everybody's super excited to get their journeyman license once they've been
apprenticing as an electrician for several years but what are some of the things that people don't
talk about when becoming a journeyman that may not be that awesome [Music]
all right so first and foremost once you become a journeyman now you are a money maker right now
you're being seen by the boss as like somebody that can be sent out independently and whatever
they do is going to bring in money with an apprentice you're just sticking apprentices
wherever to try to like get them trained up but they can't really do anything they can't
send them out to like go take care of a job and do anything but journeyman can't journeyman are
the money makers so we invest money in paying a salary to people but with the hopes that
what they're bringing in is greater than the salary that they're costing and the mistakes
they are making so now we have to understand is that because every job is yours these jobs
are now yours they belong to you which means everything is your fault everything is your
fault The Good the Bad the Ugly everything in between everything's your fault and that
even goes if you're say like wiring a big custom home and there's you Mr journeyman and there's
three other Journeymen and 12 other helpers it's all your fault everything all of them do
because it doesn't matter when boss man calls and you say oh this Apprentice did this or this
journeyman didn't put this over here all I hear is you didn't do something right your job is
messed up and you weren't there properly watching people and checking and explaining it's your fault
I don't care if other Journeymen did it I don't care if other apprentice and the more you say
that the more you throw other people under the bus you're going to start building in my mind a
certain character that I know you as a sellout or somebody that will sell out their friends
take ownership all I want to hear is the jobs done really well or you know when something's messed up
just say ah we messed this up that's the better way to say it when you say we mess this up I
know you probably didn't do it otherwise you would have said I messed this up if you say we I know 30
the breakdown in the team somewhere and I get I understand it but at least you're not being
a dick by throwing your buddies onto the bus and trying to tattle on them to the owner anyways you
just need to understand that everything's your fault and be okay with that if a job goes you
know uh belly up your fault if an inspection gets failed your fault Apprentice like kicks a hole in
a wall your fault you're the one that's gonna get yelled at for it everything because you are
the responsible party you're the one that's the babysitter you're the one that's there to ensure
everybody's doing everything right that's part of your job description it's not just now you're
doing work and you got a truck that you're driving it's now you have all of the responsibility of
everything that has that having that card actually means everything that you do now
affects the company's bank account if you take too long on a job and you spend all this time screwing
around you know working slow being meticulous whatever and the the company has bid a job to
be a certain amount because the owner thought it's going to take this amount of time and you
take way more time now the the company is paying money and wasting money and losing money and going
out of business eventually if this keeps happening so you have to think that you need to be efficient
you need to do it work as fast as you can and as clean and perfect as you can in as little amount
of time and the less time it takes you to do a job the more money that it the company makes or
the more service calls you can take throughout a day and actually complete the more money that the
company's gonna earn it's not just like making a whole bunch of stops if you're not bringing a
check back with you or getting a card scan you're not making any money so just understand everything
you do the level of motivation level of Hustle the quality of work that you do or don't do the
amount you screw off and sit out in your truck on your phone versus actually being in being able to
Bill hours you you have a massive impact on the company's bank account all right the next kind
of like downside that you're gonna have to deal with as a journeyman is this idea of wanting to
get some work done and not being able to get anything done throughout the day this usually
happens when you have a site that you're working on in multiple buildings and several different
Crews on a job or maybe it's just you and four helpers and you're just not really that used
to how to deal with that many people but what's going to happen is that you're gonna you're gonna
sit down not gonna sit down because you don't sit down you're gonna stand in front of the thing with
your tools on and you're about to start using a screwdriver and all of a sudden your phone rings
and it's the Builder and you're like all right I gotta take this hold on when you finish this
one for me you sit on the phone and talk for a little while and then hang up and you get
ready again and The Apprentice comes up you're like yo man I need your help and you're like
all right let's go put your tools away you go over and explain something it's like no
you didn't do that that's not what I said to do dude I said to do a different thing and now I get
over there and you look and everything's running you come back and you're like oh
yeah I was trying to do this thing and you sit down and do the thing and then your boss calls
mother yeah get on the phone hey man what's up you know just trying to work trying to
get some job some work done for you all right cool I'll talk to you later boom
sit back down hey dude I need help can you come and look at this
block it's like this as a job lead it's something that just sucks but you have to learn this balance
of not being able to get things done and getting things done now that you have four six people on
a job more things are naturally going to get done because there's more people turning tools
at the same exact time in different places in the building more things are getting done so you don't
have to be the person doing all of them that's not to say that once you become a journeyman you
just don't wear tools and you just bark orders at every people that's that's stupid like you should
get everybody lined out to their skill level know what's going on the job be thinking about things
ahead of the people doing things next but once you've gotten like the idea of what each person
is going to do next and you kind of have the next few hours laid out like just go back to work like
start helping them and you know put your tools on but it's more beneficial for you to take your
tools off and just walk around especially when you get like 10 12 people on a job just don't even
wear your tools you know what I mean like you got to balance it the more experienced you you become
as a journeyman you know when to like strap it up and when to take it off but you need to get used
to allowing other people to work so one of the guys I was working with recently had just gotten
a job that I like handed to him and I was like all right man you're you got the rest of this
and I'm walking away from it this is all you now and you have to run this and I would see him with
a couple of helpers standing around and he he's in a trench digging and all these dudes are just
standing around not doing anything there's [ __ ] and telling jokes and I'd be like yo get give them
one of the shovels what are you doing right now give them a shovel they're you have these
standing around you that don't know anything and need experience let them dig trenches you've dug
like thousands of trenches by this point stop doing that or I would see him you know like he
he'd have helper stand around him and he'd be in there doing something that I knew that these
apprentices had at least enough experience to like do this stuff and I'm like bro hey you doing it
again you're in and because you're in everybody else is out you can't do that as a person running
a job you're gonna get that one thing done and nobody else is going to get anything else done and
nobody's gonna get trained because you just keep diving in so you need to back up and explain how
things work and get these people some experience and allow multiple people to be working at one
time so more things will get done and it's it's something that like all of us deal with right like
at a certain point you've been apprenticing for four years you've been so focused in on everything
and the work ethic is what you're getting rewarded for that currency that I always talk about and
like really putting it in and so once you become a job lead and you have a whole job now that you're
responsible for it's hard to just like stop being that way and start be in a different way but you
have to you know when you've got multiple people on a job site you really it becomes less about
the work you do and more about you directing the kind of Symphony of everybody else working
and that has to be okay because that's where that's where the money is going to get made
the next thing that kind of sucks as a journeyman is that you don't get to say I don't know anymore
now now you know enough that the things you don't know are your fault
and the things that you don't know which are okay like your day one journeyman you're still barely
a journeyman right you're still pretty much just an expert a experienced Apprentice but
like year 20 journeyman whole different thing right there's gonna know way more so there's a
gradation everybody understands that there's going to be a lot of things you don't know but you're
going to be expected to be able to find things on your own and find answers on your own and present
Solutions when you're an apprentice you can just be like how's that wired and it you're like what
is what is an electron in it like you don't have to know anything and it's okay nobody expects you
to know anything so there's this huge jump that happens once you become a journeyman and you're
running jobs and when a customer is like hey is it possible to get like you know this tv up
on this wall you can't be like you gotta have an answer you'll be like well there's these different
mounts I've run across this experience or just be like you know what I haven't done that before let
me call and I'll talk to some more experienced people that have done that and I'll get back to
you with an answer but you have to find answers and you can't just be calling boss man all the
time every day like hey hey I don't know you gotta find answers so that when you call boss
man you can be like hey I've narrowed down the 73 questions I was going to ask you because I've
done my research and I've actually tried to find solutions to this and I'm down to these two things
right here and I can't make a decision because I just don't have enough knowledge but out of
these two things what do you think or sometimes it's just too complex and you do need to call but
that's the whole thing is not you're not just an apprentice who's never interfacing with the boss
and trying to solve problems and just being told what to do all the time now you're the one telling
everybody what to do now you're the one coming up with or coming across every single problem and
it's constantly just new stuff Builders constantly like hey I want a TV that floats in the middle of
the room and has a ghost up out of the middle of it how do we do that you know like you just
have to figure things out that's your role now so as a journeyman as a new dream then that kind of
sucks because you need a little bit more time in service really and coming across these problems
to come up with really good Solutions but you should still be able to find the answers as a
journeyman rather than just being like boom next is that uh everything comes down to you so if you
work for say a service company commercial Service Company and there's service calls that have to
be done emergency service calls that Home Depot calls in the middle of the night or Walmart calls
and they're like all of our produce is down and we have an emergency and we're going to pay you
whatever costs to drive two hours and come and help us figure this out you're not an apprentice
anymore it's not just somebody else had to go do that aha that sucks it's you have to do that now
so now everything that's like a big emergency problem or hey you forgot to put a panel cover
back on and so and so homeowner you just drove an hour and a half from the job site to get home
and now the homeowner called and said that their panels wide open and there's just wires hanging
out and Breakers and they're afraid their kids are going to get electrocuted you gotta go do it
Apprentice I don't know what to do you're not going to get that call as an apprentice right
it's only trained guys they're gonna have to go drive after they just got home after a long
day work drive back an hour and a half to go put that panel cover back on and then drive another
hour and a half back it's all on you now so it's something that a lot of people just don't think
about going into it so it behooves you to be a lot more careful and double check everything that
you do and be very meticulous with your work at all times and always think about before we
pack up at the end of the day have we cleaned everything up so that the homeowners aren't
going to be pissed that it looks like we just disrespected their place but did we also put
everything back that needs to be put back so that everything is safe those are the two questions
every journeyman needs to ask at the end of the day every single day did we clean everything up
and did we put everything back so it's all safe and then go check and verify all of that even if
everybody says yes you're undoubtedly going to go into that one room they left a huge pile of
crap and they just forgot that one room you know it's your job to check it all comes down to you
same note one thing that sucks about beginning a journeyman is that you have to care more
when you're an apprentice you can just show up you can just like do tweedly Tweedledum
listen to music throughout the day go home like nobody expects anything more out of you than just
to like show up kind of be in the way a lot do stupid stuff be corrected all the time you just
like you're not really dependent on that much you don't have to know what's going on with the entire
job you don't have to know the ins and outs and intricacies of the entire blueprint and all the
different editions of it and what was changed and what you know like you don't have to know
anything people tell you what to do all the time so as a journeyman you need to care a lot more you
need to take the whole the plan home if you get a brand new job sit at home for a little while look
at things if you know if you didn't have time to do this on a job site take that extra time to give
a [ __ ] you know like understand what's going on on the job so that way when you get to the
job you're like oh wow that wasn't on the plan you know understand every single page what the
one line diagram says well check the service uh you know conductor size did they size the
condo doctors for the service right is the service how it shows on the one dot line diagram actually
going to work out in the field you know like are there receptacles that were left off per code
so now you guys are wiring a house that's not actually up to code go through with a pencil
and write in little thing you know you just have to care more as a journeyman because the more you
care the better your jobs are going to go the more money you're going to make for the company and so
every master electrician that owns a company wants people that care that go at the extra mile because
we do that too and it's really hard because obviously we're the ones that own the company
so we're benefiting from caring a lot more about it but we want other people that care about our
thing like we care about our thing and it's really rare to find but when you find somebody like that
like rewarding the [ __ ] out of that behavior is a good idea because it's rare but we would love it
if everybody cared a lot and like we're super hungry and super like watching YouTube videos
and trying to learn everything and informs reading about stuff and everybody wants that
person right you might find one of those every 40 electricians that you meet that's unfortunate but
everybody in general needs to care a little bit more they need to get there earlier so they can
talk to the boss about this and that and what problems are going on and hey what would you do
so being there early to be able to do that showing up at the end of the day late to make sure
materials get put back and ladders get put up and that you have your stuff geared up for the next
day so just kind of like this extra caring more knowing when you should work through lunch because
there's a crazy deadline and you'll like make it up later or whatever you know like you just
you're you have to try to care more and care more about the company rather than just your individual
thoughts and feelings all the time that's key all right and the last thing that I'm going to touch
on is that now you're the example and it's not even intentional most of the time but now because
you're a journeyman because of the way the boss talks to you everybody else looks at the way the
boss talks to you and realizes you're a different thing than they are and so whatever you do and
whatever you say they're going to be watching you very closely always watching you closely to see
what does he do when he gets to the shop in the morning is he just sitting around bullshitting
smoking a cigarette maybe that means that I consider on bullshitting smoking a cigarette
with him or like outside because he's doing it or he gets there first thing in the morning and
he's always organizing materials and working maybe when I get there I need to start getting
materials and like work you know people watch you and they're gonna try to do what you're doing so
even without you thinking about it people are watching you and they're thinking about either
doing what you do because they respect you and they want to mirror you or not doing anything
remotely close to you because they disrespect you and can't stand you and don't want to be
anything like you or the third option is they just don't care about you in any way or fashion but
what you say matters the things that you take Serious are gonna be things they take Serious
um if you're if you always talk about safety about doing this safe and hey I'm never going
to put you guys In Harm's Way hey make sure you before you go up there that this is strapped
off and that this is safe and that you're safe and we do things safe if you are the
one that's constantly saying safety safety safety checking safety safety being safe yourself being
the example safety safety safety everybody around you is going to take that seriously
but you're one impact that one person that you are if you never talk about it and you're up balancing
crazy on ladders that are tied onto other ladders hanging from a helicopter then you never talk
about safety everybody else is going to be like well this is the norm this is what we do and it
makes me feel terrified and then I have to do it anyways or quit my job but they're willing to put
my life in in Jeopardy you know like you that one person you have an impact on so many other
people so you have to understand that you are the example and I think you should take seriously when
things need to be said and you know it say those things be the one that says the things
when things don't need to be said don't say the things because you have an impact now that other
people are looking up to you the things that you do people are going to see the things you
don't do people are going to see so think about your impact as a teacher alright that's all I
got please leave some comments below let me know if there's some other things that I missed other
things that you think kind of suck about doing all of a sudden or honestly things that you think
are great about being a journeyman too doesn't have to be Negative Nancy stuff all the time you
can leave some good stuff below to you love you crazy people and I'll talk to you in the next one