Why a Four-Year College Degree Is a Waste of Money

Sean Weisbrot: Donald Booth is the CEO and founder of the American Institute of Non-Destructive Testing. In this conversation we talked about what it was like starting the company, some of the problems he faced when he first started, problems he faced getting his first customer problems he faced after he started getting customers problems he faced after he started scaling the business. And what the future of training is like and some of our experiences with using our hands and our families and, and how the generations have changed and what the future looks like. So I know you're going to enjoy this episode if you like to hear about founders' journeys and a little bit of the psychology of entrepreneurship. So let's get to it. When did you decide that? Training people on new skills was something that you needed to do?

Donald Booth: Well, it was in the middle of my career. I was working in the Arctic Circle up in Prude Bay, Alaska, a little town called Dead Horse, uh, doing non-destructive testing. And I'm sure a lot of people have heard of Ice Road Truckers. That's where they drive to and they deliver goods and so forth up to Dead Horse. Well, I was working up in the field and I, you know, in our, in our industry, non-destructive testing as a certified inspector, uh, technician, you get trainees. And so they're entering the career. They've had their education. And now they need to work with an experienced technician to get their on the job training hours, their apprenticeship hours. And at that point, I really realized I enjoyed it. I enjoyed training people in what I did, and then as my career moved on, I realized that some of the people had that had received training and I was now mentoring. Didn't seem to know a lot and they'd just gone to training somewhere else and, and so I thought, well, you know, why is that? And this seems to be a disconnect or an issue that I wanted to solve. So at that point I said, you know, I think I can do this better. I think if people are coming to me and just fresh out of being trained somewhere and really don't seem to know what I would expect them to. And then the light bulb went on, and that's when I decided to start the American Institute in non-destructive testing.

Sean Weisbrot: So how long did it take you to go from idea to execution on being able to actually start training people?

Donald Booth: Well, I started with, I would say probably six months of I. Uh, deep research. Um, I was still doing my career in Alaska. Uh, the one thing, the benefit of having that career, even though you're so remote, is you work 2112 hour days in a row. And then I flew home to Minnesota for 21 days off. So in my off time, even though I was an inspector up there in Alaska, I would have three weeks off every three weeks. And so I started just by, you know, all right, get on Google. Who's, who's the competition? What are they offering, how are they delivering it? What are the prices? And all the other, you know, hundreds of questions you need to ask yourself. Before you start a business, right? Um, how can I, uh, deliver it better? Um, you know, why am I doing this? You know, what, what, what's the purpose and what are my intentions? What are my goals? What is my vision? What would I like to see in one year, two years, five years, 10 years? Right? I think everyone needs to ask those questions. And so I built a comprehensive spreadsheet of all the competitors out there, and there's not a lot that is pretty niche. Business, maybe a dozen other ones that I would consider competitors around the country. Um, and then just broke down what they're offering, what their content was, how they were delivering it, and what price point. And so I, I'd say about six months. Before I decided. All right, it's time to pull the trigger and give my notice up here and, and dive in.

Sean Weisbrot: I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you what was it like living in Alaska?

Donald Booth: I, uh, Alaska's, I always say Alaska's a beautiful, beautiful place to visit. I don't know if I'd wanna live there. Right. I mean, it's not for me. The mountains of the vistas, everything are amazing. Um, but the, you know, and that's in the Kenai Peninsula and different places in Alaska, but we were in crude bay, which is in the Arctic Circle up on the Beaufort Sea. And it gets so cold that the ocean freezes over and we drive out to an island, uh, called North Star Island even. Um, and sometimes it was 40 below. Um, ambient temperature. Uh, I remember calling, uh, BP British Petroleum Radio one day saying, BP radio, what's the, what's the windchill? And then they say, this is BP radio. It's 99 below. Windchill, and that's as far as our meter can read. So, um, at times, you know, it was, uh, it was challenging, but I always said the paychecks were warming because they, they paid you quite a bit to go up there and do these things, um, up there in the Arctic. So basically you're, you're living on camp for 24. 21 days, um, basically 24 hours a day. You're there, you're working at night. It's, or in the winter it's 24 hours of dark. In the summer it's 24 hours of light. So it's, it's quite an experience. Not many people get to see that part of Alaska.

Sean Weisbrot: How did you feel leaving Alaska, knowing that it was gonna be the last time you were there?

Donald Booth: You know, I'd been an entrepreneur in, uh, my previous life, quote unquote, and I, and I had some failures and successes and, and I'd sold a company, a marketing company, and then took a couple years off and then decided, all right, what am I gonna do with myself? And, um, this was at 38 and I, and I rebuilt. Um, uh, you know, my life basically just said, okay, I'm taking some time off. Uh, what am I gonna do with myself? I gotta get back to work. And, uh, anyway, kind of in a long way to explain it is when I finally did leave there eight years later, I remember waking up that morning just feeling. You know, kind of bliss that I was back in, back in the game, back to being an entrepreneur and, you know, with all this future ahead of me and another challenge. So I, I, it was, I guess, the career change more than just leaving Alaska, but I. I, I flew home every three weeks to Minnesota, so I, I didn't live up there full time. But, uh, when you're on the North slope of Alaska, you're pretty isolated

Sean Weisbrot: I'm sure. What was the hardest thing about starting the training company?

Donald Booth: You know, I think for me, um, I had never, I mean, I trained people in the field and I was very experienced in what I did, and I knew what I needed to. Teach them. But then, you know, choosing what curriculum I was gonna use and ch choosing which learning management system I was gonna deliver our online portion of it. Um, I knew what I needed for the hands-on, right? I need ultrasound scopes, magnetic particle equipment, radiography equipment, and I've used it all. I'm an expert in it. I can show them, but, all right, how do I deliver? This online and, you know, try to figure out the best way to deliver it, I think was the hardest part. And then I, I remember we, I hired one employee and we walked in on May 1st, 2013 to an empty office. And he looked at me and said, well, what do we do now? And I said, well, we start, we, we, we start filling this office with desks and, and computers and everything. And then we started to go through the curriculum and, uh. Then just, you know, really comb through it and really learn how to deliver education. Some people are tactile, they like books. Some people are auditory. Uh, some people say, man, I gotta put my hands on that stuff. You know, I. Um, and that's why I created the hybrid, um, model. Um, and, and people like repetition and lectures. So, you know, our, our curriculum includes books and quizzes and flashcard reviews and video demonstrations. But I think the hardest part was, you know, learning that. As an entrepreneur, you know this, we talked about this when, when we met, that you just kind of jump in and whatever you think it's gonna be is not really what it's gonna be, and you're just gonna have to learn. I always kind of equate it to take a, a cookie sheet or a a, a cookie sheet where you put some water on it and start walking across the room and you're just constantly making adjustments and that that's what business is. So. I think the toughest part was just educating myself how to deliver this and making a decision. And moving forward.

Sean Weisbrot: How did you get your first student? Did you like, were you creating the content as you were looking for students, or did you create the content and then test it on someone you knew? Did you do free trials? Like what did you do first? Kind of a funny, funny

Donald Booth: story because I, um, for several months we just concentrated on building the curriculum, right? I mean, we literally went through. Every question in the quizzes from the curriculum that we were using. And then looked up what pa, what page number, and what paragraph the answer was on, because I wanted to be able to navigate it. And so after these months, we were getting close to finishing our online system. We had chosen a learning management system and LMS, and we were programming and everything. And I said, okay, turn on the Google ads. I wanna see. How long is this gonna take? You know, I didn't know really. I mean, I had some idea on Google ads, but I didn't understand, you know, would it take a little time to ramp up? So we, we turned it on and the phone rang like an hour later and someone was saying, yeah, I'm interested in your training program. And I, and I was so surprised. I remember I. Just kind of going, uh, uh, uh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, you know, um, and I remember calling my web designer and say, shut it off. Shut it off. We're not ready yet. But it was exciting to know that once we turned it on, all of a sudden the phone started ringing. Right. So we used Google ads for. For, uh, uh, several years until we built out enough content and, and mastered our SEO to, you know, pretty much own the first page of Google like we do now. So, for organically, which is nice,

Sean Weisbrot: did that person end up paying and becoming your first student?

Donald Booth: I, I really don't recall. Um, back then, that would be in 2013. Um, but I think he may have, I, I, it was, it was funny, you know, because we, we offered, uh, you know, as a private career school and, and someone was just, happened to be. Searching for non-destructive testing schools, NDT schools. And we popped up and they gave us a call. And, uh, so, you know, Google Ads really was what drove us. You know, and you know, this, the, you know, there's all kinds of marketing. Marketing's tricky. You can spend a lot of money and get no results. Google can be expensive at times, but it's very targeted and, and you at least know that they're searching for your product when they type in non-destructive testing schools. And, and that's a, a more of a hot lead or a better, better lead when they're actually looking exactly for your

Sean Weisbrot: product. Okay. You said the term non-destructive testing. I was gonna say it in the intro, but you might as well tell us what it is. What is it? Yeah,

Donald Booth: I guess, yeah. You know, it's funny because people say. You know, uh, electrician plumber, HVAC roofer. Everybody knows everyone's nodding when you say that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then you say non-destructive testing in their head tilts and they look at you a little funny. So, you know, non-destructive testing is utilizing radiography, so taking x-rays. Um, is, is the layman's term. You know, we do radiographic inspections, industrial ultrasound, magnetic particle, liquid penetrant, visual, any current acoustic emission, all these different modalities to test structures during the manufacturing phase to find flaws, discontinuities, something that might, uh, be a problem and create the product to fail. So, um, non-destructive testing really touches. On so much that we really don't know, like all the lug nuts on your cars while they're being manufactured are batch tested. To make sure the quality is good, right? Um, structures, spacecraft, aircraft, bridges, nuclear facilities, pipelines. We do training for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, SpaceX, blue Origin, um, you know, uh, manufacturing companies across the country, across the world. And, uh, so it's really a quality control. It's during the manufacturing and then after it's in use, right? Every time people have probably been on a bridge before walking and they feel cars and it rumbles, right? Well, it's that, uh, cyclical vibratory fatigue that's gonna slowly create a stress fracture or a crack. And that's what we look for. You know, nobody hears about the bridge that didn't fall down or the plane that stayed in the sky. That's our job. We keep everything safe and make a safer world.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. So an extremely important skill that very few people are aware of is necessary. Yeah. Yeah.

Donald Booth: A great career with, uh, a lot of potential and great pay, and we have 93% placement of our graduates. And, and I'm really proud of what I do and I also enjoy the fact that I'm an entrepreneur. Right. Um, and, and so those are kinda, I enjoy this company. Um, and then I also enjoy the, the. The puzzle of putting it together. Right. That's what like, well, I love the title of your, of your podcast. We, we live to build because that's what we do and we love it and we know it's gonna be hard. And we, you know, my golden rule, people ask me, how do I start a business? I just say, all right, let me start out. It's gonna be harder, take longer, and be more expensive than you think. So if you're not ready to accept those things, don't start.

Sean Weisbrot: Exactly. I. Almost called the podcast. We love to build, but I didn't, I I made it. We live to build. I, it is actually a, a silly story. I won't tell it here, but it took me like five minutes to come up with the name and it's just stuck for the last few years. Uh, so after you got your first student, what was the next pain point or struggle that you faced

Donald Booth: Financing Because we're. We are a private career school, so we're not nationally accredited, which is a whole long title IV Department of Education, you know, red tape that you can fill a swimming pool. Um, so, um, it was like, okay, I. Um, everybody's calling and they wanna sign up, but they're asking for financial aid and everybody wants to come to my school because it's a really cool school. It's only eight months and, and it's a great career, but nobody has any money. Everyone expects to just, which we've been programmed, right? Two year colleges, four year colleges, go get grants, go get scholarships, go get federal financial aid. Don't worry, you're gonna get approved because it's the government. And so I, you know, all of a sudden I'm getting all these calls and everyone's like, oh, what I gotta pay, you know, out of pocket. Uh, well, yeah, we're a for-profit business. So immediately then I had to create my own financing program with, uh, certain money down and then a payment structure. And I really never done that. So all of a sudden you're rush and solve this problem, right? Um, let's get rid of the money wall. And let's make it affordable for, you know, a $2,000 down and then payments. And back then I think we were charging them, um, $8,000 for the full course. Um, now we're 12,045, but I have a private student housing included. And, and a lot of things had grown and everything obviously, and times and inflation and money, but, um, but you know, now we have, uh. You know, we solved that problem with an in-house financing first, and then as we started to reach out to try to solve that problem more, we found out that there are private companies that give student loans and, and so forth, like we use with, we go with ize and, and they've been a great partner of ours and they'll give. Private student loans to our students and, and no payments till 90 days after you graduate, and a bunch of benefits like that. But that was the first pain point was, okay, we got all these people that want to come to me, but they want financing. How do I solve that?

Sean Weisbrot: There's been a lot of backlash in the last few years about private student loans. Where they're obviously not interest only loans. And so if the student doesn't pay them back, the amount can balloon very quickly causing them to take decades to pay the loans off. Your partners like ize, do they, how, how do they protect the student from falling into this kind of an issue? Is it something where they repay based on their salary? Does it like get, uh, uh, their salary get cut? Or

Donald Booth: something. Yeah, there's ISAs. Those are, uh, income share agreement companies where you'll never pay more than 1.5 the tuition. Okay, so it is 12,000. The max you'll ever pay back is 18. Okay. Which is, you know, hey, 18,000, if you can get a good career and, and make 60,000 to 70,000 starting and move up to 80, 90 to a hundred, hey, what a deal. You know, that's a, that's a great deal. And then the other ones, um, they will protect you through a payment system and they do have caps. On it so they're not predatory. Right. A lot of these other ones were predatory and the attorney generals of different states came down on them. Uh, and you know, so we, our, our, the ones we work with have a cap. And they'll protect the student. And, uh, that was really important to us when we were choosing them as partners.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm glad you thought about that because it's, I I know so many people that have been screwed by loans. Yeah. Well, and

Donald Booth: especially these college loans, you know, they, they, you know, people get in deep. And I, and you know, one thing that I really is, you know, I started this in 2013 and the pendulum from. Two year, four year degrees hadn't started to swing back to the trades yet, but the Wall Street Journal, just a few weeks ago I read an article that said, you know, uh, gen Z fast becoming the tool belt generation. They're, they're looking at these four year degrees saying, man, it's a hundred grand and all. What am I gonna do? You know, marketing, there's a lot of marketing people out there, you know, and so when you get into a skilled trade, the demand is so much higher, the pay is excellent, and it's a skill that they just can't take, take from you. So it, the pendulum's swinging back our way back to the trades. And it's really, it's really cool to see that, yeah, we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need these people. Um. And, uh, the trades are becoming more, uh, more cool again. I think

Sean Weisbrot: I remember when I was a kid, my dad's best friend was a plumber and. I don't know why I, I had this, like, I never expressed this to, to anybody really, but I always thought like, oh, he is a plumber. Like on one hand he is like, oh, you know, he is always dirty. He is always sweaty, like when he is around, you know, he's just come off a job or something. So he always was like, it looked like, uh, un unkept, but, and like, you know, he cussed a lot and he swore a lot and he drank a lot. You know, he is like that kind of a, that kind of a guy. But at the end of it, he, he got things done. He was really good. Like he, he ended up building a pool system and a jacuzzi system for my dad. Custom. And like normally when you buy a pool in a, in a jacuzzi in the States and you have it, you know, built by the developer or whatever, they put this like little crappy half horsepower kind of thing in it. He's, he made a multi setting system so that you could have half, three and six horsepowers on the jacuzzi jets. So this thing was like, he would've probably charged someone like 40 or $50,000 to build. And it was amazing for, you know, 20 years my parents had it. It was just an incredible system. So, you know, on one hand you're like, it's easy to look down on people like him because like, oh, you're using your hands, you're not making equipment, but like. Some of, some of these plumbers can make a hundred grand easy and like they're just, they're not talking about, you know, I make this kind of money. You know, you just see the, you just see them, right. You, you see their personality, you see the way they talk and you make an impression about them. But like, they're making bank and they're doing some good work and they're providing people with what they need. And so, yeah, I think, uh, trades are completely underestimated and uh, I feel kind of ashamed that when I was younger I looked down on him a little bit, even though he was a good person. Yeah. Just a little rough around the edges. Yeah. I never

Donald Booth: thought of that stuff either. You see these guys operating a crane. They're making bank, especially when you see that big crane over a city where you know, that's a lot of liability. Hey, just

Sean Weisbrot: gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would. Love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your. Subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much and we'll take you back to the show.

Donald Booth: Now, the heavy equipment operators, you see, oh, he is just there. There's that guy digging that hole again. Yeah. He's running a front loader and making a hundred grand a year, and he is in an air conditioned cab and, and there's a lot of knowledge to moving dirt and moving earth and making it level and, and operating this equipment. And it's funny, when I was younger, I never thought of it either, you know, and, uh, you're right, it's people. There's a lot of people out there I think like. It's only 55 or 65% finish college if they go to a four year. And then within 10 years, only about 40% of 'em are doing what they went to school for. Uh, and, and so it's nice to get in our, our program's only eight months and you graduate, you know, uh, American Institute of Non-Destructive Testing. You know, we do training all over the world. And, uh, not only for corporations, but we'll put you in a good job. And, and there's upside to it. And trades are, trades are great. So I, you know, Mike Rowe has done a great job, right? He's been pounding the drum for a long time, you know.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I remember when I was married, I used to get into fights with my wife because she was like, oh, something's broken. Go fix it. And I'm like. I don't know how to fix it. She's like, why don't you know how to fix it? Like, be a man. And I was like, my parents could afford to hire someone to fix things when they broke. That's my experience. I was never exposed to fixing things. I never needed to. And she came from a poor family and she was forced to learn how to fix things with her hands. So she got mad at me because she was forced to perform some masculine, uh, some roles that she, uh, you know. Assumed was masculine. Um, I never expected her to fix things, but hey, if you can do it, great. You know, you save us some money. Absolutely. But, but yeah, she would get mad at me 'cause I didn't know how to do it. And I looked at my dad, I'm like, dude, you used to build cabinets by hand. You know, he, he used to make wood, um, furniture. Like that was one of his jobs as a teenager. I'm like, you know how to use your hands. Why didn't you ever teach me? Right. You know, I feel like, not useless, but like, I, I feel like. Uh, not my grandparents or great-grandparents because they immigrated from Eastern Europe, but you know, if, if your great-grandfather was born in the US he probably built his own house by scratch, you know, a hundred plus years ago. And, and we don't even know how to use our hands to build anything. I can't. I can't build anything.

Donald Booth: My, my dad's father built his own house from scratch and dug. His basement with a shovel. God.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. See that's what I'm talking about.

Donald Booth: I mean, I know, I mean, this is crazy. I mean, um, yeah, it's a different world and we've evolved very quickly and, and I'm, I, I always say, you know, hey, I pay someone to fix that and I'm, I'm good at what I do and they're good at what they do, so I'm gonna let them do their job. Come on in. I got a guide Re uh. You know, I tore out, uh, a bunch of stuff, uh, uh, old shelving on one side of my house. I'm having it all repainted and everything right now while I'm in Costa Rica. But they, uh, you know, he's over there doing it. I, I, I did the part where I took a hammer and pulled all the old shelving out and made all the mess and the holes in the walls. That's easy, a demo and then, and so that's like, okay, I did my part, I feel pretty good. And then, but let the craftsmen come in and, and mud those, and sand them and paint it and make it look beautiful again. And, and that's what he's doing on that side. So that was my manly moment. I got to do a little demo on that side and I felt pretty good about it. But I, I, you know, I let people. Um, fix my stuff for me. You know, I'm not a car guy. I mean, you know, I can do the basic stuff, but, you know, growing up I really wasn't a big hands-on guy either. Mm.

Sean Weisbrot: So you solved the financing. What was your next struggle?

Donald Booth: It, it really, it came down to, uh, marketing. I think, um, for this, I mean, Google AdWords worked, but then how do you. There's only so many people, and I still struggle with this a little bit today. I mean, our, our name is out there in a lot of referrals, but biggest struggle was there's only so many people typing in non-destructive testing schools because nobody knows what it is. If your buddy isn't working in, or your dad wasn't working in it, or. Right. You know, word of mouth. I mean, like I said, walk up to the next 10 people, you know, or see and say non-destructive testing and, and chances are there may be zero that know what it's, so that was the, the struggle is how do you cast a net? Big enough to capture people and then, and then they, wow, that sounds interesting. But then you gotta educate them on it. Right. You know, just like the easiest products out there is, you know, sell a screwdriver. Everybody knows what a screwdriver's for, right? Um, sell a jacuzzi. Everybody knows what a jacuzzi is for

Sean Weisbrot: Sure.

Donald Booth: A hot tub. So, you know, uh, non-destructive testing is once you even captured their interest is. Is this a career for them? And you know, so finding my target market and spending the marketing dollars to capture them, you know, uh, is hard. And then like on Google Ads, if I wanted to try to pull people in that were searching for electrician or welding or HVAC or something, very difficult. 'cause Google will give you a bad quality score. 'cause they'll look at your webpage and say you don't do any of that. Mm-hmm. We don't wanna give you, you know, that ad space. And so then you get a, a low quality score. And so it's a, it was a real battle and it still is today, really, um, is, you know, marketing is expensive. People say, well, you just have to tell more people. Well, there is a cost related to that. You wanna reach millions and be on a Super Bowl lad, well then get out your wallet. You know, you, you wanna reach a hundred people. That's pretty cheap. You can do that yourself walking around town, but you know, you wanna reach a million people. There's a price to that and then, and then who really is looking for a career to go back to school? And then is it a trade? And then what kind of trade and so forth. So yeah, marketing was the next thing is how do we let the world know about a trade that is, has been around forever and super important. Um, but it's, people aren't educated about it. I'm working with, you know, um, some of our orgs and some of the societies right now about. How do we spread the word and high school counselors and, you know, reaching out to those type of people and, and just, and it's just a continual evolution, right?

Sean Weisbrot: I think if you were to make an ad for TikTok, then you could reach a lot of people in the US that are young, that are possibly lost and looking for something to get into. And the cost of promoting on TikTok is very low compared to Google. And you could do something as simple as like, you know, showing them what their ideal, uh, like what they, what their ideal is. I, I, I don't know exactly how to explain it. I'm not like an ad person, but I feel like TikTok would be good. I guess the point could be, you know, show them, hey, you know, are you not sure that college is for you and do you still wanna. Escape the matrix and make more than, you know, six figures a year, then come be a trades person. Come learn from us. How to, you know, use your hands, do something that gets you away from the internet so you can, you know, develop as a real person and go out into the world and make six figures. And I. Then, you know, you don't have to worry about college, you don't have to worry about debt, and you can start your life before all of your friends and you can make your family proud. Or, you know, I, again, I, I don't know all the triggers for someone Gen Z, but

Donald Booth: yeah, no, and, and I've started experimenting with that. I've created a few ads like, what is NDTI? Yeah. You know, and then I explain what it is. It's not, but that's not exciting enough to capture that, not, you know, so what, what I'm trying to do, the, trying to pick that lock, right. You know, trying to pick that lock or put that piece of puzzle together of. Because everything has to be fantastic on TikTok. You got people jumping off buildings or you can, you know, you know what I mean? They got crazy stuff that really, boom, wow, I gotta watch this. People watch it. So how do I, how do you reach out in TikTok and slap 'em? To make 'em stop from that quick flip, quick flip, quick flip, you know? And so, um, but you are absolutely right. And, um, I'm working on that right now to try to pick that lock. How do you, you only have a second to capture their interest. And, uh, so that's, that's one of the, uh, one of the. Not a problem. I mean, it's just the reality of it. And so I'm trying to figure out how to do that. How do I, because it's, it's hard to make it sexy a, a career or, or crazy or anything. And, and so, um, but yeah, I'm working on that and that's, so you're absolutely right. And, and that's a project we've got cooking right now.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. I'll do more thinking about it. And we'll talk about this, uh, after I may know someone that can help who's Gen Z? Um. So, 'cause I'm, I'm involved in some affiliate marketing spaces because of the, one of the a, one of the services I provide is access to stronger ad accounts that they can use to scale their spending with on Facebook and TikTok and all that. So some of these people might have ideas for how to, I. Do affiliate marketing for you in a way that would get you a bunch more people and then, you know, potentially you would just pay them an affiliate commission fee if someone signs

Donald Booth: up. Something like that. Yeah. I would absolutely like you to do that for me, please. Um, I've thought of affiliate marketing and I have some, some decent room. To pay someone well, um, on a conversion. So yeah, if you can, uh, shoot me an email, hook me up with somebody, uh, gimme a little insight on that, I'd appreciate

Sean Weisbrot: it. Great. So you're, you've figured out the financing, you've figured out kind of the marketing, you've got consistent income. You're growing now. You said things have looked up since COVID. What has been your focus outside of that in the last few years?

Donald Booth: Uh, building corporate business? So, you know, when, when we first started, we were, when I quote unquote just a private school, so there was a couple big dogs in the industry that provided company training, employee training, and I, when I started my company, I didn't wanna lock horns with them. Right out of the gate. So I became everyone's friend. I was providing well-trained trainees that your company can hire. And so the big dogs went, yeah, we love this guy. He's not competing with us. He's just a college. He's not doing corporate training. And then once our reputation was strong, I turned on the corporate training. It started to go for that segment and of the, that vertical right. And, uh, so we've been, you know, uh. You know, COVID, COVID hit us a little bit. I mean, we, we, we fared much better than most people. 'cause we had, by then, it had been many years. I mean, we were seven years old and we'd already developed our corporate training. But now we're, you know, I have a really good B2B director of business development and, you know, creating deeper relationships with the Air Force and. And, you know, uh, the Royal Air Force of England orders from us and just trying to capture the, uh, the corporate business more, which is really a big part of our business now. But there's so much more out there that we've really focus on de developing that and updating our curriculum. I mean. Things change. There's better modalities to deliver it. Right? There's um, better ways, you know, PowerPoints are so 1990, right? And, and then we'd go PowerPoint with the instructor, lecture over it so they don't have to sit and read it. And then more videos. More videos. More videos, right? Everything live and right now, um, I, in fact, tomorrow morning my team meets with. A professional video conferencing company and digital audio solutions company. And we're gonna wire our classrooms, um, our actual lecture class, classroom. Classroom, and our lab with all these integrated cameras that we can switch from the classroom to the lab and do live training. So now we're going to live webinars. So globally, right? So we get, we keep getting reached out from. Argentina, Singapore, South Africa, and all these places for this training, and I'm like. All right. We can't just fly everywhere and I'm not ready to just scale and open offices everywhere. So how do we deliver this where we get to control and know that the student is there? You know, to keep our reputation. It's hard to just sell an online course to somebody in Africa who knows how many people are sitting around the computer. Finishing the work, right? Or you know, are they really taking the exam? How do we make sure they take the exam unaided and you know, all these logistics for our own integrity, right? I don't want my company's name on a educational certificate for someone that really doesn't know what they're doing. So how do we deliver it globally? So now we're gonna be wired throughout our whole new facility that I just completed in December of last year of 23. Um, and, uh, we're gonna wire that so we can use a, there's a few different training delivery systems that track the people's attendance and we can send out pop quizzes to make sure they're always there and, and control that there. They're, um, actually doing all the work and stuff. So that's our next big project, is how do we bring it globally with the highest integrity? And that's what we're working on Now.

Sean Weisbrot: I wanna take a step back. I'm curious to know about the corporate training because if you were previously everybody's friend and these corporate training companies that are now your competitors saw you as not a competitor because at the time you weren't competing. Was there anything that they did to try to sabotage your business when you started to make noise in, in a way that would affect them? Like how, how did they take it and, and what did they do, if anything? And how did you handle that?

Donald Booth: Well, what did they say that, um, I know, what did they say? Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm.

Donald Booth: Um, and there's a legend in the industry. His name is Chuck Hellier, and he wrote. Some of the very first documents for SNT TC one a recommended practices on certification and qualification of NDT people. It's a deep subject and, and a lot of jargon that we deal with, um, in non-destructive testing. But Chuck Hellier, I remember on LinkedIn, he had started a thing called NDT Classroom and he was, I think the second one there is a, another one World Spec up in Canada. Um. And, uh, but Chuck had started NDT classroom and I, and I remember I was a couple years in and I saw a, a thread on LinkedIn that was talking about online training. And a lot of the old school people in in our industry are saying, I don't believe in online training. I, you know, they're never, you gotta get into the classroom, you gotta do this stuff. So, and I get it. Um, and that's why when I designed it, I created the first hybrid school. So I, anyway, I posted on that thread as a leader, as one of the leaders in, on online education in the, in the industry. I think this, and I put it out there and, uh, Chuck Kelly says, I don't know who this Donald Booth is or why he thinks he's one of the leaders. And I didn't say a peep 'cause I wasn't gonna get in a, a wrestling match with one of the legends. Now, Chuck Hellier. And I got to know each other and become friends. And he, now, when I would see him at a conference, he'd put his arm around me and say, you know, this guy's the next generation. I'm just running from the Reaper. 'cause he is in, he's in his eighties and he is a great guy and we've had a, a, a great relationship now. Um, and I really respect him, obviously as one of the leaders in the industry. Um, but now he's kind of, you know, getting older and fading away out of the industry, but. Um, uh, anyway, so, uh, how did they react? That was, well, Chuck's, Chuck's, uh, um, input at first, but they didn't try to sabotage me. Really. I did, I just don't think they really took me serious, um, until I created the first hybrid blended learning where it's online with hands-on, and then a certain company copied that, and then I said, you know what? When the, when the a hundred million dollar company is. Copying my stuff, I'm doing something right. And, uh, now we're taking some market share and, and they're taking market share. There's room for everybody. Um, but I, I'm staying ahead of people by trying to be innovative. Like I bought a hotel in 2020 during the pandemic, great time to buy a hotel and, uh, because nobody was in 'em. And, uh, I bought this 40 unit small hotel out on the town and I closed it down to the public and remodeled it and created the first private student housing complex for non-destructive testing schools. And so that was to remove that pain point, right? If people have to send someone to Houston or someone of these other cities, uh, wherever it may be, to get training, that housing cost is huge. Hotels, you know, you send 10 guys at a couple hundred bucks a night, there's $2,000 more a night. So I bought a hotel and I removed that pain point. And then, uh, a couple years later, I, I, I, I, my, my training facility was at another building across town that I owned. And, and, uh, then I moved. And then just last year I finally really realized my dream that I thought of. 12, 13 years ago, even a year before I even started the schools that I, I wanted my own private campus with everything on one footprint. So now I have our corporate offices below student housing up, up top, and my facility adjacent to that hotel now. So I built that. So that's, I'm just, you know, you just gotta keep innovating and you gotta, you know, use technology and use, you know, try to solve and offer or solve, pay pain points and offer more. Value. And so now we include free housing with our training. And so that saves our customers thousands and thousands of dollars. And uh, that was one of the unique things. And I think the next thing that, like I said, is wiring it to do live webinars and save people on travel, if they can put 10 of their. Employees in a classroom and watch live and then transfer to the lab for demonstrations and back to the classroom. I think that's gonna be a unique thing that also, um, will be great for the company.

Sean Weisbrot: What do you think the future of training looks like beyond what you've just described? What's the next big change of the big innovation that's coming?

Donald Booth: You know, there's a lot of people going for thinking virtual reality and. I just, I, I'm not a big fan of it for non-destructive testing and there's probably gonna be people that are, might prove me wrong or, or it might make it work. Um, I. You know, uh, so I don't know. I think, I mean, virtual reality, right? Or augmented reality, I think is gonna be even more in, I think augmented reality is gonna be much more used than virtual reality in the future. Um, but for, for training, um. I think, you know, virtual or augmented reality is gonna play a role in it, and I just don't exactly know how. Now there's the one thing about our industry is you have three parts to our education and certification. You have your theory training, which we provide, and then you have your on the job training. So it's like an electrician. You graduate, you're not an electrician, you have to go work. With an apprentice, right? And, and be an apprentice and, and then work with a master electrician and then become one yourself. And that's how ours work. So it's really hard to replace that knowledge of that person who's seen a thousand welds or a thousand structures and a thousand radiographs, or thousands of radiographs. And, and to be able to interpret the results of the inspections is something that is. Is just really hard to replace without just good old hands-on experience.

Sean Weisbrot: So,

Donald Booth: and uh, so I dunno how we'll bridge that.

Sean Weisbrot: So I've seen an example of how it could work. Microsoft had their own kind of augmented reality headset that was meant for like enterprise use. And one of the examples they had was. One in which someone was trying to set up a solar panel, uh, not a solar panel, like an actual solar structure, like a wind, a wind farm. So big massive machine, and there's a person trying to work on it and they don't know how to fix it. They put on their headset. And they are able to have a live Skype call where they're able to show through their headset, their hollow lens to the other person what they see with an overlay. And that person is then able to manipulate the overlay to show them what they need to do in order to solve the problem. So even if you don't have access to a live legend who's seen thousands of welds and different structures. You could potentially use their knowledge to program in potential situations for people to be able to go through where if they don't know how to solve the issue, there can be like a help mode where that expert's kind of like been programmed into it to come on and go, Hey. Let me help you to solve this problem. Let me give you a hint, or let me try to jog your memory as to what the next step is. Something like a hint mode. Um, and I, it could be quite expensive to set up, but could potentially be the thing that kind of catapults your business into the next decade.

Donald Booth: Yeah. I, and that's, that is, uh, a possibility Absolutely. For, um, the next step. Uh, I, I see I, you know, kinda wrapping my head around your idea here, you know, a database of. What ifs, you know, or situations where you're like, man, I'm not getting a good signal. And you, you know, you hit the, the help button, right? Or, or, or the category. And there's this whole database of, of, yeah, I've been through that before. A searchable database and a, or even an overlay, like you said,

Sean Weisbrot: it would probably need an AI assistant that's, uh, vocal. So you would say, Hey, I'm trying to figure this out and I don't know what's going on. It's like, well, based on the situation you're currently looking at, you know, the best solution might end up being something like this, or, you know. Based on what you've seen before, what do you think? Like, so the, the AI could either be the helper or the teacher, the helper would tell you how to fix it, the teacher would try to get you to think of the solution. Um, that's obviously more complicated and far more expensive. But, uh, the way, the way that AI is going now with the API calls, they're gonna be so cheap. To, to be able to, to build and, and, uh, use something like this in the next five years. I agree. So basically you could, you could train an AI model on all of the potential things that could go wrong with, you know, up an airplane or a car or, uh, you know, different commercial plumbing systems or HVAC systems. You could train it on every single problem. And then teach it the solutions to everything and the steps and the, the processes, everything. And then what, what if something gets broken by accident because you're trying to fix this and you made a mistake, right? Like, uh, I, I think it could be incredibly, incredibly powerful.

Donald Booth: I agree. I think that, um. I think that's a big project, but I believe in the future it'll be tackled

Sean Weisbrot: probably by someone. Gen Z.

Donald Booth: Yeah, probably. Yeah. I just gave a talk out at the non-Destructive Testing Managers Association about, you know, how are we gonna, you know, teach this next generation that are so different than us. Um, you know, I'm, I'm 57. And, you know, I'm a Gen X man. We grew up with just running around the neighborhood and, and you know, out till dark running around. Our parents didn't know where we were. You know, it was just different. Right. We, you know, when the street lights came on, get home, you know. Um, but now it seems like everyone's so interconnected and, and people are different and, and how are we gonna accept it? It's like, you know, it's like, I remember my, my mom is 87. And, uh, she said, I said, do you remember when the Beatles came to the us? And she's like, yeah. She goes, I thought they were trouble. You know, and it's just that, that every generation thinks that about the next generation, right? And we look back at the Beatles and we're like, legends, right. Whatever, you know? Um, but I, that was kind of my. My thing, you know, in this talk was, you know, these, the, this next generation is different, but it doesn't make them worse or not not qualified or whatever, right? They're, they're just different. And how do we deliver education the way they wanna receive it, you know, not how we think it should be. And, and how are we gonna adapt? Because fresh, a fresh set of eyes on a problem that we've been fighting. Um, might just open our eyes. Right. And, you know, it's a next generation and, and, uh, you know, we've been, I I keep hearing the same thing. I, I said this right at the end of my talk. I said, Alan just said earlier, we've been having the problem of bringing in fresh new trainees and new entry level NDT technicians for 20 years. And if we've been having that problem for 20 years, then we're doing something wrong and we need to figure it out. And so that's kinda one of my missions now is I'm trying to build a coalition of not trying to, I am, I've got some. Like some people from Boeing and a few other large corporations that want to get behind this and, and, uh, you know, spread the word, how, how we can't just go to the high school counselor show with a 10 by 10 booth and expect to make an impact. Right. I, I, you know, we need to have a trade booth built like a huge ultrasound transducer, something that really catches their eye. To, to fight off this 80 years of a hundred years of nobody knowing who we are. So we're we, we can't just do the regular things. Obviously we've been doing it wrong. So what do we have to change to, to make an impact and educate the world on. Non-destructive testing. What a great career and make it more of a household name.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned so far in the

Donald Booth: 57 years of your life? Boy, there's a lot, a lot of lessons, um, and there's, you know, I'll just quote my mom saying I'm 87 and I'm still learning. And if you think the journey's ever over, you're wrong. Um, probably the most important thing that I learned to quit doing for myself. And I, and I still struggle with it. I think discipline and, and everything is, and, and old habits die hard and sometimes just human nature is hard to change in that. I'll be happy when, I'll be happy when I reach this much revenue. I'll be happy when this launches. I'll be happy when I can take this vacation or reach this goal. But for entrepreneurs, if you say, I'll be happy when you'll never be happy. Because as soon as you accomplish that goal, you're gonna be onto the next one. And so try to be happy, try to stop, try to appreciate what you do. My, my vice president of my company, Jeff Erno, amazing guy, um, Ben with me, he was a graduate. I hired him right out of the class and eight years ago. And, and he's, I've been his mentor and he's been my right hand man since, but. He always says, you never stop and appreciate what you did. You don't, you realize you, 12 years ago, you dreamt about this private campus and now you finally have it, you know, and, and you've done it and it, and now you're, you're the only school in the world that has this. And, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But next is wiring it. And then next is this. So I guess the most important thing is to try to stop daily with a little bit of gratitude. Remember, try to remember back to when you dreamt about everything you have today and you didn't have it. And then it's okay to just keep dreaming and keep pushing and keep creating. And we live to build and we're gonna keep building. Um, but take a moment and enjoy your accomplishments and, and remember, it is a journey. There's never one. Piece of the puzzle. The puzzle doesn't have edges, it just keeps on going, and there's always another piece. So just stay focused, be disciplined, and keep the dream alive, but enjoy every day because you're doing it. And that's, it's hard to do sometimes.