The $120k Jobs Nobody Wants. (Jocko Willink)

Who who's going to fight the wars if a war comes? Well, this is a very similar thing, right? Who's going to weld the ships? Who's going to manufacture the weapons? Who's going to actually have the skills to do that? You know, one thing you mentioned a couple times was you know, that the fact that we got an average age of welders at your company your prior company was 54 years old. Uh as you know, I'm also in the business of people working with their hands. We've got people that are manufacturing things in America that haven't been manufactured in a long time here. Uh passing on. We were lucky enough to grab some of that knowledge. You know, Pete was knowledge from some of these people that were older than 54 years old, you know, that were 65. We've lost some of those mentors at Origin that were passing on first-hand knowledge of how to do this stuff. Is there something that we could do better as a country um to help steer people in the right direction? I know I just worked with a university up in uh Indiana called Ivy Tech and they teach trades. That's what they're doing. And you know, I had an interesting conversation with them. It's like the highest paying job that you can get out of Ivy Tech is a elevator repair man. And they make like 80 grand coming out of that school. You make 80 grand a year. And you got a a job, a career, a life. What do how are we failing to educate the young people in America that they don't necessarily have to go to college. get a degree and they don't necessarily have to look for uh some kind of a job white-collar job that if you go and you get a trade and you learn how to do something and you I always say this, the SEAL Teams on the enlisted side, this is a as blue-collar as it gets. I mean, that's what you're doing. You're working a machine gun. You're building demolition charges, your it is and your moving company. We always joked about the fact that we're always moving stuff. But where are we making that mistake? How could we do better in America? Well, I I think [clears throat] it starts with the perception of these jobs, right? So, if you think about at home, right? The [clears throat] parents think now, "Hey, I don't want you to be a plumber. I want you to go to college. " Well, if you look at the data, you say, "Okay, look at you got a What is it? 1. 6 trillion of college debt and you have no And I don't want to offend anybody, but this will. You have you're getting, you know, degrees in like art history. Right. Now, no offense to art history, but how many historians of art do you think there are in the world that actually operate as art historians? I Seven? There can't be many, right? I mean I mean, I don't know, but there there are not the there are not thousands of these jobs and what do they pay? So, there's this perception, "Hey, you go to college, it's your ticket. " Well, the data would actually show if you if you do a skilled trade, at least my experience, so we have a plumbing division as well. Look, you have you have plumbers that easily make 80, 90, six figures. I know welders that worked for us at Shipyard Staffing. If you're not making six figures, you're not any good. At GroundWorks, you know, a good foreman, it's 90 to 120,000 dollars a year. Now, you got to work for it. But think about the perception of a kid in high school saying, "Hey, look, I'm going to go do be a electrician. " Now, that's a skill that will They can go anywhere and do anything and I would argue economically in today's world, their value is only increasing because there's fewer and fewer Scarcity does cause does drive value. So, it's a kind of I believe it's this we've been shoved this idea for the last 20, 25 years that you have to go to college to be successful. That has to change. How does that change? It's candidly parents. I always believe it starts at home. The perception of hey, my Majani and Sally or whatever, they need to go to college to be successful. Not for everyone. I'll tell you just a quick story at GroundWorks. I have a uh and you know him, Flint Cockrum joined our company. He used to be with EF. Um you know, Harvard Business School, McKinsey. He's divisional vice president of our East Coast division our Eastern division. He has a counterpart out west. His name is Jeffrey Martin. Jeffrey Martin went to Moberly High School. That's where he went. So, this notion of meritocracy is alive and well at GroundWorks and that's just a perfect example of it. If if if we celebrate the minimum that work with their hands and not demean them, we'll get more of them. And then I think look, there has to be some kind of mindset that says look, we as a country need to unite around developing more skilled trades and pushing it back down to the high school. I don't know if you know, but I don't know any high schools that really have, you know, that kind of craft anymore. And it's not for everybody. Look, going to college is not for everybody, but there are there are things we need to do as a country and I know you know this better than

me. You know, men and women that lead this country from a legislative standpoint need to figure out a way to push this agenda because if they don't, national security in my view will be at risk. I only know that from shipyard staffing. And if you can't repair these boats and you can't build them. And I don't even that's not even including planes and tanks and everything else. They have still has to be welded. An art history degree is not going to get you there. So, how we solve this as a country? Look again, my view it has to start at home. Parents need to think okay, there's still a great livelihood for my my son or daughter by being a skilled tradesman. And we have to as a society celebrate it. Like part of the thing at GroundWorks is we're celebrating a profession. We honor you cuz you work with your hands. You're not beneath me. " Now, most of these are history majors. They end up slinging you coffee at Starbucks, right? So, you know, you look at them and you say, "Okay, there's 200 grand down the toilet that you and I will have to pay for. " Conversely, you go to all the parents out there, if you have kids, they can go to a trade school. They come out not in debt, but making money. And they you know, they have a nice six-figure job, all to make a ton of money. So, it's it it's the has to start at home, but I think legislative legislatively we need to do better at celebrating the skilled trades and put a concerted effort on building it. Just like you would build a military. Yeah. It's really what we're building. And then like you mentioned, I'm in the manufacturing business as well doing it here in America. Beautiful. — Um you guys are are you how much are you able to keep your manufacturing in America? It's all in America. So, I did mention this to where vertically integrated as you know, we have we have our own software business, but we make our own uh steel products as well. So, I get too technical cuz you'll fall asleep, but you know, when we secure foundations, we get to the footer and we put brackets on and we drive steel to support the foundations of a home. Well, all that steel uh we patented our own products and we actually make it in a 120,000 sq ft facility in Rosewood, South Carolina. You know, we have lasers and and machines and you know, 40 guys out there getting after it. So, that's not imported steel. We do it right here in America. Um you know, all our pumps and dehumidifiers are also made here in America. It's our little part to serve the country's. If you can do it, you should do it. And again, we we're not big manufacturers like you guys, but if you're going to serve the country in any little way, you need to serve the country. And part of the way of serving the country is making it here in America. I think we saw with pandemic and and what's going on in China and the rest of the world? Hey man, it'd be nice to have a supply chain from some South Carolina versus from India that's sitting off the coast here right now in a boat. I I've always I've I'm a very lucky person in a lot of different ways, but certainly uh the luck the luck of being a kind of obsessed with building stuff in America and having that supply chain up and you know, Pete and the rest of the team at Origin good you know, we when COVID hit, we were kind of looking around look, we were it was horrible and you know, people are losing their jobs. It was horrible, but we were kind of looking around like nodding our head going, we were on the right path and we're not worried about we're not we don't have containers sitting off the coast of wherever waiting to get here. We have our supply chain. It's an American supply chain and then like you said, we're employing Americans and we got people that are building this country and taking these skills. You know, I had a conversation with someone was talking about you know, people not being fit for the military, right? You I'm sure you've seen articles like that. You know, they say that the kids are spending so much time on video games or whatever that they don't won't even be fit to join the military. You know, and I kind of said, well, who who's going to fight the wars if a war comes? Well, this is a very similar thing, right? Who's going to weld the ships? Who's going to manufacture the weapons? Who's going to actually have the skills to do that? And yeah, this uh the idea I think you mentioned that who's going to technical schools nowadays? You know, it's just I don't even know. I the like the high school where my kids went, they don't they are trying now to reopen the the automotive, you know, repair section. When I went to high school, all the kids were working on cars. It was part of, you know, everyone was building their own car and doing that. And then a lot of them went on to do that for a living. Where's that where Who's going to do this stuff now if we don't refocus America on the skills that we need as a nation to be self-sufficient? Could not agree more. — Just don't need to say more. And

agree more. And if it's not done, Jocko, there will be real ramifications to it, right? I mean it's a silent killer at the moment because it's getting done. Mhm. People don't even know it. Mhm. But again, average age I read that average age of you in manufacturing job in the country is 55. Average age. Yeah. I got to throw one more thing out there cuz I've just for anyone that's 18, 19, 20, 22 years old, whatever you are. A lot of times I talk to people and they say, "Well, you know, I don't want to be doing that kind of physical labor my whole life. " Well, I'm going to tell you right now, if you go if you become an electrician or you become a plumber, you're not going to do that if you're smart and you're hard working and you really get after it and you have the intention of elevating in that environment, you'll absolutely do it. I mean, who's the guy you were talking about that's a high school graduate? Uh that's running the — Martin. So Jeffrey Martin. Is he right now How old is Jeffrey Martin? He's 32. His dad owned the business. He started at. So he was slinging steel at like 14 or 15, right? So his experience level is crazy, right? So uh But he did 20 years of slinging steel. He's not in a crawl space anymore, you know? And so my point is that and I've got a I've got multiple friends like this that started off they were electrician. And they were an electrician for 4 years, 6 years, and all of a sudden they got put in charge of two electricians. — [snorts] — And then they got put in charge of four electricians. Then they went and said, "You know what? If I'm going to be running four electricians, I might as well just have my own business. " — That's right. — And they start their own businesses, and now they have 28 electricians working for them. And you can go in any one of these trades, if you have the mindset, and you want to learn, grow, and you want to take a little extra time to understand the financial part of it, if you have that mindset, you can run any kind of business that you want. So, don't think when I'm sitting here or Matt's sitting here saying, "Hey, we need people that are going to know how to weld. " We do. But, this doesn't mean you're going to be necessarily welding until you're 62 years old. You can if you want to, but if your goal is to grow out of that role, you'll have the experience to do it, you'll have the money to do it, and you will definitely, in this country, have the opportunity to do it. That's what America provides. 100%. The notion that, by the way, you can't be educated by not going to college is false. The notion is you go to college, you get educated. You can be educated by doing your craft, and still learning, and being a learned adult. You just have to take the time to do it. You'd have to read the books. You have to study on your own. There's the notion that these some things are 100% correlated are wrong. That's part of the mindset is I know a lot of very smart foremen. You join our company, you start as an installer, takes you a year to get to foreman, if you're any good. Then after that, a couple years, you can move to super, and then production manager, and then ultimately to general manager, then ultimately to regional manager, and then divisional, and then hopefully one day CEO. But, the point is you still have to take and do the work. Do the work of growing your mind, investing in yourself, and you don't have to have a sheepskin to say it. You just have to have the mindset to go learn. And and the notion is the two are separated is a fallacy, in my opinion. And it's just all, you know, you mentioned uh Peter Thiel, right? Peter Thiel, like he's hiring people and he's been doing that. He doesn't care if you went to college or not. And he's running a freaking, you know, he's running a giant uh giant company that's moving money, billions of dollars. Look at all these founders, uh the big founders, the big name founders as you see out there, Musk and Thiel and uh Zuck and all these guys. They don't have a degree. I call him Zuck. I call like I know him. Yeah, he's your bro. He's my bro. So. Uh awesome stuff. Probably a good place. So we get to the So let's just look, where we at right now, GroundWorks? What's the future? Well, I think ultimately you we want to continue the mission, of course, expand. I Look, I think ultimately this is a public company. I think we're we're getting to the point we're going to be so big, you know, going to need the capital to ultimately go public. I think right now, if you think about our business, we are in the water management displacement business. But, you know, we operate with an NPS um over 70. NPS is net promoter score, which is how you measure your performance with consumers. You know, we're going to move into other home services lines. We we believe our mindset and our ability to service the customer, we think there are other lines that we can get into to further expand our business. You know, gutters and um plumbing and other things. I think we're just beginning to build this business. And so, ultimately, I think GroundWorks will be my passion will be that this is a business that lasts a hundred years. That a business that celebrates, again, men and women that work with their hands. They can go for a not a job, but for a

profession. That's built with a common sense of respect and dignity, where it's a true meritocracy, that doesn't matter where you come from or what degree you have. That you can come to a company like GroundWorks and and make it to the very top.