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Travis Bader, host of The Silvercore Podcast, discusses matters related to hunting, firearms, hiking, outdoor adventure, success, health and more with the people and businesses that comprise the community all from a uniquely Canadian perspective.
Zach has just released his
new book, the Trade Gap.
It's a fascinating read and it's
packed with insight and picking up
a copy is a great way to support
the important work he's doing.
I've read it myself, and I can confidently
say you'll get a ton of value out of it.
Speaking of value, one of the ways
we go deeper here at Silver Core
is through the Outpost, our private
podcast for Silver Core Club members,
club member Jess wrote in Above the
Outpost and here's what she had to say.
The Outpost is a delightful
bite-sized mini pod with just enough
content to kickstart your brain
into doing some deep thinking.
The homework given at the end of
almost every episode is awesome.
Makes me feel extra engaged with
what I'm listening to as well.
It encourages me to think outside
the box on a lot of topics.
Keep 'em coming.
If you are a member, your personal
link is waiting for you in the
Silver Court Club dashboard.
If not, you can learn more@silvercourt.ca.
Now let's get into this podcast.
I'm joined today by a man who's
worked with Fortune 500 Giants.
He's authored bestsellers, he's lived
off grid, and he's welded his way back to
something most of us didn't realize We'd
lost with his new book, the Trade Gap,
as opposed to romanticizing the trades.
He's here to show us why we
desperately need them and
what's at stake if we don't act.
Welcome back to the Silver Court
Podcast, my friend Zach Hanson.
Yeah, well, I'm glad to be back,
you know, as a, as a two timer and
you know, I'm glad to actual friend
someone who's actually literally
sat down and broken bread with you.
Uh, you know, glad to be here.
Speaking of breaking, breaking bread,
you know what I'm really craving.
One of those.
Now, I don't know how you pronounce 'em.
S Scone or S scone.
Someone's gonna correct me one side
or the other, English, Scottish, or
vice versa, but Merits Holy Crow.
I have been craving those ever
since we had 'em last time.
They're in Boise, even though in
Canada, I think we call 'em a donut.
Uh, it's a deep fried, it's, it's amazing.
If you're ever down in Boise,
Idaho, whoever's listening to
this, check that place out.
Yeah, yeah.
Merits Cafe.
Been there for over 50 years.
It's probably one of the few, like,
I don't know if you'd call it a
hole in the wall, but it's got that
kind of old diner western decor.
But yeah, they have what they call
scones, which is really like, I'm from
the south, so I would've called it a
funnel cake, but it's like a flat dough
fried with cinnamon sugar or whatever
else you want on it, but very good.
Oh man, they're so good.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think hole in the wall
is the right term, but it is,
it's definitely a throwback.
Yeah.
It's, uh, and my favorite
places to eat are like that.
It's funny how the atmosphere in a, in a
restaurant can do so much for the food.
Like you can go into fine dining
when it's so sterile and you're just
like, you can't wait to get out.
Well, another one along those
lines that I think would fit that
motif is a hundred percent the
Beaver Lodge up in Atlanta, Idaho.
Oh, yes.
You're not getting the best food
in the world, but the, uh, the
atmosphere makes it, uh, it worthwhile.
Yeah.
Well, what's the population there now?
Well, I mean, if you subtract us from
being full-time residents, I mean, we're,
they're probably floating around 32, 33.
That's not 3,200, that's 32, 33 people.
Yeah.
The Beaver Lodge was, uh, was
definitely a cool place to be at,
you know, and I think about like
some of my favorite restaurants, uh,
tarps in Boston, San Tar, tars Pizza.
It's.
It's an old throwback kind of dive,
and I, it's just that vibe that
I'm attracted to The Beaver Lodge.
You go in there and everyone's
kinda looking at you side eyed,
like, who is this person coming in?
Because when the population, 32,
33, anybody coming in that doesn't
look like they belong, there is
going to be some question marks.
Yeah.
It it, it goes that way until you say, oh,
I'm here with insert name of resident, and
they're like, oh, okay, okay, I got you.
Yeah.
And then they're bending over
backwards and then they, the
hospitality was amazing there.
The, the phish on the
way up there, holy crow.
So some of the best fishing I've ever had.
In my life on the rivers driving
up to your place there in Atlanta.
Now you'd lent me that 10 carra rod.
Mm-hmm.
And I'll be honest, I was a little
shy about 10 Kera because it's kinda
like skaters and roller blades.
That one joke comes out about roller
blades and nobody wants to touch 'em.
Right.
Uhhuh.
And then, uh, with those 10 karara rods,
the traditionalists, the people who
are into fly fishing or spay fishing
or whatever nim thing, and they'll all
kind of got their opinion about what 10
Karara is about, despite the fact that
10 karara has been around way longer
than any of these other disciplines.
And, uh, so I, I never touched it and I
stayed away from it, but you, you lent
me the rod and now I've got a 10 car rod
in the back of my truck that lives there.
And if I'm early for a meeting and
I know there's a river nearby, if
I am, I got a little bit of time
to kill, bang outta the truck.
It's up in seconds and
I'm fishing with it.
So thank you for introducing me to that.
Well, it was funny, like, uh, and
I guess maybe context for people
listening, I guess this was this
last summer or the summer before.
Time is a flat circle for me right now.
Uh, a hundred percent.
Same with me.
Um,
last summer, right.
I wanna say last summer
there was a heat wave.
It was like 42 or something
when we were over there.
That's Celsius for the people
listening in America, which is
like, yes, 103, 104 Fahrenheit.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it
was crazy.
Yeah.
But when you got up in the
mountains, it was better.
But nonetheless, you and your wife
went up and stayed at our cabin.
And I just remember, you know,
I hand you that 10 car rod and
I know nothing about fishing.
That was a, that was a gift from somebody
else to me, and I hadn't used it yet.
And I think you stopped at a, a.
Fly shop here in Boise and you know,
outfitted it and I've used it since then.
And you kind of gave me the other flies
and stuff you got for it, but man, the
pictures you sent to me on the North
fork of the Boise just hammering fish.
Oh man.
It was like every time I
cast it was one coming back.
It was, it was insane, man.
I, I had such a good time there.
I
did.
You just put your finger in
the air on the north floor.
'cause wherever you stopped
that was like the honey hole.
I know.
You dropped me a pin and I'm keeping
that for when I need to go back.
What do you think that was?
Divine intervention or just luck?
Yeah.
Divine intervention probably
had some play in there.
I, I tend to try and find places
where there aren't other people, even
though the people are usually the
indicator of where it's a hotspot.
Mm-hmm But you, you know, it's like
going out into the salt shuck out here
and you take your boat out and you see
all these people and they're trolling
in lines and everybody wants to get in
that line 'cause they figure the other
person know what's, knows what's up
and I'll just stay completely away from
everybody else and I'll catch and all
these other people don't realize that the
first person who set up had no idea what
they're doing and they're just trolling
and everyone else started trolling around.
Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
Right.
That's how it goes.
But man, that was awesome.
I'm glad you guys were able to
get up there and have success
fishing and poking around.
And for those that don't know,
like for my first book Turning
Faroh, it was all about my move to
that small town of Atlanta, Idaho.
And that's where you and I
connected the first time.
And I was pretty excited that
you guys got to at least go and.
And see it.
There's very few people that I've
connected with over the past few years
that have had the opportunity to, but
I'm always excited when someone can,
oh, you know what?
And I'm, I'm the type that always says no.
Someone's like, oh, you
should stay at my place.
No, nah, nah, it's okay.
Oh, you should borrow this.
Nah, nah.
All right.
And I, I'm, it's just my personality type
for whatever reason, and you'll need both.
I'm so glad that I said yes.
I mean, there is some arm
twisting, like you were persistent.
I'm like, you know what?
I think he means it.
Okay.
I'm gonna say yes and what an
adventure and I mean, okay.
So hot out, but nice, cool stream
going out the side, that gets too cold.
Jump in the hot springs.
I mean, it was, it was beautiful.
Yeah.
Well that's awesome.
I'm glad and you guys were great guests
and very gracious and everything, so
Yeah, we only threw one
party, I mean, warm.
Are you cleaned up
pretty good.
You know, it a little puke
spot, but other than that,
yeah, I think we got most of the 33
people out there, but it was pretty good.
Uh, yeah, there was some like
Canadian denim left around, but other
than that, I, well that's, I mean
that's the Canadian tuxedo, right?
The denim jacket and the, uh,
left little maple syrup stains
in the, uh, in the corner.
But aside from
that, they're all forgivable sins.
Yeah.
So we were chatting last was what
connected us was turning feral.
And so you and your background in
AI and in the tech industry and
computers, and then you find yourself
supporting your family through trapping.
Mm-hmm.
Bit of a throwback skill.
And now you've got the
book, the trade gap.
Mm-hmm.
And when we were.
Uh, together.
Last time you were midway through
the process of learning to weld Yep.
Stick welding, I think it was,
was that you were working on.
Yep.
Where are you at with that now?
Still doing it?
You know, I, as a hobby, so I mean,
I guess context for folks and, you
know, if you've listened to the first
podcast, turning feral, um, was my
adventure from being a white collar
corporate desk jockey, which for all
intents and purposes, I still am.
Um, but that was my career.
I never grew up in the outdoors outside
of just, you know, occasional outings.
But I didn't grow up hunting, fishing, got
an interest in it, went through a divorce,
ended up moving to the most remote
town in the lower 48, Atlanta, Idaho.
Um, kind of restarting my life
and learning to hunt, ultimately
trap, which is where most of
my passion ended up lying.
Um.
And just kind of rediscovering
what it meant to be human.
'cause I was always stuck at
a computer, um, playing with
algorithms, all that good jazz.
And that's been a great adventure.
That's been the last
seven years of my life.
Remarried multiple awesome
kids, my wife's great as well.
But in that process, I always kept my
day job, but I was starting to learn
skills on the side, mostly trapping, um,
you know, some welding, some other stuff
that you just have to learn in order to
live a relatively off grid lifestyle.
You know, even just down to
changing your own oil and fixing
plumbing issues, things like that.
Mm-hmm.
Um,
and it was kind of just a natural
progression for me from going
white collar to kind of being
out in the middle of nowhere.
Um, and what Travis was kind of alluding
to in 2023, I, for the first time in my
professional white collar career, had the
ax fall on me in the result of a layoff.
So,
mm-hmm.
All of a sudden I was
staring at two mortgages.
A bunch of kids, you know, wife
and I had all the white collar
manifest destiny kinda laid out as
far as I had six months of savings.
That's kind of what
people in the US tell you.
Like, I have six months of savings in the
event of an emergency, you get laid off.
And I was like, good, I'm good.
I am okay here.
I didn't feel nervous when it happened.
I was like, I'll find a new job.
No problem.
Well, long story made very short.
Fast forward 11 months later,
we've blown through all of that
six months of, uh, extra money.
Mm-hmm.
We had stowed away and all of a sudden
the screws were to me to say, you gotta
figure out how to provide for your family.
And ultimately that came
through the form of trapping.
I had some contracts with us Fish and
Wildlife, um, you know, was doing some
wolf trapping, which pays pretty well
in Idaho and some other stuff just full
bore selling pelts, the whole nine.
And that's how I paid my mortgages
before I ultimately found another
job in the white collar industry, uh,
which is where I'm at now, still kind
of toiling away for the man, but for
a little bit of a bigger paycheck.
Um, and that's kinda what spurred
the trade gap, which was just my dive
into understanding like, okay, the
only thing that saved my bacon in that
scenario was just by fortune alone.
I had started to learn some form of a
trade and my version of trade's very
loose, but it was trapping for me and
some taxidermy, um, that floated us.
Had I not had that, I, I don't
know what would've happened.
We definitely would've been
liquidating more assets.
We would've been really pushing, you
know, the line a little bit more.
I would've been, you know, getting a
job at the local store, which is fine.
Um, but it saved me and that's what
inspired the book itself, which we can
talk about too here in a little bit.
Yeah.
You know, eh, Chapin had that quote outta
suffering of emerged as strongest souls.
The most massive characters
are seared with scars.
Mm-hmm.
Um, had it not been for that suffering
and that pain that you're feeling, you
probably wouldn't have been spurred on to,
uh, to learn welding, to, to use trapping
as a means of a, uh, a livelihood.
Um, where would you be if
you didn't get laid off?
What would your life look like?
I mean, it would look similar to what
it is now, but I would have fewer
skills that a, I enjoy doing and b,
you know, act as a hedge against, you
know, what I foresee as a full change
in our economy and the way that our
system here in the US and even Canada
has been set up over the last 20 years.
Tell me about that.
So, once I got hired again is when I
started to write this book, you know.
When I got hired, I was really reflecting
over the pain that you just mentioned.
Sure.
It was 11 months of pain.
It was a lot of my wife and I on our
knees praying for, you know, something
to come about to help change it.
We were going back and forth on
whether we needed to sell our cabin.
We sold our car, you know, we were
down to like three kids, two adults,
no vehicles in a non walkable city.
You know, it, it was, it was tough.
Mm-hmm.
So, out of the reflection, I started
to think a lot about a lot of things.
One, I went to night welding school.
I was like, look, I'm going to
start to double down on trades.
That means something to me.
And just for the record right now,
you know, I, I still do some stick
welding, but I also went and I've
started my apprenticeship for getting
my electrical journeyman's license.
It's a very long process.
Oh, wow.
Especially part-time, like
this is probably a 10 year.
Um, process that I'm going
under, but doing nights Wow.
For being an electrician and kind of
helping out with a, an electrician friend.
I know from time to time when he needs
it to get a friendship hours, but you
know, it was the reflection on that and
saying like, I don't ever wanna be caught
with my proverbial pants down again.
And the trends that I'm seeing in the
white collar tech world are layoffs.
You look in the news any
day, it's like layoffs.
Layoffs.
You know, we have AI agents that
are doing coding, so engineers who
used to gather a huge paycheck are
just not being hired right now.
Mm-hmm.
Product managers like myself, like you
introduced chat GPT and you can kind of
do the job pretty well with way fewer
people than you used to be able to.
Mm-hmm.
Same goes for graphic
designers, technical writers.
The list goes on and people are being
laid off, left and right, and people
are having a hard time finding jobs.
Um, and so it spurred me to start
researching like, what, what has
been the educational track of trade
work and knowledge work in the us?
And I'll try to, I'll try to make
this very short, but it all started
in 1917 in the US when, you know,
agriculture was really picking
up kind of on the, you know, tail
end of the industrial revolution.
And in Georgia there were two
senators, the state of Georgia, two
senators who really saw a lot of
destitution in their area, you know,
in the, going into the twenties.
And they wanted to
bring in education work.
So they had a, a federal mandate,
um, that states could buy into to
bring in trade education, right?
And this was mostly in the form
of agricultural trade at the time.
And that act.
Lasted all the way up through the sixties.
So states got federal funding essentially
for building trade schools all across
the us and it was relatively successful.
There were different re-ups through the,
you know, the forties and the fifties
post-war, post Korean War to kind
of, you know, arm the American public
with skills that actually paid money.
Mm-hmm.
And at the time, with manufacturing,
just going through the roof, think of the
car industry in Detroit, you know, just
all over the US It was very successful.
And then into the sixties kind
of is where it hit its peak.
If you were in the sixties in the US
and I did a lot of interviews for this
book, almost every high school had
some either metal shop or wood shop
where you could go and learn a trade.
And many people ultimately either
went into the trades or at minimum.
Had some knowledge of
how manufacturing worked.
Like even if somebody did go to
college and didn't go into the
trade, they understood how you
slap two pieces of metal together.
They understood how to, you know,
change their oil in their car.
They understood woodworking so they
could do some work on their home
that they could afford at the time.
Yeah.
And that trajectory kept going
all the way up until the eighties.
And in the eighties there was a paper
called, I'm, I'm gonna blank on it
right now, even though I just wrote a
book on it, but it was something around
like, the national reform of education.
Sure.
Um, you pick up the book on, yeah, yeah.
Cardio Tuesday if you really
wanna find the actual, uh, paper.
But it was pretty much saying if
we're gonna compete with China at the
time, um, we need to focus on STEM
education, you know, the science,
technology, engineering and math.
Um, on the surface, not a bad paper.
But what happened is a lot of the funding
that was going into that original federal
grants for, um, trade education all
almost immediately got diverted to stem.
Hmm.
So, you
know, I'm an eighties baby, so I grew up
in the early nineties and I never, no, no
school I ever went to, had a trade shop.
So it was that like early, mid
eighties when all the funding got
rerouted from trades to technology.
So I had a computer lab in
the early nineties in my
school learning how to type.
And pretty much from that point on, say
late eighties, early nineties, the stance
in America was higher education or bust.
Hmm.
It was, you need to learn technology.
Trades are kind of a lesser
than pursuit at this time.
We need knowledge workers,
was kind of the terminology.
We need people to go and learn.
Philosophy, political science,
it doesn't matter what you go to
college for, you go and you will
come out on the other end with a high
paying job and it'll all be good.
You take on the debt, it doesn't matter.
You'll pay it off quickly.
And then of course, fast forward to
my generation finally getting outta
school, right in the recession of
2007, 2008, there's no jobs to be had,
right?
That's
higher than it's ever been.
And then it's never really
recovered from there.
And it's just been, you know, we have
a generation of skill list people.
Well, and so you worked in the AI
industry and we're looking at AI and
how that's being integrated with, uh,
in the workforce, how people are losing
their jobs, how one AI agent can easily
replace a whole team of, uh, individuals.
Maybe not to the same degree of what
everyone can do, but when a cost benefit
analysis is done, they're like, ah, okay.
Giving up a little bit because in a couple
years, a, it is gonna be even better.
Right?
Um, a a lot of these technology
sort of things are, are disposable.
Like when I grew up, I was
learning about computers as well.
I was born, what, 78.
So, grew up in the eighties and started
seeing the computers go in the classroom.
I learned little c plus plus little basic,
just so I can hack away at the nibbles
game and, uh, get the high score, right?
Just, just the bare minimum amount, but.
Uh, those were kind of building blocks
for later things, but if I were to
get into any sort of programming
now, I'd be completely lost.
It's completely different.
No, you
wouldn't because now
AI will do it for you.
You can do what they're
calling vibe coding right now.
You can get now.
This is the time to get back into it.
Well, I guess what I'm looking at
is there are some fundamental things
that I think people should have under
their belt and maybe having, uh,
logic, reasoning, rhetoric, uh, math
basic, like, I don't know, like your
computers can do your math for you.
AI can now do your logic for you, right?
Like there's all these
different things, but.
Um, rules that you can comport yourself
by or you can hold other things too.
If this, then that.
Does this make sense for my
own personal, uh, usage case?
Would it make sense for me
to use AI in this Yes or no?
Based on what, um, I think those
sort of skills are gonna be like
longer term kind of hard skills, like
this traditional things when you're
talking about how do you stick two
pieces of metal together Now, whether
it's a computer doing it mm-hmm.
A machine, you have to understand that
different metals melt at different
rates and they'll oxidize differently
and they can join differently.
And, but if you have that basic
understanding, in the same way that I have
a basic understanding of c plus plus and
basic, I understand a little bit about
how computer program and I can kinda hack
my way around these different things.
I, I think there's a strong case
to be made for having, uh, an.
Overall, what do they call that?
Renaissance man, kind of a, uh, uh,
understanding of how things work.
Um,
well, you, you just named one of
the titles of a chapter in the book.
Right.
Like that modern Renaissance man.
And I think, well, one of the things I
put forward in the book, really towards
the end is a, a touch on what you're
just saying is a real general education.
When I went through college, I was
getting a general education degree.
That general education degree
comprised of some political science
courses, some humanities, a little
bit of math and languages, right?
Mm. That was a general education
that is not a general education,
that is a specific education.
Mm. And one that doesn't necessarily,
in our society today lend itself
towards a good paying job.
So the argument I'd like
to make and put forth.
We need to get back to
true general education.
You know, at the peak in the sixties
when, you know, college bound
individuals were increasing, but
there was still the demand for, you
know, trades education in high school.
Whether you ended up
going to trades or not.
It was probably the peak in the US
of like actual general education.
It was, you know, you gotta learn it all.
You know, you have your home ec
class, you've got your wood class,
you've got your shop class, and
then you still have your math, your
science languages, all of that.
And I think that's where we got lost
going into the eighties and nineties
was, it was now all humanities.
Like, that's all you need to
learn is like STEM and humanities.
Everything else is lesser than.
So I think it's like that full circle
approach of, you know, we're gonna be in
some dire straits pretty soon and we can
talk about the economics, uh, behind the
lack of tradesmen and women out there.
But we need to get back
to general education.
You know, we need welders who can recite
K and Shakespeare as much as we need,
you know, people who can, you know,
write PhD level dissertations on some
algorithm that can also swing a hammer.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I, I, I think having that basic
practical skill base is important
because the, uh, the ins and outs,
the real technical things, AI is
starting to pick up the slack on that.
Like, and I got a couple examples.
So I've got a, an old pinball machine.
It's, it's got no electronics
in it, so to speak.
It's just, it's all wired in.
And, and it wasn't working for me.
And I'm like, what's going on?
I don't know.
How do I figure this out?
Well, I got these schematics
and I can't really read them.
They're so tiny, and like I could if
I wanted to, but the A DHD kicks in,
it's just like, it's overwhelming.
Like, I'd, I'd rather.
I'd rather take the time and go
through every little wire on this
thing than look at the schematic
and try and wire it out that way.
But if I take a picture of the schematic
and then I took a picture of the inside
of the pinball machine, ai AI's like, oh,
here's what you gotta do step by step.
And I put the thing on speaker
phone and I'm like, okay,
talk to me like I'm stupid.
Right?
To explain it to me like I'm five
years old, what's my next step?
And I worked through piece by
piece until I could figure it out.
It helped that I know how to solder.
It helps that I know
how to use a multimeter.
And if it's too fancy, then I can
ask AI how to interpret the readings.
But there's, I, there needs to
be a fundamental skillset to
be able to at least start that.
And in the same way, like our
air conditioning stopped working.
I call in, buddy of mine, his family owns
a, uh, uh, plumbing heating HVAC company.
And they said, Hey, I mean, if I'm gonna
hire anyone, I'm gonna hire a friend.
Come on by.
Right?
So, uh, and they send, one of their
technicians by technician looks at it and
says, well, I'm not sure it comes back
a second time, does some stuff to it.
And so after the second time,
I'm like, all right, I'm gonna
take a crack at this myself.
Get AI on there, have it, put
me through the whole process.
And okay, so there's some free on
recovery and a couple other things
that you're supposed to have a,
a tech there for to do properly.
So anyways, what that technician
would've really benefited from was the
ability to understand how AI works.
Mm-hmm.
Because they would've been able to
fast track this, this whole process.
And what I could benefit from
is some of the specialized
tools that this technician has.
And, uh, so there is this marrying of
ideas that I think is really important.
Um.
Until AI dies or, or takes
over the world, I guess.
Yeah.
I, I think of it as like
a Venn diagram, right?
Like there's that overlap.
Like I think a lot of people who
are gonna see success in the next
10 years, if you think about whether
that's financially or in business,
are people who are, have a strong base
in whatever their expertise may be.
Or they are a, a renaissance
man mentality where they know
a little bit about everything.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can augment it with ai.
It's a great augmentation tool.
Like it, it's a catch 22 where it
can really lead to brain, right?
Where you don't ever feel you
need to learn core skills because
you can rely on this to answer
questions for you, do things for you.
But those who take the time to learn
core skills that aren't necessarily.
Ai, like you said, the
ability to solder mm-hmm.
The ability to understand just
general plumbing or HVAC things.
Mm-hmm.
And
then you add AI on top of that, it can
really take you to that next level.
And I think that's gonna be great.
And in that Venn diagram of
people who know nothing about AI
but are skilled in the trades.
And then you have the other circle of
people who know nothing about trade
work, but know a lot about ai, those
people who overlap, who have a little
bit of both are gonna be the people
who really excel in whatever they
do over the next 10, 15, 20 years.
Whatever the horizon for
this actually looks like.
I, I think so.
I think you're right.
I, I think there is the natural,
uh, human reaction to having
a navigator in your vehicle.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Take a left here.
Next set of lights, take a right.
We're gonna go a couple of miles down.
I can drive, I can operate the vehicle
person's giving me the directions
and ask me, how do I get there again?
Oh, well I, you know, I
think I remember right.
Or maybe I don't, or I'm quick to forget.
If I looked at the map and I
plotted it out myself, then,
then it's gonna be more in there.
And I think AI is kind of like that
navigator that we have that naturally
people are just gonna kind of rely on it.
And there probably should be another
step that if it's something they think
they're gonna ever have to do again,
spend a bit more time with maybe with AI
and say, okay, how will I remember this?
Gimme some pneumonics.
Help teach me.
So this is something that, what are the
most important parts that I should know?
So I can, I can work forward with?
Yeah, I think that's right.
And like the argument in the book
is, if you're thinking of the Venn
diagram, it would be talking to those
knowledge workers, the people who
have not swung a hammer, who have
had their career in a space that is.
You know, maybe not AI driven, but
largely something that could be replaced
by AI easily back to the middle, to
that Venn diagram to say, you know,
should learn skills and augment it
with all the stuff, you know, all the
stuff you got through your college
education, all that good stuff.
And to, to stay competitive because
the other ends of, I think both sides
of those Venn diagram are at risk.
Right?
Mm. Um,
so I, I've, you know, I got my gut feeling
as, I think I know where this is gonna
go, but I'm gonna throw it out anyways.
I want to ask, um, how much did you use
AI for researching and maybe, uh, spell
checking, editing, whatever the trade gap?
Almost zero.
Actually zero.
Like I, I'm a purist in that regard.
You know, it, it's, I saw
something the other day.
In relation to ai, where it
says everybody now is an artist,
everybody now is an author.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and it's very easy to leverage it.
But as you know, I've written
several books even outside of
the Turn or Turning Ferrell.
Um, and for me it's a mental escape.
Like I, I self-admittedly, I believe
that I am struggling right now with
brain rot from both social media and ai.
Mm-hmm.
It is so easy.
Like my daughter yesterday,
she brought in a wasp.
It was a dead wasp, but it
was gnarly Looking here in
Idaho, I'm like, what is that?
Um, in the past I might've like
taken time to describe this
wasp to Google or something that
was non-AI driven at the time.
Mm-hmm.
Like, hey, there's a wasp
roughly one inch long.
It's got like tan and red bands around.
It's thax, you know, it's
got medium-sized antennas.
Uh, found in Boise,
Idaho, what would this be?
And it might give me a list and you can
narrow it down and start to do research.
I literally took my phone out, took
a picture of it, and I got like a
dictionary back on what this bug
was, what it eats, all of that.
Turns out to be non-aggressive, by the
way, though it looked very aggressive.
Um, yeah, sounds like it.
It was a cicada killer.
Um, wasp.
I didn't even know we had
cicadas here in Idaho, but we do.
And it was just, it took two seconds,
but then I never absorbed anything.
Like I, I've been thinking on it,
you know, as an example, so maybe
I thought a little more, but it
was that like I took a picture, it
gave me the result, and I moved on.
Yeah.
If I saw that same thing out in
the wild again, I wouldn't be
like, oh, that's a cicada killer.
I'd have to pull my phone out again
and be like, what was that thing again?
Oh yeah, let me just take another picture.
So I struggled with that brain rot.
You add in the social media
aspects of just like the.
It is hard to get away from
like mindless scrolling.
And I try to be conscious
about it and I'll find it.
My wife and I go on intermittent breaks
because we'll just find ourselves like
on the loo or whatever, just scrolling.
And then you're like, 30 minutes goes by
and you're like, what am I looking at?
Yeah.
And I think that coupling is
just sending us down this path
of, you know, true brain rot.
And for me, the writing
aspect is my escape from that.
Like when I write, I get up
in the morning and I write, I
write my words out of my brain.
And when I look at this book,
especially, like there's a lot of AI
slop out there, there's more books
than there's ever been in the world.
Mm.
But you know, whether people say,
believe it or not, and that's the
hard part is people are gonna be
like, well, maybe you just used day
I to write it, blah, blah, blah.
I didn't, I can look myself in the mirror
and know I wrote all 34,000, 40,000 words.
Sitting at my desk in the morning hacking
it away, and then using fantastic human
editors to help me refine it and get
it out the door and get it packed in
a way that's hopefully meaningful.
So zero is exactly what I think
it figured you'd come back with.
Yeah.
So my gut was right on that.
Well,
it's not zero 'cause I did have it
shop around some title stuff for me.
Okay.
I ended up going with the title
that I had originally, uh,
come up with a long time ago.
But I did like, I was like, let's
play with chat GPT, like, you know,
here's the context for the book.
Here's the title I have.
And it gave me some other ones
that I wasn't too jazzed about.
So.
You know, some friends of
mine are putting a book out.
It's an amazing book.
The, uh, they both have
exceptional backgrounds.
They are in the top, less than
one percentile of what they do in,
in the world, uh, amazing book.
But they sat down a few years ago and
they spoke it all out into tape recorders.
They got it transcribed.
They mm-hmm.
They're trying to put it together and
then it gets shelved, and then they're
trying it again, and it gets shelved
because they're not writers, right.
That's not, that's not what they do.
And so they ended up utilizing AI in
the large learned LLMI guess they call
it, to, to help tie it all together.
And it was really useful.
It hasn't come out yet.
It's gonna come out in a bit.
Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk
about it yet, so I'll just talk about
it in the, uh, a bit more nebulous.
Yep.
Um.
But it does a great job.
It references things back and forth.
Yeah.
It says like, we talk about this,
and then you'll see it over here.
But it also does other things in there
like, uh, contrast phrasing and m dashes
and all these indicators, which sound
really cool the first time you see it.
But once you get a little bit of AI
fatigue, you're gonna be like, this looks
like ai, AI had written at this thing.
And you know, I, I did
some videos a while back.
We had one of our instructors,
and it's a government video that
we're doing, and he was wearing
this goofy, um, paracord bracelet.
Mm-hmm.
Because he thought it was the
coolest thing of the world.
Like if you get captured, you
could escape with this para court.
Like all these goofy things.
Right.
The cartoon that they have.
This guy's imagining, oh,
I can catch fish with it.
I could use it as fire starter.
And the reality is his friends are like,
oh, so you're wearing a bracelet now.
Hey.
But uh, but he, as soon as it
was done, he's like, I wish
I didn't wear that bracelet.
It, it totally, uh, ages this, it
puts me in a different category.
And I look at AI like a paraquat bracelet.
Mm-hmm.
When people are looking at this, they're
gonna quickly dismiss the value that
these people have in the book because
they, oh, it's just an AI thing.
And no, the concepts aren't ai, it was
put together by ai, but all the concepts
and all this stuff inside there, and I.
I, I get it from your side for the
therapeutic thing, but I also get
the outside perspective looking in.
Yeah.
That people will judge
you based on the AI thing.
And I, I don't want to, yeah, too
long here, but I'll give a, a silly
story, sort of self-deprecating.
So, uh, there's a guy, some of our
listeners may have heard of him.
His name's George St. Pierre.
He is done a little bit of fighting
in the UFC and anyways, um, got
a few followers on Instagram.
He's gotten into hunting.
I thought, you know, I'd love
to chat with him on the podcast.
So I reach out to him.
And I talk a couple times,
I don't hear anything back.
And I'm like, well, you know, he is got
about 5 million people that follow him.
So I get on AI and I'm like, alright,
I spend 20 minutes, half an hour, like
five o'clock in the morning and I'm
just going through back and forth.
What's his psychology like, what's
is this like, what's like, what
would get him to want to respond?
Because I think there would be a lot
of value for the listeners, I think.
I'm hoping I could
bring some value to him.
Right?
Anyways, hammer wrote this really
nice AI thing and I send out on over
and I'm feeling happy with myself
because I put so much work into this.
And then I get back into AI
and I, I'm like, you know,
he's got 5 million followers.
What if, um, what if he just doesn't
read my DM here and I wanna put an email
together of the same thread, right?
And I'll, uh, figure I'll send him
an email in the same kind of way.
And so I type that into ai.
Press go.
How come I'm not getting anything back?
Oh wait.
That wasn't ai.
I DMed that over to GSPI DMed my AI
request to GSP, and so then my blind
panic at five o'clock in the morning,
I am, uh, how I don't, I'm not social
media savvy, like, how do I unsend this?
Oh, this thing says delete.
And I, before reading the
whole thing, A DHD kicks in.
I guess it says delete, I think it
said delete for you or delete for user.
So I deleted it and now
I can't unsend it now.
So anyways, I had to send them over
this very highly personal one because
what I thought I was doing great.
The second that there is
lights on on it mm-hmm.
That somebody else from the
outside might see me using it.
I'm like, wait a minute.
He's gonna look at it.
It's like I'm being lazy.
Like I wasn't lazy, but that's
how everyone's gonna view it.
Yeah, I, well that's a pretty funny story
and I think you should have George St.
Pierre on, that'd be a great guess.
He's listening.
Come on.
Oh, yes,
yes.
I'm sure he is tuned in right now.
Oh yeah.
But yeah, to your point, it's
a, we're in the wild west of it.
It's so hard to tell.
But like you said, like I've
always used M dashes in my writing.
You can't use them anymore.
That's become like the tell, right?
Yeah.
On LinkedIn and other, you know,
stuff like, oh, that must be
AI slop because it's got that.
So I've been a little butt hurt all over.
Yeah.
The use of M dashes and
uh, ai, but you're right.
But it's also hard to become
discerning about it, right.
You might read, like if Jack Carrack was
writing right now, you would read this
beautiful prose from him and you would
guess like, did he really write that?
Mm-hmm.
Because you could take, you know, it
was interesting, like I played around
with this too, you know, I've uploaded
some of my writing to chat GPT.
Mm-hmm.
And if I get.
To write an email.
I've done the thing like, Hey, write
this in the style that I would say,
right.
You know, you can modify it to be kind of,
for you to maybe mask some of that, uh,
ai, I'm trying to think of the right word.
It's just like, uh, stigma.
Well, I don't even know.
It just something that smells like ai.
Yeah.
Is, it's an intuition you get, you know,
I'll get emails from people at work.
I'll be, that smells like ai.
Mm-hmm.
And you just kinda have to laugh it off
and like, let it roll over your shoulder.
But maybe it's not, and like, to your
point with your friend's books, you
know, I, I'm in a lot of like circles
with writers and authors and you know,
there are so many people who start
books who will never publish.
Mm.
You know, there's the psychology
behind it or maybe they're just
not writers, like your friends.
And they had shelved it for many years.
And they had the ideas down and
they used it to tie together.
I think that's beautiful.
I think it's great.
I think people need to
get their work out there.
Mm-hmm.
Now,
over time, can you start to
tell, like, I'm gonna hedge
my bets on saying, I hope so.
I hope someone can read my work
and be like, oh, I see the fallacy
in his writing enough to, to
recognize that it, it's actually me.
You know, being open to having
errors or stuff that is unique
or, uh, linguistically unique
for the area that you live in.
That might be a tel of saying, oh,
this guy actually wrote this book.
But I, I, it's so hard to say.
Like, I, I'm not anti AI for
getting good work out there.
Um, I have my hard stances personally.
Mm-hmm.
But
there's gonna be a lot of
good that comes of it too.
And that's, it's this weird
catch 22 that I don't know how
to wrestle with to be honest.
Um, and I think it's a
time will tell scenario.
Well, I've, I've taken the approach
that like at some point, like progress
is always happening and it's always
putting people outta work, right?
Yeah.
We used to live in a,
you know, a physicality.
That was the thing that got you through.
If you can get out, you can farm,
you work hard, you're gonna be
making money and your family's gonna
do well, you're gonna live happy.
And then the industrial revolution,
and they automate things and all
of a sudden they're like, okay,
you gotta get an education, right?
And education goes through, now we
got AI coming and like that whole
adage of you gotta know your math.
You're never gonna be walking around
with a calculator in your pocket.
Well, that didn't Yeah.
Hold up too well.
So there's always gonna be these changes.
There's always gonna be times
when people are like, oh my
God, it's the end of the world.
Like when the steam engine came
out, people were protesting it.
'cause they said, you can't use this.
It's gonna put so many people outta work.
Yep.
But.
We have to learn to pivot.
And I think when it comes to like
ai, I kinda liken it to using a word
processor as opposed to a typewriter.
Like I'm, I'm not gonna invent my own
word processor to put this thing together.
I'm gonna lean on the bolding and the
spell checking and the suggested, uh,
calm is, or whatever it might have a, as I
type it out, PE-people think that's okay.
And if I'm gonna be using ai,
what I do now is the same thing
I suggested to my friends.
I said, in your forward, why
don't you just be up front
and say this is what we did.
We, a lot of blood, sweat
and tears went into this.
And in order to get it out, we
used AI to put this together.
Right.
So now based on my GSP thing or anything
else, I was asked for some feedback on
a new product that's being made by a
Canadian manufacturing company, which
is a Silver Core Club partner, which
I'm really excited to talk about when
I can, but I'll just leave that there.
And I, I'm just upfront, I said, look,
it, I, I typed out three pages of notes,
but it, I used AI to make it put into
something that's digestible for you.
Yeah.
And, and I think, um, I think that's
gonna be the tool moving forward.
Not to pretend like this is you,
even though it is me, it's my stuff.
But just say, look, it, I, I
didn't invent the word processor,
but I quickly typed it out.
Yeah.
I think that kind of footnoting,
what is that level of honesty?
And it helps you to avoid that
questioning, you know, like, yeah.
This was my notes.
I used AI to put into three bullet points
that you could take away more easily.
Yeah.
You are a self-deprecating guy.
I'm a self-deprecating guy.
I tend to be a little verbose in
my note taking and stuff like that.
For me, it'd be like, Hey.
Instead of sending you four pages
of ramblings from an A DHD brain, I
asked AI to help me condense it to
the three main takeaways for you.
Right.
I think that's honest.
I think that's fair.
And I think it's a good use of an LLM
and AI and kind of every day task taking.
But what's, you know, interesting
to me too, um, you know, the amount
of electricity and energy for every
single one of those prompts, prompts
being someone typing up plain language
request and the chat, GPT, clawed
gr whatever you use is astronomical.
Is it really?
Oh my god.
I don't know what the actual stat is.
You know, you'll have to, someone
will have to Google it, but it is
get on AI and ask.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
But it is an absurd amount of energy
per prompt and um, you know, with it
comes the need for more data centers.
And electricity to be able to continue
to run these things at the scale that
they're going to continue to amplify at.
Uh, they're all in podcasts.
I was listening to it the other day
and it was all about manufacturing.
It was like, how do we, you know,
actually build these things to
continue on this path for ai?
And the, then tying back into the book a
little bit is, you know, my high school
graduating class, this will, you know,
age me as a young guy, but like, you know,
I graduated high school in 2006 or 2007.
Hmm.
In the US there were 33
million high school graduates.
76% went to a two or four year pay
to play university, taking on debt.
You know, out of that 33 million,
I think the, the number is like.
Super low, maybe 10, 15% went
to a trade school, you know,
another couple did nothing.
And then someone into the military,
which you could argue might lead to
a trade in some instances as well.
Mm-hmm.
So let's say it's 15%.
So you know, you're having a very
small number, a year over a year
of people who actually learning
the trades, hvac, plumbing, you
know, welding, insert any of those.
And you do that year over
year, over year, over year.
And the number of trades people
has just been minimally low.
And for every five people that are
retiring out of the trades right
now, only two are replacing them.
But the demand is going up, not
just domestically for like, Hey, I
need somebody to come fix my hvac.
But even just for like building
data centers, you need, they
need kus of electricians.
And they were saying they
can't hire enough electricians.
They need welders, they need
everything that goes into building
these physical machines to power.
The digital world that we're moving into.
Mm-hmm.
And you know, that's a stark contrast.
And now, you know, I'm sure you've
seen it, I've seen it even in my own
life of like, now you call a handyman
for a leaky water heater, whatever.
It's, it's not like, Hey,
I'll be there in an hour.
It's like, yep.
I could probably get to
you in a week or two.
That's right.
But meanwhile, your floors are
bowing because your water heater's
leaking and you don't even know
where your water shutoff valve is.
Yep.
And then, then you, that that
panic is starting to set in
for people every day like that.
We don't know the basics anymore.
Yeah.
And that's so scary.
It's very scary.
So we look at our education system, which
is rather antiquated in its approach.
Yep.
Uh, wrought with flaws.
I did not do well in a
traditional educational SY system.
Yep.
Some people do.
Um.
I can see a lot of areas where there
can be improvements made, but with
the idea of the trade gap, your book,
and how we get people to be more
renaissance minded, what would you
do to overhaul the education system?
Yeah.
What would
you leave it as?
It is?
You know, I, I, there's a lot of great
examples, and one I talked to about
in the book is the state of Oklahoma.
They have done a great job historically,
even from like the early 19 hundreds
in trade education, largely a rural
agricultural state, but the, you know,
they have started to integrate trade
education more holistically in their, you
know, middle and high school curriculum.
Mm-hmm.
Every single county has a trade center.
I think there's like 26 counties
might have the number wrong, but that
means there's 26 trade education and
they have a very good program where.
At the beginning of high school for
these students, I think it's called icap.
I don't remember what the acronym
stands for, but they'll sit with
high school students and kind of
work out, um, what do they want
their high school career look like.
You know, you should have the opportunity
to dabble in some of these things.
Like you can come before school, during
school, or after school if you wanna learn
to hang sheet rock and do construction.
Mm-hmm.
If you want to do nursing, you
should start to kind of getting
some nursing education while
you're already in high school.
And what's happening is they're graduating
kids that either may want to still go on
to a four year degree, but they have a
hard skill that they're already certified
in, say welding, to help maybe augment
the debt that they're taking on for.
They can work as a welder through school.
They can work as a nurse through school,
um, you know, things of that nature where
they're actually working with kids to give
them a true general education, which is.
Skill development as well as the, you
know, humanities side and STEM side.
Mm-hmm.
And letting kids kind of find
where their passions are.
'cause it sounded like you, like
I didn't do great in, I ended
up forcing my way through it.
Like I did, you know, my high school
and I was a very average student.
I got more focused in college and
then I did graduate school twice.
Um, but I didn't ever really
know what I wanted to do.
I had never actually been
exposed to say, doing business.
I didn't get exposed to trades.
I would just kind of blindly
following what people said was the
right formula to be successful.
And it turned out to be very false for me.
You know, I was able to bully my way
into a career in a field, which was
great, but that was my personality.
That wasn't my, you know,
education that paid off for that.
That was just pure tenacity.
Mm-hmm.
So I
think what they're doing well in Oklahoma.
Doing true general education early,
exposing kids to so much, letting them
kind of like take that Montessori approach
of like, what are you attracted to?
But being very honest with 'em, you
know, like, uh, I think the director of
ICAP in Oklahoma was saying something
to the effect of, you know, we still
have to develop grit in these kids,
especially in the grades because, you
know, the worst thing they could do is
show them how to hang sheet rock and
then kick 'em out the door and they're
actually hanging sheet rock and they don't
understand what the environment is like.
And construction environments,
a lot of trade environments,
like they're hard on you.
You know, there's the
apprentice mentality.
They're gonna be bullying,
there's gonna be stuff that,
uh, you have to be prepared for.
So I think that's the, the
answer is expanding that
more generally across the us.
Um, and that's for kids coming
up now, for adults who are
already in the world that I'm in.
Uh, that is a different story and that's
another thing I touch on in the book.
So, okay.
So for an a adult, they're
up and coming in the world.
You're gonna encourage 'em to learn
a trade, learn how to do something.
What would be the number one
trade that you'd tell people
that they should be looking at?
You
know, I don't know.
I, I don't have an answer for that.
And again, my knitting could
be a trade in my mind, right?
Like, you could be making
some socks on the side.
It,
EMS, you know, like
volunteering on the side.
Like, I have a guy, a friend of mine from
my time at Capital One in the AI world
where, you know, he's ex-military, but he
was also getting a little disillusioned
with the day to day he is like, I
need something else to hang my hat on.
And he got EMS certified and now he
helps run in the ambulances in the
evening, a few nights a week in his town.
Um, you know, the approach is.
I very much, I, I kind of borrowed from
Michael Easter, the idea of like his oggi
and then Michael Easter's comfort crisis.
He's like, you should do at least one
thing every year that is very, very
hard, um, physically that you run a
chance of not actually completing.
And that's to kind of help build
this resilience that you can
kind of grow into over time.
And for me, I kind of have the same
mentality, but applying it to trades.
Like if you're a knowledge worker,
that's great, you're making money.
But as a hedge you should start doing
like little monthly mini ogis, the things
you've put off or have historically
said, due to the time value of money,
it's easier for me to hire someone
else to do it, to try it yourself.
And for many people that might be
changing the oil in your car one
month, the next month it might be
those floorboards or the, you know,
baseboards that you've wanted to
replace for forever that you never did.
Again, use AI as an augment, you
know, ask chat GPT, like what do
I need to go get from Home Depot?
And, you know, put it up there, have
it speak to you and do it, but do these
little things to accrue a set of skills.
Now you could focus on one thing.
Like a lot of guys I know like to
smoke barbecue, go to your night
welding local community college and
learn to stick weld like I did, and
then build a barrel smoker and smoke
thing.
Um, I'm sitting in front of my desk
like this will not mean much to many
people, but this is the first piece
of metal I ever welded together.
Oh yeah, it is a little t and you can see
like my terrible welds and then starting
to go into something that's passable.
But I look at this every day sitting
at my desk, and this is one of
the more proud things that I have
accomplished is like knowing that I
could do something that my grandfather
used to do who was a welder by trade.
Um, and just picking up those little wins
of self-reliance is what my proposal is.
I'm not telling people to quit their
jobs and knowledge working, or if
you're a lawyer making a lot of money
to quit, but man, you should spend
extra time to try and expand your
mind and your skills capability.
And then in the event of the
hammer dropping, you might
have something to fall back on.
Yeah.
And if the hammer never drops, I think
you touched on something pretty huge
there, and that's the grit portion of it.
So many people are a
discomfort adverse and yeah.
Michael Easter, Easter writes about
that in the comfort crisis, and I
think he makes a very, very good point.
And he, and he wrote in your book
as well, he's got, um, a little
blurb that he put about it.
The, the idea of doing things that
are uncomfortable for the sake of.
Knowing that you can actually
do uncomfortable things like
those ogis, what are his rules?
Number one rule is you, you can't die.
Yep.
Don die.
'cause he kind of defeats the purpose
of the oggi if you're dead Yep.
But isn't number two, that the
likelihoods of success or, eh,
maybe I'll succeed, maybe I won't.
Yep.
Coin toss.
Right,
right.
Um, so I, I think, I think he's
brought some attention to that.
I think with the trade gap, you're
bringing more attention to that idea
and perhaps from a different angle.
And maybe it's a little bit more, um, bit
more tangible that people can actually
do these mini masos on a regular basis.
Okay.
I was recording a podcast on a boat
the other day, and, uh, buddy's a
videographer and he's setting up one of
the GoPro things on the side, and he,
he dropped some of my kit overboard.
Okay, fair enough.
Um, I can go on Amazon, I can order
a new piece of kit, it's gonna cost
X amount of dollars, or I can make it
myself, like I've got enough stuff in
the back, in the shop and I can, I, it's
not gonna be perfect, and it's gonna
take me longer to make that than it's
gonna take to, uh, just buy it on Amazon.
Like the cost value.
Well, what make
your door the same day?
It would've, it would've
arrived at the same day.
And the cost value proposition is like,
so how much per hour do I think I'm worth?
How much time is it gonna take?
And I've, and I've played that
game back and forth a lot of times.
And of course, if we're doing it,
do I, what do I think I'm worth?
Well, I think I'm worth a lot.
So, um, you can start falling in the trap
of paying for things over and over again.
Yeah, as opposed to doing things.
But there, it doesn't
lead to a happy life.
It doesn't give me kit that has scars on
it that I can be proud of, that I could
turn around and show people or hand down.
Happiness isn't a destination
that I can ever get to.
It's a byproduct of what I'm
doing towards that destination.
So the thing you just described is
something I cover in two chapters on the
book, which is both of our generation
and especially the Amazon generation
now, is about the time value of money.
We've all been coached up, like, you
know, like you said, you drop that kid
overboard, you start doing that dance
of like, well, what's my hourly rate?
And I could just order this, pay the cash.
Is that my door?
I can forget about it.
Or do I go and do the thing
and it takes time and it has
the scars and it has meaning.
And 99 out of a hundred times, most
of us these days are gonna be like
b. It's a one click purchase button.
It's already got my address in there.
Got my credit card.
I'm good to go.
Yep.
Um, the argument I make is that we should
transfer from time value of money, TVM to
what I'm calling time value of experience
TVE, and looking at these things,
knowing that the math doesn't math like
mm-hmm.
There's
no way you can economically talk
your way out of that mentality,
but you have to make the conscious
decision to say, you know what?
This hourly rate thing doesn't work out.
This is gonna take me a long time.
This might lead to more time
because there's gonna be something
that happens that I don't expect
because I don't know what I'm doing.
Mm-hmm.
But it's
worth that in order to build that
resilience, to build that experience,
to build those skills, despite what
we've grown up being pushed towards,
which is time value of money.
Mm-hmm.
So you mentioned earlier that
going through school that you
didn't know what you wanted to do.
Mm-hmm.
Do you know what you wanna do now?
You know, I, I didn't know what I
wanted to do and I fell into my career.
And what's ironic is I've had a
career in AI for the last 12 years.
I'm very lucky for that, but I always
found myself having a hard time
answering the question at dinner parties.
Hey Zach, what do you do?
You know, and I don't know if it was
embarrassment or what, but I always
kind of skirted the question and be
like, oh, I don't even know what I do.
And like rerouted the question.
Mm.
Because what I would say is like, yeah,
you know, I'm an AI product manager and.
I help build algorithms to further
fuel the absurd consumerism that
we're all, you know, tied into.
And, you know, that either sounds creepy
or you know, people just kinda like, nah.
They're like, oh yeah, cool, that guy.
Um, versus now to somewhat answer your
question is like, you know, I'm a writer.
I'm a trapper and occasional welder.
That's my answer.
Yeah.
And
those are the things that bring me joy.
Right.
And I think that's where that
line is like what actually defines
me my day-to-day career and it's
taken me a long time to get here.
Travis is not my day job.
Mm-hmm.
I thought it was for a long
time, but it never was.
So now as I'm finding my way into
stuff that like has soul to it is
the things that I claim as what
I do because it is what I do.
I spend time in the
mountains, I guide, I hunt.
Now I still have my day job that still
pays the bills, but that's not what I do.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I've, I've mentioned this
on the podcast before, and, uh, it's
been said on the podcast by Dean
Nugent, who was ex British Army.
Him and Jace Bud were sitting at the
table here and, uh, they were talking
about mental health and resilience.
And Dean brought up something
that has always stuck with me.
He says, well, Jace,
he's ex uh, British army.
He's, um, sniper with him.
Done, done this elite stuff.
Then he is a firefighter, and now
he's IMFG, a mountain guide and,
and, uh, some other certification
as well, which is quite up there.
Anyways, we were out climbing in Squamish.
Dean's at the bottom.
Jason's set in the route.
Dean's bling girl walks by and says.
Oh, you're a climber.
Are you dean's?
Like, no, I'm not a climber.
That guy out there, he's a climber, right?
And, uh, she says, well, hold on a second.
You've got a helmet on.
You got a harness on, you're attached
to a rope and you're belaying a person.
Are you going up there?
He's like, oh, yeah, I sure
sound like a climber to me.
Like, I've never been
on any of those, right?
Mm-hmm.
And that one has always stuck with me
because, like, you, I've had a hard time.
You're going across a border.
What do you do for work?
I don't know.
Like, as little as possible, right?
Or whatever.
Just whatever joke thing
you can throw out there.
Um, only recently I've
said I'm a podcaster.
I, I think this is gonna be in
the one sixties, one seventies.
Been doing this since 2019,
and only recently someone was
like, oh, you're a podcaster.
No, I'm not a podcaster.
I said, well.
You got a microphone, you talk into
it, you put it out every couple weeks.
You look like a podcaster to me.
Right.
How long did, because you've got what?
Five?
I think it's five, six books out.
Number five is the trick.
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah.
Uh, how long did it take you
to feel comfortable to say
that, uh, you're a writer
now?
Really?
I mean, really like, you know,
like Yeah, I put 'em out.
Like, but again, I don't think podcasting
right now is the bulk of your income.
Hmm.
Writing for me is not
the bulk of my income.
I'm making tens of dollars.
I'm like rolling in it.
Um, but you know, it, I think what
people will assume is what you do
is tied to what pays your bills.
Mm. I think that's the mindset shift
that sounds like you've gone through.
And what I've gone through
is like, what do I do?
I'm a writer.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I write
articles for field ethos.
I write articles all the
time because I like writing.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm a writer.
I'm a welder.
I'm a trapper.
Those are the things that I do.
And it took me up until very recently to
get to that point of understanding of who
I am and being comfortable saying that.
And everything that stemmed around me
hemming and hauling and trying to figure
out what to say when people ask me that
before was all fueled by insecurities.
Like I know myself.
Mm-hmm.
Like my GoTo is a joke and like rerouting.
You know, like, lemme talk
about you, lemme talk about you.
Like don't, doesn't worry about
what I do, lemme talk about what
you do, let's talk about you.
But a lot of that's insecurity
or it was for me at the
Oh, I agree.
I agree.
I would just, I was never secure
enough to say I'm a podcaster.
I mean, I'm not Joe Rogan, right.
I'm, there's so many people that
can do this so much better than me.
Right.
So I'm not them in the same way that
Dean not a climber, I'm a New York
Times bestselling author.
Right.
I'll be happy if I sell a
thousand copies of this book.
But you know, figuring out where that
comfort level is and getting to that
point to say like, this is who I am.
I'm okay with that.
And I think it starts to unlock.
A lot, um, in that craft, whatever
craft or set of crafts that is,
or skills being able to say that.
And if you say like, I'm a
knowledge worker and you own it
and that is your life, great.
It just happens to not be me.
Um,
I think there's a lot of power in what you
just said there and I think the audience,
people listening to this, to the right
people that's gonna resonate with them.
Yep.
What does success look like to you?
You know, that that has
been an ever moving target.
I'd be a liar if I said like
success for me has absolutely
changed and made 180 degree turns
for every stage of life I'm in.
Mm-hmm.
You know, right now I've got three
kids, four and under, you know, success
for me is being a present father, a
good husband, and providing that's it.
Those three things.
That is success to me and I am succeeding
right now and I'm very happy with that.
I like that.
I've always defaulted to Earl Nightingale.
Success is a progressive realization
of a worthy ideal, right?
Yeah, it is.
'cause it's, it's a bit of a cop out,
it's a bit of a cop out deferring
to somebody else's definition.
But I agree with it.
It is something that you're
always working towards.
It will be a changing target,
uh, and different items will
be, uh, a measure of success.
Right.
Interesting.
Interesting.
That your success, like obviously I
want to be the best father I can be.
I wanna be the best
husband, the best friend.
I want to do what I can do, but that,
that all requires external things
as a indicator of my, my ability.
Yeah.
Um, do you have a definition
of success that doesn't have
those external indicators?
Man, that's a tough question.
I mean, all right.
Well, I'll say this, and this
is gonna be me really, truly
stepping outta my comfort zone.
Because this is something that I had a
hard time saying to my wife the other day.
I told her, you know, let
me give context for people.
The first book I wrote, 2017 to
date, that's from 2017 till now,
sold a whopping 90 copies, nine zero
mm.
Big fraction of that
is probably my family.
So, you know, it was a reality
of what it is to be a writer.
Now, turning Ferrell has done great.
It sold over 10,000 copies and
you know that, that I went into
that book with no expectations.
Mm. So 10,000 people have purchased
that book, maybe some smaller
number have actually read it.
It's gotten good reviews and all
that great success in my mind.
But again, I didn't have that in my head.
I was like, if I sell none or
I sell a million, I don't know.
With the trade gap, I told
my wife that I'm gonna sell a
million copies of this book.
I don't know.
What timeline that is, but I'm gonna
sell a million copies of this book.
Now, whether that's saying it and
manifesting it, uh, that's part of it.
But that, that is putting aside
those other external factors,
that's a measure of success for me.
Now, will I be a failure if I don't?
No.
So I have this kind of like
loose interpretation of success.
It's not like a hard number, but
that is a goal and that would be
real success for me if I did that
a million copies.
So you, I I have, I have zero doubt.
You can sell a million
copies of your book.
I appreciate that.
There's a, there's a few different
ways you can get there, and I like
the way that you're getting there.
I mean, like, you can price it out
of, uh, less than pennies on the
dollar and buy them yourself, right?
Hey, you got your million right?
But there's, uh.
But the concept that you're
relaying is something that's very
attractive to people right now.
Yeah.
People are looking for a way to be,
uh, not just to be self-sufficient,
but a way that they connect in the
world themselves and with others.
Yeah.
Because I think that that idea
of being happy is something
that appeals to a lot of people.
And I think a lot of the world
is waking up to happiness is
a byproduct of what you do.
It isn't a destination that you arrive at.
And the trade gap is something that
will allow people to find a path that
the byproduct of is gonna be happiness.
Yeah, I hope so.
And again, you know, it's, uh, not
everybody needs to stop what they're
doing and become an electrician.
It might be a great path,
but it might not be.
But there's zero downside to
spending some time to be more
self-reliant, to build some skills to.
Become a more well-rounded human in a
world where, at least in the Americas,
we have been pushed to do the opposite.
Mm-hmm.
To be specialist, to be, you
know, fully honed in on one craft
that could be gone tomorrow.
Do you think there's an under or
an overarching reason why in the
Americas people are pushed to,
uh, to go down that one path?
Do you think maybe like I, I do have a
tinfoil hat I haven't been able to use
yet, but do you have any, do you think
there might be a tinfoil hat reason?
There could be,
and I, I mean, it is less tinfoil Hattie
and more just like the actual history
in the us but um, I actually believe
that the path that we were setting
down on education wasn't ill-conceived.
I don't think there was malice
in the eighties when the push
started to go and degrade the
trades and pushed people towards.
Knowledge working.
I, I don't think that's the case.
I think there was a lot of historical
things, and I talk about it in
the book that happened, you know,
the No Child Left Behind Act.
There's a lot of stuff in the
nineties and the two thousands that
just kind of doubled down on pushing
the trades as a lesser than thing.
And now we're clearly, you
know, reaping what we sow in a
negative way across the country.
Um, but I don't think so.
I mean, I, I am too dumb to
speculate, uh, on that now.
I could, uh, and I think
a lot of people will.
Hmm.
But I think it's just a byproduct
of probably well-intentioned people
who just could not see in the
crystal ball what that really would
mean for us 20, 30 years from now.
And then again, I don't
think anybody quite saw.
AI going.
I've been in AI for the past 12 years and
it's always been like, we're almost there.
We're almost there all of a sudden
it's like, oh my God, we're here.
Like it's accessible, it's everyone
can access it and you know,
it's useful, it's scary, it's
nefarious, it's all of those things.
Mm. And we're trying to learn how
to operate within and I don't think
people could have seen that coming.
Is there anything that we
should be talking about that
we haven't talked about yet?
Um, I'll touch on one thing just
to kind of double down on it.
And you mentioned like, you know, the
two gentlemen you had on the podcast and
I listened to that episode, but talking
about mental health, like one of the
things that pushed me over the edge to
write the book, um, was a gentleman I
had worked with at a company, um, similar
backgrounds, but he was a data specialist.
He had specialized in, you
know, our particular data format
database, and he got laid off.
This was about a year
before I got laid off.
And you know, essentially that thing
he had spent his life learning,
or as at least his adult life
learning was no longer needed.
Right?
It was obsolete, which is gonna be
the continued trend of a lot of these
different languages for engineers,
for database engineers, et cetera.
And the long story made sure is he
took his life, two young kids and
a wife, why he couldn't find a job.
Now, I'm sure there might be other factors
at play there that I am not aware of,
but you know, I do know that he put a
gun in his mouth and pulled a trigger
with two young kids and a wife because
he felt like he could not provide.
Hmm.
And you know, I know the guy or knew him
like he wasn't incapable of re-skilling.
But I think that I, speaking
from experience in a layoff like.
I look back on it, I'm like, yeah,
I had 11 months of unemployment.
But in those 11 months I felt so
much, I felt more pressure with
young kids to provide and figure
out a way to make this happen.
And nothing in my traditional
role was working out.
I'd get the final interviews, they'd
pull recs, they'd do all this stuff,
and it felt terrible and it felt
endless, and I really didn't know.
I'm like, I don't know if I
will be able to get a job in
this, you know, community again.
And that's what led me to start,
obviously the trapping and
taxidermy's, what floated us.
But that's when I started
night welding school.
I'm like, I have to be able to do
something that pays more than being
a, you know, a stocker at a store.
Which again, that's great.
There's nothing wrong with that,
but I want to hedge against it.
So I think the mental health aspect,
I think we're unfortunately gonna
see more and more of that as we have
ultimately skill people who are, you know.
Made redundant through AI that are gonna
be sitting there on their butts hoping
for something to change and it's not.
And they're gonna have to take that
initiative to learn these new things.
And that's why I say knowledge workers
get ahead of it, hedge against it,
start learning stuff on the side.
'cause you never know when
that hammer's gonna drop.
Mm. Yeah.
That's a, it is an important story.
And you know, as you get older
you learn things differently.
Yeah.
I'm not gonna say you don't learn things
as well, but you learn things differently.
And some people fall into this
trap of doing the same thing over
and over again and thinking, this
is what I am, this is what I do,
and I can't do this other thing.
I mean, it's, it's overwhelming.
It's a, it's illusory and
it's it's effect to me.
I remember, uh, the Adobe suite and
I'd watch people using it, and I'm
like, there's no way in hell I'm
ever gonna be able to learn how to
edit a photo or a video or be able to
edit audio or do any of these things
that this whole Adobe Suite does.
It's, it is just, it's too much.
It's a completely different language.
I can't learn another language.
Right?
Yep.
And at some point something clicked.
It was because I was pushed to a
point, there's a lot of negativity
in my industry and I was looking at
like, this is what I know is what I've
done since I've been four years old.
Guns or what I know, right?
And, uh, I either do something
else or I find a way to bring
positivity into this industry.
And, uh, there is some inspiration
through other YouTubers and
individuals out there doing stuff.
And I thought, if they
can do it, I can do it.
And I started sitting down, not
only learning another language,
but learning, uh, the Tobi language
in putting this stuff out there.
And it just, it provides you more options.
And I think if someone's gonna be
taking their life, it's because
they've come to a point where that's
in their head at that time, the
best viable option that they have.
They don't have all these other
options on the table that they
can readily see they're there.
But just like Adobe was always there and
I could have always looked at that, unless
you've touched in it and worked on it,
it doesn't seem palpable or real to you.
And,
and I think that's a hope for me, you
know, selfishly with the book is somebody
who might not have that clarity of
vision to say, there are these things
out there that I could touch and I could
learn that they might at least have the
curtain pulled back to be like, yeah,
there are more options for me out there.
Um.
If whatever I'm currently
doing doesn't work out,
you know, different professions, they
have, uh, statistics that go with them.
I think policing, they say it's one of the
highest divorce rates for a profession.
And yeah, dentists are
the highest suicide rate.
And yeah, uh, psychologists
or psychiatrists are the
highest depression rate.
And I was talking to a psychiatrist
one time and asking about that, the,
the depression rate and all the rest.
And like, is that like you're listening
to people's problems all day long?
Is this something that you're,
uh, that you have to work with?
And he's like, so he talked about
it from his perspective, but he also
shifted it and you talked about,
um, suicidal ideation and people
who are at a point where they feel
like they need to commit suicide.
I said, well, what do you tell 'em?
And he says, you know, I
haven't lost a person yet.
Uh, knock on wood.
And I tell 'em the same thing.
You know what?
Maybe killing yourself's the right idea.
Maybe that's the option.
Maybe that's a route you have to go.
But right now, that's not the
decision you should be making because
you're not in the right mindset
to make that logical decision.
It says give it a month or two, come
back and we will reanalyze this.
And if it's in fact still the right
decision, okay, then we can look at
options for, uh, what you gotta do here.
Right?
But that allows him to buy time for the
individual and that mindset that the
person's in where everything's cloudy
and they can't see those other options.
It's amazing what a good
night's sleep can do.
It's amazing what a bit of exercise and
going for a walk, what limiting negative
substances, alcohol, drugs, the social
media, endless scrolling all the rest and
put yourself into a different perspective.
And I think that's what
the psychologists do.
Like really all they the good ones
will ever do is provide a different
perspective, a different option for you.
So I, I think the, when you
say selling a million copies.
I think that mental health aspect
to this is exactly why people
will want to read the trade gap.
I really hope so.
But man, Travis, this was awesome.
Thank you so much Zach.
I really appreciate you being on
the podcast again and I'm looking
forward to you coming up into bc.
We're gonna have to get you up here.
We
gotta go bear hunt or do
something up there pretty soon.
A hundred percent.
You know, the, those Idaho boys
are always looking for the, uh,
the jet black bears and us up here.
We're like, oh, we're
looking for the color phase.
So, uh, can definitely help
you out on the jet lights
trade.
You come down, we'll shoot a cinnamon
bear down here and then I'll go up
and we can, uh, find a something.
Jet Black up in Canada.
Done deal.
Zach, thanks so much.
It was a pleasure as always.
Yeah.
Appreciate
it.