Episode 138

Youth attract Youth with Mark Hedstrom

Let’s get real: the skilled trades need a serious boost, and today we’re diving into how Mark Hedstrom is making waves with the Skilled Careers Coalition.

The skilled trades industry is facing a major challenge: not enough young talent to fill the gap left by retiring workers. That’s where Mark the Executive Director of the Skilled Careers Coalition, comes in. With decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, Mark has shifted his focus to bridging the gap between industry demand and the next generation of skilled workers.

In this episode, Mark talks about how he’s tackling the stigma around trade careers and why they should be seen as a top-tier option for young people today. From plumbers and electricians to carpenters and welders, skilled trades are critical to keeping the country running. But without a united effort, the labor pool won’t meet the demand.

Mark shares how youth-focused content, including a successful docu-series with millions of views, is helping connect students with opportunities. He also digs into how the coalition is bringing together businesses, schools, and organizations to create a pipeline of skilled workers.

If you’ve ever wondered how we can fix the skilled trades shortage and create a brighter future for these essential careers, this conversation is a must-listen.

Highlights

  • Mark explains how the Skilled Careers Coalition is addressing the skilled trades gap.
  • Insights into why skilled trades should be a top career option for Gen Z.
  • The power of youth-driven marketing, including a 13-million-view docu-series.
  • Why collective action is critical to solving the skilled trades crisis.
  • How local businesses can get involved and connect with future talent.

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Transcript
Steve Doyle (:

Welcome back to Bluecaller BS. Brad, how you doing my friend?

Brad Herda (:

I am fantastic, Mr. Doyle. We are getting that second summer here in Wisconsin, and I think Mother Nature is going to play some tricks on us here sooner rather than later and turn it into snow, sleet, rain, et cetera.

Steve Doyle (:

I can't wait. I'm so looking forward to some snow. Love me some snow. No, let's bring it.

Brad Herda (:

It's too early for that, but. Well, I got hopefully I got two more months of golf going on and.

Steve Doyle (:

No, you can have all your pumpkin spice latte, know, food food stuff, all you want.

Brad Herda (:

No, no, no, no. Hey, it's not pumpkin spice latte. It's PSL, Steve. You gotta be, you gotta talk to kids. What do your daughters call it? PSL, right?

Steve Doyle (:

Whatever. Listen, I don't even they're not into it. They're not into it. Yeah. So with that being said, Brad, who do we have on the show today?

Brad Herda (:

Okay.

All right, fantastic.

Brad Herda (:

today on our show, we have Mr. Mark Hedstrom. In his role today, he is the executive director of the Skilled Careers Coalition, and he creates and shapes and directs the mission and strategy for that organization to inspire and connect and convert the next generation of skilled talent to create a talent pipeline to help close the gap that we have in our labor pool. He was previously part of...

And worked as the executive director of the Movember Foundation for 11 years raising over 220 million dollars. Congratulations mark For you know men's mental health suicide prevention prostate and testicular cancer has worked at some other large organizations Oakley the Arbor Collective he's done He's been a lot of different places and we are blessed and humbled that he found our little show To come on and talk multi -generational skilled workforce. So mark. Thank you for being here

Steve Doyle (:

That's awesome.

Mark Hedstrom (:

thank you guys for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation.

Brad Herda (:

He says, well, now.

Steve Doyle (:

That's he says it now. So so before we jump in and I'm going to forget because I almost did. Which which generation bark do you fit in with?

Mark Hedstrom (:

Hahaha

Mark Hedstrom (:

I am squarely in Exer. So around about the time I'm, think I'm smack dab in the middle or maybe early Exer. So I was definitely leading from the front.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (:

Awesome. So. I I can't clean leading from the front and Gen X. Nope, I can't do that, but you know. I can also claim we're not in the millennial squarely. Absolutely not. Not even in the friend zone. Nope, we are also in Gen X.

Brad Herda (:

Steve, you cannot claim that. Don't keep...

Brad Herda (:

Whatever. It's okay.

Steve Doyle (:

So, Mark, help us understand how did you go from being in the part of the Movember Foundation to joining the Skilled Careers Coalition?

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah, it's, and I think, you know, Brad mentioned a little bit about my background. So I spent a lot of time in the healthcare sector for a number of years. So was an advocacy and policy work in the state of Massachusetts when I first started out, spend a bunch of time in the Midwest prior to that. So, I went to school in Illinois. So kind of smack dab between where you guys are at. but. know, in or around the time, that I was coming out of, you know, there's an action sports space where I spent a little time, you know, building snow wards and.

random parts of the world, all the way through to sunglasses at Oakley, came across the opportunity to work at Movember and loved what they were doing as a brand in the nonprofit space. And just fast forwarding that to, know, 11 years in learning that there was opportunity to leverage what I had done with Movember, particularly around having conversations with men and young boys about mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and to sicker cancer too.

some other large issues that we face as a nation and particularly with the skilled trades, or as we refer to it, the skilled careers challenge that we see in this country, applying the same principles of that and looking for that next thing for me to kind of sink my teeth in and drive my passion.

Brad Herda (:

So what's, so skilled trades coalition, right? It's to bridge that gap. Where are you finding the greatest success to create opportunity for young men and women to understand what opportunities exist and then connecting those to industry leaders who may or may not be ready for those young individuals? How are you bridging that gap to connect those two things?

Mark Hedstrom (:

I think there's a couple of things that we look at the Skilled Careers Coalition. First and foremost is we are out of sync on demand and supply, right? So we have a high demand for talented workforce that is not being met by the supply. We've under invested in CTE programming in this country for, let's just argue 50 years, it could be 60 years, but it's been highly under invested in for a long, long time. And at the same time, you know, as an exer, I was told that a four year degree was the thing to do.

Brad Herda (:

decades.

Mark Hedstrom (:

and you had this stigma around a blue collar job, as used to be called, or a trade job, or you went to the trade high school. And I think we did a real disservice to the country, let alone all the different workers in that space, around a divesting of all that infrastructure that we know really kind of makes America work. And so you had this massive change in how people perceived what a skilled trade was, or a blue collar job was.

And it led a lot of people down the path of going to four year degrees. And now what you're starting to see is, a pushback on the fact that you actually can be entrepreneurial. You can have a highly successful career. You can come out of school and training without a massive amount of debt and have a fulfilling career and fulfilling life. so part of our work in the skill careers coalition is first and foremost in that demand supply issue that we see is we've got to really amp up the supply. How do we get, you know, millennials.

Gen Z and emerging alphas to be excited about either looking at retraining into a skilled career or actually training and going to trade school, high schools, CTE programs across the country to look at that as a third option for them. Right now, the university system in this market, if you look at some of the numbers, they probably spend about 1 .2 billion plus in marketing to parents, students.

Brad Herda (:

Yep.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm

Mark Hedstrom (:

The military is comparable. spend about 1 .1 to 1 .3 billion on marketing to parents and high school students about those two options for them. We're not doing the same, or at least we're doing it in a disaggregated way. So a lot of our work in youth marketing is really creating content by youth for youth, talking to younger individuals as a peer, right? It's certainly not me, I'm an exer, but getting younger millennials or Gen Z people are coming through.

training to talk to other kids about what's happening, other students about why they're excited about that skilled career that they've undertaken. I think, Brad, just to put a point on your second part of the question is, how do we get them ready for that workforce or those employers? The second piece we look for is, we've got to destigmatize skilled careers, right? How do we do that via youth marketing? And how do we aggregate or at least create better efficiencies in a very siloed ecosystem around recruiting people into that?

space and then placing them in jobs that employers are looking for. It's completely disaggregated. If you look at it, I think you guys know this from, from your own experience, there's just this massive amount of siloing that's happening. Everyone's trying to solve this problem, but they're doing so independently. So our second focus is in that coalition, in that collective space, right? And this is just my learning from my background and what people do in nonprofit is how do we drive collective impact? So what's your core competencies? What are mine? How do we work together?

because if we can, then we move further faster to solving this problem.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah, that's that's very on point with the collective input because we are definitely not seeing that every company, every I would say even association, they're addressing it only for their specific needs and not as a not as a like an industry collective because there's there nobody is spending in the trades anywhere near a billion dollars in marketing. To get people going.

Brad Herda (:

No. Not even the unions. The unions aren't even doing that.

Steve Doyle (:

No.

So.

Brad Herda (:

So how are you, are you seeing any engagement, typically it's a male dominated industry, are you seeing with your youth to youth type marketing, are you seeing greater engagement on the female side to attract women into the trades and bring them in? Because that's, it's a math problem at the end of the day and.

We don't have enough population of Gen Z, Gen Alpha total to replace Boomer X leaving. The numbers, it's still a math problem if we do it by gender, which I don't even know what that means anymore today. There's not enough people in totality. So are you seeing some females activity in your...

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah, back to the demand supply issue or supply demand as most people refer to it, when we look at that space, so just to do that math for a second and just keeping it simple, right? I think part of the problem is that these things are such large issues that we get really convoluted and tied up on ourselves as like, what's the real issue here? What are we trying to do? So when we step back and look at the basic problem, Arguably right now,

from what we've seen, there's about 10 to 11 million students going through CTE programming in this country, right? At the same time, 10 ,000 boomers are retiring, a lot of them in skilled careers, right? So for every five plumbers that are retiring, we only have one plumber coming through the system. So that clearly is just, it's an outsized challenge with supply demand. Just to take that further, so you've got 10 to 11 million students, we see,

And if you look at Gen Z, it is actually a massive population. It's about 65 million individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 today. That's a big cohort of people we should be looking at. And then you take in active duty that are potentially retiring from active duty and going into reserves or out into the workforce. You've got veterans, you've got people who are coming out of prisons.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm.

Mark Hedstrom (:

And when we look at that in totality, there's about 70 million people we should be talking to about skill careers. Right now, if you do the math, 10 to 11, there's only about 16 % of those individuals are converting to CTE programs or going through a skill career training protocol. If we just improve that by 8%, that's another six to 7 million workers. That's not hard to do if we do it together. And I think that's the point is, you what you just said, Brad is,

Everyone's kind of working on this separately. I'd argue we're actually probably spending close to a billion plus dollars individually, Skill Careers Coalition, what you guys are doing, other people in industry trying to solve this problem, but we're not doing it together. So there's no cohesive messaging. There's nothing to come alongside a four -year degree or the military and say, hey, here's this third opportunity you should be thinking about and messaging that the same way and doing it. I think probably more importantly, doing it in places where millennials and Zs are spending their time, which is not on a website.

They don't spend any time on a website. I'm pretty sure you have kids, I have a young son who's 11. They're texting, they're on their phone. They don't even use their phone as a phone, they're texting and that's how you have to be communicating with them. So I think there's a sea change in thinking about how you talk to the younger workforce that's coming up, but recognizing there's a huge opportunity. 70 million individuals in that cohort that we should be talking to and thinking about how do we convert just another 8 % of them.

Brad Herda (:

Right here.

Steve Doyle (:

Right. Now, knowing where the kids are at, from us, I would say from a technology standpoint, what have you seen that's been most successful as a strategy for reaching those kids?

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah, that's, you know, I mean, as I said, I'm an exer and I'm definitely getting a certain age. So I'm not the person to talk about, you know, what the conversation is that they're having, but look, and look, I just want to acknowledge, you know, obviously on the lead in, you guys know, I spent a lot of time in men and boys mental health. And I social media has a positive side to what it can do, particularly when we look at this type of issue of sending positive messaging out there showing

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm.

Mark Hedstrom (:

who are passionate about being a plumber or passionate about being a carpenter to other individuals who might want to explore that. But there's always that downside, right? There's a lot of conversation right now as to what social media is doing to young individuals. And I just want to acknowledge that that is a challenge and something we need to be considerate of. But when you look at where they're spending your time or where they're consuming information, it is online. That is where marketing is happening. If you are a 35 -year -old plumber now or a carpenter and you want to...

Steve Doyle (:

Correct.

Mark Hedstrom (:

start getting business coming in, you should be thinking about how you're leveraging social media to do that. It's not the traditional back of the newspaper anymore. It can be, but that's not the way it's happening.

Brad Herda (:

newspaper My wife actually stopped our newspaper subscription because it would never show up on time in the morning on the Sunday for the Sundays like we're just get the digital and we're done with it

Steve Doyle (:

What?

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah. So I think there's, you know, this very powerful little computer we're all holding in our hands, particularly our younger generations. Like that's where they're spending their time and that's how you communicate to them. But I think you're going to do it in such a way that it's authentic. And that's kind of the last point, you know, just in my work at Movember and talking to men about mental health, when we're talking to younger individuals about a skilled career as an option for them, it's got to be something that looks and feels and talks like them. It can't be me, a Gen Xer talking about

why I'm doing, because it's just not authentic to someone who's younger. I do think there's opportunity to look at me as an ex -her and talk about my 30 years of experience and how I can help individuals who are younger than me learn from that experience or avoid the mistakes or hurdles that I encountered. So there's a lot of opportunity in there. just we've got to be focused on authentic, peer -based, they look like me, they talk like me, and in places they're spending their time.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm

Brad Herda (:

So what would be your largest win so far with the coalition? From your viewpoint, what's the biggest win to date?

Mark Hedstrom (:

I think it's a lot of our work in skills jam, which is our social media platform. it's really where we're generating a lot of content. one of our key partners in that space is skills USA. an amazing organization that student member led, have over 400 ,000 students in CTU program in the U S and they're just amazing, amazing individuals. and the organization's incredible in terms of what they're trying to do. And it's not just the hard skills with the soft skills. What we think has been our,

most important piece of work to date is just elevating that consciousness around this challenge. So in our first season, we ran a docu -series just to test whether or not we were going to get any kind of feedback, subscribers, people driving this issue. And we had over 13 million views and about 10 ,000 subscribers to our YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels. So very quickly in...

Brad Herda (:

Okay.

Mark Hedstrom (:

less than a year, we launched it in October of last year, our docu -series brought in to the conversation within the Skills Jam platform, 10 ,000 people wanted to talk about this issue. And we continue to build on that. So we're about to release what we're referring to as season two, but season two is going to be always on. And, we have some, I won't give it away because it's not out yet, but we have some surprising people who are involved in season two.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah.

Mark Hedstrom (:

In the influence space, somebody you guys will recognize and quite frankly, parents will recognize. And we want to make sure that we're also talking to the parents in this conversation, right? If a kid is watching or a student is watching something on YouTube, having that conversation with the parents, say, hey, did you know that this is an opportunity for me? And at least having content that the parents can consume too and go, okay, hey, maybe we should talk about this a bit further and consume it. So I think that 13 million views and subscribers in a very short window,

is a good indicator that we're onto something here and we just need to continue to put our foot on the gas and keep going with the content we're creating.

Steve Doyle (:

Right. go ahead. No, I'm I'm just it just blows my mind with the. Taking the stance with the with a docu series that it's created that many views and that short amount of time, but it further lends know where your audience is and how they're consuming the content. And I think that's a huge miss today that a lot of.

I would say trade companies are missing out on because they don't want to get in front of the camera. They don't want to do something like that and and and be vulnerable if you will and showing people what it's about. So kudos to you guys.

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah, no, I think it's an important point. know, most of us in hiring positions in organizations, big or small, did not grow up with social media, right? Probably most of us can remember what a rotary phone felt like in terms of dialing or the very long cord on the digital phone, like that you had to take around the corner. yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know,

Steve Doyle (:

Alright.

Steve Doyle (:

yeah.

Brad Herda (:

have the conversation with your girlfriend or buddy. Hey yeah, we'll see you the bar later, don't tell mom.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah.

Mark Hedstrom (:

But so very quickly, the technology has kind of just moved people off of those in -person conversations to those virtual online conversations. And I think just acknowledging that what we think people are doing and growing up in environment where those things didn't exist is how younger people are doing. And we all have, know, it sounds like we all have kids or nieces and nephews. We know where they're spending their time.

Steve Doyle (:

Right. Now I want to just kind of turn the conversation just a little to kind of pick up on some stuff from your past experience with the Movember Foundation, because it's also part of the stigma that we have, like putting things on social media. People are doing that and they're kind of showing you in an inauthentic way, quote unquote, to get views. And it's leading to a lot of, I would say perceived, but it's not.

family is experiencing this right now with social media and the impact on youth minds. Right? how, how I'm looking at like how that's being bridged with what you guys are doing, like with social media and how you're also helping to amplify that stigma that's actually out there within the trade space of mental.

Mark Hedstrom (:

Yeah, it's good question. think we all grew up before social media and November was one of the first organizations that really embraced Facebook back in the day in 2004 when November started. They started in 2003 and Facebook came on the scene in 2004 and they were very early adopters of Facebook as a way to create social content, social connection. I think the challenge is that how those

Steve Doyle (:

Correct, we did.

Steve Doyle (:

Okay.

Mark Hedstrom (:

platforms were created was really around first that social connection, knowing someone was down the hallway or someone on the campus or wherever the case may be, it blossomed into marketing companies. So most of what you see is distillated, look at my perfect life and look at the wealth I've created. And it's a very cultivated experience for a lot of people. So you move from this very social connection intent behind social media.

Steve Doyle (:

Correct.

Mark Hedstrom (:

to now just, we want to market things at you, right? And then you get into the dark spaces of social media, which I think is a real challenge. And look, we saw a lot at November, particularly as social media is starting to grow and you move from, you know, just Facebook to Snapchat to, you know, TikTok to Instagram to everything else that's kind of come on the scene. At some point there was this thing called MySpace, right? Where you just, you, yeah, no, I mean, it's, I think it's still out there somewhere on the internet.

Steve Doyle (:

I was wondering if we were going to get there.

Mark Hedstrom (:

But all kidding aside, you saw that progression to what we're now waking up to, which is, our kids aren't in a good space because of what they're seeing online or how they're being interacted with online, right? You know how the algorithms work. They're feeding stuff to young girls that absolutely should not be fed to young girls about body image. So look, I think just to acknowledge that's part of the challenge.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm. Right.

Steve Doyle (:

Correct.

Mark Hedstrom (:

with social media and leveraging social media for good. Part of Movember's approach, part of Skill Careers Coalition with Skills Gym approach is show what's the positivity. We were very conscious of, at Movember, of showing the positive side, the healthy side of masculinity, but also acknowledging that there were challenges. So we often refer to the mustache as there were two sides to that mustache. One was the fun.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm

Mark Hedstrom (:

engaging side of the mustache, growing an awkward mustache with your buddies or supporting your husband and looking the other way at Thanksgiving all the way through to the serious side of the mustache, which was really using the mustache as a Trojan horse to engage men in a serious conversation about their health, whether it was their physical health or whether it was their mental health. And so you can still do that work. I still think we can do that work in Skilled Careers Coalition where we're leveraging fun, engaging content.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm

Mark Hedstrom (:

by younger individuals who are passionate about what they're doing, but get other people to think seriously about that as a career for them. So it's that push -pull of what social media was, what it now is, and how can we still leverage it for good, right? We spend more time worrying about our kids' safety offline than we do online, and we gotta figure out how to get that balance right.

Steve Doyle (:

Yes. Yes.

Brad Herda (:

Agreed. Completely agree. Mark, so how do organizations connect with you if they want to support from a funding perspective or get involved or be a sponsor or have opportunities for some of those kids that are out there? How do people find you, get a hold of you, become part of the movement?

Mark Hedstrom (:

Well, I mean, for those that are of my age, you know, maybe older generations, if you just go to skillcareers .org, that's our website. That's built for, in a lot of ways, this kind of conversation, longer form content, what we're talking to, because that audience really is, we're gonna be talking to parents, we're gonna be talking to teachers, advisors, counselors, and those in industry around what we can do together. If you wanna understand what we're doing,

with our youth marketing and the by youth for youth movement we're creating with skills jam. Just go over to skillsjam .com or you can search on skills jam on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok. So skillcareers .org or skillsjam .com is a start point for some of the older folks. And if you're on TikTok, just search for skills jam.

Brad Herda (:

Okay, because one of the things, common theme that we get through our many of our guests is, you know, they're going into the high schools directly. They're going in and marketing and being involved. They might be mentoring or robotics. They might be sponsoring something. They might be refereeing local sports at the high school level, different things to get to know and understand the kids to bring them into their own organizations.

Skills Jam may be a way for them to also see other ways to attract and retain talent and get their organizations involved. I would assume is that correct or not correct?

Mark Hedstrom (:

I think it's two things. Look, we're looking at it from a sector national level all the way down to a regional local level. If I'm thinking about someone who's got a plumbing business in Illinois, it's still a lot of boots on the ground to understand who's in your backyard, who's going through CTE programming that might be employable in your business. But it's also like we were talking about before, those platforms are

Brad Herda (:

Mm

Mark Hedstrom (:

great advertising marketing platforms if you do it right and you do it well. And you can, and they're built in such a way that you can be hyper local in terms of how you're trying to engage people like, hey, I run a plumbing business, I'm looking for talent, I can put it in my backyard, right? And really localize my media to that point, exactly what you guys are doing with podcasts and who you're looking for out there and sort of directing traffic back to you from those opportunities. even at a local level,

I think there's, you it's always going to be boots on the ground till you build that muscle and that trust with the local CTE program or those that are advising these kids or getting to meet the kids and bringing them over to what you're trying to do. That's always going to be there, but I think you can get some efficiency or capacity out of how do I, how do I market myself online? Right? How do I talk to the individuals? Right? We're always going to be for the most part, skills jam or skill careers coalition is always going to be a 10 ,000 feet.

Steve Doyle (:

Mm -hmm.

Mark Hedstrom (:

We want to talk about the larger issue and what's happening in space. But if you're someone who's really on the ground in Illinois that has a plumbing business, you want to understand like, what does that 5 ,000, 1 ,000 foot view look like online? And then making sure you're continuing to establish that in -person trust with those local programs as well as the students that are coming through.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah.

Brad Herda (:

Okay, one last question. The magic wand question. If you had the magic wand mark, what does success over the next five years look like for the coalition, the skills, career coalition?

Steve Doyle (:

Mmm.

Mark Hedstrom (:

I think two things back to the supply and demand issue. then we're making market progress and trackable evidence -based progress on filling that gap that we're seeing more than 10 to 11 million individuals select CTE as their opportunity for education and training. And then moving into that workforce, I would want to see another couple of million folks in that pipeline in the next five years. that second part is that set of recruitment and placement.

infrastructure, ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, better aligned. And look, we're not asking for Nirvana. We're not, you know, assuming that you're going to get perfect alignment, but just getting some level of alignment and bringing more people into the coalition, the conversation. And just to be really clear that the skill careers coalition is a nonprofit based organization. So we're not looking at it from a revenue shareholder perspective. We're just saying, Hey, how, how can we help others? How can we bring people together? So I think making some market progress and

The indicator for that, the KPI for that is that we've got a lot of people coming into coalition wanting to have this conversation together. think to your point and what we've been talking about, everyone's kind of doing it on their own. And I think a good marker for us as a coalition is we've got, you know, 10 to 20, and then we're building to 30 to 40. And it's an amalgamation of those that have national level challenges with respect to a sector all the way down through to, you know, those on the ground that are really trying to figure out how do I, how do I resolve or

build this issue in my backyard, right? So it's that national level, but also that regional local level. So to me, a couple more people in the pipeline that are coming through schooling and maybe filling those jobs quicker to deal with that demand. And then with the coalition that we're, you know, north of 40 to 50 organizations, individuals, big, small, coalescing around this idea. And I think our approach here is look, we're here to be, and I used to say this in November all the time.

We are the roadies, the youth, the individuals, and the organizations that are trying to get to them are the rock stars. So how do we help set everything up? And then how do we make sure that they're playing the best show they possibly can?

Steve Doyle (:

you

Steve Doyle (:

Mm

Brad Herda (:

I that. I love the I love that analogy because it is true, right? Everybody's looking for an answer and there's no place to go locally. I've got part of a skill trades foundation here locally. We can go out, we can talk, but we can't get anybody to give us their time. We can get the money. We just can't get the time to do that. And four people can't do all the things that we need to do or want to do. So I'm grateful that you are putting this together and trying to funnel into one location because the industry needs a location to go and do something.

Steve Doyle (:

That's awesome.

Brad Herda (:

So Mark, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you sharing your story your passion your enthusiasm for what you are doing and We're very grateful to have you today

Mark Hedstrom (:

Thank you, Brad and Steve. Appreciate the time and look forward to the coming weekend.

Steve Doyle (:

Yeah. All right. Thanks, Mark.

Brad Herda (:

Thank you very much.

Mark Hedstrom (:

Thank you.

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