Women In The Trades; Is It Even An Issue?

Lia: You're listening to the Sparky life podcast with your host, Lia Lamela. Here we discuss women in the trades and how to construct your career.If you like this podcast, be sure to subscribe and rate us five stars. The reviews on Apple and Spotify really help us reach listeners like you. So if you'd like to give a helping hand, I'd really appreciate it. And now let's welcome the next Sparky life guest.I'm so excited. I'm so happy you're here. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. I'd like to welcome Dustin Stelzer. He is a master electrician, and the creator of Electrician U. He is a pioneer in improving and developing electrical courses. He's a teacher's teacher, and an individual who many students are grateful for.
Dustin: Well, thank you for like, elevate what we're about to talk about right now. Because it's gonna go downhill from that in a hurry. 
Lia: Oh, you are just being humble. Your courses are absolutely fantastic. Really. I know, being in the electrical field, how difficult it is to have access to information that can really help you understand electricity. And it's an abstract thing. It's not something that you can physically touch, I mean, we shouldn't. Your courses are fantastic. And you're a pillar in the industry. Truly.Dustin: Thank you. I appreciate that.Lia: So I noticed that many listeners might know a little bit about your background. But I believe you have a little bit in sales and a little bit in the restaurant. But for those who don't know, tell us how you got into the electrical fields.Dustin: I've always kind of been in and out of job sites, I've family that's been in construction, like framers and stuff like that. So my whole life has been around tools and then on job sites, but my dad, I was working with him because I got laid off at Dell, I was not a corporate person, I found out. So I was doing a tile job with him, and it just happened to be at an electrician's house. And he looked at me, and I think he was just tired of dragging me around to work because he didn't really need me, just like, I needed to do something. He looked at me, and he looked at the guy. He's like, “are you hiring electricians?”. He's like, “Yeah, actually we are”, and he's like, “go apply for a job”. And so, I had never done it before. And I mean, like I changed out ballasts. And you know, like I had run 14 Two and 12 two and stuff like that. I had no clue what any of it was. But like, seriously, day one, I got the job, went and interviewed. And then from then on out, I just fell in love with it. Mostly, we did large scale custom homes. So the cool thing was like, I felt like I was in an episode of like MTV Cribs. And I would go out to all these houses and they got Ferraris and stuff. And they got like steamers in their shower, their showers as big as my house. All right, this is legit. I think I could do this for a while. And then we also did a lot of the AV work. So we did houses that had lighting control systems. So like this was the early 2000s. Like I had never seen anything that you could touch a screen and control all your lighting. And then we were doing home theater systems too. So like, just these fancy dim lights and getting everything to work. I don't know, man, I just fell in love with that immediately.Lia: That's so cool. That's so cool. I geek out over building automation any day of the week.Dustin: What do you do? Like what's your kind of forte?Lia: I am working with controls. I live in data centers. So building automation, as a one little machine talking to another little machine. Yeah, think Terminator.Dustin: So in the data center, though, do you primarily deal with like Backup UPS battery kind of like DC stuff? Or are you more on the AC controls?Lia: Both. Dustin: Oh, wow. Okay, yeah. Lia: I love it. I love everything about it. Yeah, I love running pipe. Three quarter. It's my fave. It's my jam. If we're doing anything bigger than three quarter I want to use a cycloneDustin: I was just gonna say, three quarter is the max though, right? Like that's where everybody’s like, I don’t like pipe anymore.Lia: Pretty much, pretty much.Dustin: I don't know, I really like the big stuff. Like I like the three inch, four inch, where you're in an electric room and the space is tight, and you got to sit and try to, obviously you're not bending any of it, but like just trying to make stuff look aesthetically great and fit things into small spaces. I love that.Lia: Yes, yes. That's the thing about electrical. There's so much art involved. The symmetry is huge. I never would have expected it when I first walked into the field. But…Dustin: Yeah, yeah. And I'm very artistic as well too. So like, the aesthetics of what I do, I take pride in it because I like really clean lines and some of the first houses we ever got to work in, we were hanging chandeliers that are like $20,000, like these monster chandeliers and then by the time everything looks like completed you're like, Dude, I did that. And it works. And it doesn't kill anybody and the breaker doesn't blow, there’s a pride to it.Lia: Well, speaking of electrical work, tell us some pros and cons. I mean, you did do a little pros there, but give us a broad spectrum of what to expect.Dustin: Okay, so the biggest pro that I tell people for why they should be an electrician is that you can start out not knowing anything and get paid to learn. So like, every mistake that you make, your boss has to pay for it, and they're paying you to make mistakes. You don't have to go get a degree, some places, very few places, but some places there are like the state of Utah, you have to actually go through four years of schooling and to just be able to get into the industry. So the apprenticeship with the school, and that's not union, that's the state mandated requirement. But I will say they put out phenomenal electricians because of that, you know what I mean? There's like a very strict requirement, a lot of their testing, so rather than like a lot of us, we just go sit in front of a computer and take our journeyman test, and just pops random questions. This is, they have to sit in front of a board and actually go up and do work. And they're watching them put stuff in boxes, and wire relays and stuff like that. So there's like the theory portion of their tests, there's the code portion, and there's like a practical application portion of it. Honestly, it's impressive. And I feel like the standards for how to get into the industry should be a little bit more like that. But yeah, like, what I loved about it is that I could literally go get a job and it was good paying, like for me at the time, you know, 16 years ago, like it was paying better than anything I could find. And I was working in restaurants, I had so many different jobs, and I was like holy crap, like, I can actually get paid that. And I don't even have any tools, I don't even know what I'm doing. And they're just going to show me you know, like, that's the awesome thing. Downside of it is, you're gonna have to change your lifestyle. So this isn't like a lazy kind of get up, on your phone all the time, screw around type of thing, the more serious you take this, the more money you're gonna earn, the further you're gonna get in it. And for the people that don't really give a shit, the teams don't want those people around. So you'll be gotten rid of pretty quickly. But it's like a, getting up at five in the morning, making your coffee, getting breakfast and lunch packed. So you're up really early, usually every morning. But the great thing is like by 2, 3:30, you're done for the day, so you get the whole rest of the day. And once you get your license, you know, take you four years, but it needs to because this shit is dangerous and it can kill people, but after that, for years, once you get that journeyman card, it's like gold, you'll find a job anywhere in everywhere. As long as you're worth it. You know, like if you're crappy and you don't know what you're talking about, you just somehow landed this card, like, it'll see through, everyone will know immediately. For anybody that's got a card, like it, we need electricians so bad, everybody does. So yes, definitely you have a secure future.Lia: What's the difference between a good electrician and a great electrician?Dustin: I hate answering that question.Lia: Why, you're like, the perfect person for this question.Dustin: What's the difference between anybody that's just good at something versus anybody that's just great. It’s the same. It’s their nerdiness.Lia: It's a nerdiness Ah, see, I like that.Dustin: It's like, do they have libraries of books, if you're into finance, you know, like, I'm a nerd about money, too. So like, I've got books about finance and crypto and numismatics and all kinds of stupid stuff. But like, I find that throughout the time that I've been doing this, even like the old, old cats that are running things that have been out in the field for 40 years, there's a nerdiness about it, that they love. They love how electricity works. They love how devices works, you know, and networking, and they just love the understanding of the science of how everything works. And then they get a gratification off of completing something. So there's like a huge dopamine hit that we get when we've done a whole bunch of work that's really complex, and nobody thought it could get done. And then we handle it. And it works. And it's great. Like there's no bigger joy in the world and actually being able to take that knowledge of your nerdiness and like apply it to something that's that you get to see like a direct result of.Lia: Yes, yes, definitely. Now I'm gonna backtrack a little bit. You talked about us needing electricians very badly. So I know you're well aware, there's a huge labor shortage issue. It's very, very hard to find skilled tradesmen and tradeswomen in the field, and the shortage, it's complicated. There are many factors that played into this. I wanted to know, what do you think are some of the factors that played into this?Dustin: Ha, that’s a loaded question. What caused it or what played into it has probably been the culture of America and everything that that entails, the culture of the people, the economics, the you know, like everything about our society as Americans in America, the way we operate as people, that is the, that's what's contributed to this.Lia: Regarding the culture, there was a huge swing to push college and almost dismiss trade jobs, as though they were like less than.Dustin: But I think that that swing and technology while you're right, I think it amplified with kind of the web 2.0 thing that happened with the Facebook and Google and all that stuff in the late 90s, early 2000s. But I think technology and media is, has been the downfall of the trades from the beginning.Lia: And what about the trades themselves? The tech companies did a very good job in understanding psychologically how to make great teams, how to improve the environment you work in, and construction cultures kind of been lacking and catching up with that, you know, this old school kind of mentality, imperial setup. Have you seen any changes more geared towards like, what Google does, I mean, they're big on creating an environment where they get the most out of their employees.Dustin: I think right now, there's a lot of really large companies that for compliance reasons, are making a shift, and probably a lot to do with money. And it costs a lot to have to train people over and over. So if you can't retain people, it becomes expensive. But I think I see more companies out there that don't care about that and don't even think about that. And they're just like, I'll just find somebody else, I don't care. So it is that like old school thing. But where I see a lot of the development happening, and a lot of like new technology being adopted and a lot of mindfulness about employees and stuff like that, it's really at these large companies, where if they're not doing that, it's potentially costing millions of dollars. So it's like if we can just kind of change core behaviors and belief systems with our employees, like we can correct a whole lot of things. But you know, the small mom and pop five to 20 employee range, they're just kind of doing whatever they got to do to get these jobs done.Lia: Mm hmm. Okay, so you talked about changing mindset, what type of mindsets do you think we could put into play where people would be more attracted to trade careers, because construction careers trades, they're fucking awesome, like, we are the foundation of civilization. This is how society works, guys, like, I love saying things like this, we are the matrix. Okay, forget your tech. We are the matrix. Okay.Dustin: Let's get into the simulation theory of reality at some point, because you're right on. There's a lot of things that we can do, mindfulness, in how we treat people, because like, like you're saying, the construction industry largely is a lot of gruff people, and those people happen to be men, you know, 96%, male in the construction industry, I think if we took the same age slice of men that are in the trades, and just put that same age slice, didn't give a crap about kids, there, we just took a bunch of 30 year old 26, 40 year old women and just converted them over, like, boom, overnight, the trade gap is fixed. So making it so that women feel comfortable in this space, it has been something that's a challenge. It's not as big of a challenge as I think a lot of people think that it is, but it's something that like, it's only now being thought of probably the last like, you know, six years or so that we've been seeing a lot of like, trending towards mindfulness in the trades. And I think it's great if we need more people like this, just having conversations and like making conversation available to people. Because I remember when I first started making videos, the culture, you know, it's only been seven years that I've been making videos, but like the culture at first..Lia: Don't say, oh, it's only been seven years, it's almost a decade. That’s a  fucking accomplishment.Dustin: No, but I mean, like, you know, seven years ago, there wasn't a lot of female influence, in general that was being talked about. It was rare to see a woman on a job site, and I still think it is, I still think like, it's very, very rare. But I came up fortunately, like, even through the years of apprenticing and stuff like that with females on job sites, you know, electrical industry. So, like, I understood the issues, I understood, if I go and ask her, if she needs help picking up that ladder, I'm gonna get a fucking hammer thrown at me. Okay, like now I know, I didn't know that was a thing, you know. So it's just, I find that like, most guys are really, they want to be on the good side of women. And just in general, in our society, right? Guys want to be liked by women. And it doesn't, it's not always a sexual thing. It's just that we've been trained by our mothers and our grandmothers to open doors, to do these, you know, do these things and be this certain character in our society. And so I think it's just kind of created this culture of like, if a woman says that she wants a certain thing or like things need to be a certain way, we're just gonna fall in line with that. And I think most men out there, when we find out about an issue, like, one thing I didn't even know, do you know who Angel Savoy is? She's a master electrician. Yes, she told me about this whole Porta Potty thing and this was three, four years ago. She's like, we need bigger porta potties. She was like, we need light, we have, imagine if you're wearing overalls, or coveralls and you got to do lady stuff. Oh, she's like, we can't just use every port-a-John, like, that's the argument, right? All the guys were like, we'll just go use ours or seven of them, right? They're like, what are you complaining about? It's like, dude, if you could just be a woman for a day and understand and have to go through that nasty port-a-John, but it's something I didn't know. But now that I know, every conversation I have from then on out is a completely different conversation. And it's one of understanding so I think that like, while a lot of people are like, Oh, men are pigs and we're never gonna get this issue straightened out. I really think the majority of men are not pigs, and majority of men are not toxic masculine, you know, assholes that are out there, majority of us just want everybody to be cool, is just like this small fraction of like extremes on both sides of any issue. And that seems to be like where the crux of the problem is, if there is a problem. Lia: I was talking to a friend of mine in Australia, and she did a lot of research on the SATs about trades, and it's not that the doors aren't open to women. They are; you're 100% correct. Any woman, easily, can walk into a trade position; that's not the problem. The problem is them actually completing, and the main issue with that is I think, it's 70% of females who start don't finish and for the guys, it's like 40%. That's not good either. Dustin: Weird. Lia: That's fucking sucks. Are you kidding me, that they're not retaining guys either. And it really comes down to, I believe, the environment nowadays, like, nobody's putting up with the bullshit that they used to put up with, guys are entitled to a clean fucking restroom too, man. Like, you shouldn't have to walk around in urine. Dustin: Yeah, but bro, we’ll poop in the woods, like that ain’t even a thing we give a shit about, really.Lia: But you're entitled to cleanliness, and the other thing is, a lot of young guys, they don't want to deal with being screamed at and like, you know, the Gollum effect. Right? Like if you tell someone they're a piece of shit, and they're useless, chances are you aren't going to get much out of them. They did a study, Vanessa Van Edwards has this book, Captivate, I'm a huge Vanessa Van Edwards fan. Highly recommend her shit.Dustin: Let me write that down. I don't know who she is. But I'm a big reader. And I love like, motivational stuff.Lia: Oh me too!Dustin: Are you really? Lia: A book a week. Dustin: Yea me too! For real? Yeah. You're a fucking nerd. I love it. All right. Hola. Hola. Hola. Lia: We are totally exchanging book faves.Dustin: Alright, what's her name? Lia: Vanessa. Vanessa Van Edwards. Dustin: Edwards. All right. What's this book?Lia: Captivate and Cues. It's absolutely incredible. The reason that I was so successful in the trades is because of that book. I'm not kidding.Dustin: Interesting. Is she somebody affiliated with construction? Or is it just mindset?Lia: It's psychology. I'm a psychology geek. I love psych, the mind, everything about it. There was a study done where they called up people, and they wanted to get donations for a political party. And one would call up somebody and read a script about “Will you please donate to ABC and why”? And the other one, they would call up people, and they said, “last year, you were so giving, you were so supportive. We really appreciated your donation, we were calling you and see if you donate again”, and the people that they said, “you were so supportive and you donated”, they never donated. And then what did they do? They donated.Dustin: Wow. Lia: It's because you set them up for success. We have an innate desire to want to fulfill a valuable role. So with men, right, if you, if you want a guy to be the best version of himself, you want to elevate him. You want to tell him, you're so structured, you’ve always got a plan. Chances are, he'll always have a backup plan to fulfill that role. Women are the same way: we want to fulfill that value. So if you tell someone. “Wow, you really pay attention to detail. I value how you organize the material, how you're quick to pick out what I need next”, they will fill that role, as opposed to the Gollum effect, where you’re tearing someone down. You're not gonna get much out of them. And unfortunately, the way the construction culture is, a lot of the guys were like, “Well, I had it that tough. So you know, you just have to like, work through it”. And it's.. Dustin: “Back in my day, we couldn't wear shoes on jobs. Get over it.”Lia: Yeah, it's like, oh, I'm sorry you were like treated like dirt, but that doesn't mean you should treat the next person like dirt. Right?Dustin: Yeah. So there's a huge chasm between, that that generation and like my kids generation, my kid just turned 18, he's about to leave the house and so, like, what they're willing to put up with, how they can easily make money doing shit that's not having to dig trenches every day, there's a lot to that, but I also think with the issue with females in the trade, the retention, so like, A; first, before I just like, go over what you just said, I completely agree with you like, being a positive, being a non-threatening, positive motivational force in people's lives, just everybody in your life, you're gonna get so much more out of them. I talked about like, parenting with my son and was like, you have to build equity with people before you can deliver a hard message to them, for them to be respected and for them to actually hear and want to heed what you're saying. So like, if I was just a dick all the time to people, no one's ever going to listen to me, they're going to hide things from me rather than coming to me when there's something that they need help with. But if you’re spending all this time, like, building character and building relationships, and joking about stuff, and clowning on stuff, also telling them when they're doing a great job, and like, “Dude, I'm so impressed with you, like, you did that, I don't believe you did that, bro”, like, having fun with people. So then when something happens, and you gotta snap at them real quick to you know, like to tell them like, “Dude, you fucked up”. And you that's the other thing. You don't have to yell at people. You can tell somebody like, “what were you doing, man? Like, this is stupid, this looks terrible”. Or like, “if you leave like that, like that you're gonna kill somebody, I can't believe that you did that”. You know, and just that kind of seriousness and that change of how you're being with them will stick with them because they're like, “Oh, dude, Dustin's normally like, cool as hell. And he's pissed at me right now. So like, I must have really fucked up. Because he's never like this”.Lia: Yes, it's definitely more impactful. 100%Dustin: But so, where I was trying to go with that, next is, you had mentioned, like the retention rate of females in the trade. I think that there's a lot of other factors of how men and women interact in workplaces in general, that, I think are like, amplified in the trades. I think that most men in a trade position, when they see a woman show up on a job site with tools, they treat her like a woman first, not a tradesman first, whereas if I jump on a job site, and I got tools, everybody's like, Yo, there's an electrician, there's a new guy, you know, like, “Go do your work”, and everybody else is like, “Hey, there's this chick, and I'm a guy. I wonder if she's single”, or I wonder like, “oh, wow, she's cute. Oh, she's wearing makeup” or like, you know, it's just “she's a woman”. She's just “woman, woman, woman”, instead of being like, “electrician, electrician, electrician”. And I think that customers don't realize it too, because it's so bizarre for them. So they're just like, “hey, don't fall off that ladder”, like they think it's silly. I don't think they mean harm, but they don't realize how fucking irritating it is for a woman to not be just respected right out the gate the same way as a man, would you? Would you say that, that's fairly accurate?Dustin: I say this often. I'm from New Jersey. I have no soul. I think iit takes a lot to piss meoff. If you fuck with my money, you fuck with my work, then I have a problem. Anything else, I really, I don't, I don't care, like, it's water off a duck's back. Like, it doesn't get to me. I'm not necessarily bothered that it might take them a while for to click, that, I'm an electrician like you. We, you know, we’re coworkers. Because I know it will. And I respect that we communicate differently.Dustin: Yeah. How long have you been doing this?Lia: Not long enough.Dustin: No, I mean like, a couple years, like where are you at a couple years?Lia: I'm brand new. I'm a baby.Dustin: So talk to me when you get to about year 12 to see if you're still cool with it. That's the only thing I have to say though. It seems like the women that last the longest and then end up becoming master electricians and owning their own company, they've got fucking grit, dude, like, they're not gonna put up with shit. You give them shit, you better watch the fuck out, there's a shoe coming down the hall at you like, you know, but that's the thing. Most men don't have to be like that to be able to last in the industry because they're just generally respected. But I found that most females, they constantly have to reestablish their skill in every new person's eyes that they need everyone, for day in, day out, week in,  month, year in, and by about like four or five years, they're just like, bro, I'm so fucking tired of this. Like, I'm so sick of being a woman in this trade. Like, just treat me like a fucking human being, you know,Lia: They don't make it to four or five years. They don't, they don't make it to getting the ticket. They don't think that far. And it's because of one of the reasons is definitely when when it's day in and day out. Unless you're somebody like me. It's like, I really don't let a lot of that get to me or bother me. It just, it, because, to me, it's I'm always in competition with myself. And I'm not here to impress anybody else. I'm here to impress me. So, don't don't misunderstand. I empathize. I have rough days too, where you are sick and tired of having to reestablish and reprove yourself over and over again. It does get exhausting, for sure. I would like more women to get into the trades because if there's more women, then you don't really come into this caveat. You have the ability to be mentored by a female electrician. A lot of guys have a problem with mentoring female electricians not because they don't want to, just because they don't know what to do, they're just, they're afraid of what it might look like if they get too close. Again, the communication is different between guys and gals. And also, like you pointed out, in a work environment, how women work, as opposed to men, but, I was speaking to a gender bias specialist, just recently, she's so cool. She was talking about how industries that have more of a balance between female and male make a 10% more income. So having female and masculine energy together is ideal. That's the way it's supposed to be. We are the best versions of ourselves, when we have both, both are important, both bring value. And a lot of the women that I speak to in the trades, they say, other than that, it's the best thing that ever happened to them, I can tell you personally, it changed my life on a whole nother level. I'm the best version of myself I've ever been. I'm doing things I never ever thought I'd be doing. But they say that on the crew, men, like what you're saying how they see she's a “she” first, they're that she's a woman first? Well, that actually can be a positive, because instead of guys cramming down their feelings, they're frustrated, they're angry, but they're not addressing it. Instead of losing their temper, they're more likely to communicate because a female is present. And a lot of the women are like, “Oh, I'm not just an ironworker. I'm a counselor”. A lot of the guys are more willing to talk and like, talk it out with the other guys with her being present, as opposed to if it was just all guys, because a lot of bias, you know, on the on the male part is they they're not really welcome to open up their feelings or you know, express themselves. That's not healthy. That's not good. That's, that doesn't help them. That only hurts them.Dustin: I don't know. I mean, we all like to break shit at some point, right? Like, I like throwing a fist through a window, every once in a while. I'm kidding!Lia: If it works for ya! Dustin: No, we actually in Austin, we have these what are they called, like, chaos rooms or something like that. But like you can bring anything in there. And you can have a baseball bat and you just go to town and smash anything and everything, bring plates. But it's like these individual rooms where it's like concrete and wood. And you're wearing, you know, like a helmet face stuff. So like you don't hurt yourself with it. But the whole thing is just like a rage room. That's what it's called, for to, just, let out rage in a responsible healthy place. And a lot of people have come out of that, like, “dude, that was the best thing that's ever happened to me. Like, I've been holding in so much shit for so long, for like my whole life. And I finally just got it all out”.Lia: Demo is a good profession for that. Dustin: Go be a steel worker, or, cuz, Iron workers, right, seem like they're kind of the kind of cowboys?Lia: I again, I think the trades is one of the best career paths you could possibly take, being able to see your progress. Yeah, and mental health purposes, they say that the trades used to be classified within the top 10 for suicide rates. And I think that's like construction jobs, electricians, in particular, by the way, I think that has to do with the traveling and the lack of expressing emotion being male dominated, you know, it was kind of just do it, just get the job done. There wasn't a lot of compassion for if you're dealing with things at home, or you're away from home. And if the culture changes, those things are going to be non-existent. Dustin: I don't know if I agree with that, though. So like, I do understand psychologically, and like any data points on that makes sense. But I don't know that that's the only reason why those things are happening. Right? Because like, I don't have a good relationship with my dad, my real, my biological father, I don’t even know who the fuck it is, you know. So like, there's been trauma my whole life with being disrespected and treated horribly from men in my life and not being able to express it. But I'm not out, you know, committing suicide, I think that men can deal with that kind of rough weirdness better. Like we're just almost more suited for that, because that's what we're used to. I think if you look at other factors that, for people being in the trades to begin with, is in the trades, it tends to be a lack of choices environment. A lot of people have felonies, a lot of people didn't go to college, don't have high SATs scores, had a kid when they were 18. A lot of people that are in the trades are there because they have no choice and it's the only job they could get. It's either that or wait tables. So I wonder, I'm not making a statement here. I just wonder if suicide rates amongst those types of people have lots of rest records. You know, like just people in general that are like that they kind of have a certain weight on their life, if maybe that's contributing to a lot of it because like I said, like I can be an environment with all varying ages of men. Some of them are assholes. Some of them aren't. Most time we get in, it's like, oh, so and so just being a dick again there, I did, stay away from them, you know, like, whatever, just bury, like we, we I don't think that those are the reasons people are committing suicide in the trades is all I'm saying there might be drug use, there might be other factors. But maybe what you're saying is, the mental health issues or the inability to express yourself also contributes to that, I think I would agree to that.Lia: There are a lot of people in the trades who are in the trades, because they think they didn't have another choice. But that wasn't how it always was at all, right? To be in the trades, it was actually highly regarded. Relatively recently. This wasn't something that it was like this prior, what played into that was this whole push for college. I think we have $1.5 trillion worth of debt. And half of the people who go to college don't graduate. It's not good. Not good.Dustin: I can't tell you how many electricians I know that have degrees in restaurant management, or accounting or whatever. And it's like, “Bro, why are you here doing this”? And it's like, “well, I can't get a job doing that, or I hate it. I just did it because my parents wanted me to go and I've got all this debt”, but like, I can actually get into the trades and just work. Lia: Yes, yes. Dustin: How much do you think that our media influence of the characterization of a tradesperson has influence on kind of the demise of people's perspective?Lia: It's been huge. It's been huge. They make them like they're dumb, cavemen ogres, and any female presented is like an Amazon, masculineDustin: Or there's the meme-female where it's like, she's barely wearing any clothes and she's got you know, stuff sticking out. And she's got a drill and it's like they're sexualizing the female in the, in that role, but they're also treating every man as if…Lia: We're only sexualized!Dustin: Yea, like, women you're pretty, like that's all, you win, you win all, no but I think like we you start seeing like media from long time ago, like 60s, 70s, of like, the stupid trades and kind of coming in and wearing overalls and like ass cracks, fumbling through and breaking things. And then it's like this Peter Griffin-isation of cat calling him and I'm like, dude, I've never once seen a woman cat called on a jobsite. I'm sure that does happen. And I'm sure that it has happened. But it's like what we portray tradespeople to be. I just think we need new influences. We need people that are like, respectable and respectful.Lia: Yes. So we're getting that, people like you.Dustin: Oh, get out of here. Milwaukee shirt. Try to blow sunshine at me. You and I should do a show. We should do like, like an a&e show.Lia: Oh fuck yea! Dustin: We got to calm, we got to calm the fucks down though. Like TV stations, I've been told don't like the fucks so much. They can curse. Dustin: Actually, I have a question for you. Where do you get that rad Milwaukee shirt?Lia: I got it from Milwaukee Rep. Dustin: I figured that's awesome.Lia: Yeah. They love giving it to the like, the only female. So it's an advantage.Dustin: They're pretty smart about that stuff.Lia: So, you know, we were talking about how there's this like, bad representation of the tradespeople in the media. And a lot of the women have that in their head like when they are going to go onto the job site that these guys are going to be catcalling and hooting hollering. But I would say that the majority of women I speak to don't have that experience at all. I have been in corporate and I've been in the trades, and I got more sexual harassment in corporate than I did in the trades. Now, I don't know if that's because of the timeframe when I'm walking in now with all this craziness. People are extra careful, because we lost our minds a little bit.Dustin: Because everything's on tick tock. Now you'll end up on tick tock if you're not careful.Lia: Right. Exactly. So I don't know if that's the case. A lot of times, if they're shocked that you're there, it's just more that you're disturbing the apple card, that they've just never worked with a woman before. And Hillary peach, she's a boilermaker, in Canada. She said that she got a lot of questions of, “Are you sure you want to do this”, very philosophical questions. So it's not that they have anything against women being there. That's not it. It's just in their minds, it's hard to understand why would a female want to do work like this. And it's like, if you take away the fact that I'm female, and you focus on all the reasons of why you love doing it, that's what we want to do.Dustin: I think you're absolutely right. It's, it's silly that gender plays anything into it. Really. I know for me, personally, anybody that shows up at a job site with me the first thing I do is I look at their tools, you know, like, I don't care who they are, what kind of, you know, what kind of gender they claim or or anything like that, if I see your bag of tools and they look worn, and then you have a leather belt instead of a nylon one, like it's the little details, if it's Klein versus, you know, craftsman, like you have a wooden hammer instead of like a nut, you know, I just look at all of that.Lia: Are you a tool snob? Dustin: Oh, yeah. Not even like brand snob. I'm quality tools now, because I've broken and blown up every tool you can imagine. So like now, I just I would rather spend more money on good stuff and know that it's gonna last me 10 years then have to keep buying crap. So when I see somebody has crapped that little $5 drill you just bought that's gonna burn up today. So, I guess I'm kind of a snob. Like, no, I mean, if there's a girl that shows up, or a woman that shows up on a job site, and she's got tools that I'm like, I can tell you use those and I can tell like how you hold yourself and how you carry yourself. I'm gonna know immediately that she's got experience, there's not, there's not going to be any guess in my mind on, “fuck, do I have to stick with her all day, and like, walk her through everything?”. But I'm gonna think the same thing for my 18 year old kid who just showed up on a job site, you know, and all my friends, they'll see the tools or you know, the people I'm working with, they'll see the tools. And if he goes to town, and he's not on his phone, and he's busting ass, he's gonna earn that respect. And people are just gonna be like, Oh, well, he's one of us. But if he's not, they're gonna hate working with him. Is there going to be having a babysit all day long? So I don't think that gender matters at all. It's unfortunate that like, psychologically, it does. But in my experience, most of the women that I've worked with have a) had to work harder and outwork everybody to get anywhere near the same amount of respect, in most cases, not the same respect. But once they do have that respect, everybody around in the environments I have been in are fucking warriors for her, and won't let anybody put up, you know, like, nobody will fuck with her. That's our queen. I don't know. It's, there's a lot of factors to it. And everybody's got a dog in the race. Everybody's got feelings about it. But I think in general, I think we just need better examples of people. We need more conversations out there, like people doing this having this conversation. And we need most people just being more mindful and stop worrying about your preferences so much and just kind of surrender to like the experience of who a person is before judging them.Lia: Yes, yes, definitely. I think that having these conversations with the women that I've spoken to, has been so positive and breaking a lot of stigmas, debunking a lot of myths about working in the trades. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think are some of the biggest myths in the trades?Dustin: Myths in the trades? Oh, I think that plumbers make more than electricians is a huge myth. Yeah.Dustin: I love you, Roger.Lia: Yeah, I feel like, I really got to be like, “Nicole, it's cool. It's cool”.Dustin: I think the biggest myth is just that we're all piece of shit, like, dirty people that can't do anything. And you know, like, in all reality, especially in the electrical trade, you have to be really smart, you have to be hard working, and you have to be careful. And just that, like I'm writing a textbook for universities right now, gonna have 1000 pages that I'm writing and let you know when it's done. It's fucking dope, man. I'm writing it from my, you know, from how I see people should learn stuff. And I go, like, way off the deep end, and all kinds of different harmonics and just crazy stuff that a lot of other books just don't touch. And I'm trying to put together a book that's like, every kind of different book that I've read, because there's millions of, my whole couch is like, littered with electrical books right now. And it's like, “Why do I have to get 73 fucking books”? Like, why is there not just one killer textbook that's covers everything. So.Lia: That's fucking amazing. You have to let me know when that's coming out. I am so gonna get my hands on that. Like, it's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. You have a gift. It is so rare to have an electrician who can teach. It's really like that is, man, if I could convince you to start a program where you take, you know, electricians, mold them into real teachers, real professors for the trades, because we need it so bad. Dustin: What do you think the biggest downfall is or like what… I haven't gone through institutional trade learning. So like, my perspective is that a lot of instructors are just community college, you know, like substitute teachers that just got a job and they've never been in the trades. And so they're just kind of teaching shit based off of lesson plans that are in front of them. But like, I don't meet people that are like 30 year master electricians that are in a school making very little money to teach rather than making a fuckload of money out in the field.Lia: Know that you're only going to make a fuckload of money if you teach in union, and even then they're amazing electricians and horrible teachers. Absolutely horrible.Dustin: Is it like the level of explaining things or like, well, what do you mean, horrible?Lia: What does Einstein say, if you can't explain it simply then you really don't understand it. Or if you can't explain it on a fifth grade level or, something of that nature, he's got this amazing quote about basically being able to break things down. That's what you do. That's what you do. That's so fucking awesome. And like, these, these are complex, like I said, they're abstract theories and science and math and totally sick and awesome shit. But it's hard to break it down. And when you've been in the industry, so long, and you're, you're using a vocabulary, electrical language is like speaking another language.Dustin: Yeah, that codebook sucks, bro.Lia: It's so bad. It's so bad. But if you, if you don't have somebody to break that language down for you, you're learning on your own. And in my opinion, that's also a reason why there's this huge gap now, because anyone who was trying to get into an apprenticeship or learn about the trade, and I'm specifically talking about electrical right now, because that's my largest experience and self experience with it. But they weren't able to find very good teachers or mentors, because they weren't able to really communicate what was happening or what needed to happen. And a lot of it, you've got to teach yourself. And if you're not very proactive, and if you're not in love with this, and that's what kills me though, because there's so many people out there that would be in love with this. Because they're, it's so hard for them to get access to really understanding what's happening, they don't have that opportunity. That's why having having teachers like you. I really think it's so important.Dustin: I'm actually writing, I'm writing a shitload of books right now. Like I've got an entire, I got like, the next couple of years in my life planned out, and like my messaging and what I'm kind of what I'm trying to do, like I've been really reactionary for a lot of the last few years, just throwing content out whatever I can and working out in the field, and like, I just haven't had a plan. But now I'm on a very clear trajectory for where I want my life to go. But where I want our industry to go, and I think that if I can, if I can try to keep people around me and stay somewhere near the cutting edge of like, where our industry is going, like I want to do that, I take that as like a responsibility. So anyways, there's some books that I'm writing, but they're not like electrical, but it has to do with my experiences in electrical and one of them. It's the whole my first actual like Dustin Stelzer book that's ever gonna come out is about teaching. Oh, I think that's because I think people will buy it because that's what it's all about.Lia: I’ll buy it.Dustin: Cool!Lia: I will be literally like, giving it out to all, you need this.Dustin: Don't give it to people, make them buy it! Alright, make me rich. I, really, no, I, I just want to help people out. So you say I want to help like, in any way if there's like, something that makes sense to somebody that I can drop something and they're like, oh, “wow, that's a whole different way of looking at shit. I've never even thought of that”. Like, that's enough for me, is you know, just to have that kind of like Adam Bration, that echoing out of having an effect and then other people affecting other people. Like, I'd really like by the time I die for me to be sitting on my deathbed and be like, did anything I fucking said in any of those videos actually help somebody?Lia: Yes! I can tell you. Yes, I would not have made it through a lot of dest take if it wasn’t for your courses really? Seriously? I’m constantly looking at your breakdown on stuff. And that has been so helpful, so helpful, and it totally geeked me out into, and then I went into quantum physics like…Dustin: Yes! Oh, you want to know the one video that I have recorded, probably 12 times and I still have not released because I keep throwing it away. Lia: Why? Dustin: It's the one video that I can't do the Einstein thing. Lia: Oh..Dustin: It’s, what is electricity?Lia: What is electricity? Ah!Dustin: The reason I can't answer that question is because I feel like I've read every single book on the planet. Seriously, I buy collegiate level. I've got books from Stanford, I've got Duke University, their, their electrical engineering department. I have read more fucking books than I think should exist about this topic. And I watched videos, I talked to other electrical engineers. And I realized that where I'm at in my understanding about this, is that the same barrier that the rest of the people in this industry that are like, PhD level understanding. We're all at this fucking barrier where we can't observe the thing. So we can't really say what it is. And to me, that means it's magic. Like the fact we can't smell it, see it touch it, you know, like, it's magic. But the hard part about trying to describe what is electricity is that there's so many different parts of it that you can look at. So to extrapolate what the actual electricity part versus the non electricity part is impossible. And so you've got, I've got manuals behind me that say electricity is an energy. I have behind me that say, electricity is a particle, it's matter. I have it behind me that say it's a force. Some people say it's a phenomenon. It can't both be energy, and it can't both be matter. So it's like, how are two established universities completely conflicting in their definition, the basic definition of what electricity is, and so I've made so many videos and the problem is, is I'm, I'm lengthy when I talk. So I'll be like, “Alright, I'm gonna do a five minute like, burner, this is my understanding of electricity”. But then I go through all the conflicting definitions, and the problem and why people don't understand and it's like, “Fuck, I can't make a simple concise, like, quick thing about what electricity is”. So in writing this textbook, dude, I nailed it. I can explain this, so simply, but I'm not going to do it on your podcast.Lia: Nooo! You just like, dangled that carrot!Dustin: See now, go buy my book for all your people! No, I mean, really, what electricity is, honestly, is we have the particles, every charged particle, everything that makes up matter that makes up anything, every atom is made of electricity. And that's fucking crazy thing once you start thinking about it, because we were like, I was joking about this simulation theory. It's like, if you're not if you're a religious person, I'm sorry. I'm like taking a deviation away from your, like where you're at. But everything in reality is made of electric particles, protons, electrons, there's voltage within every atom, and that ability for matter to have charge associated with it, that charge is what's electricity. But a lot of people are like, well, the movement of electrons is electricity. No, it's not, because static electrons hold matter together. Statically. You know, like, it's not the movement that matters. It's not static electricity. It's not the EMF, the force of it. There's so many different ways that we look at electricity. And it's like, are we looking at the fruits of a tree? Are we looking at the roots, it's all one big fucking tree, though. But you can't discount any of it. It's kind of like, when people talk about spacetime, you can't talk about space without time, I can't move, it takes time to move. So space and time are in our like, interlinked. And so it's the same thing with, with charge, with charged particles, we think of like magnetism, or magnetic fields and electric fields, we think of these things as different, but the only reason something's magnetic is because electrons are spinning inside of an atom. And if they're both spinning the same direction, it adds up. And it produces the ability for magnetism to happen. So there's not just like these things that are magnetic and things that aren't, it's all fucking electrons. Like everything, it's all charges. So but, it's hard to like, come up with a concise talk with people, there's a lot of dots that have to be connected for me to be able to explain in a good video, what electricity is, and unfortunately, the vast amount of people that are not going to understand what the fuck I'm talking about, I have to like, paint A through Z, to be able to get through an explanation of all of it. You have to get into quantum physics, you have to talk about the fact that like, electrons, we, they're not in this orbit, you know that like we don't know where electrons are, we like we can kind of postulate certain things. Nobody's even ever seen a fucking electron, there's a possibility our entire model of physics can be wrong. Like, how do you have this video? How can we explain what electricity is? It's, it's really difficult.Lai: Yeah, well, I think you did a great job right there. I mean, yes, that's what makes it so beautiful. That's what makes it so captivating. It's like you said, magic. It's magic.Dustin: Yeah, it really is. The craziest thing I think about electricity, that still just blows my mind that I'm like, fascinated by, is that the movement of charges, the movement of these electrons are not actually what's carrying the energy from one thing to another. Like, something happened a long time ago, when I was learning about electrical theory, where I realized somebody had told me like, they're pumping electrons from the utility company. And I'm like, I just always thought that that was the way things were, it's like when we're paying at the meter, the meter is like, recording how many electrons are flowing. But that's not the actual, what's happening is that we have a big generator that's spinning, and that fucking magnets got a lot of energy, and we put wires next to it. And that energy changes from mechanical motion energy to electrical energy, and it's not even the electrons moving that is carrying energy. It's those fields around every charge when you add all those fields together. This huge field around conductors is what's carrying this invisible energy. And so while you have electrons moving back and forth, electrical energy keeps going one way, and that's like the most fucking, that's like Harry Potter shit, you know, it just blows my mind how invisible fields carry energy and then once you know electrical energy gets to a load, it's just this moving back and forth but through air, we can turn a fan on and we can take that electrical energy that's being carried through thin air and change it back to spinning mechanical motion and a fan or we can have a light bulb turn off and whole bunch of the energy escapes but like, I don't know, to me that's just fucking crazy. That's like some “A-la-kazam”, like Hogwarts, kind of.Lia: Totally is. It totally is. But I think that's one of the reasons why you're obviously so passionate about it. Dustin: Yeah, I mean, I just want to be a wizard. That's really all this is. Lia: Why not?Dustin: You should have Milwaukee design me a wand. Lia: Yes. Okay. Go with a cape.Dustin: Dude, I would wear a wand, shirt, if they had some kind of Harry Potter Electricitian U shirt? Shit, that's all that I’d wear.Lia: You should totally make it. Dustin: Electrician U wand?Lia: First customer right here. I know that you said that you wanted to go where our industry is going. I want to know, where do you want our industry to go?Dustin: Oh, man, that's a crazy question. I want our industry to, I want our industry to stay the same in a lot of ways. Like, I think too much progressiveness for the sake of being progressive is a bad thing for anything. Not everything needs to change. You know, like, everybody's like, I want to change the world. It's like, bro, we got mountains, we got fucking grass and lizards and shit, stop trying to change the fucking world world doesn't need to change, it's fine. But like, there's shit with people that need to change. Because we're fucked up in the world. You know what I'm saying? The electrical industry doesn't need to change because it's awesome. And I love it. And it's changed my life. It's made me, it took me from being a more of a boy. And it raised me to turn me into a fucking man and a man that I'm proud of being. But it's only because of breaking my fucking knuckles every day and bleeding and like having to deal with like having arguments and having customers pissed off and learn how to be responsible and be here on time. I think that people being irresponsible and come and fucked up and having to get yelled at like, all that shit I think is necessary to a certain degree. Because I think young people coming into this are raised by the older people. And it's just like, you have new work parents, you have new influences around you. But I think like you said, this has been the biggest change in your life, and it's because of the industry you've come into, as it is not as it needs to be changed or as it is going to be in 20 years. It's like the struggles you're dealing with are building you and are making you and the successes that you're having are building and making you so like, I really don't think anything needs to change. The problem is is that we're going through a massive shift technologically, like homes now, I would say like 5 to 10 years, most houses are going to be being built with panels that have logic to them, that have a brain that can change and well, I don't even know about PLCs I think like I know Schneider right now square d, they're building panels, and they're installing them everywhere in California, they’ve got a brain in them. Yeah, so I can walk in as an electrician, I can look and see historical data of what's been going on, it'll read to me and let me know what you know, like, what things are going on in this panel. Yeah, it's gonna be, it's largely like, the whole, every all the devices are going to be networked and connected. So like you can see usage and very specific detailed information at every single load. So I think the technology needs to get better because we've gone through this weird, like analog system of like the 20s and 30s, where everything was like, indestructible there's still shit in like the Empire State Building, and we've never seen that or like real, you know, like magnetic crazy relays that were like hand built by some guys swinging a hammer, and the shit’s solid. And now we're building this like, Chinese ship like that, we're trying to get it the cheapest price. And I'm not hating on China or anything. Lia: Yup, “made in America”.Dustin: Yeah. And it's like planned obsolescence, we're hoping that things you know, don’t need to be replaced every couple of years. So now we got electronic ballasts that aren't worth a fuck, and every like year and a half, two years, you're having to replace them. So I think this huge shift is kind of swinging back where it's like, alright, we need to, we need to make stuff that lasts. But we need to make things that are very smart. There's no reason why every circuit breaker should not be a def breaker, it shouldn't be able to be smart enough to be remotely turned on and turned off like a smart breaker, it should be able to be networked through an app, an electrician should be able to see the usage for you know, something saved to a cloud that a user can like pay $49 a year or whatever for every customer that ever gets a panel, the entirety of their data can be looked at by an electrician. It's like three months ago, you had a huge fucking surge through your system that shows that you had this much current going through this one receptacle over here and like, it just needs to be smarter, and I don't see why every breaker can't tell if there's a ground fault that happens on the circuit. Or if there's an arc fault that happens on the circuit. It's just that like, the manufacturers are the ones that are in charge of making our code. Like, there's a lot of other people with it. But the manufacturers are, there's a vested interest that's happening with the development of stuff. And I think that if, if we can just get to development for like, development sake and figuring out what we need and what's like actually good for society, I think that we can come up with some crazy development because we've been wiring shit the same way for like the last 80 years. We use the same tools. So I think like smartening the technology in the industry and smartening the people, smartening…I know that's the dumbest fucking word, I'm trying to talk about people becoming smarter.Lia: I like it. You're speaking my language.Dustin: But no, I mean, I think people should have more education. I honestly think our continuing education is bullshit, dude, I had surgery not too long ago. And I woke up, like, all fucking doped up. And this woman was next to me. And she had this monster textbook. And she was just reading through it. And I was like, “What are you doing right now?” And she's like, “I'm doing continuing education”. I'm like, “from that fucking book, you have to read that book?” She's like, “this is one of them. I have to read like four of these every year. And I'm tested rigorously on them”. They have to know more. It's not like, “Hey, let's go through these click screens”. It's been the same changes to the code for the last three fucking years. And you don't have to take quizzes. You're not tested on like, nobody's learning anything new. I think in an industry where we can kill people, and like, literally burn down a $20 million facility because I fucking didn't ground something. Right? You pushing people to be smarter and be better. And I think if there's anything I wish to change, it's how educated people have to be to do this, and how educated they want to be to do this, because there's shit available for them to nerd the fuck out whenever they want to.Lia: Yes, I think I think you hit the nail on the head when you said things being available, accessible. And the people, soft skills, communication, real leadership, that has to change. That's, that's something that the construction culture is still lacking. And if you have real leaders that are going to require continued education on the level that you're talking about, which I'm a big fan of, the more learning, the better. I always feel like you can always if you're not learning and growing, you're dying. Yeah, so feed the brain. And with building automation, which is my especially geeky love of my life. Tech, it's constantly like there's always something new. And that's one of the things I love about it. So definitely having those changes in place will basically nurture and grow that requirement, it will become a requirement and to have something more challenging, you're going to attract quality tradesmen and tradeswomen. Because you're giving them goals, if you plateau, and like you said, you're doing the same thing over and over again, you're not elevating yourself as complacency, which is the worst thing. Yeah, it's very dangerous. Yeah.Dustin: The one thing that I like to make sure that I tell everybody that's getting into a leadership role, and they're just kind of starting out. When people get into really, leadership roles, they don't really have experience with relationships with people where they're above them in some kind of way. So there's a lot of this like, extraneous pushing your way around thinking, the one that knows everything. And if anyone questions you, like, you do what I say, yeah, a lot of like machismo that happens because of it's because of an overcompensating for an inadequacy that they don't want to actually like. They don't want to admit they don't know something. Lia: They like swinging the dick around. Dustin: That's what, that's what, it's only the people that really, it's not only, it's majority of the time, it's people that feel inadequate, they feel small in some way, because that don't know and they're trying to hide it by overcompensating for shit that so that you, you can't even question because the subject is being changed about how you're a fucking idiot and you didn't show up on time, you know? Yeah, like, yeah, so like the one thing I like to tell people like if you're getting into a leadership role if you're, if you are the foreman, if you're the superintendent of a company, even if your boss man and you own the company, you don't wear tools, think about your impact, because literally your behavior single handedly could be the behavior that changes everything for everybody at the company. And you might not realize how your being is fucking the culture of the whole rest of the company. Because you're the example and you're who people are watching so if you're the guy that's up stacking three fucking extension ladders up on top of trees, hanging from a fucking helicopter, a couple of people are gonna think that shit’s okay, and I came up that way, so I thought that shit was okay. And I did a lot of stupid shit. And I put a lot of people in harm's way because I just didn't know better. Right? We're in a stairwell and somebody's leaning up a ladder. It's like, “I'll just grab the other side of that. Go ahead”. 16 foot fucking ladder and I'm like, Oh, just stupid shit. But if you're the person that's allowing that everybody else is gonna see that and they're gonna be like, “Oh, that's just the way things are”. Yeah, if you're the person that every day is like, “hey, safety, let's talk about how people get shocked. Like today, we're gonna take five minutes, like, don't go to your truck yet. Just sit here for a second. Listen to me. You get shocked between two fucking things. Put one hand in your back pocket when you're reaching into something metal. All right, go like, have a good day”, you know? And like, the next day, it's like, “Hey, why are you guys wearing fucking sandals on a job site? Stop doing that”. What's your like, if they're constantly hearing safety, safety, safety, safety, Hey, you're the $25 for one hour that you're making for me is not worth you risking your entire life and dying and your kid not having a dad anymore. So like, don't do stupid fucking shit. If you're that person, you'll also have an echo of everybody else taking that seriously and acting that way. So like, think about your impacts, the words that you say, the way that you show up to like, the shop in the morning, and you're a journeyman, and all you do is just sit there and smoke cigarettes and watch everybody else. They're just going to be sitting there smoking cigarettes and fucking off. But if you get there and you start going through material bins, and you're like, hey, hey, go take that trash out, like hey, will, you put this over here, hey, will you get this, if you're the example and you're busy and yourself and you're always dedicated, you're always coming in early, you're never late, you're always staying late, making sure shits getting handled, your job sites are in order, the people under you are going to act like you because they're going to want to mirror you or they're not going to know any other way to be. So they're just going to naturally mirror you. So the way that you treat people, the way you talk to people, the way that you show up, really think about yourself and the effects that you have, because they're way larger than you realize.Lia: Yes, 100% you might have already answered the question I was about to ask, but I'm gonna  ask it anyway, because I can't help myself. You're gonna have to deal with my really bad corniness.Dustin: Are you about to tell me a dad joke?Lia: Almost, no! So because we're on construction, and we work in the field, and all that jazz, and this is a very personal thing, for me, being female, having the right tool to do the job is huge, huge. I've had to get real clever, even make some of my own tools to make things work for me. Okay? So I love to ask all the guests, what's in your tool belt? What's something that you carry with you, all the time, something that you, you know, embody to help you achieve your goals in life?Dustin: In life, like you just said, toolbelt, like I was thinking like a stubby screwdriver.Lia: I mean, metaphorically, life.Dustin: Shit, man. Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things. I have a T shirt that literally says “shit happens when you party naked”. That's what me and my son say to each other when something happens or he like fucks up or gets in trouble or whatever. Like, I'm like, “Hey, bro, shit happens when you party naked”. A tool? I think it's important for people to not take themselves too seriously. But take what they do with deadly seriousness. There's a huge distinction. Yeah, I think that thinking that you're something that you're you know, every Master has a Master. Yeah. So get over yourself. And I think if you always think of every environment that you're in, everything that you do, as studious as you are, you get a PhD: still think of yourself as a student, always, always think of yourself as a student, because the second that you think of yourself as a master, you got 500 students under you just ready to take you out, and you're not growing anymore. Yeah, so a buddy of mine, who's a classically trained musician, we were talking about teaching and learning for this book that I was talking about. And I was like, “at your level of musicianship, you're..”, here, he runs an entire school, he's got people that teach, you know, I'm like, “how do you continue learning”? And he's like, “it's simple. I am the one having the conversations with other people at my level about what can change and what new things can we do, what new ways can we teach and bring new technology available to people” he's like, “I'm just trying to push whatever boundaries that I can because nobody else is doing it”. So the people that know the most have a responsibility to shape the boundaries of any given industry. And I think that people just need to take that more seriously, like, take what they do with a lot of seriousness, but at the same time, a lot of those people get a really big ego. And I think dropping the ego, do some psychedelics, maybe drop some acid, you seem like mushrooms, that shit should get rid of the fucking ego. You don't need to do it very many times, one time go through it. But like drop the fucking ego man, you're not as special as you think you are. You're no more special than any of the rest of us, so take your craft serious you know, like, be good at it, don't be out here fucking around, we only get one life as far as we know. Yeah. So don't don't fucking squander that. You know, like, live it up.Lia: I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Fucking awesome man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This has been incredible. Absolutely incredible.Dustin: Cool. Well, thank you for having me on here. It was a, good meeting you, good talking to you.Lia: Dustin Stelzer, a real life wizard, dismantles this idea that electrician’s jobs are just that: jobs, or a mere way to get a paycheck. He rewires our perspective to see the world of mystery and magic and electricity, bringing adventure, integrity and grit into the heart of what it means to be a journeyman or journeywoman. Dustin elaborates on all of the benefits of being an honored member of the trades, and expands on the ways we can contribute to make this a welcoming and rewarding world that anyone can come into, striving to achieve the important balance of feminine and masculine energy in the trades. I am grateful for my conversation with Dustin and feel inspired in my own mission to continue elevating values of the trades such as striving for authenticity, seeing one another in our full humanity, and flaunting my nerdiness as a superpower that can help bring about a better world, one spark at a time. Thank you for joining us. If you felt a spark in today's episode, I invite you to write a review. I'd love to hear what lit you up. Take what resonates with you. And if you'd like to hear more of the Sparky Life, please, subscribe, like, follow and share. Until next time, create the sparks in your life.