Hector Resendez - Trade School Secrets

There are only about 25,000 elevator technicians in the entire U.S. Let that sink in. Now think about how many elevators exist: • Apartments • Hospitals • Hotels • Office buildings • Airports Every single one needs maintenance… forever. Now here’s where it gets interesting: Elevator techs make $100k on average Top earners clear $150k+ With overtime in big cities? Even higher. And the “training pipeline” everyone talks about? It’s not 4 years of college. It’s: • Apprenticeship programs • Trade-based training • Earn while you learn So let me get this straight… We’re telling 18 year olds to take on $100k+ in debt… Instead of pointing them toward a career where they can make six figures fixing elevators? Here’s the controversial part: The shortage isn’t because the job is bad. It’s because no one is telling kids this path exists. We’ve marketed college. We’ve ignored trades like this. And now we have a massive gap. In 10–15 years? The people who chose these “invisible trades” are going to look like geniuses. Fun fact: only one out of the three elevators worked during our trip and average wait time was 10-15 mins.

There are only about 25,000 elevator technicians in the entire U.S. Let that sink in. Now think about how many elevators exist: • Apartments • Hospitals • Hotels • Office buildings • Airports Every single one needs maintenance… forever. Now here’s where it gets interesting: Elevator techs make $100k on average Top earners clear $150k+ With overtime in big cities? Even higher. And the “training pipeline” everyone talks about? It’s not 4 years of college. It’s: • Apprenticeship programs • Trade-based training • Earn while you learn So let me get this straight… We’re telling 18 year olds to take on $100k+ in debt… Instead of pointing them toward a career where they can make six figures fixing elevators? Here’s the controversial part: The shortage isn’t because the job is bad. It’s because no one is telling kids this path exists. We’ve marketed college. We’ve ignored trades like this. And now we have a massive gap. In 10–15 years? The people who chose these “invisible trades” are going to look like geniuses. Fun fact: only one out of the three elevators worked during our trip and average wait time was 10-15 mins.

Starting a CFO search, where should I be looking? 10M EBITDA, 200 employees, 3 states, 4 locations. Halp!

I know Silicon Valley startups don't want to hear this..... But the combination of someone in the trades with deep domain expertise and Claude Code will run circles around your generic software. I talked to Cory LaChance this morning, a mechanical engineer in industrial piping construction in Houston. He normally works with chemical plants and refineries, but now he also works with the terminal He reached out in a DM a few days ago and I was so fired up by his story, I asked him if we could record the conversation and share it. He built a full application that industrial contractors are using every day. It reads piping isometric drawings and automatically extracts every weld count, every material spec, every commodity code. Work that took 10 minutes per drawing now takes 60 seconds. It can do 100 drawings in five minutes, saving days of time. His co-workers are all mind blown, and when he talks to them, it's like they are speaking different languages. His fabrication shop uses it daily, and he built the entire thing in 8 weeks. During those 8 weeks he also had to learn everything about Claude Code, the terminal, VS Code, everything. My favorite quote from him was when he said, "I literally did this with zero outside help other than the AI. My favorite tools are screenshots, step by step instructions and asking Claude to explain things like I'm five." Every trades worker with deep expertise and a willingness to sit down with Claude Code for a few weekends is now a potential software founder. I can't wait to meet more people like Cory.