sixty seconds because we got to
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: rap here.
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: Come on, dude, you can't wrap yet.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Give me sixty seconds on hope through Art, and then
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: I want to I want to talk with Brian briefly
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: about about the Brave Brave Leadership program.
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you gotta go number two or something.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: No, I want to talk about the Brave Youth Leadership classes.
• 54:38
  Speaker 6: Right well, listen, Uh do you have that new video
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: Brian just put up on the Brave Leadership.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: Negative, but I will.
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna send that to you. I don't send that
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: to you right now. You should play it.
• 54:53
  Speaker 6: I also, and I'm gonna give you my sixty seconds
• 54:55
  Speaker 6: and you can run over a little bit.
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: Don't be a baby, all right. I'm being serious baby
• 55:02
  Speaker 5: right now.
• 55:04
  Speaker 6: So listen, I'm gonna send you this video that Loudon
• 55:07
  Speaker 6: made yesterday on the Community Ambassador program.
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: It's really tight, dude. It's two minutes long.
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: You should play it, will And the other thing I
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: sent you, I sent you another video just now.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: That Tom Verano made of him and Rick yesterday.
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: So I'll just tell you this, and at some point
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: you got to get this guy in the podcast to
• 55:28
  Speaker 6: His name is Tom Verano. He grew up in New
• 55:30
  Speaker 6: York State, Syracuse, New York area. This guy is unbelievable.
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: And Rick and I did this speech the day before
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: Thanksgiving at this school. They tortured their people and made
• 55:43
  Speaker 6: their adults come back.
• 55:47
  Speaker 5: The day before Thanksgiving when every kid head off. And
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: so anyway, so we go down there, we do this
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: speech and then this.
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: Guy takes the stage right after us, and he's one
• 55:58
  Speaker 6: of these speed painters that paints things upside down. You know,
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: these big giant canvases and flips it and next thing
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: you know, it's a statue of liberty.
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: It's Martin Luther King.
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: Anyway, so I just come up with this idea and
• 56:11
  Speaker 6: I'm like, oh, I got to talk to you, and
• 56:13
  Speaker 6: he wanted to talk to us first, and then I
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: followed up. But he lives in Houston, Texas today, and
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: his story is unbelievable. Dude, When he tells you your story,
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: you will cry and it will be like heartbreaking. But
• 56:27
  Speaker 6: what he went through in life, it's just the unimaginable
• 56:30
  Speaker 6: is what it is. But he's been doing his painting
• 56:33
  Speaker 6: thing for about fourteen years. It's called Emotion into Art,
• 56:37
  Speaker 6: and the inspiration that he just gives it's on another level.
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: But anyway, the punchline is this. He does a couple
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: of paintings and.
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: I got him in a whole series of schools this
• 56:48
  Speaker 6: week that are schools that we have.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: Good relationships with. He does.
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: He does these two or three paintings and these are
• 56:55
  Speaker 6: two music and Martin Luther King's words are infused in
• 56:59
  Speaker 6: and and some other great you know human He does
• 57:03
  Speaker 6: seventy portraits. This guy does seventy seven zero. But the
• 57:07
  Speaker 6: last one is rick Yarish prior to his injury.
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: So he's painting this. Rick's voice is infused in the music.
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: You don't know Rick is there. He's got this picture
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: of this regular, normal looking person. And then Rick walks
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: out at the end and he looks at the picture
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: and he goes, that's not me. And that was one
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: of the line. I got chills thinking about this too.
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: When he saw his face for the first time after
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: his injury and he sees a picture of himself with
• 57:43
  Speaker 6: his family before his.
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: Injury, it just crushes him.
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: It puts him into hopelessness again because he says, that's
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: not me. Now, twenty years later, he's looking at this
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: portrait of himself before his injury in front of one
• 57:56
  Speaker 6: hundred in front of five hundred kids, and he says,
• 57:58
  Speaker 6: that's not me, and it's not him.
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: It's that's not who rick Yarish is.
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: Rick Yarish is the man that got blown up in
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: Iraq and the man that's given hope.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: To two million students.
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: That's rick Yarish, not some boy that didn't know what
• 58:16
  Speaker 6: he was doing at the age of twenty five.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Wow, man, that is so powerful.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: Oh dude, it's cool.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: Cool, you're gonna help me get Tom on the air.
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, let's get Tom on there too. Bro. We
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: gotta we gotta squeeze him in like Leon's got to
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: pick up the pace. Dude, this is ridiculous.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: Thanks Tom, thanks for coming on, buddy, appreciate it just
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: so much. You know, you know what I should do? Hey, Tom,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: he you there? Oh, hung first, try to get him
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: beat me. You know, I've never ever had a chance
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: to be successful in hanging up on Tom.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: It's tough to get It's very Yeah, I get it
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: pretty early in the morning like this.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he just wrote he just look at look
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: at it got you? Got you? Yeah.
• 59:16
  Speaker 7: See.
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: Uh really brief here man, the the brave youth leadership classes,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: the circle training that you're doing. To tell me, tell
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: me about these things so really important. I know, we
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: went along, we had a very unpredictable, very unpredictable. It's awesome,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: but it was great. I lost so well.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: I love hearing about Ryan's culture, dude, Like that is
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: to me, honestly, like that's like taking it back to
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: like ancient medieval times, like when when that group that
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: you were with, like if you were whatever a carpenter
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: like whatever, like that group became your family.
• 59:52
  Speaker 7: Man.
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: That's like sounds like what he's doing. It sounds like
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: it's very you know, aware of the deficit, but he's
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: very strength based focus, which is really really awesome stuff.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: We need more people like that, Oh yeah, man, don't
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: we though, And not just in the construction.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: No, everywhere everywhere, Like that's what you should That's like,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: that's what it should be, man. It should be about
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: like when you go into that, when especially a profession
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: like the trades like that that becomes you should become
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: your family. You know, you should just be going there
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: your eight, your nine to five or whatever and then
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: coming back and like getting them into jiu jitsu, getting
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: them that financial literacy. Like I said, like that was
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 4: just spot on amazing, spot on yeah, uh yeah. Brave
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: switching trains here. Brave is kind of our magnum opus
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: like thing that we do where it infuses everything we
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: talk about, Like we have all these different components. We
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: got the hope and action, we got circle, we got
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: circle training, we got some leadership stuff. We got our
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: play stuff and our bully drills and the Brave classes,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: which we have one for middle school seven and eighth
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: grade and then we're gonn We have four levels in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: high school, so if you start in ninth grade in
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: one oh one, you can theoretically complete one oh four
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: and do four years of this And essentially it's taking
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: those foundational pillars. BRAVE stands for it's an acronym br AVE.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: It stands for sixteenth century bullies. So sweethearts are it's
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: just like a r as, like a text lingo type thing.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: Are action based, vulnerable, and empathetic. So they're kind of
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: like the foundational pillars that this class revolves around, and
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: we essentially take them through a journey of like our
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: hope in action, message circle, leadership stuff play, and then
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: we start taking all these skills that they kind of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: learn in the beginning of the year and they start
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: going down to the elementary classes to just play with
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: the kids, you know, but there's so much going on
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: that you know, nobody really understands. We're trying to, like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: as you progress through the class, you learn more about
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: what's happening, but like the little kids don't know that
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: they're picking up all these behaviors and all that stuff. So, yeah,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: that's kind of our suite of classes that really brings
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: everything together and it's just about you know, giving kids
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: these life skills.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: You know, yeah, real real stuff that's light years beyond
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: the classroom. Yeah yeah, man so and the playground too.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: And the playground. Yeah, it combines. It's like the classroom
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: and the playground combined.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: This is amazing though when you think about the administration
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: that's picking up on this and what they're learning, Yeah,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: what they're carrying and bringing home to their lives, to
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: their husbands, their wives, whatever.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, well you know the kids. It kind of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: goes into our Community Ambassador program, which is essentially it's
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: essentially where you know, we have different levels. It could
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: be like a weekly visit thing, could be like every
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: other week, maybe even once a month, but it's about
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: like getting us, our team members like to become part
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: of your community. And we've done we did three of them.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: This year was the first time we've done them, and
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: they've just been outstanding. I think we got at least
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: five or so lined up for next year already. But yeah,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: our guys, just Pat and Joe spend the year there
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: with you, like taking the schools and the students through
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: a you know, we kind of do like a bit
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: of an orientation in the beginning, where we're just trying
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: to figure out where their culture is, what kind of
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: things we want to you know, work on them with
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: what the school is really prioritizing. And then yeah, we
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: just take them through a bunch of different stuff from
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: our Circle training for students, for educators, our Brave Shorter program,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: which is like a six week type program which kind
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: of combined it's kind of like just takes some foundational
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: stuff from the classes over a shorter period. So yeah,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: that that's a really powerful program we run right now.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you and your brother yea, Are you guys gonna
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: be doing any Spartan stuff?
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: Well, I I wanted to do Joe. I don't think
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: is I wanted to do Killington this year. I don't think.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: I haven't been doing the running. I've been freaking working
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: out like crazy, but I haven't been doing the running part.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: And that's the part where it will kill me if
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: I don't change. So I don't know if it's in
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: the cars from me this year, but I've been I've
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: been working out a lot, most I've ever done in
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: my life. So doing pretty good.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: Otherwise, just big, big props to you, Joe, Pat Loud,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: and Tom Rick of course Leon Winton. Who am I
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: forgetting here?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: Abby? Yeah, yeah, just amazing. I think that's everybody, Chad, Chad. Yeah,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: we got like eleven, twelve, thirteen people and I haven't
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: had Chatty's hard.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: To keep track now and and you know, just this
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: conversation this morning was uh yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: That was that was wild.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Thanks for coming on here, man, Thanks for schlepping all
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: the way here, dude. It is an absolute pleasure. It
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: always is, dude, always. I appreciate it so much. Thank
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: you for your time, your energy. I know you didn't
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: get a whole heck of a lot of talk time
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: this morning. Yeah, but it was. It was fascinating.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Tom always does stuff on the fly. And for sure, geez,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: you know you you mentioned running tomorrow morning special Olympics. Uh,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: they have their summer games Saturday at Saint Mike's and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: the Torch run on the way to Saint Mike's is
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: going to be coming right through Barry tomorrow and I'm
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: going to try and live stream it here unaired out
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: and take our viewers, our listeners, our followers with me
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: and see if I can live stream it.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: Nice.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, I'm tuning into my Yeah about eight thirty or so,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: and it's we're gonna be going right through Barry Wow.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and then we're gonna be you know, and
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: then I'm gonna be quickly shifting gears and jumping into
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: the studio. Back in the studio. I may not come
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: to a full stop at stop signs tomorrow morning. I'm
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: just saying, Okay, it might be a slow roll through.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: We'll see, but.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: I'll be back in the studio as close to nine
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: as as possible. I know I'm gonna be late, and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: then I'm gonna be connecting in with a great guy
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: named Chris Hatch who is started up Upper Valley Cars
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: and Coffee. He's gonna be doing classic car shows all
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: up and down the Connecticut River Valley this summer, and
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: I'm just so excited to chat with them. We've got
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of stuff going on. It's gonna be uh,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: it's gonna be a great day tomorrow. So thanks for
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: coming in. Mann. Appreciate you so much. Brian McKeon uh
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 3: from Sweethearts and Heroes, along with Tom Murphy and our
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: new friend Ryan Ahearn. Absolute pleasure to have you on.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: Thanks man all right, Buddy.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Puts the bird had told fat people att