{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Build It Forward","title":"Teaching Kids to Use Power Tools with Mason Lord","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1232,"description":"Most kids never get the chance to hold a tool before someone tells them it's not for them. Mason Lord is trying to change that.\nMason is the founder of TradesUp and owner of Hudson Valley Preservation, a design-build company in Kent, Connecticut with 35 years of preservation and high-performance remodeling work behind it. His path into the trades started at age seven, in a neighbor's basement workshop, after losing his father in first grade. That early spark is the entire philosophy behind what he's building next with TradesUp.\nThe conversation moves through how a small idea, inviting local kids to a job site for a day, became an annual event drawing 500 people, where tradespeople set up hands-on experiences for kids ages 5 to 12. Why that age range matters. Why middle schoolers hesitate and little kids jump right in. Why the tradespeople keep showing up, year after year, without being asked twice. And what Mason sees as the real opportunity: not just recruiting for the trades, but putting kids at the top of a funnel so that even the ones who don't become carpenters grow up knowing how to walk into a lumberyard without flinching.\nThis conversation on Build It Forward, recorded at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston 2026, also gets into the trades training center Mason is developing on the campus of the Eric Sloan Museum in Kent, the idea of building as something close to human instinct, and why the desire to work with your hands hasn't gone away just because shop class has.\n00:44 Hudson Valley Preservation and how NESEA changed things\n02:31 Starting a workforce development initiative\n03:24 The Spark event -- 500 people, ages 5 to 12\n05:09 Where Mason's spark started\n05:43 TradesUp as the top of the funnel\n06:42 Workshops, community events, and what's next\n07:06 Building a trades training center at the Eric Sloan Museum\n08:30 The desire to build hasn't gone away\n15:11 What builders remember first\n16:01 Planning for Play and the case for raw materials\n17:57 What shop class...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/-Ao_bwqJOd8XP1Oqx5_ardqmHaaRKP_qhVtz4noqcLM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iZjE0/MzBkN2UyMTQwMzc0/M2NmZTY4NGRkZDQw/ZDUyZi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}