Blue-Collar BS

This week we get into the stretch of the year most business owners dread: the final seven or eight weeks before the holidays hit and half the workforce disappears into deer blinds, vacation time, and holiday shutdowns. We talk through why this crunch catches so many owners off guard every single year, even though it’s completely predictable, and what separates the organizations that handle it smoo...

This week we welcome Mayce DelValle and Missy Washam, co-founders of Impactful Message, a leadership training company built around connection, curiosity, and helping leaders learn how to lead, not just manage. We dig into one of the biggest traps they see across generations: blaming each other instead of asking questions. Mayce and Missy share why curiosity, not control, is the real foundation of...

This week Steve brings back some real-world insight from an industry event he attended, Driven by Innovation, where leaders from several automotive and manufacturing companies talked about labor shortages, automation, and AI. One panelist’s comment stuck with both of us: instead of hiring to backfill every open role, their company is pausing hiring and focusing on developing the people they alread...

This week we welcome back Matt Guse, owner of MRS Machining, for his second appearance on the show. Matt is also a board member of the Chippewa Economic Development Corporation and Chippewa Valley Technical College, and an NCAA Division III football official. We talk about the shifting employment landscape and how younger workers often expect to leapfrog straight to leadership without putting in t...

This week we dig into a topic every business owner deals with but rarely talks about openly: cash flow. Not revenue, not sales volume, but the actual timing of money moving in and out of a business, and why that timing matters more than most owners realize. We talk through what strong cash flow looks like in practice, invoicing quickly, collecting on time, and knowing predictable expenses well bef...

This week's guest is Sue Schuster, partner at BizFi.io, where she helps small businesses access the right kind of capital to grow. Before finance, Sue spent 18 years building and running a swim school with her parents, eventually selling it after COVID upended the business, so she's coming at this from real experience building and exiting a company, not just advising from the outside. We get into...

This week we dig into one of the trickiest conversations in small business: handing a family business down to the next generation. It's a topic that comes up constantly in the work we both do outside the show, and it rarely goes the way anyone expects. We talk about the gap between owning a business and actually operating it, and how often parents assume they're still running the day-to-day when t...

This week's guest is Cary Sparrow, founder and CEO of WageScape, a company that pulls together the world's largest and most current labor market data set. Before building WageScape, Cary spent time on nuclear submarines in the Navy and had a long career in engineering, military consulting, and operations leadership. We get into how WageScape works, scanning job ads across the country every day to...

This week's episode is a little different. On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, we set aside the usual format to talk about where we were that day, what we remember, and how it shaped the years that followed. We walk through the morning as it unfolded for each of us, from the confusion of realizing what was actually happening to the strange stillness that settled over everything in the hours...

This week on the show we talk with Jared Millar, co-founder and head of operations at Big Blue Collar, a growth partner built specifically for blue collar businesses. Before getting into marketing and operations, Jared spent years running his own tile setting business, so he's coming at this from inside the trades, not just as an outside consultant. A lot of the conversation centers on a mindset s...

We're joined by Jim Vinoski, a Gen Xer who spent over three decades on factory floors before turning to writing about American manufacturing. He wrote for Forbes for seven years and is releasing a book profiling 22 of the best American manufacturers, built on stories he collected from a career spent inside the industry rather than looking at it from the outside. We talk about how manufacturing has...

Daniel Walsh grew up with a father who was a plumber, but he couldn't have foreseen that his career would eventually lead him to serve people just like his dad. He ended up creating a tech platform for the trades. Daniel is the founder of VeroSkills, an AI hiring platform built to solve one of the biggest headaches in the trades, finding good people fast, without the cost of a full staffing agency...

This week we're joined by Toby Van Sistine, Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Builders Association (MBA), whose path into home building started with a detour into aerospace engineering before he landed in construction for good. We dig into a theme this show returns to often: why Gen Z isn't seeing a clear path into the trades, and how Toby's own son found his way into an electrical apprentices...

This week on the show we're talking about something most business owners never think about until they can't find people to hire the pipeline. Tom Hermann is an educator who spent 24 years as a principal and now works on connecting schools with businesses through experiential learning. And he's got something important to tell you. There's a massive gap between what schools teach and what the real w...

This week on the show we're exploring something most business owners don't talk about the mental game. Brad's been writing about his golf experiences and how they directly parallel running a business. Not in a cute, surface level way. In a real way that matters to how you lead and make decisions. The thing about golf is it reveals exactly what's happening in your head. You can have all the physica...

This week on the show we're talking about something that might be the most important thing you never thought about who you're spending time with. Jamar Jones wrote a book called "Change Your Circle, Change Your Life" because he realized that his ability to consistently change his circle of people was what got him where he is. Not his skills alone. Not his hustle. The people around him. Most busine...

This week on the show we're discussing a real life example of how home service businesses operate when they don't have their systems dialed in. Without the proper CRM and real processes, you and your team are winging it. You're losing time and money while everyone's frustrated because they're not on the same page. In this example a large landscaping project was what the homeonwere needed. They cal...

Brooke Laing is a steam fitter and welder apprentice in her third year with UA Local 46 in Toronto. She's also the Chief of Strategy for the Sisterhood of Trades and just started her own podcast. So she's got something to say about what it's really like for women coming into the trades right now. The barriers are real. Women have to prove themselves in ways men don't. There's harassment that super...

A lot of younger workers are going through major organizational change for the first time. When leadership announces big shifts without spelling out what success looks like, they're left trying to figure it out on their own. They came in with their trust bucket full. But when the clarity doesn't show up, that bucket empties fast. The real problem isn't the change itself. It's announcing change wit...

David Hewitt is one of the first guests we've had who's led teams across the world - China, Europe, Asia, and North America. This gives David a completely different perspective than many of us would have. One of the starkest differences is how people view work. In China, people didn't mind hustling because it got them to a goal. In Europe, work hours are strict and asking someone to stay late is b...

When uncertainty hits whether it's weather, natural disasters, or the unexpected how you respond reveals your leadership. We talk about what separates leaders who have plans from leaders who are making it up as they go. The difference between chaos and calm isn't luck. It's preparation. It's knowing what matters when everything else is falling apart. It's writing down who does what, what gets prot...

Let's welcome Pat Riley onto the show this week. As an entrepreneur for years, Pat made a big pivot into working for someone else. That shift gives him a unique view from both the owner's and employee's side. This conversation challenged stereotypes we all hear Gen Z isn't lazy, Boomers aren't just selfish stock watchers, and bringing decades of experience into a new role doesn't mean you're stuck...

We break away from our usual educational episodes to talk about what's actually going on in our lives. Steve's daughter is graduating, Brad's rebuilding a trailer, and the roasting begins immediately starting with Steve's 40 yards of concrete project that never happened. Our conversation bounces from home improvement disasters to paint color debates (chartreuse with zebra stripes, anyone?) to what...

The trades can't find people. Employers know this. Yet most are still ghosting qualified applicants and ignoring an entire demographic that wants in. Zoey Bryant's story shows both problems at once young workers getting shut out and women never making it past the application stage. Zoey dropped out of college after realizing she hated classrooms. Her mom suggested welding. She went to trade school...

Brad's Friday game night exists because he got uncomfortable during COVID and started networking. That group of strangers a travel agent, Microsoft expert, idea coach, and HR consultant became the friends now playing ridiculous word games together. More importantly, they became the network that solves real business problems. That network paid off when a client texted Friday at 10:30 AM needing 2,0...