S5:E17 - Engaging Kids to Contribute with Craig Cegielski and Tyson Rohrscheib

Well, hey everyone and welcome back. We are so excited to be here. It is the official debut of part 2 of season 5 of the Growing Small Town Show, and we have missed you. I don't know about you guys, but I love a schedule, and we took the summer off to get ahead on some of our recordings and to have great content ready for you. Make tweaks as necessary. No worries, we didn't really tweak anything too, too much. We're gonna share one thing we're debuting today in this season, but it's just nice to be back. We, we always feel like we miss you as our listeners. We love to hear from our listeners. We have gotten great feedback with the addition of these small town shoutouts that we do. And so, you know, we want to open the episode and open the season just reminding you that that's a thing where you can literally call us, or you can always send us a message too and just say, hey, this is a community doing something cool and we want to shout them out because it's so fun to celebrate wins all over our communities. And then because you're about to hear an episode that's being released today, we release once a week every single Monday. And then again, we're releasing episodes September through December. We'll take January off for batching and recording and getting caught up. And then we'll come back and it's February through May with the summer off. This format has given us the space to make sure that we're bringing great guests to you and trying to be timely with the things that we're bringing to you as well. So with the debut of this season, it's always a good thing, at least I think, that we remind you why we're here, what we really care about, and what kinds of things you're likely to hear on this show. So as just a, general reminder from the beginning, Growing Small Towns exists to help the communities that we serve, small towns, to be places that people love to call home. That's been our mission from the beginning, and it will continue to be. Now, we have some specific core beliefs that guide our work. One of them is we really genuinely believe that when people get better, everything gets better. And so we're really interested in the kind of work that supports the social, cultural, and, and then by extension, the economics of communities, building the human capital, prioritizing humans, pulling humanity through our work. So there's kind of 3 big areas, uh, of programming that we focus on. One is the arts. Um, and this really, for the most part, is more of a local focus because at our physical facility, um, our headquarters here at 510 Main in Oaks, We have an actual exhibition space where we feature, you know, we always have a featured artist that we get to work with and show off their incredible work. We believe that the arts are a way that allow our communities to, a few things, to express their identity. We think it's a great way to, you can honor where you've been, you can honor the past, and then it helps us imagine our future. I think the arts unlocks creativity, and almost always represents the best of us as humans. Um, so that's something that you'll hear and have heard in previous episodes. We discuss art on this podcast. The second thing is we encourage, uh, entrepreneurship, um, not just in the sense that small businesses pop up, although of course that's a beautiful thing. Uh, truly we believe that locally owned businesses are the heart of small communities. And so You know, not only does that obviously create some diversity in your economy and create, you know, like a Main Street worth visiting and all of that, which is true. I think for us, it's also about just recognizing that we want to create space for people's ideas to come to life. You know, everything that you love about your community was once just an idea that hadn't yet come to fruition, and everything your community needs is an idea. And so we want to do everything we can to help nurture the people who have ideas and give them a place to launch and implement, iterate and get better. And then the third is, of course, when people get better, everything gets better. So we are all about people development, whether we are helping a person get better at conflict management, working collaborative— collaboratively with other people, adjusting the way they communicate a message to meet the needs of people vastly different from them. Such a hard thing, BTW. All of those things help make our communities, like, a richer culture. Better, again, better communication, especially if you're on, you know, an elected board or you're, you know, part of what's considered local leadership. Those skills are, there's nothing soft about them and there's nothing fluffy about them. Businesses need them. Main streets need them. It's something that we deeply care about at Growing Small Towns. So just wanted to give you a quick recap, like that's, and just a reminder, a mission moment, if you will. That's what we're about. That's what we, that's what we care about. That's the work we are trying to do to help communities grow. We've dabbled a bit in genuine economic development, and this is the lane that we belong in. And so welcome back. Uh, here is the thing we're debuting. We're really excited to, to launch this facet of our programming. Um, we've been pod— I've been podcasting for 5 years. We have never run ads on our podcast. Now I'm not, that's not how I view this. And so, um, we're not suddenly going to be an ad-riddled podcast. That's just not, doesn't even sound appealing to me, frankly. Um, but. About mid-roll of this episode, you are going to hear from our featured business partner of the month. And I'm actually asking you to not just hit that forward 15 seconds depending on your player, um, and, and scroll past it because we are choosing locally owned small businesses that not only have a product or a service that you yourself could either purchase or engage with, but we're also featuring that business owner. Because they are actively living and breathing the things that we are trying to encourage more of in our communities. We can't think of a better way to honor people living and, and, and acting in the way that we hope more people would in communities. So, um, with that, just wanna, you know, tell you, make a note of it, listen for it, and then go and engage like crazy with that person. Share it. You're gonna see their, the, the featured business partner pop up in the, our our socials, please share that actively, willingly, graciously, generously. Just share it like crazy. And, um, similar to the shoutouts, the small town shoutouts, people have loved them. It's been so cool to hear about communities. We encourage— that's what we need from you. We need to hear what are the small towns doing cool things. And now, who's a featured business? Who's a small locally owned business that has a product that could be consumed, um, broader and more out, you know, outside of just their Main Street or just their front door that we can feature and partner with. Um, let us meet all the rad people, please, because we can see lots of really cool opportunities, um, for cross-promotion down the road. We're thinking holiday gift-giving guides, that kind of thing, all based on small-town businesses, which— who doesn't love to support a small business, right? So with that, um, please enjoy this first episode of our season, and welcome back. You have been deeply missed. You are listening to the Growing Small Town Show, a podcast dedicated to supporting you, the person who really cares about the future of your small town. We believe when people get better, everything gets better, and our episodes offer the ideas and actions that prioritize people and small communities. Thank you for listening. We're so glad you're here. Well, hey friends, welcome back. It is the first episode of part 2 of season 5 of the Growing Small Town Show, and we're so excited to be coming back to you after a summer hiatus from production. Uh, and we're kicking off part 2 of the season With a bang. Our guests on today's episode are two educators who are, in my opinion, truly revolutionizing what education can look like. That sounds strong. It is. And I mean it. Our guests are Craig Sigelski and Tyson Rorschach. They are both both in the trades. They grew up, you'll hear Craig talk about having grown up in the trades, and they have, their background is in CTE education. And they're currently the two instructors that both teach at Oliva-Strum School District in Strum, Wisconsin. You'll hear them talk about the size of this community, but the thing they're here to talk about just kind of the traditional, even the traditional kind of not, you know, CTE education isn't always considered traditional education, but there is kind of a way it's usually done. And instead, these two are talking about a student-led manufacturing company called Cardinal Manufacturing. It is a company, a full-blown company. It isn't, we talk a lot about the fact that this is not a simulation. This is not like a thought experiment. This is an actual business where they have profit and loss. They have departments that include, you know, finance and marketing, and then they have the actual hands-on manufacturing work that's being done. And every single facet of the business is run by students. I, I, you'll hear, you'll hear in this episode what you could almost refer to as awe in me. I had moments where I felt actually kind of speechless. But man, you know, what I'm so excited about with this episode is we are launching season— the second part of season 5 with what I think is just such a hope-filled episode. In my work in org development, I get a lot of questions about Gen Z. And specifically Gen Z in the workplace. Like, how do we engage them? How do we motivate them? And there's just kind of a lot of consternation about this youngest generation in the workplace. And these guys, we talked about it, we touched on it a bit. I mean, this, the generation now that's coming up after Gen Z is, they're labeling it Gen Alpha. If that's gonna stick or not, I guess we'll see. But that's technically who these two, Craig and Tyson, are working with every day. And when you hear the way they talk about these students, I mean, if it doesn't give you hope, like seriously, you need to just stop listening to our show because it's exactly what I think we all need. And so I, and there's a ton of resources in the show notes about this particular episode because these guys are very giving and generous and gracious with sharing what they've done. They're completely willing. In fact, you can physically go and schedule a time to come on site and see what they've done if you wanna build something like this. So as I said at the, at the top of this long intro, um, very rarely do I feel such hits, deep hits of hope in speaking with guests. And, um, these guys are just delivering. They're doing so many incredible things. I can't wait to hear your feedback on this episode. Uh, seriously, for this one, get out your pen and paper. You're probably going to want to take some notes and enjoy this, uh, rich conversation with Craig and Tyson of Cardinal Manufacturing. Well, good morning, Craig and Tyson. Welcome to the show.

Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Good morning.

So we were just, um, talking a bit about our, our origin story, which this technically, this moment is our origin story. But, um, one of my favorite things about the show is that, um, because we've been doing it for 5 seasons now, everywhere I go I mention that we do this. And inevitably somebody will walk up to me and say, you should really talk to these people. Uh, and that's how I find myself sitting in front of you two gentlemen today. Um, and you're— I'm in North Dakota, you are in Wisconsin, and I came to you by way of a woman at an event in Washington State. What a world we live in, huh?

Yep.

It's a small world and all the dots get connected at times. So it's fun to, yeah. Get, you know, spread the word what we're doing.

Yeah, it's super exciting. So why don't we start with— I think maybe the easiest thing is to start with just a little background on each of you, um, and then we'll get into Cardinal Manufacturing, how it all came to be, and all the jazz. So Tyson, how about we start with you? Just tell us just a bit, quick overview, who you are, how you came to be involved in this thing.

Yeah, so I've been in Alevestrom kind of my whole life. Grew up in Aleve, went through the Alevestrom, school district from kindergarten through senior year, so graduated through there. Um, while my time at Oliva-Stroum, I took a lot of the tech ed classes beginning in 7th grade. Um, and as I progressed, I was accepted into the Cardinal Manufacturing program my junior year, um, where I was out on the floor. And then my senior year, I was, uh, the production manager for the, the Cardinal Manufacturing class. Um, after that, I went to CVTC for machine tool and die for a year.

Can you tell us what that stands for?

CVTC is Chippewa Valley Technical College.

Okay, great. Thank you. Just because. Yep. Yep.

So I went there for a year. While I was there, I was also working part-time at a shop in Eau Claire. And one day I just had the realization of like, you know, I really like what I'm doing, but I don't know if I can do it for the next 40 years. So, but I knew I liked what I was doing. I knew I was in the right kind of career field. It just I didn't know how, where it was going to take me. So I started thinking, I'm like, you know, when I was in high school, I was able to help kids. I was able to kind of be one of the help instruct. So I got to thinking, I'm like, well, maybe I should go to UW-Stout in Menominee, which is a short drive away, and look at a teaching degree for tech ed. So I went there for 3 years and ended up coming back, doing an internship at Oliva Strum, and now I just finished my 6th year teaching there.

What a fantastic— that's like, I'm just gonna say, you're— that's like a dream story for communities like mine, um, and clearly yours. So again, just for listeners to kind of round a few things out, Tyson, so we're going to get into Cardinal Manufacturing because right away I wanted to ask questions like, wait, what do you mean your junior year? Like, we'll get in— we'll get into kind of the program semantics here in a minute. Um, but first of all, the community, I just want to kind of give our listeners, uh, a sense of scope of where it is that you're at. So Aliva Strum, it's a It's a combined or consolidated community school district. Yes. Two different— two different towns. Oliva is one town. Strum is another town. Yep. You told me this ahead of time, but let's go ahead and tell our audience, what are we talking population-wise?

Yeah. So Oliva is about 600-ish people and Strum is about 1,100-ish people. I think it's about 3 miles in between them.

Okay.

So school is built right in the middle and all of the students from both of those small little towns come to the Oliva-Strum district. And Tyson was one of those students, and he grew up in Oliva, and he attended for all 12 years, and he's never left. And he went on to the technical college, the university. He student taught with me, so I had Tyson in class in 7th grade all the way through, part of the program.

That's got to be special for you, Craig.

Yeah. And as the program grew and more demand and more enrollment, we were— it was a perfect timing. We were able to get Tyson to go full time. So he not only student taught and then went on, and now he's been with me teaching, teaching partners for 6 years.

That's, it's just amazing. Okay. So Craig, how about you give us a background on you and then go ahead and dovetail right into how Cardinal Manufacturing started? Like, like who had this idea? Who did it take to, and I'll ask a lot of questions along the way. Cause I mean, I want to know how this sausage was actually made. Like as much as we can get into that on the show, because it's just a fascinating thing. I'll point out one other thing. We— oh, you know what, I remember. I remember what it was, what the conversation was that led this woman to come up to me. So, uh, earlier on the show in this season, actually, I had met this— a couple of people that started a publishing company called MAKE, which stands for Manufacturing a Kid's Experience. They started a publishing company, wrote a children's book about manufacturing that they could like read and engage with early elementary, right? Because they have a, they both work in manufacturing and they see this kind of long-term workforce challenge with getting and recruiting people to come into the trade, specifically into manufacturing. So that was what prompted this woman to come up to me and mention you two. And so I love talking to people that have unlocked truly a completely different way of thinking about a challenge, 'cause this challenge of manufacturing, Pete, getting students involved and engaged in it, early on, um, plus just the workforce challenges that exist in manufacturing. You know, you guys are— what you're doing is a really specific, really clear thing, and it's super exciting to have you here. So I just suddenly remembered why it was, um, because I— when I said earlier, like, when an idea is a good idea, it's good everywhere. And so it's really special. Okay, so Craig, go. I want to hear all about you and how this thing started.

Yeah, so I grew up about an hour and a half east of Livestrom, so another smaller town, uh, but, you know, an hour and a half away. I, like Tyson, took a lot of tech ed courses, had a similar path, was planning to be a machinist, planning to go to the technical college, enjoyed, you know, all the hands-on activities— racing, four-wheeling, hunting, fishing— down in this rural area kind of ish. And I was all enrolled to go to the technical college, but I actually made my decision before I actually went to the technical college, end of my senior high school year.. And so I kept working in manufacturing. I had worked in manufacturing all the way through high school, and then I went directly to UW-Stout, a local university here, same place Tyson went. And I also went to get my 4-year bachelor's degree in tech ed teaching. And when I graduated, I had— that was my background, was manufacturing all the way through high school, all the way through my college years. I worked in manufacturing, welding, machining, fabricating. So we had some similar experiences growing up, just not in the same town. I knew I wanted to teach manufacturing, so I only interviewed for schools where I was going to become the metal shop teacher, the welding, the machining, stuff like that. And I happened to land a job up in northeast Wisconsin, Annega, Wisconsin. And I got there and I realized that I think just like most schools I've seen now across the country, they're underfunded, they're underequipped, they got old technology. It's just, it's not a great look at manufacturing. And that's part of the problem. Of the workforce is if students don't get a good look at manufacturing, of modern manufacturing, it kind of turns them off in middle school and high school when they're making their decisions for their career path. So I was— had this dilapidated shop and it was underfunded. And that was where one of the goals was, you know, I knew we could build stuff, but we— so we started— I actually started a student-run business in Antigo called Red Robin Machining. And that's where that started and did it for 6 years and, you know, took off and was great and caught attention of the local local press and local people and local industry. And, and we're gaining some popularity. And then that is when I decided to move to western Wisconsin to be closer to family. So I, I came here without even having a teaching job, built a house in Strom, said, this is where I'm going to live because I want to live in this location. And I couldn't find a teaching job. So I went back into manufacturing myself and I started machining and welding again. And I did it for a year and I thought maybe I'd do it longer. And then all of a sudden, the the local school district opened up their tech ed teacher, um, got a, got a different position as a principal and it left a vacancy only a couple weeks before school. And I was able to get that job and basically inherited the same rundown shop, um, and started the process over again of rebuilding and cleaning and organizing. And eventually 2 years later, starting Cardinal Manufacturing in 2007 and then building until Tyson joined Cardinal Manufacturing in 2013. 13, 14-ish. Uh, yep. So it was, uh, whatever, uh, 6, 7 years in already. So it's already kind of had some traction. Shop was moving. Tyson was a part of it. And just like you said, a strong community support. The school, um, recognizing— because when I started there, there was the program, the Tech Ed program was mostly dead. I mean, the shop was poor. You might have seen some old pictures if you've seen our book.. And but it took time to build. So I was only teaching maybe 50 to 75 kids a day. But by 20— whatever it was, 19, it had grown to well over 100 students or 100 and some per day down there, which started to need another teacher. Well, the school wasn't ready to pick up a full-time tech ed teacher yet. And but all I had to do was make 5 phone calls to local people and they completely covered Tyson's salary for 3 years, salary and benefits. So then The school couldn't say no to a free teacher for 3 years. And by the time Tyson's third year was up, we had grown it to over 200 students a day. And no, no extra students really came to the school. It's just that the participation— we had so many kids taking sometimes up to 4 and 5 and 6 and maybe even 7 hours a day down in the shop. They were just taking— we had so much participation that we needed 2 full-time teachers once we grew it over the 210, 220 mark. And so then they had to pick Tyson up. After year 3. So the first 3 years were completely paid for, and now the school district has picked him up and now, you know, continues both of us as full-time tech ed teachers.

Okay, so the audience can't see my face. I've basically been smiling like a fool, like, since, I don't know, halfway through that backstory. Craig, there are so many things I want to ask you, and I'm going to, um, but just a couple things to note. We— so education is something that's really important to me. Rural, rural schools. There's just so many challenges that face rural school districts. I've got 3 kids there. They'll be a junior this coming year. They'll be a junior in high school, an 8th grader, and then a 5th grader. So I really, I really have kids just like right in the heart of the school district. And so as I listen to you and Tyson, I'm sure I'm sure this will really come through because even your story of just like deciding to come back, deciding, deciding to pursue something where you knew you'd be back where you were from and all of those things. The passion that you talk about your job, like how passionate you are, Craig, I would give anything to just bottle it. And I'm sure that you get that, you hear that a lot because it's, it's special. Like you are an incredibly special teacher. And I, I can't even imagine— it doesn't surprise me at all. And I love it too that you're just like, yep, we needed, we needed the funding, so I made a few phone calls. There is just so much here that I want to dive into because, um, it's not just the program that you created that I think is really, really cool. I think it's, it's the fact that like you, you saw a need. It's the way that you approached it. It's a fact— that's the fact that very clearly you have collaboration between your school district and your community. Because those, those phone calls that you made were not to anybody within the school proper, I'm assuming, right? Like they were, they were local business people or local— I mean, can you give any background as to who those people were?

Yeah, I mean, one was an alumni that had done very well for himself and stays in touch, and we've had a relationship with for years and lives out in Denver, Colorado. But we, you know, stay in work with him. He was very supportive and some were just community members. They were just not industry. And then some were local industry. But actually the pro— just the average community member is what picked up the majority of the tab. The industry did some too.

Yeah, it's just, it's just such a powerful story. So, okay, maybe, maybe it was, it was called Red Rob— was Red Robin, is that right?

Or just Red Robin?

Red Robin Manufacturing was in your first. So maybe, I mean, that's where this started, was that your brainchild? Like, did you just— what inspired you to do student-led manufacturing? Because I think we should talk a bit about that, because this isn't exactly like a typical shop class. It's not run like a typical shop class. When it's— when you say student-led manufacturing, you're actually producing products for industry.

Yeah, we're right.

I mean, Yeah, please go. Yeah, tell us, tell us about that because this is different manufacturing parts.

So anybody and everybody in the community. So we become the community repair shop, we become the community fix. It doesn't matter if you're farming to excavating to lawn mowing services to— we'll weld on the stainless steel night deposit box, the bank, we'll make the railing for the church, we'll build something for the baseball team, we'll build it, fix it, modify it. Well drilling rigs, blacktopping equipment. Whatever, and trailers to you name it, whether it's welding fabrication from aluminum welding to stainless welding to cast welding to custom railings to manual machining, CNC machining, just general. And that's— Tyson and I both have this experience background. I grew up in the local job shop. He grew up in Cardinal Manufacturing and they farm and just the fix and repair. And so it serves the community. But really, and the least important thing is we're teaching high-level technical skills that they can take on, but it's really our least important thing we worry about. We are stressing professionalism, um, polite, friendly, hardworking, work ethic, appropriate behavior, transferable skills, communication, problem solving, working documentation. We're— so customers are— and those are the skills we really want to teach because that's going to make them successful anywhere. And these kids come in and they leave confident, and they— while they're serving a purpose, while they're creating a revenue stream because all the work we're doing, they have to practice all those skills, plus make the— use the technical skills to make part, plus then invoice it. And the students do everything. We have a full office staff.

That's so cool. I can't— I'm like, seriously, this is going to be one of those interviews that I don't stop thinking about for a really, really, really long time. Sorry, I don't mean it. I'm just like, so that's— and that's— I think so. As I think about our community, one thing I want to ask you is, do you have traditional manufacturing in your community, or are you filling an actual gap as well?

You know, we don't really have any manufacturing facilities in our immediate little towns. I mean, we work with some of them around the area that are 20, 30 miles away, but we're really not mass producing anything. We're doing that custom job shops. We're doing the one-of-a-kind stuff that we're filling the niche where a lot of the bigger companies don't even want that work that we're doing.

Well, yeah, they can't. The setup time alone, it makes it inefficient, right? So yeah, I totally get that. I just thought I'd ask because I think as I'm listening to this and as our listeners are listening to this, I hope that what we're asking ourselves is what's the gap in our community? Because in my community, we have several manufacturing places, right? But that doesn't mean this model still couldn't work. Like you just said, we're rich in farming, in this, like, a rich, diverse farming community. So I think even just the, the fixing alone like that. Do we have a lot of— we have a lot of business, a lot of industry that supports that already. And obviously we would never want our students to be competing with local business, which was why I asked. Um, so if you have thoughts about that, please share. But I, I think the question, the bigger question goes to just what are the gaps that are in your community that students, if you created an actual business around it— and again, like, I love so much. So you guys maybe don't know this, my background is in org, organizational development. So, you know, it's all of the people side of running a business. So I love that you're talking about those skills that everyone deems as soft, which we all know are nothing. They're not, there's nothing soft about being able to look people in the eye and good customer service and good communication and leadership skills, right? I love that. That's an enormous focus of this. It's not just the technical skills. Um, God, that's so special. So that if you've— yeah, go. If you have anything to say to all the stuff I just said, go ahead, please.

That's completely our focus is it's weird and we can't— we have schools visit all the time and they want to do that. We've helped— I think we're nearly helped 100 schools across the country start up their student-run businesses. And sometimes we can't convince them enough. I mean, they, they see the technical skills, they see the parts we make, and they wrap their head around that. But it is the very, very least important thing. And we stress it all day, every day. But some schools can't get it because once we have the call It's all about setting the culture.

Yes, for sure.

And the kids are on time and they're— when we focus on body posture and how you sit in your chair and where your hands are and, you know, how you're talking and eye contact and all that stuff and how we say the Pledge of Allegiance to perfection all day, every day, every morning, and how we interact with customers and the critique and the handshake and holding doors and what we wear and everything matters. All that, once that's set and we're all working hard and we're all owning our responsibilities, The business is easy, then it all just falls into place.

And, you know, you're talking to, you know, our business is worried about us coming in and taking some of the work, uh, around here. No, they actually love it because there's a lot of work that they look at and they're like, you know, we're gonna make this person mad if we quote them, um, because it's going to be a lot more than what they're thinking. So they say, you know, we, we could do that, or why don't you take it down to the high school and see what they can do for you? It gives them to send them somewhere and not you know, not just have to say no. And then we're able to do the same thing. We don't like a lot of high production stuff that doesn't fit us. We know that's not our niche. So when we have stuff like that come in, we say, hey, you know, we'd love to look at it, but that doesn't really fit us. Why don't you go see these guys over here and, and be able to work like that? Um, some shops will send some work in for us because they've learned that, you know, we have, um, a lack of employees. It's, it's hard to find employees right now, and we're looking for younger ones. And they're starting to figure out that Well, it's— you can't go to the technical college anymore because by the time kids get there, they already know where they're headed. And then it was, well, let's go to the high schools. Well, even by the time kids get in high school, it's almost too late. They already are starting to think of where they're getting their part-time jobs. So we've talked to a lot of shops. It's like, you've got to get them when they're in middle school because you got to come in and talk just so, you know, when they're looking for that first part-time job in 9th, 10th grade, you're the first person that pops up. And a lot of times you can retain them all the way through just be by coming in in middle school and starting that relationship and being that first person on their mind.

Yeah, you're— I, I think you're so right. So again, I— so, well, let me ask you this. What do you, what do you consider middle school? 7th, 8th? Uh, yeah, 6th, 7th, 8th. Okay. Yeah, everyone has a different perspective on that depending on the size of your school district, I think. But, you know, again, I have a, a kid that'll be 14 in August. He's, he is absolutely looking at what his first part-time job will be once he turns 14 and actually, you know, legally he's— he can do stuff here and there for people. But I— and I think to you guys, what I love so much about this is you're, you're also— you're connecting these students to their community in a really meaningful way. You know, as they're interacting with all of these customers, they're getting a different and kind of broader appreciation for the community that they're growing up in. I mean, I'm back, so my little town where I'm in a town of 1,800 people, Um, which is kind of, you know, your, your towns almost combined, which is fine. Like that's, it's, it's a great size town. I, I grew up here, I was gone for a decade. I had no concept of like what actually happened in this town when I was in high school. Yeah. I mean, just, I think so. There's also just a really meaningful connection to the community that you're building through their daily practice of showing up in your shop. It's just really. It's really cool. I can see so many benefits outside of just the technical skills, which I'm sure there are a lot of people that focus on that, and I appreciate so much that that's not what you're actually directly focusing on. It's a cool benefit, like a cool ancillary benefit, right?

And, and the kids take pride, and so do we. And when you drive around town and like, we fix that, we fix that, we fix that, we built that, we built that railing, we did this for that, that piece of equipment. And so you're right, we teach pay it forward, give back. So a lot of our work, even if at the right time we don't charge for it, we'll donate it to the local community festivals, into the local fire departments, local churches and local organizations. We pass out raffle items and stuff like that. But we should go back to— you mentioned it always comes up that people say, well, you're competing against your local industry. Aren't people mad? I mean, this is year 26 for me and nobody's ever upset about that. Companies will even tell us, if you're threatened by 22 high schoolers with no experience in a subpar shop working 1.5 hours a day with 100% turnover every single year, then you got some bigger problems with your—

Exactly. Your business might be in trouble. Right.

Yeah. Nobody's worried about this. They're— the amount we're taking and the jobs we're taking is seen and valued as training and not just training the technical skills for future manufacturers, but training the soft skills and the employability skills and the professionalism and the confidence building that lets all the students go out. And that's what they come back and tell us is just the confidence. We were just at our small town festival this weekend talking to former students. I mean, some are just doing incredible things and traveling the world and going places they never thought they would do. But I think they just have confidence that why can't I do that? I can do that. Yeah.

So I would love to— so is there any stories that just really stand out an e— for each of you, like, a student story. And you don't have to say their name necessarily, but like, I, I'm guessing every day you're kind of faced with these little mo— like, little moments where you see it, just the benefit of what's been created here. But like, are there any— do you have any statistics about like the number of students that have returned to the area, anything like that, just to kind of ground it in the data that so many people care about? I love the story of it, let me just tell you. Like, I'm I'm here for this. Like, you could say nobody's moved back because of it, and I wouldn't care. What you're doing is really special. But I'm guessing for funding and for some of those bigger stakeholders, sometimes there's data points that you're kind of tracking. Are there things that you guys are tracking from a quality perspective for the program?

We do a little bit, but it's mostly the word of mouth in a small town like this. And our bigger stakeholders, I mean, we are, we are really not structured. We talk to our people all the time and people are in and they're not looking. They just see when they come in. And almost all of our visitors tell us when they hear about this, they hear us speak and they hear us go out and they read our books and see our videos and podcasts and stuff. They all like it. And when they come, they say it's 10 times better because they feel the culture. And then I mean, and they just, they just help. They just want to help. And, but really, as much as we don't need that much help because we create our own revenue stream, I mean, we're, we're self-sustaining. It doesn't need— now we appreciate and we love it because when someone does make a donation, it's a big boost and it allows us to go further faster. But we don't have to rely on it like some programs have to rely on grants and funding. This, this model makes its own funding.

And I think, yeah, another thing is like people that kind of have, have given money and stuff for, or material or machines, they really like when they come back and they see, you know, whatever they, they were trying to help do, they see it being used. And then they also see like, oh well, where'd that come from over there? And it's like, well, you know, we had a lot of money, we were able to upgrade. But they like seeing that, you know, we're not just focusing or we don't just need them. It's we can continue upgrading on our own. Um, that gets them coming back more because they just like to see, well, what have you done now? What have you done now?

Right, right. Well, and I, you know, to be fair, and I didn't mean to like, like question, you know, question if you had metrics because I, again, like truly it's not It's not what gets me going when I talk to people, but even your participation numbers speak, speak to the fact that you've created something that kids want to be a part of. And that's what I mean. I swear that is what every— so many communities, we talk about how do we engage our youth, how do we get the kids involved? You know, like legitimately, it's on the topic of communities all over the country. And so I think there's— it's very clear that your program is not only successful, but you're doing something right when it comes to engaging students. So I would love to ask that, like, how did you— like, how did you go about that? Getting almost, almost the, you know, quote unquote marketing of it, you know, what, what did that look like? What did your guys's engagement— maybe you specifically, Craig, since you were— Tyson wasn't a part of it when you first started it. How did you, how did you go about kind of engaging the students? And like, was there something special you did to get them to kind of change their mind? Because you basically changed the minds of a bunch of students in the sense that they went, I never thought that'd be for me, but I'm going to give it a shot, which is a huge deal. So was there something— yeah, was there something specific you did to kind of encourage that early on?

I think, you know, yeah, you're right. We used to have kind of— used to be kind of the dumping ground of the school and it was dirty and messy and underlit. And so we definitely strategically cleaned it, modernized it, organized it. Run it more efficient. I think it's really important for Tyson and I to role model everything we want from them. We have to live by what we preach. And we have posters. I don't know if you had a chance to see our posters, but we live and die by 5 posters, and then we'll talk about it more later.

Yeah.

But yeah, it really drives engagement because this— I mean, when a student does a project and a customer comes in, a local customer they know, and take, you know, they shake hands, they The customer is impressed. They hand them money. The student is proud of that. They go in the community, they get patted on the back. We have social media, we have all that, and the community gets behind these kids and they really do some high-level work and have some high-level skills, which then that builds pride in them. So just that whole leading, building the right culture, getting the students to see how they are talented, and I think building confidence in them. And all of a sudden now you have which one early on when I started, you wouldn't have the valedictorian taking a class at the school. Now you're upper level. We have the whole range. That's what I like. But it's not just an Advanced Placement course. It's not a college credit course. We have a spot in this part of manufacturing for everybody in the school. It can be at all levels. We can challenge them. And we need— just like any company, you don't have anybody all in one spot. We have marketing needs, we have finance needs, production management, we have engineering, we have maintenance. We, you know, we have CNC programming, CNC machinists, manual machinists, welders, fabricators, woodworkers. I mean, we need all those people to function and everybody has to do their role. And that's what I think driven engagement. And it's exciting. And the class gets— every single class gets $80,000, $90,000 because they get one of our— and so it's just lucrative too. I mean, when they come in because one, one of our former alumni, he gives every single student which is 22 of them every single year, he gives them $2,000 scholarship each for every year they continue their education. So they go on for 4 years, they get $8,000 apiece.

Wow.

And then they also get a profit sharing check. So we do $21,000 in profit sharing every year. Plus they get all their clothing and they get their food and we travel and travel expenses and stuff. So the class really gets more than $80,000, $90,000. You start talking travel, they probably get close to $100,000 by participating in this class.

Okay, Craig, I I like right now I want to get in my car and drive to Livestrom and see this thing. And I may do that one day and bring a whole bunch of people with me. We're going to have to get a passenger van or something. But so what I'm— what I— as I listen to you again, what's— what I'm questioning, what I'm questioning is like, how did you figure all of this out? I mean, you're— I get it. You're a teacher, right? So, so clearly you have— there's a lot of— but like, and this and this and this Cardinal Manufacturing is seriously, is it just actually from an advisory perspective? Perspective and management perspective run by the two of you.

Yeah, I mean, well, well, I'll start it back. The, the—

yeah, the kids, the kids run it, but you— I mean, literally everything. Okay, so like finance, marketing, even social media, right? Like, how did you know what to build out structurally and kind of within— and I'm saying air quotes here, and again, you guys can see me, right— uh, departments? How, how did you, how did you build that out?

Well, we both worked in manufacturing and we both saw it and we both got those technical skills and we both witnessed it. And I think that makes us unique. We weren't just educators all the way through.

Sure.

Yeah.

Even though I've been educated my whole career, but through high school and same with Tyson. So we knew what it looked like and it didn't all happen at once. When both companies I started, you start small and I started Cardinal Manufacturing with only 9 students and I was doing most of the management stuff to get the business up and going and then Slowly, as the business grew, we kept adding positions. We had— first we had one office position, then we had, we had a, you know, one person who kind of did a little bit of everything. But then as the company grew, we had to start breaking it down into all these positions. And we continue to grow. We added a brand new position next year just to do stuff like this. We're getting so much requests around the country.

PR, PR and marketing. I'm not surprised. Yeah. God, you guys, this is just so— I am— you are— you're my favorite story in a long, long time. I— because like I'm asking you these questions. And it's funny because I'm treating you like it should be different, and you're literally like, we built a company, Rebecca. That's what we did. And like any company that gets built, you add as you go. But I think, I think I'm just floored by it because I don't meet many educators that think like this. That's what's so special about this.

But yeah, we sit and we do not think little. I mean, as soon as we, and we're like, well, why don't we just go here and then here and then here? Like Everything we do just wants to be better than perfect. That's right. We tell the kids, I mean, just be a little better than perfect and we'll be reasonably content with that because we have high expectations. We expect them to be 40-year-old perfect employees with perfect attendance and perfect professionalism and perfect body posture and perfect eye contact. We want everything perfect. We want everything neat, clean, organized, picked up. I mean, we, we literally go outside in front of our school and we just took over the grass and we fertilize it and we lime it and we directional mow it and we do our own landscaping and plant our trees and do our bark and do our watering and automated our watering and, and we want that perfect. And then we seal coat our own blacktop and we put our own signs up and we paint everything to match. And we don't, we don't use anything. We only wear red shirts every single day to school and we match and everything we do. We only use red pens. We only use red tape measures. We only buy red tools. And our whole shop is red and white. We painted our forklift red and white. We want everything to be perfect.

The Growing Small Towns show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast. Call 701-203-3333. 937, and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you. Today's small town shout out is Freeman, South Dakota, where Shelly shares, we love to fest. Freeman, South Dakota hosts the annual Schmeck Fest, Chislik Fest, and a Rib Fest. All three of these fests are completely volunteer run, which as anybody knows in a small community, that's an enormous feat, plus holding these things annually. Um, so if you're listening listening to this and you're thinking, what the heck is a shmeck fest or a chislic fest? It sounds like you might need to make a trip to Freeman, South Dakota. Way to go, Freeman.

Hey, this is Brody, friend of Growing Small Towns and owner of the Market on the Plaza in Aberdeen, South Dakota. In small towns, coffee is more than just a morning pick-me-up. It's where neighbors catch up. It's where farmers fuel up before their day and where friends linger just just a little longer. At the Market on the Plaza, we roast our beans right here in town, slow and steady, in small batches, so every cup tastes fresh, rich, and made just for you. So stop into the Market on the Plaza next time you're in Aberdeen, grab a bag for home, or just sit a while with us. Because when your coffee is local, your town feels a little closer too. Freshly roasted, proudly local, always welcoming. That's the Market on the Plaza.

I just like almost can't stand this. It's such a—

this is—

this— you guys are making my day on a Wednesday morning. It's fantastic. Tyson, go ahead.

And kind of go back on one thing you said, you know, how, how do we kind of— when we get to a point, how do we decide what to do? Well, we're pretty simple. We like to keep things really simple and we just go, well, we're running a business. What do other businesses do? You know, right? Sure, we call one of them, you know, we call a local business, say, hey, here's what we got going on, have you guys experienced that, what would you do? And they're always like, oh yeah, we've had that, here's what we did, here's the position we made, or this, or, you know what, why don't you send a couple kids to come, come check it out, um, or, or this or that. So it's, it's pretty cool.

I'm not even kidding you, as I'm sitting here listening to you, it's, it's making me think like, what can I create that would have this? Like, I, my wheels are spinning, cuz I think what's so cool about this is it's like with anything, kids, and when kids ask me, sometimes I'll, sometimes I'll get asked to speak at like maybe a college level course on public speaking, right? Which is something sometimes happens, or I've spoken to high school students, right? They always ask me like, what should we do thinking about like career? And what I always tell 'em is like, just start, like get a job, work for somebody else and pay attention to what feels good to you. What doesn't feel good to you? What you love doing, what you don't love doing. Like, life is— I mean, we figure it out by doing. And so that's what I think is so cool about what you've built, is that you're giving kids an actual opportunity to be in a business, but while they're in school. And of course they're picking up marketable skills, there's no question about that, but it's more about the character that you're developing in these people. It's un— it's unbelievable. And like you said, that confidence and belief that they're worth something. You know, we can say that to kids all day long. Let them feel it. That's what you're doing. I am just enamored with this whole thing. So, okay, a couple, a couple other things I definitely want to get to is you said that you've been, you've helped 100 other schools. I noticed on your website, like, you actually have a workshop that you've created, right? Like, you have a process for how you help other schools. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I have a feeling once this podcast goes live, you're going to get some phone calls.

Yes. So we've started to get so much demand that we were having people visit like weekly, if not almost daily, coming in. And it got to be a little bit of a distraction. So we ended up creating workshops and advertising 2, 3, 4 times a year where groups can come. And sometimes the groups are 10 and sometimes they've been 120 people where we and the students, of course, take all the— organize the whole thing because we have them there for the entire day. So it starts out with, you know, greeting all the guests. They come in and having a PowerPoint presentation made. And the usually— and we have usually coffee and rolls and stuff and kind of greet just like a workshop would be. And that's all we do is copy a workshop like we've gone to, right? And bring them in. And the first couple hours, they actually— Cardinal Manufacturing runs live so they can witness everything and just watch the students in their element working. And then we come in and we give them this couple-hour-long you know, spiel about how it started, where it goes, how it all works, like we're doing. Then we have lunch catered in and we feed them lunch and the students come back and eat lunch with them. And then we break down all their questions and talk about the history and stuff and offer any resources we can. And the whole day goes on and it's another revenue stream because people pay us to come talk to us like that. So that's really been— speaking events have been more revenue and the kids have gotten to travel and dress up and learn public speaking and they meet all these people and have lunch.

Huge skills.

A lot of handshaking, a lot of eye contact, a lot of just professionals holding doors, saying thank you. So that's been another, another positive for us.

Yeah, we've had schools just come in and just be there for a week and just watch what we do, you know, just basically stand in the back and just watch.

And it's funny because all we do is simple. I mean, we— this isn't complicated. We, we just expect them kids when they're in middle school. Tyson has them in 7th grade. He literally teaches them how to walk through a door. They don't know how to walk. They come running in and they bounce off the doors and they hit the top. We're like, we're not going to do that.

Oh my God.

We tell them how—

the way you just like pretended to hit a doorway, I've seen it 10,000 times. I have boys, for crying out loud. I love that. That's— that is simple. And it's—

it's—

but so, so let's maybe say instead it's fundamental, it's foundational, it's basics. It's the basics. Yeah, but you're right, they don't know because nobody's ever slowed down and taken the time to teach them all that.

And then, you know, and something we said, I would say, okay, we're not in the classroom anymore, we're in a business meeting. You know, that's all we're learning, how to be in a business meeting. So it's like, okay, you walk into a business meeting, how would you put your stuff on the table? Would you just throw it, throw it there and have it all over? And would you have all kinds of stuff coming out of your folders, or do you have it nice and neat? You know, where would you put your water bottle if you have one? You don't want it right on the edge because there's a good chance it's going to go flying off the table. You want it to sit here. Um, you know, we just talk about all that stuff. And when, when things do go wrong, we don't make a big deal out of it. It's like, okay, let's go back in, let's talk about it, and let us tell you why this might be something that could affect you later on. Um, like hitting the top of the doorway or something, something that simple. You know, you walk into a meeting with your boss and there's, you know, some high-level clients or something, he's gonna be like, what are you doing? You know, we're trying to impress these people. Yeah, just simple things like that that kids don't know.

Yeah, and we teach them, literally teach them how to drink a can of soda. They do not know how to drink a soda when they get there. 90% of them, they're in high school, and we're like, well, in business meetings sometimes you drink soda or coffee or water. We'll give it to them, but we'll instruct them. Everything we do, we instruct ahead of time, and then we critique them and give them feedback afterwards. And pretty soon they know. So when it's soda time, they know to go to the fridge, but they know to not all try to wedge through the door at the same time. One side, single file. The first person out holds the door. Everybody goes through and says thank you to that person. They all get the soda. They all come back in. They all sit down. They immediately open it because it used to be I'd start talking and all of a sudden I'd talk some more and I talk some more. I'm like, what are we doing? We're opening our sodas all the time. Then one kid would guzzle it and let out a big belch. And then the next kid would drink it and then go crinkle, crinkle, crinkle for the next half hour. And the next kid would wrinkle it up and crush it and then it'd be dripping on the desk. And the next kid would put it in front of them and tip it over and spill it on the desk. And it was just amazing how many ways they could find to fail at drinking a soda. And, but now we strategically teach drinking a soda.

We teach—

Tyson had to teach his 7th graders how to put a piece of paper in a folder because they would give them a piece of paper, next day they don't have it. Finally, he's like, okay, open up the folder, put the piece in, shut the folder, put it in your binder. Next day, open the folder, there it is. But they couldn't hang— they couldn't bring a piece of paper back in a day later. They can't sit in a chair when they come in.

I did one of the coolest things I've ever done, and it sounds really geeky, but I taught—

I love it.

I taught a whole 7th grade middle school class this year without talking. Nobody ever talked, and we did actual learning. Everybody's like, well, you must not have done anything. It's like, no, we learned how to put our CO2 cars together. But I talked to him a lot about communication. And you know, you're not going to always be able to verbally talk to somebody. You might be 1,000 miles away. Well, you might have to use email, might have to use a phone, you might, you know, or, you know what, somebody might not speak the same language with as you. So how would you communicate with them? So we do a lot of different activities there. But I was like that day, I'm like, I'm like, hey, you guys have, you can use any resources you need. We're a one-to-one school with the middle school's Apple iPads. They all have iPads. There's a whiteboard in the room. But I'm like, here's the deal. I am going to use my computer. I'm going to write the directions on, I just use Google Translate because then it can speak for them. And I'm going to talk like that. But if you guys need to ask me a question, you can use any of the resources you need. You know, and we, and we did a whole class like that.

How, what was, what, how did they, what did they do? What were their, what were some of their choices? Did anything surprise you?

Yeah, it was, um, I mean, at first it's funny because they'll stand up and they'll try to be like pointing at you or this or that, and, um, just sometimes they don't always know. They have all this technology at their fingertips, but they don't always know, like, oh Well, I could just send them an email. Like that simple kind of stuff. Like that's an option, you know? So just kind of showing them that and talking through it all like that.

What I love so much about— again, there's like a million things I love about this, but what you're, what you're actually doing too is you're just helping them become better humans. I mean, really, and better, like when, especially when it comes to the workplace and kind of society, right? You're creating better people to be and live in society with the rest of us.

I mean, that's what we're trying to do. And we should talk about our 5 posters because—

please do. Yep, yep. I made a note of that on the wall.

And the first one is 10— they could— we call it the Ten Commandments for Career Success because it's the 10 traits you need to be a good employee. I mean, it's literally show up on time, work hard, get along with people, you know, be polite and friendly. Keep learning, no whining, just fundamental soft employability skills.

Yeah, right.

We move into career planning. There's only 6 options our students have, and I think sometimes they get overwhelmed with thinking, not knowing what to do next and looking. So they kind of avoid the whole idea of career planning. But when we make it simple, you only have 6. You can either go to university, go to a technical college, Join a military branch, enter an apprenticeship, get a job, or start a business. That's all you got. You got 6 things.

Yeah, you're right.

There's nothing else out there.

Yeah, right.

I think that distilling it down like that really does help because it does feel overwhelming when you have the conversations about the pros and cons of each of the 6. Pretty soon it becomes clear which one of those 6 is best for them. Now, once decided that a technical college is my route. Well, now we can look at the technical college programs and the couple in our area. Or once we decide that a military branch, then we can break it down to those. And once we decide maybe just for me getting a job, and then we can look at that or going to university. So we really try to get that career plan going. But we like to have our students— and we're talking all the time about in high school and middle school, we're really talking about retirement. We're talking about retirement planning, Roth IRAs, investing money. And we, so we go, we transition from first, we got to set the culture and have employability skills. We got to start practicing them in 7th grade. And then we got to start talking about career planning in 7th, 8th grade.

And one thing big with career planning too, we're never like, you need to do this. It's always like, hey, here's your 6 options. No matter what you do, you got to pick one. You know, we will help you with anything we can on any of these 6, but it's your choice. You know, you got to do the research.

We can't. On what to do because it depends on their goals, their dreams, where they want to live, what they're, what they're looking for in life. So once we have the career plan, then we get into money because they start making money and we see a lot of kids that are wasting, in our opinion. I mean, they're going to the gas station every single morning, lunch and supper, and they're literally throwing $20 a day into that gas station. And we show them and we put investment calculators, we bring in financial advisors and we talk about You can put that into a Roth IRA and you can get 12% on your thing. You could have $1 million by putting in $20 a day in a short time that you're giving. You're paying $1 million for that energy drink. And once they start doing— we get a lot of kids. We actually this year, we want, we want to— we got probably almost half the class take out Roth IRAs. And Tyson and I subsidized it and said, we'll put the first $125 in if you just go start one of these things and get contributing. Because the goal is they're all millionaires before they're 60. And they can be all millionaires before 60. And we're setting that up for— so they got the employability skills, then they got the right career. And then if you get the right career, you're probably going to be— you like it, probably more successful. And then you start investing when you're 16 years old. And then we have a healthy living because we started to realize like some kids don't really— are making poor healthy living choices. And it's hard to come to school if you're tired or sick because you've been up all night drinking energy drinks and eating potato chips and not sleeping right. And, you know, just just not taking care of yourself. So, we have a really foundational poster that says, get 8 hours sleep. I mean, just, it's all simple. It's just basic. But we need that reminder on a daily basis that I do need to sleep 8 hours. I do need to drink water. I do need to exercise. You know, I do need to avoid bad habits. I do need to kind of do these things. And then our last poster is all on wellness from a professional wellness coach. And what's actually going to make me happy is to be excited about life and look at my positives and just, you know, take care of people and help people and do nice things for things and positive self-talk and, you know, hang with positive people and, and the whole attitude and how you approach everything. And when those 5 posters are in line, well, they can't hardly help but be successful. And then it's fun to watch them come back and be like, you know, we're just seeing kids buy homes at early, early ages with significant down payments because they've, they've made some good choices.

I want to come and work with you guys. I just like, I want to be a student. I would give anything to be a student again and and come and hang out with you. It's, it's just— and again, like, I get it, you're saying it's so simple, um, but if it were simple, everybody would be doing it. And, and not every school is doing this. And I think— and again, this— I'm not— I, I really try hard to talk about things that I think could always use some improvement without criticism. I think that's an important thing, right? I know that especially even our school district, people are doing— people are working really hard at this, right? So it's not, it's not that I just don't think people care. I do think sometimes we overcomplicate it. And, and, and really kids need a lot of direction, which your posters are just that very clear direction. And I think, oh my goodness, the money stuff. I, I mean, I have kids, they literally, can I just, it's so, we've got several gas stations, right? It's always, can I go to T-Stop? Can I go to, you know, and I'm like, do you guys have any idea? And they don't. But that's like a mom way of saying it. And you're saying, hey, instead Do you, you know, do you want to give up $1 million for a rock star right now? Because that's what you're doing. And I just think that's such a relatable way. I think it's also really special because you're— you are not their parents. And so I think they have a— they can hold a different level of respect for you. I think they show up differently for you and in a good way. I mean, I mean that in the best way. The environment that you're creating is designed to help them get better. I think they have the 5 ways.

They, they know that we're truly giving them solid advice and we tell them all the time, maybe fact-check it and go talk to people. And if we're wrong, I mean, come tell us. But nobody ever does. And because we're not— I mean, we're telling them, right, make choices that are not what's good for me right now. We're teaching them to make long-term choices and think about what you're doing. And, you know, don't just do what feels good at the moment, because what feels good at the moment maybe is to get the rock star and maybe is to go spend some money, maybe is to go goof around, to do this. We're saying develop habits that are going to make you successful and financially secure, and you don't need to work when you're older. You'll be, you'll be fine, you know, right?

We use a lot of stories and we use a lot of like what we've done, so we tell them we haven't done everything right. If we could go back and redo things, we definitely would, but sure, you have to learn it the hard way like we always did, you know. Just try it, right? I mean, we know not everybody's going to, but you know, at least, at least take it. And so A lot of them, you know, they might not use a lot of the things we say for 5, 10 years, but once they get to that point, a lot of them are like, you know, I kind of remember you guys saying something about this. And at least they know the questions to start asking.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think big picture, what I feel like you're teaching them too, or giving them, is the reminder that they have agency.

Mm-hmm.

That, you know, that they are self-directed people. And so the earlier they start actually intentionally intentionally setting a direction and making, like you said, making choices and building habits that support the direction they want to go in, the better and happier their lives will be. It's literally the opposite of teaching a bunch of people to blame, make excuses, look for somebody outside of themselves. It starts at home, and home is with you. And that's just— as a mom, I think about that a lot. That's what I want my kids to understand. Is that, you know, it's not that nobody's going to help you, but nobody's going to do this for you. People will rally around you for sure, but it's that it comes down to you.

That's exactly what we tell them all the time. You, your choices are going to get you exactly where it is. So if you, if you can tell us this is what I want, well, it's just a goal. We can break it into some steps. You can absolutely get there. If you want to make $1 million, you can make $1 million. If you want to go get this job, you can absolutely get that job. If you want We just had a kid this week. He's all set and he's excited and he graduated and he's just, I'm going to Montana and I'm going to Montana. And he's, he's sending us pictures. He's camping along the way. He found, he's got a job out there. He's like, I'm gonna live in the mountains and do this and this and this. And why can't you move to Montana? I mean, you can, you can, you're 18 years old and, but the next kid doesn't want nothing to do with that. Wants to stay local. And it's kind of whatever your dreams are, then, you know, go do it.

Mm-hmm. I, I just, um, I, it's, it's, I, I wouldn't say, I, I feel like I'm in awe a lot. I get, I have a really cool job. Like, because this getting to do this is really special to me. You two are standout people. Like, I'm super, super thankful that I casually mentioned Make Publishing and manufacturing when I was out in Washington because what you're doing, I'm thinking about the echoes of this work, the ripple effect of this work. You guys are actually changing the world with the work that you're doing in a town of less than 2,000 people combined, right? Your school district, 1,600. I love it, by the way, Craig, you're like, ish, which is a very small town thing, just like 1,100-ish people. Um, these kids are, you know, they're, they're gonna— they— some of them will go on to start businesses that impact some of us listening. Like, there is just— it's incredible what you guys are doing, is incredible.

We've had a lot of businesses start already, quite a few. I mean, for that, no, there— and, and I think— and just doing some big things, and they're coming back. I But it's— community support is crazy. We've already started having like people, community members pass away, and then they'll say instead of sending flowers to the funeral home, send money to Cardinal Manufacturing in their behalf and stuff like that, memory stuff. And we just had our big open house, and we have, you know, town of whatever, 1,800, and we had 1,200 people attend that night, and we made $31,000. We brought in one single night, which is double our tech ed budget. You know, just a big number of people just come in and volunteer, and everything is donated by the community. Community. So huge community support, huge student engagement, you know, providing the community service of all the fixing— we're the community fix-it shop— to helping all the community organizations, you know, giving them funding or raffle items and stuff like that. So it's really— there's no downside, and it costs no money to start. You just start like every business. Every school has a shop and a teacher and some tools, and that's what we started with. We started with with what we had. And the first jobs were $20 bills and they were just rough. And then as it advanced, we're into, you know, modern CNC programming equipment and automation and stuff like that. And now the jobs can be $5,000, $10,000 jobs instead of $50 jobs. So we're just evolving. But it all starts— it's just a pipeline. We start them in 7th grade. We start setting the culture, moved to 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and the only way into Cardinal Manufacturing is it's a good job. So they have to fill out the resume, the COVID letter, the references, interview process, dress up, shake our hand, answer questions, practice interview. Not everybody's accepted. If you, you can't, you can't be a jerk all day, every day, and you can't have bad attendance and you can't be lazy and you can't not do good work or you won't be in. So there's a little bit of a carrot there. They're not guaranteed in to that class and therefore it drives demand and drives away all our discipline in our younger classes. And then they get into Cardinal their senior year, and then they roll out. And then we just over and over and over every year for the last 20-some years.

So, so that's a question actually just from a logistics standpoint. Well, is there, is there a place where you actually share your, like, what your program looks like in terms of curriculum? Do you guys share your curriculum?

You know, we're working on building it. We've shared kind of what we have. We, it keeps changing, and we, we fall behind a little bit, but we could. I mean, we're trying to get that on our website and try and get it documented, all of our projects, all of our rubrics. Yeah, and we got a start on it.

One of the hard parts though is it changes every day. It really—

I believe that.

Yeah, I believe that, especially in middle school. I never really know what I'm going into because I read the class, you know. Yeah, I always have a goal of like where we're headed, but if they come in one day and I see that, you know, 'Well, we're just kind of— we're a little rowdier today. We're a little excited.' It's like, you know, guys, we got to talk about this. Um, you know, especially when you get close to summer. I, I had to talk about them like, 'Hey, you know, we're getting close to summer, but we got to see this as— this is practice for when we are out and out in the workforce and we have a job.' Because more than likely you're not going to get a summer break. You know, say June 1st, 'I'm done, I'll see you in August or September.'. It's, well, you go home for the weekend and then you're back, you know, the next week. And it was pretty cool because I had one student raise their hand. They're like, I'm not worried. I'm like, okay, well, what's your idea? Well, I'm going to get paid time off. I'm going to get, you know, days to take off. I'm like, you're not wrong. That is going to happen. But, you know, does anybody have an idea how many days off a year you get or sick time?

Great question. What did they say? Like 4 months? Did they think they get like 4 months of paid vacation?

I don't know, enough for summer and this, that. I'm like, well, you know, when you start knowing, a lot of times it's like that 2 to 4 weeks depending where you're at. And they just look at you like, wait, what?

Yeah, right. And then you have to remind them. And like, that's if you get sick. Yeah, those, those days, you know, it's just, it is, it's so, it's so great though. Like, it, because it's, it's all so real and you're making, you're making future stuff real for them now in a way that they can like take it in and embody it and experience it. Because again, it's different than teaching. Like, we can talk to them about it, and it never lands the same for them as it does if they actually experience it. And that's why this kind of education is just so, so important.

Yeah, I think that's why it's working for us, because a lot of school is just kind of make-believe. You're trying to simulate a lesson to learn a topic, but it's not exciting, it's not engaging, it's not fun. They don't even see why to learn it, so they don't put a lot of effort. Where we try to do everything in all our class— I mean, when we teach an automotive class, we're teaching about tools and fixing cars, but we spend a lot of time on, on just like insurance and registering and understanding liabilities and just taking care of that car and preventative maintenance and buying cars and selling cars and leasing cars and all the different options of fixing cars because so they can make the informed consumers. And the same thing in our construction class, we're talking about homeownership and the pros and cons of living in town, out of town,, you know, different options. You have sewers, wells, septics, you know, that kind of different siding options, roofing options, buying a house, selling a house, real estate versus just because we know in that class they're not all going to be carpenters, they're not all going to be welders. I mean, we have a topic for each class, but we treat it as a life skill about that topic.

Yeah, I— your school district is just really blessed to have you, as are all of the students that have ever come and will. Come through your program. I, I, one thing I know is there's going to be a lot of people that want to connect with you. So we'll make sure, um, we'll make sure we have all the connection points, you know, your website, all of the links to your socials. We'll get all of that in the show notes. Um, I, I, I just can't thank you enough. I can't thank you enough for your time, um, for, for sharing all of this with me. But ultimately, I just can't thank you enough for your passion and energy for you know, actually training up this next generation of humans that I might be bumping into one day as I'm traveling or wherever I might be going.

We do it this way and it actually makes our life a lot easier because now we have almost no discipline problems. I mean, most of the classes, the 7th, they'll even tell us. I mean, it's pretty rare. We can easily have a 7th grade class not talk for 45 minutes, not one word out of turn. I mean, it can easily happen. It doesn't happen every day, but that's normal because we try to get that relevance. They know that they got to perform at a level and just the expectations are so high. And then it's been really fun because we've been able to travel the world. I mean, Tyson went to Germany for a week on this. We've been just this year, we were in Washington State and Idaho and Chicago, and we've gone to Georgia and we've gone out Pennsylvania and we've traveled to Nebraska and we've traveled around the country. So we've had cool opportunities. We had to go to Vegas this year and talk and go to a NASCAR race and go down the pit lane. Kits and be with the drivers and stuff. So yeah, we've caught some cool opportunities sharing our message across the country.

And, and you're— and your kid— the kids that are a part of your program are seeing that possibility, right?

And that's what we're trying to teach them is think big. I mean, big. We're not— that's— I mean, so, um, that's our name— name of our book is Dream Big and Have Fun and just go do it at a high level.

By the way, I didn't know you wrote a book, so that's on your website, I assume?

We call it a book. Some people call it a magazine and it's only 50 pages, but that's okay.

No, that's okay. But is it on— it's on your website and it's on there. It's for purchase.

No, it's just free. My goodness, you guys, we can mail you a copy too if you want because we have printed copies. But we tell people when they're interested about this, go to our website and some short videos, you know, maybe 5, 6, 7, 8 of them that are 2, 4, 6 minutes long, 8 minutes. And you kind of get the gist of what we're talking about. And then if you like it, We got some podcasts on there like this, like an hour or two. You know, you can listen to this. We can put this one on there too, if that's okay.

Absolutely. Please do.

And then we have this book, which takes a lot of people 2, 2.5 hours to read. So you can kind of dive into this 50 pages. And then if you think it's a good idea, then come visit us at a workshop and spend 8 hours with us. And then if you like it, go back and start your own. And then we can kind of help and we can provide resources. We give away way, you know, our book of course, and everything's free, and our posters that we can share and people rebrand them. Um, I think that's important to have your— what are you really trying to accomplish? And everything we're really trying to accomplish is on our 5 posters. So I should, you know, posters to you.

Um, and it, it really starts with culture.

Yeah, it does. Well, and that's like— that I don't hear that from anybody, and it's the— that's the core of my work. I mean, it's— I think it's what makes companies great places to work is when they've got their culture figured out. And it doesn't have to look exactly the same, right? Like, a company can decide what they want to be about, but then you've got to be about it and be about it to the point that you'll fire to it. Like, if people don't, don't want to live up to that or don't want to be that, then they don't belong with you, right? And it's really clear that you guys get that. And that's what I'm— that's what I think I'm so stoked about listening, listening to this, is because you get that in a way that I don't often hear. Well, especially educators, and not— and not— that's not disparagement of education. It's just like you said, it's instead of simulating it, you're actually demanding it. Um, and I haven't seen culture taught to this kind of granular level, and it's really, really cool. And I interrupted you, Tyson, so please go ahead and, and finish your thought, but it's— it struck me immediately.

Another big takeaway too is we don't have any problems either. We decided we didn't like them because problems are— we don't want problems So we just quit having them.

Right. That's fantastic.

We now only have inconveniences because the problem is something in the shop breaks or someone makes a— because sometimes it is a, well, that's $500 or that's $1,000 we just broke. And Tyson, good job. You know, you only burned up $300 of tooling and made $10. And, and but it's not a problem because we have an inconvenience. We have. And when you have a problem, people start pointing fingers, people start blaming. It's his fault. Fault, this fault, and we don't have problems, so we have inconveniences. And all we have now is, that is inconvenient, that is broken, what's the solution? We need to right away transition. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to fix it? How are we going to make it right? Um, why we can't change it, so we now we need to fix it.

And let's not do it.

But so when we change that mindset, we kind of can smile more and be like, that's pretty inconvenient right now, you know.

That was a pricey inconvenience.

We're gonna be here all night working on fixing that. But, uh, so that is inconvenient. And everybody smiles like, yeah, that is really inconvenient.

It was like last week, it was our last week of school. I've got a student who's just— he's phenomenal. He's, he's doing an awesome job. He's doing our CNC machining this year, and he's doing— he's making his own fixtures and jigs for, um, some of these parts. And I walked over, I'm like, you know, I thought we had 3 of these new end mills left. He goes, well, we did. I'm like, why is there only one in the machine? He goes, well, that's what we got left now. I'm like, huh, all right, well, let's not break that one. He goes, yeah, I'm working on it, you know.

And these— they, they buy stuff and they break stuff. I mean, they tell us, I need this, $500, then they break it. It's like, there goes $500. But, you know, that's— at the end of the day, it comes out of our profits, but then we make less money. But that's okay, we're learning.

But yes, it, it happens. And it's not like you can just walk over and get mad at the kid because, like, well, you're 16 years old. You really honestly shouldn't be able to do what you're doing, but you've pushed yourself enough to be able to. So that's awesome. And I also know you're above me, so I can't do what you're doing either, you know? And I just trust that he's going the right way.

You're— one of the things that I think is, um, well, okay, like an interesting parallel again to kind of culture and why it's so important. A lot of companies are kind of perplexed by Gen Z, um, in the workplace, which you're dealing, you're dealing with whatever, whatever's gonna come next. I think it's Gen Alpha is what they're calling the next generation after Gen Z. Um, so all your students are Gen Alphas. Um, again, if that's a thing. And you know, I keep reminding everybody that leads people, like they're still just people, right? I mean, generation to generation, people need a core set of things. And one of the things that people really need, um,, in a workplace is to feel like they're trusted and valued, right? And so we end up— people end up talking about, I don't know how to empower people, I don't know how to give people ownership. But that's something that you've given these students, an actual legitimate sense of ownership over their outcomes, over their processes. You give them very clear guidelines as to what's acceptable behavior and what's not, and that's what drives the culture. But everything else, it's then on them. And that's, and that's how we build that, right? Like, you, you don't build it by micromanaging everybody. And so I love it too, because I think you're, you're pushing back against, I think, sometimes this belief that really clear expectations is micromanagement. And it's not. No, it's not. There's no way you guys are micromanaging. There's two of you and you have a couple hundred students. You're not micromanaging them, but you have very clear expectations.

Sometimes we have high school students teach when we have visitors. We'll be busy and our goal is do nothing. I mean, if we've done our job right, we don't have to— for you, because we're just standing there and let it all happen. And sometimes even asking a senior in high school to teach a middle school class, and it's great because the middle schoolers will— they can still be at a high level of attention and high level of focus. And then high schoolers have knowledge to share with the middle school, and we can be off visiting our guests for the day, and the rest of this class can still run.

And we talked to high schoolers like, hey, what you do is what they're going to think is normal because they look up to you. So I need you to, to be doing good things because when they look out in the shop and they're sitting in here, their thought is, you know, when I'm their age and I can take study halls and be down here, well, that's just what's going to be normal to do out there. So if they're out there working, that's what they're going to think is normal. If they're out there messing around, well, that's what What's going to happen then? So it's just, you can have those talks and talk about how to be a role model and a good role model, right?

Conversation. We just talk to them a lot. Like, I don't think my teachers never talked to me at this level. I mean, just explaining life, explaining decisions, explaining consequences, everything. Your reputation is so important. This employability is so important. Finance is important. Choosing the right career is important. Treating people well is important. And just over and over and over until they understand it. And then we have ridiculously high expectations of them, and then we believe in them at such a high level, and then we just let them go and they overachieve. And we— they, they can— most of them can do better work than we can because they get out there practicing at a high level.

It's kind of like when we take a field trip. A field trip for us is basically a week-long, um, uh, thing, you know. It's 3, 4 days ahead of time where we're, we're talking about, you know, when we go on this field trip, here's how we need to be dressed, here's how we need it to go, We look up the company, we, we get some knowledge on it, we talk about questions to ask, um, and then we set up. It's like, okay, well, 5, 10 minutes away from the company, we're gonna stop, find a gas station, everybody can use the restroom. When we're in the gas station or whatever, we're not all buying stuff to take back on the bus. We don't need to do that right now, you know. We got to be ready to go. And then it's, you know, who's going to be the first person off the bus to hold the door? Who's going to be the first person in to shake, you know, whoever's hands right there. And it's awesome because we tell them, you know, the only way this field trip is going to be a positive or a win for us is if we get an email back saying, you know, that was the best field trip we've ever had come through. That's our goal for them. We tell them that right up front, and then they start bringing their standards up to that. And when that first place you stop, everybody shakes that owner's hand when they walk in, and he's just looking at— when, when me and Craig walk in, just like, what is going on? That's when you know you're— you got the game won.

That's what we want, is we want the owners in disbelief that this can't be real, when every kid says thank you to every kid. And when we go into the restaurant and we treat them, then we take them to restaurants afterwards, but everybody's dressed in collared shirts, everybody's sitting there, nobody's horsing around, everybody's having conversation, everybody's saying thank you, please, everywhere, pushing their chairs in, cleaning up their messes, you know, leaving a nice tip. And when Cardinal can cover it, if it's a $500 meal, it's a $500 meal.

When you're— when the company is ready for a picture with their employees and stuff, when you can have the kids— like when they say, yeah, let's take a photo, and the kids just, they go right in line where they, where they need to be.

Because we know if our hands are going to be in front of us or behind us when we're taking a picture. We've pre-rehearsed how our— where body parts and how we're going to stand, if we're going to arch, and how many inches between our shoulders. And we've just thought all those details through. So then when it's game time is— and that's what we tell them too. I mean, this is, this is— we go to practice and then we go to game time is when the public is there. We got to perfect.

And then, you know, after the field trip, the next day or two, we come back in and the field trip's not over. It's— we got to break it down. What, what, what, what could we work on? You know, all that kind of stuff too, and just debrief on it.

And I think that's what people miss out. They don't, they don't do all that detail stuff. They, they take kids on a field trip and then they're frustrated when they acted like a bunch of high schoolers. Well, did you tell them what you wanted? Did you practice what you wanted? Or did you just always hoped they were going to do that.

Craig, I think that, that is the key of what you guys have really, um, and I wouldn't say figured out because you even said it yourselves, like every day you're not even just learning but you're adjusting and you're modifying and you're tweaking, which is, that's life and that's how it should be. But you, you aren't forgetting and overlooking the little things. In fact, you're prioritizing those little things. Um, and this is what I, I mean, I'm I just truly, I, I am, I'm inspired a lot, but this has been, this has been such an inspiring conversation. I am so thankful that there are people like you doing work just the way that you're doing it because it is unique and it's a mo— it is a model very clearly. You're gonna get more and more and more, uh, opportunities like this to share your message. And, um, I'm just, I'm so grateful, grateful to have met you, grateful for the time. Um, and I can't wait for this to go live. And more people to learn from the exceptional example that you guys are setting in education.

Well, thanks. If you want to keep up with us, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Oh, you better believe it. I'm gonna do it the second we hang up here.

Our year and where we've been and what we've done and stuff like that.

Yep. And, uh, remember what they say: all you gotta do is show up, work hard, and make it happen.

That's our model, those three top ones.

I love it. Thanks so much, you Yeah, thanks for having us.

And, uh, just, yeah, let us know if we can, uh, provide any more information.

Okay, well, hopefully I'll be bringing you back soon.

All right, sounds good. Yep, thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Yep, have a good day.

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