Hector Resendez: So he had good things to say about you.‍

Austin Gray: Absolutely. Why don't you introduce yourself? I'm just going to throw it on record and we're gonna get to know each other on air because this is like the most fun stuff to talk about. 

Hector Resendez: I love it, man. My name is Hector Resendez. I have a small little startup, one man show called Trade School Secrets. I live in a suburb outside Dallas, Texas. A little town called Lucas, Texas. I've helped somebody a while back, start a trade school, learn the operations and economics  about that, fell in love, started my school, took an exit last year, and now I help other folks all over the country either fix their school scale, their enrollments, and my goal is just to bring awareness to the trades, even though I'm not a trade guy myself. But still, that's the goal here. 

Austin Gray: Fantastic. All right. So as I'm in the trades. A lot of our listeners are in the trade and so I'm fascinated by this. What is a trade school? 

Hector Resendez: Cool. So were school and vocational schools. In the past, they've been what on the road, either like a truck driving school, a welding school, an HVAC school. But the traditional trade schools typically take about a year to two years. And what I was able  to debunk is all our schools are online  only. so your traditional HVAC course, instead of taking 12 months to go take it in person, the way we bring it to the audience is you wear a meta quest goggles and it's a virtual reality course and it's bootcamp style, and you're done in about a hundred hours. Therefore, it's just a shortcut  to your certification.

So for example,  HVAC, it's EPA 6 0 8. Your OSHA 10, Nate Reddy there's some people doing healthcare with it, like your CNA entry level, medical courses, dental courses. There's just a lot of stuff that could be accomplished online. not to bring up old news, but if Covid taught us anything. It showed us that we  could still survive working from home, training from home and everything. So   it's just a shortcut to get credentials so you're not going the in-person route. A lot of times people don't have it in the cards to go in person 'cause they work and they don't want to go to night school or weekend school. So online also allows you to cover audience versus just your backyard. That's the space I'm in. 

Austin Gray: And what trade school did you start? 

Hector Resendez: So for legal reasons, I can't say the name, but I'm sure if people just Google, they could figure it out pretty quick. 

Austin Gray: Okay. 

Hector Resendez: We started off as a healthcare and IT school 'cause it was covid and we thought that's what was needed. But we later found out it was really hard to find people jobs in that field sometimes, if not all the time a lot of our audience has blemishes on their background, and therefore you need a really clean background if you're gonna enter the healthcare space. the reason we adapted and pivoted to trades is that oftentimes  people. Are more background friendly with the trades.

It's  a tough job, so not everyone's lined up to do it. And so we position them. However, over time, where I come in, and the reason why I love meeting people like you and bringing awareness is there's a grant out there that no one talks about that I feel should be on every billboard.

And the grants called WIOA stands for Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act. And what this grant allows you to do is.  Man or woman, if you've fallen on hard times, no matter  what state you live in, you're in Colorado, right? So no matter what state you live in, you've fallen on hard times you're on food stamps. on low income. You live in transitional living, like considered unhoused, like sober living or a shelter. If you've lost your job and you're on unemployment, you could go to your local workforce office. 

And these offices is where you get resources like food stamps. and at  that office, there's a grant out there that'll pay your  tuition to go to a trade school want you to learn a new skillset. Because the way they think about it is if you learn a new skillset, guess what? Now you're off government assistance and you're paying taxes and you're not flipping burgers anymore. You're learning a new trade. And it's rare that you meet somebody that gets into the trades and gets out. So it's just, that's the awareness I wanna bring. And it exists everywhere. Just people don't know about it.

Austin Gray: Can you tell us more about that Grant? 

Hector Resendez: Sure. Like I said, it's stents WIOA. You could Google WIOA near me and it'll take you down that rabbit hole where, you'll see that exists everywhere. There's no, no matter who the administration is, that grant's been around since 1994. Just no one knows about it. Just like food stamps has been around this grant's been around employers like you, you could register with the local workforce and if you wanted to find talent, you hired  people that took this grant, here's the a secret  sauce for you guys and your audience pay 50% of your wages up to 60 to 90 days because you're hiring those kind of graduates, a win-win. 

You get to test drive somebody. For 30 to 60 days at half the wages, and then they get some experience on the resume, so they get their hands on experience. So I think it's cool that people should really look into it. And my new ICP for this year has changed quite a bit. So where for the last year I've been focusing  helping people fix schools  their enrollments, whether it's sell scripts or out of the box marketing strategies. New ICP now is helping mid-size to large size operators. Create their own school, which fixes their biggest pain point.

And that's finding scaled talent. For example, I onboarded a customer last night, that's why I'm here in Austin. He owns an adult daycare facility. 120 beds needs CNAs, which  certified nurse assistant. So guess what? We're  gonna bolt on a CNA school to his existing business where he gets to pick from the cream of the crop. The rest gets certified and go get jobs somewhere else. He's gonna tap into the workforce. gonna get 50% off his wages. So if he's paying the CNA 20 bucks an hour, he only has to pay 10 bucks an hour for the first 60 days. They get hands-on experience. He picks from the cream of the crop and rinse and repeat. So it's a cool little model. It fixes the biggest pain point every employer has, and that's finding their talent. 

Austin Gray: Especially in the trades,

Hector Resendez: Especially in the trades. 

Austin Gray: Everybody has two problems. Where do I get my next customers? Which we talk about a lot on this podcast, strategies. That's I think that's my love language. But second, where do you find people, talented people? 

‍Hector Resendez: And  that's the coin flip, right? You think everyone's figured it out where oh, the best talent comes from here, sometimes they're the ones that aren't certified. The ones that have never done that job before. From every time I've talked to an employer or anyone in the SMB space,  a lot of the times what they look for is just the attitude  and the willing to show up. Like they don't really care about the certifications. They don't care about your experience. A lot more times than not, they don't care if you have blemish in their background. It's man, can you show up? Can you get excited and do you have a good attitude? 'cause every day is not a good day.

It's hard to do anything tray related. And  that's what I figured out. I onboarded a guy last week  and he has a dog grooming business. He has three dog grooming locations. He's two months booked out 'cause he only specializes in like golden doodles. And doodles like a high ticket. His average ticket is $250 and he can't find enough technicians. 

So here comes Hector. We're gonna do  a dog grooming academy for him and it's gonna fix his pain point. So I'm like, you know what? I think I'm onto something with this and different audience and. Most operators they know that this is a problem and it's a little bit easier than helping somebody start a school from scratch, which I've done in the past

Austin Gray:  All right, so talk to me about the actual business model of the trade school. So this is going to be another stream of revenue, correct? For that operator? 

Hector Resendez: 100%. High level, make a long story short, I'll give you the example for the CNA course. You could white label these courses, meaning we didn't come up with the curriculum. If Austin is a white label company, I buy the course from Austin. Let's just say for a thousand dollars,  we slap our school name on it, and then we could sell it back to the  state.

Or you could even sell it to a general market for $5,000. So the margins are insane. To your point, it's an extra revenue, but at the same time, it's fixing your problem and you're making extra revenue, and it just makes your business look a lot more marketable. If there's an exit plan in place, I know your will are. 

Austin Gray: oh my gosh, my wheels are spending a million miles an hour. Take us deeper on that. Yeah. I'm  following you on the marketable piece but tell me and the listeners why that would make your business more valuable on an exit. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah, because it fixes the pain point. For example, one of the first companies I was able to help, was a welding company they couldn't find welders. Everyone knows that there's nothing better than learning hands-on. The problem is skilled labor shortage is real. Especially what's going on right now with the deportations and everyone, all these federal things are cracking down and everything.

People are scared to show up to work. Right now, more than anything, credentials matter,  like trade schools is finally on a conversation, CB college  or military. There's so many people from tech getting into trades and you see it all the time. So I think it's now important that people, start. Getting certifications in the field they're gonna be in. So why it makes it more marketable. This welding company that I helped, they are a welding company. I think they had 30 employees at the time. They acquired another company they needed staff fast. 

So by bolting on a school for them, instead of them spending 80 to a hundred thousand dollars. That's what they were spending, finding staff  and paying staffing companies, which I didn't  know that was a thing. Like I knew staffing company exists. I didn't know how well they did with their margins. Like I didn't, just me being naive, not on my radar, but so you eliminate the staffing costs, you create your own school now as a owner, you get to teach 'em really what there is, because you go to trade school, you're gonna get six books. 

90% of the time, you're not gonna open up the book. You're going straight to a piece of equipment and learn and learn until you get it down. What I've been able to debunk by the online model is get your certifications out of the way.  between me and you, and for all your listeners, when you go take  a test, no matter what it is, that test isn't in the field.

It's on a computer like this, and that computer doesn't care if you could climb a ladder. That computer doesn't care if you know how to turn on the solder if you know how to use heavy equipment. Did you memorize enough theory to get the little card that gives you a license to even be on the field? And that's what I've been able to debunk. Once you go to Austin for his company, Austin's gonna be like, dude, my guy for 30 days before I leave you alone. And that's the reality and what I've been able to debunk.

Austin Gray: And so when you're deep, like when you're saying you're debunking this. I wanna get more clear on this.

Hector Resendez: Sure.

Austin Gray: You are making it easier for that person to get a certification or are you qualifying that person better with the use of  

Hector Resendez: Both.

Austin Gray: You  mentioned? Okay.

Hector Resendez: Both. As the operator, as the owner. You get to vet these people first. You could tell the attitude is gonna align if the way they show up, do they tuck in their shirt? How do they do an interview and you onboard 'em. There's still some vetting process. You don't want to just let anyone  can operate heavy machinery.

There's certain words, certain  questions you would ask for that person, right? But you get to control, for example, what example can I give you? If you had an electric company as an electrician, so many times electrician owners would say, man, if I could teach 'em just how to pull wire.  For 50 hours, that's  90% of their job instead of them learning this book. So as an owner, you get to control all of that and teach 'em what really happens in that field because just like anything we've ever learned our whole life, how many people went to college and use their degree? Very little. How many people go to trade school and  actually use those books or anything? Very little.

It's just how do  you fast track 'em? And as an owner, you get to control, look, I really just want to teach you these three things really well. Learn the theory, but I wanted you to learn these two, three things 'cause this is what matters. And as an operator owner, they get to dictate that they get to control all of that for their future client or future employee. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So tell us more about, you said that they're wearing. 

Hector Resendez: Goggles are  online and if it's skilled trades, there's a lot of white label provider companies out there that, they're figuring it out. There used to be just one, and now there's five, it's just like what you see the kids wearing. It's made of Quest goggles. You're literally in a garage outside on a building  in the kitchen simulator, like it's your you're virtual reality  learning this course.

It's cool. It's sexy. People like it. However, you could still do it on a laptop. That's just a cool piece to it. don't know if you've ever worn one or anyone has, but it's pretty wild too. In the actual environment that you are like messing with the switches, electrical boards, I mean  everything. And it's just a cool way to learn it. But the hack there  is you're taking a class that used to be a year long. Down to a hundred hours by stripping it down to learning theory. The only reason vocational schools and trade schools take so long, they fluff the hours so they could qualify for all the FAFSA and Pell grants  and loans and everything out there.

'cause that's what it takes. That  by being a bootcamp style school, these schools don't qualify for all those loans. So it's just a self-pay model where you use the grant, but the key there, it's a hundred hours if somebody really focuses, they could be done in two months and they're wearing a union uniform by the month three. So it's just a shortcut. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And how much are trade school owners selling curriculum for? What's the average ticket price? 

Hector Resendez: If it's just to the general market, you're looking at four to 5,000, assuming they're buying courses as low as 500. To 800. So you can see the margins there. They just sold one a week. They're pretty happy. But if you're selling it to the states, I'll give an example, Arizona maxed out at 10,000. Florida, maxed out at 10,000 for these grants. Georgia's at 10,000. Not sure what Colorado is parts of Texas is 7,500 all the way up to 12,000, you're still buying the course for the same price. So you can see how the margins are, get crazy, 

Austin Gray: And how much does the grant cover?  those amounts I just mentioned.

Hector Resendez:  So the grant could cover up to $10,000 that you're buying for a thousand and just slapping your school name on it. I know. Don't let your head explode. I stayed quiet for this for a very long time. 'cause I was nervous myself. I'm like, is somebody gonna come arrest me? This is a crime?

Like I don't understand this. And my wife was  nervous, her whole family was nervous and I'm like. So  far it's a thing. It's been around, everyone else is doing it. Just, how many CDL driving schools, that's the, like the number one saturated school time you drive on the highway. How many CDL schools do you see? They've always been around. It's just never been on a radar as a business.

Austin Gray: Okay. That was going to be one of my specific questions. Can you do this for CDL? 

Hector Resendez: Yes and no. You could do like the driving part, simulation, like to learn all the rules and it is simulator, but you do need to go to an actual truck and do your pre-trip and stuff like that. But there is some companies out there, not a fan 'cause they're expensive because is some companies out there pulling it off on a simulator.  

And the reason I'm telling you that before, I get a lot of hate, 'cause I get hate on  this one all the time. What do you think our pilots did for a thousand hours before they went on and flew us on planes? They did a thousand hours on a simulator and then we trust them to jump on a plane just 'cause they have some assistance with computers. So I didn't invent this space like it's been around forever. I'm just bringing awareness to it now. 

Austin Gray: Alright, but I want to go back to the business model  here.

Hector Resendez:  Okay. 

Austin Gray: So I want you to state that again for listeners. 

Hector Resendez: Let me give you the example with the CNA guy. So he's in Austin, Texas. They pay out 7,500 for the grant. And hopefully he doesn't mind that I'm really getting into the weeds here, but it's gonna clear up everything needs about four to five CNAs a month. He's gonna  look for CNAs. A lot of his CNAs  now already on food stamps 'cause it's not that hard to get on food stamps.

If you have two or three kids and he only pays 20 bucks an hour, they qualify. Still consider low income. He's gonna put through the grant about half of his staff to begin with at 7,500 a pop. Assuming he is buying the course for 500, he's  making a $7,000 margin. get them trained, something they need anyway, to get 'em an actual certificate to provide quality work for his assisted living business. 

So he's gonna add an extra 40 or 50,000 a month on top of, and he's fixing a problem. So an extra four or 500,000 a year. What do you think that's gonna look like when  he goes to sell? Because he has a goal in mind. He's Hey, I wanna get to   400 beds and exit private equity is making runs and plays at all these things. I have a strong feeling that by having your staffing problem fixed, I really do think they'll be more marketable and ask for a bigger price when they go exit. I don't know if that was clear enough, but

Austin Gray: I am gonna keep diving into  this. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah.

Austin Gray: He buys a course, a training course for $500, 

Hector Resendez: Correct.   

Austin Gray: once 

Hector Resendez: Once. Every person, every seat, every credential one person. 

Austin Gray: $500 per person,correct? and then he applies for the grant, or the people apply for the grant.

Hector Resendez: The  students. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And the. Remind us of the WIOA 

Hector Resendez: Yep. Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, pays  the school. 

Austin Gray: School, which is something he created and you helped him with. Correct. So he's claiming the revenue and the spread on 7,500 minus 500. 

Hector Resendez:  And because he's an owner, not just a school, he guarantees job placement, which is all this grant and workforce cares about, help us get more people from flipping burgers into an actual trade. So they don't smell like oil all day long and see what it looks like to wear scrubs.

'cause usually CNA is the entry point to become a nurse or a medical assistant. You know what I mean? So instead of becoming a medical assistant and going to school for a year or two,  start off A-C-A-C-N-A and his program's really well, it's like  the first couple of weeks, it's 16 bucks an hour. If they figure it out hey, you're gonna stay, they bump up to 20, after three months they could qualify to be like a team lead role.

And that's 25 an hour. We just took somebody in less than six months, from 15 bucks an hour flipping burgers to 25 bucks an hour. Guess what? I don't think they're gonna qualify for food stamps anymore. So now that grant did its purpose. You're getting more people off government benefits into a workable wage, so I don't have to rely on benefits.

 Austin Gray: Where's the catch here? What are the downsides? 

Hector Resendez: I've been saying now the catch is this. I've done podcasts before and I did get burn, but every state is different. Like unfortunately for you, Colorado's a really tricky state to start a school. However,  that's from scratch and that's just from, I haven't  done it from the point of view as you already have a business and you want to add your own academy, with a grain of salt there. State is different. 

For example, Georgia wants you to sell the courses to the general public for a year to have somewhat of a sample size of your placement  and completion rates before they give you access to the wheela  grants. Texas isn't like that. Texas, if you apply. Four to six months later, you're a school. There's no really waiting period. There's just a process to get through. So there's some sleepy states out there. There's some states it up north that you just apply, and if you have a course  that's in high demand, they'll approve you. Then there's some states you just  really wanna stay away from, which is California, Washington, New York, Florida.

I love you guys, but your state's really complicated. That I don't know. I've been asking what's the catch now if I come out on an episode in American Greed later on, then. found out what the catch was.

Austin Gray: Okay. All right, so hit me with this. We need qualified operators on our forestry side of the business and on our. Excavation side of the business. And this is something that we either have to spend a ton of time with our lead operator, like that guy just like  watching and coaching. So like my head is spending  a million miles an hour.

If we could get people a hundred hours behind a me request, goggles in like virtual reality and if we could control what they're training through. And I know that would be a lot more work than buying the white labeled course, but we're in a very specific industry here.   

Hector Resendez: Offline, I'll tell you who has those courses already made up. They've been around for four years  okay in  your space.

Austin Gray: Perfect.

Hector Resendez: Yep, Done.  Again, you'll be surprised what exists. It's just I was dumb and naive to ask questions no one was asking,

Austin Gray: Okay. Yeah, all right.  You got till the top of the  hour.

Hector Resendez: Yeah, of course.

Austin Gray: We're gonna wrap this episode up. I'm going to build this thing. 

Hector Resendez:  All right, 

Hector Resendez:  I'm serious.  dude,  Like what? Where's the catch? If I can find qualified operators and if I can create a school and if I can create another revenue stream, why? Why? Let me ask you this. Why wouldn't I do this? 

Hector Resendez: Now it's doable. I just never dug deep enough in Colorado. The first thing you start off with, and here's a secret saw, is calling the state and finding what that looks like. Know how to get somebody licensed  and approve of the state of Texas and other states because I've done it already.  But when it comes to certain states, they're a little bit trickier. But it could be done. It's just not everyone's willing to do it. There's a lot paperwork, politics. You have to spend I think Colorado's 5,000 to just even apply. To  be a school. So that's the catch.

Some people aren't willing to do that or they  don't have that to do it so again, I think in the past I was helping people that wanted to start a school that already had a nine to five and they just like what I was doing and the impact. But now I think the bigger, the more important people that get it  are people like you, people like the CNA dog grooming.

So I think  I'm shifting my ICP to that 'cause it just makes a lot more sense. It's a win for everyone again, my whole mission is how do I get people out of flipping burgers into a trade? Not to knock on the fast food industry, but it's just an easy analogy to give. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I'm an entrepreneur. I love making money, right? Like the cat's outta the bag,  right? That's why that   should become as no surprise. But the way that we do that, the best businesses solve the problems, right? And so it's why I'm so passionate about the wildfire mitigation space.

It's like we have a massive problem. We all saw what happened in la.  Oh yeah, There's  a massive wildfire and. In my community in 2020, we have one of the biggest wildfires in Colorado history. So like we're literally on a mission to go clean up the forest. Do we make good money doing it? Yeah, of course. But you are the problem, we're solving a problem. And so it's like the way I see this, I was where are you? 

Hector Resendez: Yeah. I went to it was covid. Everything was like 90% off and we had never been, and we drove up to Colorado Springs, went to the zoo up in the mountain and everyone was masked up. But like the hotel, that's all you saw on the news. Like these fires everywhere. And I'm just like, should we leave? Can we get home? But I remember that now that you brought that up. 

Austin Gray: I don't talk a lot about this on the podcast, but. Legitimately, like the wildfires are a huge threat in the Western United States. And so 2020, this fire in our community engulfed over 120,000 acres in one night.   If the wind conditions are right, we have so much dead wood in the  forest.

I heard people talking about this consistently in my mountain community, and like I said. Going back to that, like just being a problem solver. The best businesses in my opinion, solve a problem. And so everybody was talking about two things. Hey, what's affordable housing in these mountain towns look like?

And then how  do we solve wildfire mitigation? I'm like, I don't really wanna, I don't have the capacity  to go solve affordable housing. That's somebody smarter and wealthier than me on the development side. But I grew up running a skid steer and mini excavators and I think if we just pair up great operators with equipment, especially with how fast robotics and equipment and AI is coming through.   Dude, I have one guy operating two different machines right  now because one's on a remote control. Like we just pair up great operators with great machinery and we go clean up the forest. It's very simple, but we need to train that person how to do this specific work. And look, I told you this before we jumped on air. 

Hector Resendez: Yep. 

Austin Gray: I looked in and I was like, I'm really excited about this conversation. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Because I think it can accelerate us solving a problem, and so I know we just met, but I am very excited about the opportunity to learn more about how we could potentially train people to be better operators as soon as they come in. 

Hector Resendez: Happy to bring awareness to it, man. I think there's more need for you guys out there, and if this brings awareness, I'm happy to be a part of it, even if it's small. 

Austin Gray: Where are the biggest be? Before we jump in to that specific stuff, as it relates to forestry excavation, where are the biggest opportunities for people who, let's say somebody just wants to go start the trade school and be that person for a specific industry. Where are the biggest opportunities right now? 

Hector Resendez: I think it's gonna vary state to state and region by region, a good. Place to start. If you're in a town and you go to Indeed and type in appliance repair technician certified nurse assistant  and 50 plus jobs there's probably a  need for it. And so far, every client I've ever had and helped, I don't care how rural the area is, there's usually a town, big enough town within an hour that they go work at anyway 'cause it's so rural and. 

It's rare that there's no need for a lot of the trades, whether it's  appliance repair dental assistant,  dental front, healthcare, front desk technicians for apartment complexes, technicians for hotels. 

A lot of times it's been overlooked. But now in these days some of these technicians in these apartment jobs that learn appliance repair, the  hack there is, they don't get paid so well, but they live on site for  free. it's like a little rent hack. 

So it's just people aren't asking the right questions, and I think they should really consider trade schools. And a lot of times what happens is these trade school owners I've met, they're like the employers. They created a  school, but because they're a trades person  themselves, they get stuck.

They get stuck working in the business instead of on it, and they never scale it. And that's where I come in. I don't wanna be behind a laptop and on the phone all day. They become the instructor, they're answering the phone, they're marketing, they never scale, they're never able to,  walk away and let it run itself, putting the right people in  place.

And that's what I bring awareness to. I'm like, Hey, you gotta automate with sales reps. With it being online, there's so many offshore talent. you could get for a third of the price that could handle your repetitive daily admin stuff and it'll allow you to buy back your  time. but yeah, man, anytime somebody  invites me to a podcast, I say yes just because I wanna bring more awareness to it.

I've done some of these in the past, and my dms will blow up and every now we make a connection that makes sense. It has to make sense. They have to be in a state that makes sense. I'll give you a small, quick example.  There's a guy from New Hampshire that wanted to do this, and I was nervous  because I'm like New Hampshire.

After you talk to the five people that live there, then what? But what was cool about him is that he licensed in New Hampshire, but he gets reciprocity to Maine and Vermont. So now he has a big territory to play with. So that was cool.

Austin Gray: That's awesome. What's been your biggest success story with somebody you've worked with? 

Hector Resendez: So there's several. There's a girl in Houston, young. She's probably 30, 32. She started off with one electrical class. She's doing about 3 million a year. The class is about 6,000. She went from two staff members to 20. She's the only female Latina trade school owner that I know about, but she is like the epitome of it.

She's going to conferences, speaking on stages, speaking at high schools, and just getting people into basic electrical. A client in  Arizona teaches an IT tech sales course, get people into tech sales that don't require a college degree. Like he's debunking the fact that you don't have to have a college degree.

You just have to know what to say and how to get in front of these people that are hiring. And he teaches people how to get into tech sales. He developed his own course so he owns the ip, so you could imagine his margins. He's selling that course for 10 to $12,000 every day, all day. will do 2 million this year. 

Austin Gray: Okay, so lemme ask you this. When you say he, he's teaching people to get into it and tech sales, it doesn't have to be like blue collar trade specific. 

‍Hector Resendez: No, there's a lot of stuff out there. He also does really well with cybersecurity class that a little bit more smarter individual, but they ask the right questions to make sure. They get somebody qualified, but it is, even though there's a lot of layoffs  you see  on the news and stuff like that, but like cybersecurity is one of those that's not gonna away with as much as identity theft and scams. There's going out there. But yeah, there's dog grooming.  Yeah. I'm onboarding Next month I does telematics. He needs technicians 'cause his business is adding GPS and telematics to fleets of vehicles at a time.  Okay, find enough technicians. Okay, small rural town in Texas and know he was spending $50,000 a year in staffing. So it's, that's gonna solve that. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So another area my head's going to, and I've had this thought recently, so like I joined the Jobber team as an ambassador. Yeah, they sponsored the podcast, but I was using Jobber way before. They decided to sponsor the podcast way before they asked me to be an ambassador. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah.

Austin Gray: I was  just naturally talking about how jobber makes my business run more smooth. I get a lot of requests right now 'cause you know how to set up jobber videos on YouTube and people literally just reach out to me and ask me just for consulting on this. And so I've been doing a fair amount of that.  

My question for you and a thought popped into my head the  other day, every small business owner I talk to, I mean like a ton of people here locally are always like, Hey, how are y'all doing your marketing? Like how do you send such professional invoices so fast, right? And this stuff is natural to me as a 33-year-old, but it may not become natural,  be so natural to somebody who owns a business who's 55 or 60  or 65, right?

And like implementing that software is a really hard thing to do because then they have, in their mind, they have to run the software, right? But what if we could train the people? To run the backend back office operations on a platform like Jobber.   Is that something that would  qualify for a trade school to basically teach people flipping burgers, how to operate the back office of a small service-based business, and then deploy those people into back office operations? 

Hector Resendez: There's definitely an idea there. it's going to vary in range is that every state pays for different courses in different fields. So for example, and I'm gonna talk about Texas 'cause that's where I live, if you like the Houston area, they're big on the coast. So like welders, underwater welders, boat technicians, believe it or not, roofers and power washer, like very  coastal. 

If you go to West Texas, wind  turbines box truck drivers, delivery drivers to drive the fuel and transport back and forth and just really oil and gas. And so it just depends on what the region looks like. but it just asking the right questions. How do we design a course that's uniform, that could be a blanket, sometimes we've had some wins where you could challenge the state and make them put this field on their demand list for the course  to cover it based on justifying something. 

As an  example, I have a big partnership with a portable AC company. And they don't need technicians, but they need the drivers to, and then fix these portable acs. So one could say that it is in the HVAC space, but it's not. To them, it's in the CDL space because they need a clean record, a driver to go set up these big old machines and wheel on them. You've seen 'em, right?

Those big AC things, and that's a, have 50  locations. They're the largest, the owner's like 28.  He's a baby and he has locations anywhere and he can't find talent. Fast enough. So again, something like that is a nationwide problem that we could probably solve. 'cause it's in the driving, transporting world, it's just offline.

How do we create a course that any state would see that as a demand and prove it why and justify it. What I've learned who I am and what I've been doing is we just gotta ask the right questions to the right people.

Austin Gray:  I love this. My head's spending a million miles an hour. Alright, where compete. Where can people find you? I wanna use the rest of this hour to pick your brain on some specifics here. 

Hector Resendez: Okay. Yeah, dude, I'm not, I don't exist anywhere, man. I joined Twitter last May 'cause a neighbor of mine went viral on Cody Sanchez podcast. I don't even heard of his name. Spencer. He started a garbage company. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, I have. And he and I have gone back and forth. He's just an operator, right? He's in the weeds right now, he and I have gone back and forth on scheduling would love to have  him on me. 

Hector Resendez: That's awesome. 

Austin Gray: Small world, right? Lone star, is that what it  is?

Hector Resendez:  yeah, he has the sickest, funniest t-shirts and marketing  campaigns does hysterical. Oh my gosh, it's hysterical. Anyway, but he's the one that goes, dude, you should join Twitter. 'cause I was driving by, when he was filming with Cody Sanchez and I text him, I'm like, dude, that girl looked like Cody Sanchez.

He responded later on, and he's dude, you gotta get on Twitter and talk about your stuff. And I'm like, who's gonna wanna talk about a trade school? So I joined and man, hope God  willing, I think I'm at 8,500 followers and people are  just. As boring as me and wanna talk about trade school, so that's cool to see.

But I'm on Twitter as ts secrets for trade school secrets. People laugh at me all the time, like the bodes of the world. I have no website. I have a Gmail account yet. I have a cool little one man show helping people fix their staffing problems. So that's where they could find me. I don't exist anywhere else. 

Austin Gray: Sometimes the operating from the Gmail account's the biggest flex, in my opinion. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah. You can't tell Bodhi that though.

Austin Gray: Hey they do great work. They crush. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah. He's in my peer group. I get to know him. We text each other almost every day. Just jab at each other. 

Austin Gray: So what is this peer group? 

‍Hector Resendez: Tribe. So tribe is a peer group where entrepreneurs like me and you go, i've never been in business for myself by myself. When I joined I needed that accountability. I needed structure literally changed my life. 'cause I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now and have the stones to charge what I charged and bring this kind of value.

And they've taught me how to do that.   I joined really early, we're over  200 members now, but there's a lot of people out there. Nick Hoki and Chris Corner, which. some of the investors in tribe, just to give you some reference. Fun fact, Chris Corner also lives across the street from me. We're in a area and he's on the country road and it took Twitter to introduce us, but small world there. 'Cause he is a big personality on everything, 

Austin Gray: That's awesome. Yeah. I had Nick on the podcast. It was funny. We recorded like several episodes. We had all these ideas. We're like, oh, shoot, let's talk ai. Oh, crap. Now we need to start a new AI podcast and let's get in. I'm like, dude, I'm so deep in three businesses right now and a podcast, and I was like, I can't commit to something else, but I will talk about AI and automations any day.That dude brings so much energy and he's awesome. 

Hector Resendez: Between both of 'em. I go to lunch at Chipotle with Chris Corner 'cause it's around the corner from us every once a month and I leave that hour with. head exploding. Hector, you should be doing this. Hector, you should be doing that. If I was in your shoes, you should do that. I'm like leaving with like and notes on behind napkins. I'm like, man, if I could just figure out how to implement one of 'em. 'cause those guys work at a speed of lightning and they're just spitting out ideas and Yeah. I understand. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Super fun. Yeah, tell Spencer Hey, we've gone back and forth on scheduling, so tell Spencer I would love to have him on the show here, 

Hector Resendez: Yeah.

Austin Gray: Next  time you see him, same with Chris. He and I have not been able to schedule anything  

Hector Resendez: Yep, would love  to get those guys on here, but it's crazy that y'all live in the same area within the mile, man, I think it's, yeah, it's wild. Within the mile.  

Austin Gray: It's so cool. So cool. Texas is friendly to these trade schools. 

Hector Resendez: Yeah, we need more of 'em, man. That's bottom line. We need more of 'em. We need more online just because not, if somebody is flipping a burger all day long and they smell like oil all day long, the last thing they want to do is go to night school or weekend school and be away from the family. So, a big fan. 

Austin Gray: Okay. All right, we're gonna wrap this one up and I have some specific questions for offline  it  listeners. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the Owner Ops podcast. You heard at First Trade School Secrets. Go check Hector out on X. If you have ideas for trade schools, I'm sure he'd be willing.

And would love to help you out. Thank you so much again for listening to another episode. We publish episodes about  building local service and trade-based businesses  every single Friday. And then we send a newsletter with the recaps of the main lessons that were learned from that episode, and we send those to you on Saturdays.

So if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, go to owner ops.com/newsletter. That's OWNR ops.com/newsletter. I've got some.  Final exciting news to announce. Again I've  said this in the last podcast couple times, but if you have specific business questions, I took a page outta Chris's book, listening to his podcast.

He does q and a where he answers questions with his guests. So we set up an open phone text line after hosting the open phone founder on the podcast.  So we've got 9 7 0 5 8 5  OWNR if you have questions about how to grow your business. Text them in. And then I will add those questions into the episodes live with the guests, and we'll answer those on some of the episodes.

All right, we're gonna wrap this one up. Thanks again. Don't forget, work hard, do your best. Never settle for less.

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