Why the Trades Need a Cultural Reset to Attract and Retain the Next Generation

This is straight straight straight out of Crumpton with your host, Greg Crumpton. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to another episode of street out of Crumpton. I am Greg Crumpton, your host for the next, I don't know, thirty, forty five minutes. We'll see how it goes. How long our guests can put up with me. She may get mad and leave early, but hopefully not. I hope you all have had a great day. Looking forward to chatting with this young lady. I have been following along with her, I guess, for about three months now or so, mostly on LinkedIn and seeing what she is doing regarding the skilled trades. She is an apprentice. She is going to school. She's also getting married and all kinds of other cool stuff. So Brooke Lang is joining us today. I said that like four times where I wouldn't screw up and I did. Okay. Nobody ever gets it right. My rec well, I knew a guy that developed some property laying properties that spelled it your way, so I should know that. But regardless, welcome to the show, Brooke. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. Excited to be here. Well, as my friend Mitch Joel, who's a Canadian, says, who are you and what do you do? So my name is Brooke Lang. I'm a third year steam fitting and welding apprentice out of the UA Local forty six, which is based in Toronto, Ontario. I've been welding for about five years. So since I was eighteen, I've been a steam fitter for about three years now, the way the apprenticeship years work out. But I also serve as the chief of strategy for the Sisterhood of Trades, which is for lack of a better terms, the largest interactive group chat for women in the trades across the world. It's mainly Canada and the States, but we do have some members all over the place. So there's about eleven hundred of us in there right now. Awesome. Yeah. I need to see if my friend Ruth Gill is in there from Ireland. Yeah. We do have a couple of you from Ireland, so that's likely If she's not, I'll introduce you to her. She's she's been on the podcast before and a heck of a refrigeration mechanic over there. So. All right. All right. So I have been an apprentice before in my life, not always the best, but incredibly useful way to learn. I love going to school and then flipping back over to the job so you can apply what you learned. I think that's awesome. What are you doing day to day right now at your level on the job site? Are you welding or are you fitting pipe? What are you doing right now mostly? So I'm a dual apprentice, but because I'm not licensed in welding, I'm not allowed to weld pipe. So I'm allowed to weld pipe at school, all that stuff. I've done my first term of welding school. I've completed my first term of fitting school and I'm currently in my second term. But my day to day right now, before I left, I was working in a boiler house. So I was doing a like tank replacement kind of. They had an underground tank and they wanted to do two larger above ground tanks to supply diesel to all the generators inside the hospital. So that mainly consisted of a lot of threading, a lot of threading stuff out, a lot of really old pipes that we ripped out, a lot of shots drilled, which is like those drop in anchors that you use to hang pipe. Know them well. Know them well. Everyone calls them different things. So I always have to be like, oh, like the drop in anchors. I think that's the actual name for them. That's what I call them anyway. I don't know if that's a hundred percent right, but Yeah. But a lot of because I was mainly doing refurbs for like the past six months, I'd say, it's a lot of fitting in tiny places and doing uncomfortable work that a lot of people don't wanna do, but I like those jobs because they're challenging. And I am a person who likes to be challenged. Awesome. Awesome. So apprenticeship is four years of classroom up there? Five years here. Five years. Five years with three school terms. Alright. So we've had a fair amount of Canadians on here with us because I'm a huge Canadian ally. I have friends in Canada. Tell us what the red seal means. The red seal to me anyways, the way it was described to me is that once I'm licensed, I can go work anywhere in the world without having to take additional testing. Gotcha. So my license is basically applicable anywhere that I want to go work. Long as I'm working. That's your passport to travel and work all in one. That's cool. Yeah. I don't think we have anything of that magnitude other than a journeyman's card that's applied across the UA, but I'm not sure about the worldwide deal. All right. So you're twenty three, if I did my math right. Turning twenty three. Yes. And how in the world did you wind up? And I say that with a big booming smile, how did you wind up in our world of MEP, electrical, mechanical, plumbing? How'd you get on this side of the coin? I played volleyball growing up. So I originally went to college for health sciences is the best way to put it. I ultimately wanted to be a diabetes nurse because I'm type one diabetic as well. So I was like, oh, at least I can be like All of my nurses were never diabetic, so they would be like, Oh, you need to do this. But they didn't like understand my side of it. So I was like, Oh, I can be the nurse that also understands. So I tried to go and I think I lasted like three weeks before I dropped out. And it was like, I've always been very hands on. I took like We didn't have like tech classes kind of thing. Like we didn't have automotive or anything like that when I was in high school, at my school anyways. But I did take tech, which was like computer sciences and then woodworking was the other half. So I was like, okay, I like that when I was in grade nine. My dad worked in the automotive industry growing up. He was always really handy. So I was always like out in the garage, changing tires with him or doing this, building that. So I kind of got that experience hands on with like tools and stuff. And then when I decided to leave college, I had no idea what I was gonna do, but I always thought welding was really cool. My mom was like, Welding? Really? Like of all the trades that you can pick, you're going to pick welding. Like why that one? And I was like, I don't know. Could take two pieces of metal and make them one. That just sounds cool to me. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos and then like, I think two weeks later I started at a private welding school. I fell in love with it from there and then took me about a year and a half to get actually initiated into my union. That's quite a good story. You know, often people say, Oh, are you against college? I'm like, Hell no, I'm not against college. I'm pro college for the right people, and I'm pro trades for the right people. Because for somebody like you, obviously, and like me, we weren't cut out to go to college. We were cut out to do what we're doing. Part of what I'm trying to do, Brooke, is to create awareness that there are opportunities outside of going to traditional college or university where you can have a great life, great career, have fun, enjoy what you do, and you get a nontraditional education by going through the trades program. So I'm certainly and I come my whole family is a traditionally educated group of people except me. And I went, you know, the trades route. And I'll just, I worry sometimes that we still have that stigma that you being a young female, your parents going, what do you mean going into trades? What? What? I want us to get to a point to where that's a natural conversation, not a shock. I agree. And I think we will. I really do because there's so many people your age that are beginning to see that traditional education, whether you're paying for it or not. It's not a slam dunk anymore to get a great job and to have a great career. So many young people that I know and I talk to, they went to four years of college and they wound up with a degree that they can't get a job for anything close to what they study. And when they get a job, it doesn't pay anything like what they thought it was going to out of the gates. And then a lot of times there's debt associated with that. Where you're going to school, your employer pays into a fund. So that pays for your school and you get paid while you work, while you're going to school. So I love it. I mean, we've just got to create more goodies. So how can you, or how do you do probably is a better question, entice others that are in your position you were three years ago before you started apprenticeship. How how do you get them to think about this being an option? So I recently did an event with the Canadian Welding Bureau, CWB. They went to an elementary school kind of in our area of Toronto and they are targeting now actually the younger kids. So instead of targeting high school age kids, they're going and talking to kids that are in that like grade four to seven range because they find that with high school students, usually by the time you get into like grade nine, ten, you already have an idea of what you want to do. So it's a little harder to be like, hey, the trades are also an option. You know what I mean? So they're putting it kind of out there for younger kids at an earlier age now so that when they do get to high school and first day of grade nine, your teacher says, well, what do you want to be when you grow up? They can be like, oh, I've talked to this girl when I was in grade seven and she was a welder and I thought that was really cool so that they can kind of start exploring those avenues earlier. But also the power of social media. I think a lot of people really underestimate the influence that social media has on us nowadays. Like I've posted TikToks that I like filmed on my break at work and it took me fifteen seconds and now it has two million views. And so many girls and even young men as well have reached out to me being like, how did you get into the trades? Where did you start? Like, do you have any advice for me? And I love being able to talk to those people and because I didn't take a traditional route either to get into the trades or to go to college either way. Like I tried going here, I went there. I was kind of all over the place. So I can speak from a place of not knowing what I wanted to do and just finding something and kind of diving headfirst into it. How are your parents and your family? How do they look at you now as a, you know, a third year apprentice or do you see them like, that's my girl kind of deal? Like how do you Yeah. My parents are so proud of me. That's All the time they tell me, especially because like with being diabetic, going into such a physically demanding workforce as well, they're just, honestly, they've always been proud of me, anything that I've done, but I feel like they're extra proud of me now because I have a good career ahead of myself and they know that I'll be set up between like the benefits that my union offers. So like, you know, the pension, healthcare, kind of all of that stuff. And then also making a very good wage on top of that alongside my fiance also being in the trade. So that's good stuff. That's what I want us to get to, to where young people in general, not just female, have the comfort with their parents to have that open dialogue. Know, to be honest, I mean, my mom forever did not want me to be in the trades because my dad was. And, you know, our my my generation's parents wanted always like, well, you've gotta do better. But what the hell is wrong with being an air conditioning guy? That's like an awesome, like Yeah. I mean, for me, it's the ultimate thing. Like, I mean, everybody in the planet should strive to be a HVAC mechanic. Okay? That's just like that's the bottom floor of everything. Yep. But I'll back up a little bit. You know, my my sister, three years ahead of me, went to college, got a PhD, all this stuff. And then, you know, here I come, you know, Carhartt wearing boot dragging kind of guy. It was just different. And Yeah. We gotta embrace that that that route and and getting comfortable with those conversations. So I love the fact that you have that rapport with your parents and that they're cool. Alright. I'm assuming they're cool. Tell them I said they're cool. So Sisterhood of the Trades? Sisterhood of Trades. Yes. Sisterhood of Trades. Tell us about it. Yeah. So as I mentioned, it's an international kind of group chat for women in the trades, but we did recently open it up to allies as well. So we have a kind of separate role where they have different access than like all the trades women do, where they can still like see the conversations that we're having and all of that stuff and just kind of support us on our journey type of thing. So we have lots of our male allies in there. Lots of men that are in like decently high positions of power who just absolutely love what we've been doing with the sisterhood. So that's been really nice to see. But basically the sisterhood of trades was created by four women, Noosh, Zoe, Carly and Hannah. So those are a few of the girls that I work with now. Just because like I said, through the power of social media, they kind of realised that women in the trades were already having different struggles and different issues that like men couldn't understand or anything like that. So we kind of found a little corner of the internet where other tradeswomen could come and just feel comfortable and talk about anything like at all times of the day. It doesn't matter if it's two in the morning, there'll be people in the chat talking, whether it's about like their hobbies or their pets or things that happened at work, anything like that. So it's really just like if you had a massive group of friends that all understand what you go through at work every single day. And how many different trades do you have represented? So many. Like, fifty, I would say. Well, that's cool that you know? Because what a new construction plumber goes through is different than what a up the electrician would go through, which is different than yeah. So that's cool. You get a bunch of different views on that. And it's very stuff like, it's very organized too. So, like, we have individual chats for like each trade that we have. If somebody joins and they're in a new trade that we don't have, we'll add a chat for them and then try to find more women that are in that trade as well. And then it breaks down into like we have all of I think between all of the moderators and like all the admin team, have like four or five podcasts that are hosted by So we have all of our podcast information and we have like a section for curious about the trades too. So that's my favorite part of the Discord actually, is we have a whole different area of our Discord for people who are curious about trades. So they come into the server, they're like, Oh, I've always thought about like being an electrician, but I don't know where to start. So it's like, we can verify you. We can get you connected with people in your area. We can get you connected with people in the trades that you're interested in just to kind of get more information. And we have helped actually a few girls now get into the trades just by coming to our server and being like, hey, I'm interested in this. And a couple of weeks later, we found women in. Is so cool. Yeah. I would love to learn more about being an ally to help promote the thing. So I try to do that. We have my company. We have a women in HVAC group just within our company. It's mostly administrative and leadership ladies. Just because, I mean, we have like twenty out of out of five thousand five hundred people in the field, only like twenty are female. And, you know, I just want to help promote the opportunities. I mean, we all say the trades are short handed. You know, you don't have enough labor. And but for the first two thousand years, we've excluded you guys from the opportunity when you're the smarter of the two of us anyway. Like how dumb are we? So about time we got our poop in a pile and started inviting you in. So that's awesome stuff. What do you want the group to grow into? How do you see it as it matures and keeps rolling? What what what does it become? Our ultimate goal is to fund scholarships for women who are looking to get into the trades because Noosh, she's our CEO. She's talked about it multiple times, but she was one of the women who grew up in a family that didn't want her to go into the trades because trades are for men and not for women kind of thing. So she the only reason she was able to do what she's doing now is because she was given, like rewarded a scholarship. So she kind of has made it her mission and by association, all of our mission to be able to fund scholarships for women that are kind of in similar situations. Just because, you know, tools get expensive, school can be very expensive even if you're looking to go into the trades because now like I know trying to get into my union, they won't even look at you if you don't have any prerequisite like knowledge or schooling or anything like that. That's gotta change. There's no way that we can continue to alright. So we're we're we've got seven people retiring and four coming in, or we have five people retiring and two coming in depending on which I mean, the math is about the same. Everybody can't have experience. And I think about this a lot as a former tech, as a tech minded person, but also as a business person and having run my own firm, have to figure out the balance of bringing in green horns and giving them room to grow without expecting them to produce revenue day one. And that's where we've gotten to as a society or specifically as an, I'll say for my industry, the HVAC industry. And we've got to figure out, we take a little more or a little less profit on the front end to ensure that we have a pipeline of folks coming forever? Because we're so freaking, and I mean, work for a big company. I get it. It takes a lot to make the machine turn, but if we don't start doing something different and we are only concentrating on making that person as productive and as profitable day one, we're not going to have anybody to worry about in five years because we're not bringing that pipeline of folks in. A worry for me. And when I talk to business leaders about how they're solving that equation, a lot of them are having to be sneaky about it. Like they'll beef up a job and then they'll slide that helper or that trades person in to get them some exposure knowing they're not going to be that productive and hoping they don't get caught doing so where that should be the norm ultimately in my view. So I think people are beginning to realize that we have to do that. Everybody doesn't come with five years of anything when you're eighteen. I mean, I was going to say if you're eighteen, do you want me to start working when I was twelve? Yeah. Yes. Very good point. What does NUSH, is that how you pronounce it? N U NUSH, what does she do? What's her trade? She is in manufacturing. So she worked in aerospace before, but she has recently moved into kind of more of a customer facing position. So she's going to be traveling, doing like trade shows with them kind of stuff. So awesome. Yeah. Well, one day she'll get up into the HVAC ranks. Maybe. All right. So flipping back over to the I love how you guys say grade seven instead of we say seventh grade. I went and I've talked to several groups of kids over the last couple of years. I find the sick grade six and grade seven kids to be very open to learning about what we do. Absolutely. And I take it because they haven't gone to high school and got too cool for school. Because once they hit that high school, they're like so freaking conscientious about social status. And I think an eleven or twelve year old is smart enough to be curious, but is not tainted by society yet. When I was talking to this last group, it was at my niece's career day at her school. She's a teacher. So I went and I started it really simply. I just held up my iPhone and said, what happens when I press that icon? And they're like, that's how I tell my mom to come pick me up. I'm like, no, that's the result of pressing that icon. Here's what happens. And walking them through a little bit of the telephones, a little bit on the power side, generation of power, distribution of power. They were like, holy crap, man. I never, like, knew it took all of that just to tell my mom to come pick me up at six thirty. They were very receptive as opposed to trying to tell a ninth grader that who was like, yeah. Whatever, old dude. I'm good. And I mean, that's probably the right age to attack. I agree because when I was there as well, the CWB has like a welding simulator, like a MIG welding simulator that they bring. And it's basically like, just like the, I don't even know what you call it because I haven't TIG welded or MIG welded in so long, but it's just like the gun basically. And it has a screen on it and it like simulates what it would be like to weld. It shows you like the angles that you need and like how fast you need to go, all of that kind of stuff. VR without the headset. Pretty much. And all the kids were like fighting over getting to do it again because they were like, this is so cool. Like, I like this a lot. So they would like do the welding simulation and then they would come talk to me and I brought I stopped by my union hall. My instructor there is great, my welding instructor. And he gave me a whole bunch of different like examples of welds. So I took it to the school, I set it up on the table and I was like talking to the kids being like, okay, like, so this is like the first stage of it. And then this is what it looks like halfway through. And like, this is what a good weld looks like. This is what a bad weld looks like. And they actually had so many questions and such good questions. I was surprised because I was like, when I was their age, I didn't have anybody come to my school and be like, hey, I'm a welder. Like, this is what that's all about. But now like seeing how interested kids actually are in that, it like kind of sparked a new fire in me to get myself out there more for that younger generation, because I realized that I didn't have anybody that I could look at like myself. So I wanna kind of be that person for them. What a great thing to do. Well, they say that the mother of invention is a necessity. So there's definitely a need for that and being able to relate it back to when you were a kid and didn't have that, you know, that's pretty darn special. I can just see that with kids looking at coupons and stuff and figuring out, you know, like, yeah, that's cool. Was. Get a sixty, ten on their seventy, eighteen rod tattooed on their arm. They'll have something then. Yep. I love that. So on where, where you work now and, and, or where, so just to be clear, you left your job because you go to school for eight weeks and then you'll go back to work for eight weeks. So you're, you're in classroom right now. When you're working, knowing that you're an apprentice and you're going to be leaving, are the journeymen and the super advisors or however you're set up, the foreman, are they working hard to give you exposure as an apprentice? Or do you find that they're still like, she's a new chick kind of deal? How is that working out? It's been very hit and miss. Worked for three companies in my time as an apprentice. So I've worked high rise and I've worked at ICI, so industrial, institutional, commercial. High rise was my first year and I've been industrial since then. In high rise, I had a really good experience actually. A lot of people say that like high rise is really rough around the edges in our trade, but I had a really good experience there. My foreman there absolutely poured into my learning and he wanted me to understand everything and like not just know, okay, this valve goes here, but he wanted me to know why that valve went there, what it did kind of thing. So when I was in my first year, I hadn't gone to school yet. So the way it works with our schooling is you get an offer for like your eight weeks. So normally you don't go to your first term until you're in your third year. I went to my first term in my second year. And then third term for me is third year, but normally it's third, fourth, fifth year, and then you write your license after that. So I probably worked for like a year and a couple of months before I went to school. But when I got to school, I felt like I was already, I don't want to say smarter than a lot of the guys in my class, but I was more knowledgeable I had a Yeah, I had a foreman that actually cared to teach me. And then the company I went to after that didn't have any fitting work. So they had me doing all plumbing stuff. And I was like, this isn't really doing much for my apprenticeship. I had bridge experience working there, I'll say. But the company that I just left, again, my foreman genuinely really cared about me actually knowing what was going on, why I was doing things and all that stuff. It's really hit and miss. I think it depends on the culture at the company you work at, but I'm also a huge advocate for if the culture isn't a fit for you, don't work there. Yeah. Well, everybody needs to know what is it? A eighth of an inch per ten feet of slope, right, where you're plumbing? I don't do slope. I don't know. All I know is that everything rolls downhill. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's good stuff. All right. So how do we create the buzz? Social media. What are and I think about this a lot. It's so hard to get people's attention. You know that from being on social media, especially if you actually have a message you're trying to give rather than just some goofballs posting. What is resonating this group of eleven hundred that you have in your network now? What's resonating? What's drawing them in? Is it the the the peer peer group nature of it because there are other youngsters in it? I mean, what what is it that's the magnet? Because I think that's the hard part for a lot of people is knowing what to put out so that it's appealing. Yeah. I think when it comes to the sisterhood of trades, our group, what kind of resonates with them is probably just like that feeling of like belonging. And on all of our sisterhood social medias, we do share like conversations that we're having with our members and like, you know, what our members are doing. We try to show that yes, all of these women do work in the trades, but they're also people outside of the trades. So we'll post videos, kind of like funny videos. Like there's been trends on TikTok about like, it's like, oh, I'm passing the phone to somebody who whatever. And then you pass the phone to the next person. So we've done quite a few videos on that with just members in our Discord being like, oh, I'm passing the phone to the sister who thinks she doesn't need a level. And then the next person will say the same thing kinda. So it is hard to get people's attention, but with the day and age of social media, I like to say that people have like goldfish attention spans. It's like you get five seconds. You have five seconds to get their attention before they're scrolling to the next video. So yeah, with our group, definitely just like that sense of belonging and knowing that you can come and talk about anything. And there's going to be at least one person in that group that understands, which is kind of few and far between when you're a woman in the trades, especially because we still only make up like four percent of the industry. I was talking to a friend of mine who has written a series of books on you said Goldfish, which struck a chord for me. Stan Phelps is his name, and he's written a whole book of different colored goldfish, blue goldfish, gray goldfish, and they all have a theme. One thing we're talking about this morning was Gen Z and taking the accountability upon themselves for where they want to go in their career and getting comfortable with the fact that it is up to you a lot to get yourself to where you want to be. But the flip side of that is it's also my responsibility to put you in a space to where you can do that. Because Gen Z, and you're a prime example, because you don't have to have reports. You don't have to read reports like I do about Gen Z. You are Gen Z. And there's a lot of conversation about making sure that we, as business owners and leaders and foremen and old people, are helping lay out a career route for you. Not just if you bust your butt for five years, here's where you're going to be. But actually walk me through that scenario so that while I'm getting up at five o'clock in the morning, I'm going to do this. I know the goal. I know where we're headed. Is that true? Do you feel that way? Do your peers feel that way? I, from my experience, can say I definitely feel that way. Like I have had the company that I just worked with that I'm likely going to be returning to if they'll have me back. They were very clear on like, this is where you are right now. When you come back from school, this is where you're going to be. And this is our goal for you for the next however many years. And then they do actually live up to that with like the way that they train and all of that kind of stuff. And they are very well, foreman that I've met at least, they have a very good sense of which foreman actually care about apprentices and which ones are just going to bust like, you know, make you bust your butt for a couple of years kind of thing. Yeah. But I know that a lot of women in the industry aren't on kind of the same perspective as me. So they haven't been as lucky and they have dealt with a lot of men in positions of power or even women in positions of power that kind of look down on them. Like, doesn't matter your trade. You're basically just a laborer to me until you're licensed. So yeah. Yeah. A shame. Yeah. We we spoke a lot about the accountability on both sides of the equation of making sure that we do a good job of forecasting and really planning, career planning. So it gives you the motivation to do what's required to learn, to buckle down and study what you need to study, and then for us to make sure we have the curriculum and the training there and the work to coincide with that. Really important because, you know, when I was an apprentice, I always not ask anything. It was not like that. And I'm so glad to see that we're getting to be more, I won't say civil, but maybe more humane in how we are helping people advance their careers and the importance of doing so. You know, I think back in the day, if somebody was going to be a plumber, they were going to be a plumber and you just assumed that you're going to be a crappy apprentice doing crappy work until you turned out. And then you turned out and you didn't know anything because you hadn't been doing anything. And what a horrible route. But yeah, we gotta do better. We can do better. What about drugs in the workplace? You know, I think about this a lot because I'm not sure about the seven Canadian provinces, but we have legalized weed here in a lot of places. Our companies are still drug free and our customers also demand that in some instances that we are drug free by testing. What does the drug use look like in the industry right now from the ground? Is it ebbing or waning or is it widespread or people getting the fact that they can't be I mean, where where where do you where do you see it? I don't think. Obviously, I can't, like, confirm, but I don't think I've ever encountered anybody that has been, like, high on the job. Awesome. Weed is legal everywhere in Canada, but I feel like those who do smoke just like know it's like if you're going to smoke, you do it after work and that's just that kind of thing. But yeah, I don't, I haven't personally haven't worked for a company that's drug tested, but my union does also work with a rehab facility that we pay into as part of our package kind of thing. So I also don't think I've known anybody who's gone there. I know obviously like ten, fifteen years ago, was probably more of a need between like the alcohol and drug abuse. But I feel like in my kind of generation of apprentices or young journeymen, I honestly haven't encountered that issue at all. Well, that's good. At our safety meeting last year, had a guy from Naloxicam came, and we were just talking about the statistics of opioid overdose and how some job sites and some, And it's very geographically dispersed. It's not everywhere. But in some places it's pretty bad. And we're just talking about that. And then the whole issue of mental health is prevalent everywhere now. So you have to be really cognizant. And it's a safety issue, you know, if somebody's not what's the right word? If they're not in a condition to perform a job safely and you don't know that until it's too late, that's what I worry about. Know, like even another trade on a job site, you gotta keep your head on a swivel for that kind of stuff. So that's good that you're not seeing it rampant on the job. Yeah. So the other thing, and I know we gotta start putting a bow on this thing shortly, but this is the first time ever that we've had five generations in the workplace. We have Z all the way through me, which is I'm the youngest baby boomer by year. And I think about it like about communicating the message, whatever message I need to get to somebody. Have you experienced improper, and I don't mean in a bad way, but communications that just didn't click for you that were too generic? Because I think about we have five generations of workers. We have to make sure that we're communicating with you at twenty two and twenty three and me at sixty two. Are our words ringing true all the way through? Are we getting the same message out? Have you noticed anything communication wise that companies or individuals should think about in ways to ensure that what their intended message is is what you're hearing? Or are you taking it upon yourself to filter and put it into context? I feel like, at least from my experience, I've dealt with communication has been pretty good, actually. Like I find that when you get into the trade, everyone kind of starts to use the same terminology and the same language and all that stuff, right? So even if there is like, I've worked with journeymen who are thirty, forty years older than me and there's never been like an issue between us not understanding each other kind of thing in that So yeah, the only thing that I have on the communication side is with more women getting into the trade, A lot of the women in our server and in our community have said that the terminology that's being used is what needs to change. So like, you know, addressing guys or boys or things like that when there are women around. Again, I personally haven't dealt with it, but this is something that I do see being on the ground with these women all the time. Meaning that people are saying stuff they shouldn't say. Yeah. And just like the general grouping, like there's some girls that want it to be acknowledged. Like I am not a man. I'm not one of the boys. Like I am here to work. I'm a worker. But somebody says, hey, guys. Yeah. Okay. Got it. I've seen those issues. It's personally not an issue to me because I understand like it's just a part of the trade. There's going to be some things that you just kind of have to take and there's other things you can stand up to. But there are a lot of women that have kind of presented that issue to us. Interesting. Because I try to be really sensitive in my approach to that, because I do want women to come into the industry and I want them to be heard and felt like they're in the cool place to be. But if I say guys sometimes, then I'm just talking about a group of people. And It's very it's like that in Canada too. Like, it's a very Canadian thing, feel like, to just, like, address everybody as guys, like it's just a group of people. But I was told that it's not that common down in the States. And maybe not. I mean, maybe I'm just in a weird area. I don't know. But Alright. So tell us, Brooke, how people can find out about you, how they can keep up with you and the sisterhood and what are your, what are all your digits as they say? Yeah. So you can look me up basically anywhere, Brooke Lang. I also host two of my own podcasts. I co host one with my fiance and then one with my partner Noosh. So if you look up Two Bolts Short of a Flange, that's my podcast. You'll be able to find all the other podcasts and then our website, sisterhood of trades dot com. All of our information's there as well. The discord, all of our podcasts, all of that stuff. Awesome. And that's Brooke with an e and l a I n g. Brooke Lange. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, I really do appreciate you taking time to come and chat with us. And I know you and I haven't talked before, so we're doing an intro on the fly. But I have enjoyed staying abreast of what all you're doing and watch what y'all are growing and proud to see it, proud to watch it grow. It's really, really cool. Thank you for doing it. It's needed. Thank you. I mean, we appreciate everyone that follows along with the journey, of course, but it's nice to know that what we're doing actually makes an impact. Oh, it does. It's important and it's our future, so we should bore into it. I agree. So, folks, thank you for sticking with us today and listening to a conversation with Brooke Lang. She's doing some really cool stuff north of the border, which I love to go up there personally. I like Toronto. I've got friends there. We've got some companies up there as well. So I'm up there for work some and really just enjoy the folks up there. Good good stuff. Enjoy the conversation. If you will go find her, look her up and study what she's doing. Maybe you should do your own thing like she's doing elsewhere and kinda let's spread the word and get more groups going. But good stuff. So, I gotta plug my book, Deep Knowledge, www.deepknowledge. Me. You can buy the set. I never thought I'd say that as an adult, that you can buy a set of my books. But check that out. They make a great gift for young folks who may be thinking about not going to college and doing the trades route, we would love to love to talk to them. The book's got some scar tissue stories in there of what not to do. It might save you a headache. So check us out, greg crumpton dot com, for all of your stuff. And until next time, be safe out there, folks. Take care.