Electrician U

Throw a Hammer

• Electrician U • Season 2 • Episode 116

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Yes, sometimes being assigned a brand new green apprentice sucks, but it's part of being a journeyman. You gotta suck it up and be a better mentor - it’s part of your job. In this episode, we tackle the real-world challenges faced by journeymen and their apprentices. From dealing with unexpected mishaps to mastering the art of mentorship, we share our experiences and practical advice. Learn how to handle mistakes, communicate effectively with other trades, and motivate apprentices based on their individual needs. We emphasize the importance of respect, continuous learning, and maintaining high standards. Whether you're a seasoned pro or new to the field, this episode offers valuable insights and engaging stories. Don't miss out!💡🔧

Want to learn more about becoming an electrician or mastering the craft? Visit ElectricianU.com for courses, resources, and everything you need to succeed!

Drake:

what do you do to motivate your apprentice?

Dustin:

throw a hammer, that's my answer for every one of these questions throw a hammer. That'll motivate someone real quick. Yeah, yeah. So today we are talking about well, really, I wanted to talk to the journeyman out there about having an apprentice. I've done a lot of like how to be a good apprentice, how to not be a stupid person and do electrical work, but I wanted to talk specifically to the journeyman out there on how to journeyman and, more specifically, how to deal with apprentices, because there's a lot of things that once you get an apprentice under you that you don't realize that you do. There's a lot of things you don't realize that they're going to do just because of who they are, but that every apprentice that you have is going to be completely different. So I wanted to talk about a lot of the different like weird experiences and different kinds of people and just kind of how to journeyman, how to be a teacher instead of just a worker, now that you've got someone to teach.

Drake:

Yeah, it's the whole sentiment. Just because you're a good electrician or anything doesn't mean you're a good teacher. Yeah, so you have to kind of learn on the fly, on the cuff, to do this. All right, so you have a new apprentice and you've been working with him, for him or her, for a while, and they totally mess up for a while and uh, they totally mess up.

Drake:

What do you do? And uh, daily, that's no I know, but I mean they mess up like they break a wall and explode a thing, right, like, what do you do? Like how, uh, how do you deal with that?

Dustin:

well, this is the part where it becomes fun being a journeyman, because now you have to solve all of the problems of everybody else around you, right, it's not just doing your job anymore. So things like knowing that there's a water main and how to shut the water main off. When somebody drills through a four inch, you know water main and there's water spraying profusely all over a building, just dumping, dumping, dumping. You have to know how to deal with the situation. So, like you have to know where a water main is or what a water main is, to even go out and look for that, to be able to shut the water off so it stops dumping and hemorrhaging all the water out. Um, if somebody sounds like this happened to you before, yeah, a few times.

Dustin:

Even me as an apprentice man, I was digging in Texas. Uh, I was digging with a pickaxe and the ground is so hard it's just rock man, for, like, you get four inches into the dirt. That's all the actual dirt under that. It is just bedrock. So we have to dig differently than most people do, swing in a pickaxee and I finally like broke through to what I thought was, uh, where I was trying to get to, and the next swing. I just hear this and then just water sprays everywhere and it's under like the pipes going under a driveway, so it was like I couldn't even get to this to fix it, and there's water spraying out everywhere.

Drake:

You're lucky, you didn't Phineas Gage yourself. Phineas Gage, phineas Gage, I don't know what that is. Oh, phineas Gage is the guy who was a miner coal miner and he hit a gas pocket and the pickaxe went through his brain and he survived.

Dustin:

What.

Drake:

And it was the first time in history that they were like wait, there's certain parts of the brain that you don't need in order to still function and be alive. It opened up a whole new field of brain science. But yeah, you're lucky you didn't finish. Gauge yourself, yeah oh man.

Dustin:

But yeah, so like, as an apprentice screwing something like that, I watched what happened next. All the journeymen went running around looking for this thing. They were calling the water man and I'm like I don't know. It's like this is just going to stop, right, it's just a little tank of water. And they're like no, this is like city water man. This is coming and coming and coming until we shut it off.

Dustin:

Yeah, so like, you learn through making mistakes, uh, how these mistakes get handled, and so most of the things that I've figured out how to solve are because somebody had to fix my screw up and I just learned in that moment how to deal with them. But as a journeyman, you just you have to realize that you're you're the dude. Now when things go awry, you need to know how to handle it. So you need to always be kind of educating yourself and paying attention to things.

Dustin:

I think it's really crucial to talk to other trades about what they do and to learn how their stuff works, not because you need to fix it or step in or do anything, but like talking to a plumber. Enough so that you understand how plumbing systems work and what's the difference between a house that has a recirculating pump and one that doesn't, and water pressure where it comes from, how to shut it off. Talk to the AC guys too. Guys too, you know, like, understand like weird things that if you were to interact or one of your apprentices interact with their thing and screw something up, how to handle it? Yeah, just simple conversations with people is really great. Talk to your gcs, because, honestly, the the general contractor building a house or a building. They've probably seen every variation of every possible thing get screwed up ever and they're a gold mine of information on how to fix problems now what about towards the apprentice, say they throw a hammer at them.

Drake:

Yeah, exactly like what do you do in the moment? Obviously, you, you fix the problem right, you get to the solution, and then what you know I know this was. This is where a whole gambit of different emotions are going to arise. Some people are going to be so mad and be like get out right, and some are going to be like hey, this is what happened, where do you land?

Dustin:

man, it's a situation by situation basis. There are some problems that are going to piss me off a whole lot more than other problems um, somebody being stupid, not doing what I told them to do and doing their own thing and then screwing something up. I'm going to be really pissed about that. Just inside of me it's going to boil my blood leaving tools on top of the ladder oh god, you're leaving a drill, or leaving a even just a pair of lineman's players.

Dustin:

It hurts, dude, that will. That will bleed someone's head top of their head if they're not wearing a safety helmet, which the argument could be said it's okay to put put things on top of ladders Cause you should be wearing a hard hat. Uh, no, like just stupid stuff. But I've tried to always maintain my cool, like in general. Uh, I'd rather be the person that can solve something. There's no use getting all bent out of shape about things. Everything in the world can be fixed Everything. It might be costly to fix it, but everything has a solution. It's just some of them are a little bit more dire than others. You know, if a fire department has to be called or something like that, that's a crazy situation. But I don't think there's a universal answer for this question because there are different kinds of people.

Dustin:

When a problem arises, there are problems that arise and people have a flight response. That's just naturally in them who they are. They will run away from the situation and there are people that will run into the situation and try to handle it, and to my detriment, I think, sometimes. I typically am the person that runs into a situation when there's a car or a truck out on fire.

Dustin:

You guys have probably seen the videos that have the guy I worked with his truck caught on fire. Just randomly there was a weird electrical problem and his truck caught on fire. I went and grabbed a whole bunch of extinguishers and I was out there you know, breaking windows try to extinguish this fire until the fire department came up, like if there's somebody getting beat up. Like I tend to step into situations and sometimes maybe I shouldn't have stepped into situations, but it depends on what kind of a person that you are. There are people that I've watched that are more senior to me, out in the field deal with some situations that, like, were really dangerous and scary and they were just calm as a cucumber because they'd seen it before They'd been in the situation. They knew what was a hazard, what wasn't, they already knew how to solve it Right.

Drake:

There's no point in getting all pissed off and even if they haven't seen that exact thing, they know how to react to a situation. Yeah.

Dustin:

Yeah, you know like somebody.

Drake:

That's true, you know, and this is actually part of another question but even with, uh, parenting a child, when a child first falls, they look to you to see how they should react. Yeah, they. And if you're just like, hey, get up, then they're like, oh okay, I'm fine.

Drake:

Obviously, if they're like leg is behind their neck yeah um, you should react, but also you shouldn't be like oh my god, oh, poor baby yeah, because you're gonna freak that kid out and you know if they fall and you run up to them like all scared, they're like, oh my god, even though I just have a skint knee, or not even they think it's the end of the world. Same thing if you're dealing with an apprentice and you're just like yelling at them and just being like obnoxious, that is what they're going to learn. Like you were just saying, you learned by your example of the people you worked for. Um, and I know one of the people you worked for and he was. He was such like a a pillar and calm as a cucumber, even though like things are crazy, it's just like he's just it's like this stoic cowboy.

Dustin:

He reminds me of sam elliott, by the way anyway, yeah, yeah, big old handlebar mustache, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he would let me try to figure out how to dig myself out of a problem and just sit there shaking his head, laughing because he knew the right way, and uh, yeah, I love dudes like that to get back to the point, um, leading by example is an incredibly important.

Drake:

The way you react is how they will react, right, yeah?

Dustin:

imagine if you a break every time like a short circuit happens and there's like a poof. You know everybody just scatters and runs out of the room terrified. Yeah, right, like you're gonna do that every time you like hit your finger.

Drake:

You're like screaming in pain. It's just like you know, just obviously, pain is pain, but yeah, reel it in, keep yourself collected, be a pillar. Yeah, be a pillar. Um, which gets me to the question how to teach. When is it a good time to teach? When is it a good time just to get stuff done?

Dustin:

That's a really. That's a good one. That requires experience and finesse over the years to achieve that.

Drake:

Explain the situation.

Dustin:

There are. Every apprentice is different. So some apprentices are just going to naturally ask a lot of questions all the time and I love that. But there are times where it gets under your nerves. It's like, bro, stop asking questions, I just need you to do this thing right now. I don't need you to ask me how it all works. We can talk about that in the truck later. I just need you to get stuff done and you can say it like that. You don't have to be a you know a jerk about it or anything like that. But when the idea of having an apprentice, it's kind of cool in that it takes them four years to test for their license. So they you kind of have to play the long game and let them get exposure to a lot of different things.

Dustin:

I always bugged the living hell out of my journey man Cause I was the asking question dude man. I asked everything. All of them would get irritated because I would ask things beyond what they would know and they didn't really know how to handle it. So some of them would just be like I don't know, man, go Google it.

Dustin:

But the primary goal is that an apprentice is a helper. They're there to help you do your job effectively as a journeyman. While they're doing that, they're going to learn some things naturally on their own, and so when you're teaching somebody, you can't give them too much to do, you can't explain too much. They're not even going to understand what the hell is going on, so you just have to give them tasks. That is going to teach them without them realizing they're being taught, and you can't give them too complex of stuff to do either. You have to give them some like things that are actually helpful, that you don't want to do yourself, that you just need them to do to kind of grease the wheel of the machine and make it go better.

Drake:

Um yeah, starting with just like a switch. I remember when those switches are too complex for help.

Dustin:

No, I'm definitely, I'm serious.

Drake:

Day one you're doing receptacles, that's just sure three wires can't mess it up when you get to a switch, the idea of just like cutting the black, open it up and down, you know, shutting it that when I first heard that a long time ago it's like I understood the concept, yeah. But when I was like, oh, you're literally just stopping the electricity from having a loop.

Dustin:

Yeah.

Drake:

Yeah, it's stuff like that, where you can teach them how to do a switch and then explain in one sentence and this is why. And then it's like oh, and then when you attach things like that, it really helps with learning. Yeah.

Dustin:

Yeah Well, and the reason I started this with, like it depends, there's a lot of different apprentices out there is because, like, you're going to have some apprentices that are just dummies and I, you know I'm sorry to be that crass and just like swath over and judge a human being to just be a dummy, but you gotta understand about a lot of apprentices and I put my all into every single one of them. There are some who are not worth my all there. They don't care enough. Or I can tell them that a switch has the word on and off on it and if it is upside down, it's trying to tell you something. It says no, because it's upside down instead of on. And every single switch they put in, they still don't do it right.

Dustin:

There's people that just are aloof as hell with their environment. It's just not cut out for them, right? Or they're the shovel guys. They're the guys that, hey, man, I need you to take a trench today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day I need you to go clean up the truck, because they're useless to you as a like a thinker, you know.

Dustin:

So it really just depends on on everything, but you got to understand that y'all as a crew the two of you sitting in that truck it's your job to get stuff done, so the company makes money, so you can have another job. It's your job to train, but you like the training kind of needs to come in secondary. You show, I need you to do this thing right here and this is the way to not do it. I need you to do exactly this thing this way, and they learn as they're doing it. So they're being taught on the job. They don't you're not intentionally teaching them, but they're getting practice doing stuff. So beyond that, though, like the extra stuff, like three phase and waveforms and frequency and all the crazy stuff I like to talk about, that's like truck talk truck time, yeah, absolutely, or lunchtime lunchtime you draw in the sand like what a sine wave is yeah, and if they're dorking out about that, that's awesome.

Drake:

yeah, you want to find that out. You know I I was an apprentice for a while and, uh, I had a hard time with all of the journeymen, except for you. I had the understanding, really quickly, of just how things worked. As an apprentice demanded respect for my intelligence, not my know-how of how to do a thing, but as a human, as a human and man did that rub wrong with most people because they were seeing you as a snapshot rather than a video.

Dustin:

They weren't looking at you as this story that you know you're a human with all these experiences. They're looking at you as an idiot because you don't know how to strip a wire. That's it and that's wrong. We like we shouldn't be looking at people like that.

Drake:

No, and I think things are shifting in general, at least in circles that I've seen. But there is that whole gruff mentality to like treat your apprentice like crap. It's not helpful. As you were saying, you guys are a team to get stuff done. Sure, you might've gotten stuck with an apprentice that you don't really want, but that's kind of your job Now. You're a journey want, but that's kind of your job. Now you're you're a journeyman you know it's kind of like deal with it and deal with it as good as you can. Sorry.

Dustin:

Yeah, you know. But if it's that bad, go tell the master electrician that you work for. Yeah, he probably trusts you more than you know. Or it's going to be like suck it up, like because we're talking, this is my sister's child, I'm not firing them. That sucks. That sucks people getting a job because, and not like deserving to have that job over somebody else that does deserve to have it yeah, sure, I mean that's a scenario.

Dustin:

But I think the moral of that story, though, for the question is like the getting things done is always first and foremost, the teaching is secondary, because it will primarily happen on its own right for the necessary things, the unnecessary extra stuff, it just over time it'll yeah show a task, go do it.

Drake:

Yep, prove to me that you can do it okay.

Dustin:

Next task yeah, yeah and on that note too, like I would make sure when you're giving apprentices stuff, that you kind of at first only give somebody something that is really easy and give them a lot of them to do. So if you are, um, if you're going to do a trim out, say, and the the, this is a this helper's first time ever doing anything. They get on a job, they have no clue what to do. They're sweating bullets, they're terrified, they, they're, they don't want to screw something up. They've heard electricity is dangerous, like they just don't know what they're getting into.

Dustin:

You need to direct them and you need to actually think about, before you get to the job, what am I going to have them do? I'm going to have them put in 300 receptacles today. By the end of the day they're going to know how to do this. It's going to be memory, you know, like muscle memory to them. And then tomorrow I'm going to have them do 400. And then the next day I'm going to have them do 500. I'm going to keep throwing this down their throat until they perfect it. And then they're probably going to ask me like, can I try doing this thing over there? Nope, you're not ready for it.

Dustin:

Sorry, you're going to do this next.

Drake:

You're still still not bending wire properly.

Dustin:

Yeah, you need to know what their level is and like where they're at and their understanding, and there are certain things they need to understand. First and foremost, electricity. To most people are receptacles, a homeowner and really think about much else. It's just there's a receptacle thing, I plug into it and I get to use electricity. Yeah, it's called a plug. Most apprentices are the same way. Yeah, so you need to get them to do like really basic stuff.

Dustin:

But I would say, once you get to a point where you've you've spent a few weeks to a few months with your apprentice and you get to see like, okay, I gave them switches, they nailed the switches. I've given them a three-way. They seem to understand three ways. They're asking really good questions about where things come from and how this works. They do clean work. They're not off screwing things up. When I tell them to do something, it gets done the way that I say that they're going to probably go somewhere.

Dustin:

So I'm going to start putting a little bit out in front of them that's beyond their capability now and see how they handle it and if they can overcome that and they can sort of troubleshoot and problem solve or you can assess whether they're going to come and ask you, versus just try to do some dumb shit and break something. You start testing their character as a worker and starting to like stretch the boundaries and as a journeyman, you have to think like this, like some of you've probably never even thought these thoughts before. It's your job to take seriously the education of somebody, and so you always have to be thinking about where they're at, what they're going to do next, what is the next thing you're going to teach them and what is the next thing you're going to introduce them to. So kind of pre-planning the route that your apprentice is going to take through their learning is really, really important, but I wouldn't do this for people that aren't going to work out. Which is why the people treated you the way that they treated you is they had so many damn apprentices over so long.

Dustin:

They came from the school of the hard knocks. It was let's take 10 dummies and let's shake them. Let's shake them violently until one of them Rises the top and that's the one we're going to keep on board and we're going to get rid of the other nine. That's just how it worked, yeah, and so that's all they know. Is that like crushing you and trying to like turn the heat up on you, and it's not necessary. There's different ways of treating human beings now, but Before you really fully invest yourself into somebody, it is understandable, especially if this is your 30th apprentice. You already know all of these things. You want to wait to see who's the hard worker that asks a lot of questions, that seems passionate, that does clean work? Yeah, who?

Drake:

asks a lot of questions, but not too many questions, yeah.

Dustin:

Yeah, who will try to find something to do to busy themselves when there's nothing for them to do? That when they've come up to you and ask, like what should I do? And you're like I don't know, just go stock the truck, and they, they're like sweeping their stock in the truck, they're doing everything, like they get the workmanship of this and the work ethic. It's like those are the people that are really worth dumping all of you into so what?

Drake:

what do you do if you end up with an apprentice that sucks and it's not your company, and you've told the boss and they're just still with you?

Dustin:

I would um, tell the boss everything about him.

Dustin:

I just be like hey, just want to let you know how their first day went today. Um, they're definitely a dummy, you know, like, uh, like all of these guys are um, he seems to be, or she seems to be like inquisitive, though, or like, um, they're very clean, they clean up after themselves. So I'm going to give an honest assessment to them because I want them to know that I'm going to come and give them like real advice or what I'm seeing. So if there is a problem, they're going to keep hearing that there's a problem over and over and over. So eventually they get to the point of just like making that decision to let them go. Or if they're doing a killer job, I also want them to know, because the journey the master electrician a lot of time is not seeing these people out in the field working, so they need to know how they're actually doing. Now, it's one thing if you start developing a relationship with an apprentice that you're with every day and they screw something up, it's not your job to go tell on them.

Drake:

Right, you're not saying tattle.

Dustin:

No, keep some things between you, like take one for the team, let them screw up, and when you talk to the boss, say we screwed up, right, that's all they need to hear, because they already know what that means. You would have said I screwed up if you did something wrong.

Dustin:

When you say we screwed up, they already know that means the other person screwed up this is all so important yeah, and so it just kind of shows that even shows to me as a master that you respect this person enough to like not want to throw them under the bus. It makes me respect you more, but it also lets me know, okay, there's, there's something going on between the two of them where it's like maybe a really good partnership and I'm just gonna let them do whatever. But yeah, your job as a journeyman is to safeguard the company. You got to let the master electrician know like this person is a waste of space. They're late every single day, they don't listen to anything, they break everything, they're wasting your time and your money and we need to find somebody else. They need to know that they want to know that.

Drake:

Yeah, so right away, just starting with the, the communication, right away. Day one yeah, and they're all going to have the same report day one. But it's the day two, day three, day four. Hmm, that's cool.

Dustin:

Yeah, and this also depends too on, like, your relationship with your boss.

Dustin:

I've always been the person to get in close with the people that own the company so that they trust me, they respect me, they give me opportunity, they see me as valuable.

Dustin:

Um, so if you don't have their kind of relationship where you feel like you can go to your boss and tell them all these kinds of things, that's a problem you need to sort out, because if your boss is giving you the responsibility, giving you a company truck allowing you to interface with the world, as with his logo on your chest, he's putting a certain amount of trust into you. And so I think getting to know him more and going in earlier and having conversations to like shooting shit about their family, like start to get to know them as a human more than just taking orders when you get to the shop every day and that should honestly start out when you're an apprentice, like if you go in with and start at a company just try to get everyone to like know you and get to know them. It just shows you care more and that alone will help so much, because then you're going to have the buy-in and they're going to listen to what you have to say.

Dustin:

Yeah, there's a personal aspect to it yeah, if you're just the standoffish guy that like never talks and doesn't want to be involved with anything, and that's how they're going to treat you, because that's who you are, that's you're, you're not I mean, if you're killer at your job and you're that type of person, hey, yeah, you know, but in some respect that'd be amazing but also like you're going to be in with somebody, if you're that good, but you're also standoffish and don't talk anybody.

Dustin:

The master electrician is going to be like I like this guy. He doesn't talk at all, but like his stuff's solid, you know.

Drake:

So they will probably develop a rapport because they want to keep you on you know so, throughout any job, especially in the beginning or somewhere in the middle, there's a lack of motivation. Anybody hits a plateau. What do you do to motivate your apprentice? Throw a hammer.

Dustin:

Throw a hammer, that's my answer for every one of these questions Throw a hammer, it'll motivate someone real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every, every human has a different thing that they find value in. Some people, you can dangle a carrot out in front of you, can dangle a $ dollar an hour raise in 12 months and they will work towards that thing because to them, that's their motivating factor. Other people don't care about a three dollar raise. They want to be the, the guy. They want to be the dependable, the one you call when problems happen. So, like you have to understand what motivates people. Some people just want to be appreciated, some people want to be left the fuck alone and they just want to collect a check and you know like not be bothered. Some people have kids and they want to get their kid into a better house, you know. So you have to really build equity in the people working for you to understand what their motivating factors are.

Dustin:

There's people that I've had working under me as apprentices that when they screw something up, if I come down on them and start being like what were you thinking, dude? Like I can't believe I told you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they cave in. They beat themselves up so hard in their own head that they can't handle the pressure of somebody else. So they're going to start doing even worse, they're going to start messing way more up, and so they need some like lifting up to get them to do something, and that you know, maybe try it a little bit and if you see a positive result like, instead of telling them everything they're doing wrong all the time, tell them everything they're doing right all the time, you will you'll find out a person like this is going to try to do everything right all the time.

Dustin:

That was the case with me. The more that somebody was being an asshole to me, I called them out on their shit. I'm like you know, like fuck you, stop being an asshole to me. I'm I'm valid, you know, I'm a valid human being. I don't know as much as you, but you're not going to get me to do shit for you if you keep being a dick. So either treat me with respect or you can get fucked. Yeah, you know.

Drake:

Yeah, I was. I was similar in my head.

Dustin:

I'm a little. But yeah, I would be. I would start questioning their own validity of intelligence. Yeah, but having those conversations like that, me being that edgy, back to them when they pushed against me, I pushed right back. I would tell him like, look, if you want me to do better, then treat me with respect, show me what to do, make sure that I understand it, and I will do such good work for you. I will show up and be a key player because I really want to do this.

Dustin:

So, just, I don't know having that conversation with people, then they realized, okay, like he's not somebody, that the pressure thing doesn't work. Respect works, yeah, but yeah, it's this. You know, I've also had other people that really need pressure because giving them attaboys doesn't matter to them, they just don't care. They need pressure turned up on them because there's who they are psychologically is that they're a person that, instead of moving towards the things they want, they move away from the things they don't want. And people that move away from what they don't want are perfect for turning up pressure and turning up a shitty situation a little bit.

Drake:

So they move away from it. I'm going to fire you if you don't do this.

Dustin:

Okay, up a shitty situation a little bit so they move away from it. I'm going to fire you if you don't do this. Okay, that will work for some people. Some people it's not going to. So I think reading about some human psychology and starting to learn about people's behaviors and their pasts and why they act the way that they do, can really give you a lot of insight and also just knowing, not like doing spy work to try to figure out their psyche, but like understanding what, where they're trying to get to do. They have kids, are they married? Are they trying to get married? Do they want to go, move to New York? Do they want to be like a engineer someday? Like, learn about where they're trying to get to, and it'll help you to motivate them a little bit more. But I will say about motivation, if you're not doing things yourself and you're trying to tell other people to do them, no one's ever going to listen to you.

Dustin:

You have to be the one that can run into any situation and handle it If you're going to expect other people to handle it. If you want people to act calmly, you got to be calmly. We teach people how to act by what we do, not what we say. And so if you want the respect of people around you, you want them to listen to you, to come to you, to trust you and to want to do good for you, and by you. You've got to do good for them and do good by them.

Drake:

If you demand respect, you have to be respectful.

Dustin:

Yeah, yeah, and I would say demand respect is not even the right term. If you command respect, sure, like you take ownership of respect so much that you exude it towards other people, people, that that's. I think. Another thing we were going to talk about is like people are going to act how you act, the things that you allow on a job site, they're going to try to get away with the minimums of everything Everybody's going to. So if there's standards that you set, if you're the guy that's out on job sites being like hey, today, I want everybody to be safe, don't do any stupid stuff, don't work live. If your attitude is about not working live ever, and if there is a time where we have to do live work, I'm going to do it and I'm going to show you how to wear PPE. I'm going to show you how to work on this stuff. What a flash suit is. We're going to talk about this.

Drake:

They're just like okay.

Dustin:

Yeah, there is no other way. That's all they know. They're going to teach them. Hey, we don't work live, we wear ppe, we care about this stuff. We don't want to risk your life, but if you're the guy that's just like ah, stop being a wuss, like, get in there. I've been doing this 30 years.

Drake:

I can work on anything live yeah, as I take a shot of some liquor yeah, every single I've had that exact situation I've. I know I've told you stories and it's funny. Like all the other electricians, I just never partook because I never wanted them to be like well, you did too, yeah, and they hated the fact that I never drank with them.

Dustin:

Yeah, you're like the cop that doesn't take the $3 million that they found on a drug bust. Yeah, because all the other cops would have been in on taking it.

Drake:

Yeah, no, I refused. They hated me for so many reasons. Yeah, but I was so, not them.

Dustin:

Yeah.

Drake:

They hated me for so many reasons, but I was, so, not them. They were just pure disrespect to the customers, like, oh my God, and dangerous, by the way.

Dustin:

But so that goes for like everything. I think you need to, really, as a journeyman, you need to think about the impact that you have, because what you don't realize is you have a way bigger impact than you think you do. In every single day, you affect people's lives around you. If you're a miserable prick, everybody around you is going to be miserable. No one's going to want to work with you. Nobody's going to like you. People are going to start trying to do shit to just piss you off and thwart you. You know. But if you're like, if you're like taking the time to understand and care about people and have conversations and like care about them, they're going to care about you too. Most people there's. There's some people that just aren't you know. They're just hateful and that's all there is to it?

Drake:

Yeah, no, I mean, I own a music school and I have my teachers who teach how I teach.

Dustin:

Yeah.

Drake:

I've set a precedence like this is what we do, and they follow suit because A it works, but B they don't want to disrespect me.

Dustin:

Yeah, but you're also so cool with all them, you're so understanding. Yeah, if one of them is late, you're not like you're late, you're five minutes late, you're blah, blah blah.

Drake:

No, we're all musicians, first off. Secondly, we're all humans. Yeah, stuff happens. Stuff happens all the time. You know, if it starts happening all the time, keep crashing into my building. I'm a teacher. It just keeps hitting my building but he's a good dude. He's an awesome dude.

Dustin:

He's like really great um, so some things you just eat.

Drake:

You just come up with uh, talk about eating. What do you do when an apprentice asks you something you don't know? Do you just make something up?

Dustin:

yes, yeah, most of Most of the throw, hammer throw a hammer. That's my answer. No, um, I think in general, electricians need to be a little bit more open with the things that they know and the things that they don't know, and be okay saying I don't know, because the truth is you don't.

Drake:

That goes with uh, everything be okay with not knowing truth is you don't.

Dustin:

That goes with uh, everything be okay with not knowing. Yeah, yeah, because the greatest thing is, when you say I don't know, it's going to like relieve you of the conversation later where you told somebody something that was wrong and then they confront you about it and prove that you're wrong, and then you feel like a total d-bag, you know, or you try to exacerbate even more and say no, that's wrong, even though you just read it. The code book's wrong like exactly I'm right, I've never been wrong.

Dustin:

You look like an imbecile, but if if I have somebody that is asking me something, I'm like dude, I actually have no clue. It. They're not like, you're not lesser in their eyes for that. It's just like. Now you guys have a task.

Drake:

It's respectable yeah, it's like, oh cool, let's find out together, yeah, and here's the thing we're in the age of not wonder. We do not have to wonder yeah, there's no longer. If you have a phone, you have chat gpt, and you can be like, hey, uh, how do you do this thing? Yeah, and it'll tell you.

Dustin:

You can have a conversation with it, live talking to it and gives you everything you could ever want yeah, you don't need to say words, live talking to it.

Drake:

And gives you everything you could ever want yeah, you don't need to say words correctly, it'll figure out what you mean well now.

Dustin:

So with an apprentice, though, I think it's important to say I don't know and then to say why don't you go figure that out when you get home tonight, look into it a little bit and come back, because I actually do want to know. And then it starts a dialogue between the two of you and they feel proud to like, bring you something and then you learn something. So you're, instead of being afraid to be found out that you don't know something, open yourself up to knowing things that you like. You always I always say you should always maintain being a student, even when you're a master. Every master has a master. There's always going to be somebody that knows more than you.

Dustin:

But if you're always eager, like a student, to learn new things, you're going to develop so much that you know over the course of your career, um, but you're never going to like look down and be shitty to people Like you're always going to be this sponge for knowledge and everybody around you is going to adumbrate that behavior outward and they're going to soak things up. So your impact is massive If you're super studious and always cracking books and always talking about code and watching videos, sending your apprentices electrician you videos or whatever. They're going to mirror that behavior. As passionate and crazy as you are about this, they're going to be as well.

Drake:

Yeah, not knowing opens an opportunity to learn something To know.

Dustin:

Yeah, so that's all I got. Yeah, that knowing opens an opportunity to learn something to know. Yeah.

Drake:

Yeah. So that's all I got. Yeah, that sounds good. Love you, crazy people. See you in the next one. Bye.