The Skilled Trades Crisis No One Is Talking About with Manja Horner

The Skilled Trades Crisis No One Is Talking About with Manja Horner

Manja Horner: Okay, so you've got this amazing guy, but he's a master plasterer from, you know, the old country, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, like that area. So everything that he did, like you- if you got to work alongside him, awesome, but like he couldn't describe what he was doing. He wasn't gonna write an SOP on how to do it.

His time sheet was barely legible. So a guy like him is now retired. Where's all that information? Where's all that knowledge? Like, it's captured a little bit in a couple people. I've got some of it. You know, a couple other people that worked under him learned about it, but not enough. So that's a shame.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, "Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal." And we couldn't agree more. This is The Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development. capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast.

And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 340 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to bring you Manja Horner. Manja is a learning experience strategist and the founder of Boost LD, where she helps trades and construction companies transform their workforce through powerful digital first training systems.

With deep roots in corporate instructional design, including designing training for thousands at BMO, and a background as a certified music and business teacher, Manja brings a rare mix of creativity, structure, and strategy to everything she builds. She's trusted by thought leaders and industry trailblazers who turn chaos into clarity and training into measurable team performance.

What sets Manja apart is her ability to make complex information simple, actionable, and unforgettable. She doesn't just deliver learning, she engineers it to stick. If you're ready to future-proof your workforce and turn your people into your biggest competitive advantage, Manja is the partner you want in your corner.

Manja, it's an honor to have you on today.

Manja Horner: What an intro. Can I have you follow me everywhere? That is so kind. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today, honestly.

Kelly Kennedy: Me too. Me too. First off, two things that we've never touched on on this show in 340 episodes, learning design, which is funny because my fiance actually works in learning design, and we just have never really put those two things together on the BDP.

And then obviously the very specific focus to HR and learning design solutions for the trades, which is something that I know when we started talking about me being in Alberta, I'm like, "Yes. Yes. Let's do more of this. I need to learn more." So I'm equally excited to have this conversation and just kind of learn how you ended up on this, on this, path, which has been very interesting, you know, from music teaching through corporate, all the way into the learning design you do today.

So very excited to have you here, so thanks for coming.

Manja Horner: Yeah. I-- It's interesting because I always wondered what I would want it to be when I grew up, and I never really could pinpoint that. And I've often felt like I've meandered through life. But I had a really interesting conversation. I asked a question one time to the president of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment in Toronto, and he manages the Air Canada Center, and concerts, and the Maple Leafs, and all of these sports and entertainment.

And it was in university, and I asked him, "How did you get to be qualified to do this job?" And he said, "You know what? I worked in all of the pieces, and suddenly at this stage in my life, they all came together and I'm qualified for this role." And so I've held onto that 'cause now I don't feel so bad that my journey has meandered.

It's brought me here.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, we all do kind of find ourselves on a path, and we don't know where it leads, and I think maybe that's the excitement about entrepreneurship that I've found on my journey. It was funny, like, I just did an interview like an hour ago, and we were talking about how I could have never looked at my start into entrepreneurship.

Or, or, or even if you look at the journey as a whole, I could have never seen how all of the pieces would lead me to the path that I'm at today with regards to, you know, what we're building with the Catalyst Club and what we're building with coaching and, and how even the company has gone from essentially consulting into a lot more of like a, like a fractional leadership model for anything- Mm-hmm

we do on that model. So you don't see where you're going, but everything, you're absolutely right, comes together to say, "This is the path," and you're on it, and now you're qualified to do those things. It's pretty, pretty amazing. I think entrepreneurship is a journey and, and, uh, probably one of the coolest journeys I've ever been on.

Manja Horner: Agreed.

Kelly Kennedy: Take us, you know, to the beginning, though, Manja. Like, you're-- you've had a very interesting career. I think you're the very first, you know, uh, violin teacher we've ever had on the show, so that's pretty exciting. But just walk us through, you know, walk us through your journey. Did you always plan to be an entrepreneur?

Show us, show us those paths.

Manja Horner: Okay. I gotta take you back kinda far for this if you don't mind.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely.

Manja Horner: I had a really unconventional education myself. I had a mix of homeschool Christian private school and homeschool again and public. And the reason for that was I had my older sister, who's still living, have, I have an older sister, and at the time she had cancer.

So she was five. I was just a, a year younger, and so we- Wow ... we got started on this unconventional journey of homeschooling way before it was cool. We're talking 1990.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: So that kind of started this, I don't know, expectation and of learning in a different way. And homeschooling actually does motivate children differently than public school.

You have to become pretty self-driven. Yeah. You get really self-directed, and for some it works, and others it doesn't. But for me, I loved it. By the time I was in grade seven, eight, I had had some private school, one year of public. That was a disaster. I hated it. And when I was grade eight, I really completed my music education studies.

I got to the point where I could actually be qualified as a music teacher by the age of 13.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Manja Horner: And that same year, my dad, who owned a construction company, he was really, like, at his peak, and I helped him transition from his paper-based accounting and bookkeeping to QuickBooks software. So I was 13. I was sitting in the office every night with my dad, helping him get QuickBooks uploaded, all the accounts organized.

So I learned a lot just about- Yeah ... what does it look like behind the scenes. He, I actually did a lot of data management for him and, like, data input over my young teenage years. I will preface, we had no TV, so there was a lot of spare time.

Yeah. I was happy to help.

Kelly Kennedy: But you had a computer.

Intro: I loved it.

Yeah. I was, I loved it. We had dial-up internet- Yeah ... out in the country, and, uh, it was great. So that's a little bit of the behind the scenes of a trades company. And then I was a music teacher a few years later, so I was already starting to teach professionally from the age of 16 to 26. I had a music studio with, oh, anywhere from 20 to 40 students.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Manja Horner: Uh, so I was pretty busy during those years teaching. I taught young kids. I taught adults in various styles of, uh, classical to Cape Breton-style fiddle, and got to learn with some really cool people. So I was already creating lesson plans. I was strategizing, like, long-term to get students to examinations and, like, it's a whole thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: So yeah, that's not typical for a teenager.

Kelly Kennedy: No.

Manja Horner: And then through the teen years, I was also working for my dad's company, um, working on job sites. He paid really well, and he loved having his three girls working in his business 'cause he did heritage restoration. So we were working on historic- Uh, building sites Oh, wow And we were hard of preservation.

So he would give us a room to strip all the paint out of, and he liked it 'cause we weren't hard on the, on the material. We weren't hard on that heritage pine, for example, which is really soft. We were very precise, and we were careful. And we knew that this was contributing to our family's bottom line.

Yeah. So, like, we weren't trying to dog it and waste time. Like, we were hard workers, we did a good job, and we learned a lot about restoration and preservation. So I was on job sites, in the shop replicating piece, you know, wood components, spindles, wood windows. Like, we got to be part of manufacturing.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Manja Horner: Uh, so that was really cool. So I got a little bit of insight into carpentry, construction, the trades early on, but I was also a musician. So, like, I had a already a weird high school experience.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: And then it was like, okay, it's, it's high school graduation, what are you gonna do when you grow up?

My dream was to get into music. Ultimately, I wanted to be a fiddler for Shania Twain.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, wow.

Manja Horner: And I was effing good. I probably should have. But, uh, my dad, I remember, he was a professional musician in his young days, and he said, "You know what? You can't make money as a musician. You should probably pick something else."

Uh, I picked business. Yeah. I didn't really know what else to do, and I knew I loved businesses and how they ran, and I always thought that I wanted to work for myself. So I did a business degree, and then kept working the music studio. And then I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna, like, pursue a little bit of higher education in this, in the, in the education space."

So I went back to university at University of Toronto and did a teaching degree, and that was kinda mid-20s. So I'm qualified to teach business and music at high school. But turns out you can't swear at high schoolers, ... and it's really an annoying job. Yeah. So anybody who's a teacher, kudos to you, because being in high school as a music teacher or a business teacher- Yeah

it was not my thing, especially at, at the age of 25. I was just like, "Screw this." I don't know. I probably shouldn't swear on your show. Sorry about that.

Kelly Kennedy: That's okay. That's okay. You said effing and not the actual word, so we're good.

Manja Horner: Okay. Okay. Sorry. I will, uh, I'll pare back on the swear words. I work in the blue collar, you know?

Yeah. It's like-

Kelly Kennedy: I know the- It's a thing ... I know, I know it well.

Manja Horner: Yeah. So I basically, after all of these things, I had this qualification and I went, "I don't really want to work in high school, so I'm going to look at something different." I was playing a music gig- And I love these pivotal moments. So I was playing this gig, and it was refreshments between shows, and I was talking to a woman I knew pretty well who was a teacher, and I said, "Ugh, I don't wanna be a teacher.

I don't know what I wanna do with this. I know it's not high school." And there was another woman, actually a brilliant flute player, world class, and she said, "Oh, you should check out what I do. I work for the Club Med of corporate training." And I had never heard the term corporate training before. Mm-hmm. I didn't even know what that meant, but she worked for BMO at the Institute for Learning, and she had a PhD in adult education.

She was this brilliant woman. She introduced me to BMO Institute for Learning and the world of corporate training. So I got hired the day after I did a, a one-month internship. So basically, I said to the hiring manager, Doug, who's currently one of my best friends, like just love Doug to pieces. I said to him, after being introduced, "I have to do a one-month internship to finish up this program.

Any chance you want me to come and work for you for free? You can give me a random project, I'll give it a try, and we'll see how it works." So I got hired the day after that as an- Wow ... instructional designer, so that, that concluded, and that was my foray into corporate training.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Like I said before, this is the very first time that learning design or instructional design has ever been said in 340 episodes on this show, so I can already tell, you know, our listeners may be o- obviously understanding this is creating learning programs.

I think maybe they can put those things together. But can you maybe dive a little bit deeper into what it takes to create material that people can actually learn from and, and learn from well?

Manja Horner: Okay, so I love this. This is a labor-intensive process. This is a very, very well-developed skill set. If you hear of people who are curriculum designers or instructional designers or learning experience design, there's a lot that goes into this.

So basically, you are taking subject matter expertise from somebody or a group of people, and you are using that, and you're being influenced by the end user, so you do a lot of research. Who's the end user? What's their world? What do they need to know? How do they need to use this information? What's their mindset that needs to change?

Uh, there's a lot of behavior modification, honestly, a lot of psychology, a lot of neuroscience, and so you have to understand all about the brain's plasticity, how it works, how people learn, how learning sticks, how to develop skills, and then you take all the knowledge from somebody who's trying to get, like, "We've got all this information.

We need people to know it and do better." So you take that kind of stuff, and you take your understanding of how adults learn best, and you mash them together, and then you create a program that means p- you get the outcome you want, so people can know something differently, they can do something better, and they think in a different way, and you can measure that So it's a whole process really to get people's behavior to change and some sort of information to stick.

So it's quite complex, and at the bank, what that meant was I was in charge of a lot of sales, customer conversations, leadership, coaching. So I did all of that for branch world.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Manja Horner: So anybody at the branch level, we were responsible for training them. So it was a lot of responsibility.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Okay. That's really interesting to see it from a corporate side because the only way that I have seen it specifically is, you know, with, with Shelby's work at NAIT, right?

So through like an institution, it's... I've never heard of it specifically at a corporation until I met you, and we kinda started- Mm-hmm ... discussing what this was. I had no idea that there were essentially learning designers at institution- Yeah ... level.

Manja Horner: Yeah, there's whole departments that work within typically the HR umbrella, you know- Okay

because there's a talent strategy. So from a company perspective, if we drill this down to, let's just say a company of 50 or 100, which is who we work with now, they're going, "Okay, we, you know, need our people to work and be productive and to not make mistakes and to be safe and all of that." So there's an outcome at the business level that's usually tied to revenue or productivity, so we want people to be able to do this.

So then that means we need to get clear on who are those people, what's the job description? Then we need to recruit great people who have maybe the skill set or we know they're great and we wanna train them. So there's an entire HR strategy-

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm ...

Manja Horner: around getting the right people in the door, and once they're there, then it's, okay, what's their first day to their first 10 years in the journey?

You know? So we actually a- do map out learning paths-

Kelly Kennedy: Wow ...

Manja Horner: for people to be able to be successful in their role and then move up and get trained into other roles.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. So kinda make- So

Manja Horner: that's a huge strategy at a big corporate level. It makes- And then for a small company, it's right- Yeah ... sized for them.

Kelly Kennedy: Mm-hmm. Okay, 'cause I was gonna say it makes a lot of sense maybe at that level, like when you're talking large scale corporation. I've never seen this, a- and I've worked at some pretty big companies. They're, I think this has been pretty rare, at least in my experience with the companies I've worked at, and I've worked with companies that have, you know, do $60, $100 million a year, and they definitely did not have a program like this in place, at least that I was aware of, once again.

Wow. I guess maybe I wasn't aware of it, but- Okay ... it's, uh, it's interesting from that standpoint. In your experience, do you, do most organizations that you come across have this or is this something that you have to introduce?

Manja Horner: Most have something, but often it's not that formal. And yeah, again, it depends on the size of the company, but I've since then, you know, done a lot of training sales And yeah, most companies have very strategic learning development departments, and there are strategies, and there is training, and there's a learning management system that holds the training.

So yeah, a lot of companies have this.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Yeah, just not something that I've come across very often in, in my career. Uh, so I do find it interesting. Obviously, throughout that time, working at BMO and, and other organizations you've worked at, large scale companies, you've probably learned what works and what doesn't work, and I think maybe I'd like to chat a little bit about that because- Yeah

I think if companies could do more of what works and maybe understand how to put together a, a l- an LMS or a learning management system, something along those lines, they could be more effective at this. Um, what have you seen when you're working with different companies with regards to what, what has worked that you've seen, and then maybe what are companies doing that isn't as effective?

Manja Horner: Yeah. Okay, so I love this question, what works? Basically, we have to treat adults as if they're adults, and we have to recognize that there are principles for adult learning that you have to stick with. So people don't learn by just giving them a whole bunch of, brain dumps, like, "Here you go. Okay, now you can do it."

That's not true. You have to make information accessible so that people can go back and reference. So a lot of times it's drawing their attention to where do I look this up, or how can I, how can I find this information? Just think about YouTube, like, we do a lot of our personal learning through YouTube, right?

It's like, oh- Yeah ... I've gotta change this, I don't know, light fixture. I've never done that before. I'm gonna look up on YouTube how to change a light fixture. Yeah. Adults typically go source out the information when they need it. Yeah. So a lot of times you have to make sure people know where to go and look, and that has been a challenge in the past because companies aren't great at holding onto their own repository of this is how we do it and keeping that well organized.

It's changing a lot with AI. Actually, we're prototyping, uh, some things now so that we can access information more readily within a, in a company's database-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Manja Horner: by using AI or, you know, retrieving information using AI models. So this is actually really exciting 'cause things are changing from a technology perspective that are gonna make learning and development professionals much more effective.

So that's one thing. I think the other thing that people do well, or this is the converse, they don't do it well, is they expect people to be better at something without giving them opportunities to practice.

Kelly Kennedy: Hmm.

Manja Horner: So of course, being a music teacher, you can't get good at something unless you've practiced.

So one of my philosophies, and it's carried me through my entire career, is you've gotta give people- Good structured opportunities to practice. They need to have immediate feedback, and it needs to be in a safe enough environment that they're not gonna screw things up but they can actually truly learn from it.

So practice has become a bedrock to making learning stick. I think that's the thing that's most often done incorrectly, is it's like it's more an infomercial or an- Yeah ... informative thing rather than an actual training. So those are two things kind of off the top of my head. There's a lot more just based on the principles of how adults learn.

Lots of principles. We could talk about it for hours. Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: No, I'm sure we could. No, I, I agree completely. I would say that almost everything that I've learned in business n- I couldn't have really learned it just from a book, right? No. You have to be put in that situation over and over and over again. I talk to a lot of people who are struggling with imposter syndrome, and what I always say- Yeah

is you're only an imposter until the day you wake up and you're not, right? Like, if you do something enough times and you're good at it, your brain at some point can no longer tell you you're an imposter at it because you're doing it and you're killing it, and you're doing a great job. And so I kind of look at it the same way.

It's like you have to be put in that situation repeatedly until you become an expert in whatever that situation is. Yeah, everything I've, everything I've learned, I feel like I've, I've had to learn the hard way, I hate to say. But-

Manja Horner: I know ...

Kelly Kennedy: once again it's that hard way and that repetitive process of banging your head against a wall that eventually you have your aha moment.

Manja Horner: Yeah, sometimes I say our... when I hear somebody has made a big mistake in business, like they lost a deal that they were counting on or something, I'm like, "Ooh, that was an expensive tuition."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: You know? But unfortunately, especially in business your tuition dues are those mistakes you make along the way.

Hopefully, you won't have to pay the tuition due twice.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. Exactly. You gotta learn from- I paid a

Manja Horner: lot of tuition.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, me too. You know- Yeah ... take me into the trades. Now, this makes a lot more sense to me now, now that I understand that you grew up, you know, with a father as an entrepreneur running a construction- Mm

company. But you could have focused on any industry with learning- Could have ... design. What was it specifically about skilled trades and construction that you saw the opportunity?

Manja Horner: Oh, that's a great question. I'll just kind of pick up from where I left with BMO. I worked there for a number of years, and the thing that was so cool about working there was they had massive budgets.

So I got to work on award-winning projects huge budgets. I got to be part of the end-to-end system. So, like, what happens from the very beginning when somebody in the company says, "Hey, we need to do better at this," all the way to the learning system, the technology, to the very end, and then cycle back through.

So, like, that was really cool. I got to see the whole journey and the whole cycle. Yeah. Some instructional designers only get to see one little piece That's most people, they just do their one little bit, but I got to see the whole cog. Yeah. And that was just because I got kind of sat on some executive potential tracks, and I got exposure that was intentional from my boss, Doug.

So once I left there more personal reasons, little kids, commuting, all the things, burnout. Yeah. Plus I'm very entrepreneurial, and I was starting to poke my fingers into things at the bank level at very high levels where I was like, "Why are we doing this?" Anyways, that's political. We won't go there.

We don't know who's ta- who's listening. I'll move on. I actually resigned after a stress leave. Okay. I was like, "I'm done here." And I started freelancing. So I had a really good reputation for getting big projects done. So I got hired by some different industries. I worked in pharmaceutical. I worked with doctors to create training for pharmacists.

I worked in the natural health space, so, um, you know, medical herbals.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: I got into creating safety training programs, training consultants on how to deliver stuff. Like, I just got into all these different models, and what I loved about that was I, I was like, "Oh, okay, we do training for companies, but there's different ways of creating training and selling it."

Yeah. So that was kinda cool. You know, I just got into different business models. I got exposure to a lot of different things and then realized I've got my own intellectual property. I actually have my own ideas, and I could train people on those.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: And so that really kind of opened my eyes to, huh, I can build stuff that I own that I can train people on.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Manja Horner: And that was kind of cool. So the trades bit, it kind of all happened one time I was walking down the main street of a neighboring town in Ontario, and I live in a, a very historic area. So I was part of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario, and they are kind of like a governing body that lobbies at, at the government level.

They do a lot of fundraising. They fight to protect h- historic buildings that are of significance. So I was part of that, and so I really care about buildings that are old and making sure that they stay and, you know, are part of our history and our legacy in Canada. So I was walking down the neighboring con- uh, uh, neighboring town street, and I saw a very important brick building being absolutely sandblasted by this, these yee-haws who were-

taking all the paint off of the brick.

Yeah. And there was just clouds of brick dust, and my stomach just goes like- Holy cow, what are they doing?

And so there's this big issue in the industry, and I won't go too far into it, where essentially low bid gets the deal.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: It's a real problem in construction, actually.

It should be low bid gets thrown out, high bid gets thrown out, and you go with somebody in the middle. And I started to look into, is there any certification for heritage people? Who's sta- who's governing? Who decides that, like, this guy with his, like, two other dudes can just come and sandblast this building and wreck it?

Like they- Yeah ... wreck the brick.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Manja Horner: And that happens a lot. So I started looking into that. You know, my dad's a heritage professional. He's part of an association of heritage professionals where you have to be kind of nominated to be there. But I learned that there's no training, and there's no certification.

So like some of the other trades, you have to be a certified electrician- Yeah ... or you have to be a Red Seal this or a Red Seal that. There's nothing for heritage. Even... Yeah, so it's kinda wild. So that kinda got me on a journey of, all right, I'm a training person, Dad, you're a heritage guy. Like, what if we do something about this?

So I started exploring this, uh, got some actually really interesting meetings within the government advanced skill development departments. This was before there was a big push for skilled trades training. Okay. This was actually back when the only thing the government invested in was climate initiatives.

Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: So there wasn't really the budget at the time. Um, so I kinda parked that, but that's really the starting of why did I get involved in trades. 'Cause I saw a need, and I went, "Wow, we can do something here."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: So my mission is a, and vision is a little different now, but it's quite tied to that pivotal moment.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I could definitely see that being... Especially when you spent so much of your life protecting the buildings, I could absolutely see why that would be. Not to mention, we have some beautiful old buildings in, in Canada across the country. You're on the West Coast right now, lots out there. I spent some time in Halifax a few years ago and was just absolutely blown away by some of those beautiful old buildings and old churches there and freaking graveyards that go back to, you know, the 1700, 1800s.

It's pretty, pretty incredible, I think. And, and I... You know, maybe for me, it's just a little bit surprising because I grew up in Alberta, and Alberta is fairly young in the grand- Yes ... scheme of, of Canada. So there's not much out here that's old, old. But man, it's pretty cool when you get to see like Victoria, Halifax, and some of those just absolutely, you know, old places within Canada.

Manja Horner: It's beautiful. So I, I love the calling

and- yeah, and in Ontario... Yeah, sorry, and in Ontario and, uh, Kingston, Toronto, there's a lot of stone. Yeah. So we have a lot more buildings that have lasted and are still standing. Whereas Alberta, you have a lot more timber construction- A

Kelly Kennedy: lot.

Manja Horner: Yeah ... which is why you don't have things that are as old.

Yeah. Yes, it's, you know, been developed, uh, in more recent decades and, uh, centuries, but Yeah, it's kinda cool. So anyways when I started my business, I, for a little while, was working with other sectors, and then very quickly I went, "You know what? For one, I need to niche down for marketing purposes." So that was a real driver.

And then two, I just said, "I like skilled trades. I wanna be part of this I wanna be part of this solution."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. '

Manja Horner: Cause there's a third of the workforce of skilled trades is retiring. That's pretty significant. Wow. You know, I talk to some companies and they're like, "Yeah, most of our workforce is over the age of 50 or 55."

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: And then there's been a whole stretch of time where students in high school were not encouraged into the trades. Everybody was funneled into university. Uh, so we had a big s- you know, I don't know how long exactly, but we had a span of time where the trades were not getting the people into it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Manja Horner: That's shifting as the governments across Canada are going, "Oh, no- Mm-hmm ... we've got a gaping hole in our skilled trades workforce." Lots of warm bodies eager for the salaries, but not necessarily skilled. So there's an issue with that right now, and that's what we're on a mission to solve.

We're on a mission with Boost LD to become the number one skilled trades trainers in North America. We wanna have an amazing repository, really strong methodologies, and it's built for the trades. Yeah. It's a different kinda worker, different kind of job site. They're not at computers. We have to train differently.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Well, let's lead into that, 'cause I can definitely see the challenge here. You know, I was gonna ask you, what are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing with these construction companies across Canada? And I think you just nailed probably the biggest one, which is just a lack of people. It's not that there's necessarily a lack of work, but, you know, I experienced this when I worked in, uh, in inspection services many years ago, where you could have the work, but you simply didn't have the people to perform that work.

Are you seeing that happening again? And, you know, what is the... What has been your experience with the young people? Are they choosing to go into trades, or are they still being pushed in a different direction?

Manja Horner: So you've got probably three or four threads there that we can draw on, so if I forget something- That's okay

help me come back to it. Sure. So one is, are young people going into it? Yes, I think the governments are doing a pretty good job of encouraging young people into the trades. There's money going in. There's more awareness happening at high school levels. Um, Ontario's doing a great job. David Piccini's a minister there.

He's really pouring a lot of money into skill development fund. A lot of that's going into unions.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Manja Horner: So they're putting money into union training Facilities training programs, more innovation in training, so leveraging virtual reality, leveraging simulators to give kids an idea about what actually the trade looks like.

Yeah. What does it mean to work in that trade? Start to kind of sample being an elevator technician through virtual reality, or working from heights through virtual reality, crane operators. They're doing more almost like student trade shows, student competitions, Skills Ontario. So there's definitely a lot happening there.

BC's got a boom in building. I don't know what's going on in Alberta as much. I'm hearing from some of the unions it's a little quieter, but unions aren't, don't have as big of a presence in, in Alberta. So yeah, it's... I'd say like it's, there's progress.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Manja Horner: And I would say also there's, you know, there's a lot of, let's just say warm bodies.

There's definitely newcomers to Canada that they're trying to get in the trades. But what we're missing is that middle skill. So you got people really skilled leaving, you've got lots of new ones, and then you've got people, like some in the middle, but that's where the gap is.

Kelly Kennedy: I see.

Manja Horner: So what's being demanded is people don't stick with a job for 30, 40, 50 years-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Manja Horner: and develop that deep expertise. They're tr- we're trying to get them skilled up within 15. So it's just like we're shrink- we're trying to shrink how long it takes for people to get good, and that's the really challenging. So what we're working on right now is knowledge capture-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Manja Horner: from more senior tradespeople.

We've got lots of technology. We've got cameras, we've got GoPros, we have audio, we've got screen captures, you know. So we're trying to do more around capturing knowledge, databasing it, and making it then accessible for younger people and being able to train on it. So it's, that's our effort. That's an- Yeah

that's a mission for sure. I feel like there was another good question in there, and now I can't remember.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, goodness, I missed it too, but we'll, we'll probably pull back to it after.

Manja Horner: We'll cycle back. I'll

Kelly Kennedy: remember when I , when we come back to this. No, it's, uh, it's just really interesting because I've, I've interviewed quite a few different HR leaders on this show already, and they were just talking about how, basically, like you mentioned the 30-year career, the golden watch is just dead, and it's not necessarily people's fault.

Like corporations have done that, have created, you know, uh, not necessarily the most the not necessarily the safest environments for employees over the past little while, right? And so I could definitely see how that would be impacting the trades where, yeah, historically, people used to get in. You're an electrician, you're an electrician till the day you retire, right?

But I think now- Agreed ... it's more of a gig type economy, right? People come in, they might spend two, three, four years, and then they're off to something else, and it's for their own protection Do you think that's gonna change for the trades? Or, or what effect does that have long term, in your opinion?

Manja Horner: Yeah. I hear complaints from construction leaders saying, "I have a good guy," or, "I have people, but they're leaving to go work for the guy down the street for a dollar more." So that's when I say, "Okay, well, what are you doing to drive people away?" Like, it's your responsibility to retain, and your strategy should be, once you get somebody good in the door, you wanna keep them there- Yeah

for a long time. So let's work on creating an environment where people wanna stay, they love it, and they wouldn't dream of leaving. So there's a bunch of components there. There's certainly a culture piece. How great is your employ- is your work culture? Retention's huge. Uh, onboarding's really important.

There are direct ties to a better onboarding experience, means people stay longer. Yeah. There are direct stats there. Provide ongoing career conversations. This is missing in trades. Nobody has a career conversation. Like, "Hey Kelly, let's have our one-on-one. All right, where do you wanna s- go? Where do you see yourself?

What skills do you wanna develop?" Nobody has those conversations- Yeah. Mm-hmm ... in the trades. Mm-hmm. That's very much a corporate conversation, but it can go a long way. "Oh, you wanna be a foreman? Amazing. When do you wanna be a foreman by? Oh, you think you can be that in six months? Okay. Well, realistically it's gonna be 18 months, and here's the training we're gonna have to do to get you there.

So show me, you know, show me your stepping up," and you know, like those kind of conversations and then some structure around it. That's really important for retention. If you know that you're the least paying guy on the street, increase your pay if you don't wanna lose them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: Or offer other kinds of compensation.

Have, like, bonuses for quality or bonuses for speed or whatever. Incentivize people differently. So they do have to think differently in the trades. You can't keep doing things the way you've always done it, or yeah, you will get left behind, and I think that's what we try and do with our customers is challenge status quo.

Yeah. We say, "Challenge everything and Boost LD anything." Mm-hmm. Like, you can Boost LD any of the aspects of your business if you're challenging- Yeah ... the status quo.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. I love that. No, it's, it's interesting, and I guess maybe one of the things that that I can see business owners saying is, "Well, isn't that expensive?"

But maybe the argument is, isn't not having a system like that more expensive, especially if you're having high turnover?

Manja Horner: Yes. Employee turnover is extremely expensive. It takes a lot of money to post jobs, recruit people, interview them, test them out, train them. You've got supervisors and leaders who are involved in training.

Like, it's, it's not very productive for your bottom line to be hiring and cycling through people. It's actually extremely expensive So you're better off putting a little bit more into somebody to retain them. Truthfully, like model it out. The numbers prove that. So yeah, it's a little bit more expensive to figure it out, but a little bit of training to get your managers and supervisors to have career conversations, it's not that complicated.

Yeah. Do it once a month. Do it once a quarter. We're going into places where they've never had a career conversation. Yeah. That's unacceptable.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. No, I've, I, I've worked in, not per se construction, but like I said, inspection services for a very long time. Very similar, right? They go through a skilled set of learning.

They, they get a ticket in something, and then they go to work on the oil and gas fields or whatever, right?

Manja Horner: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: So I understand that, and I remember too, like, I was in the operations, and I don't remember there ever being specifically, uh, "Let's talk about your path. Let's talk about what this looks like for you."

And you know, that was back in, you know, the early 2010s, so different time. I think a lot- Yeah ... has changed. I think COVID really shook everything up and made people start to think a lot more about their people than we ever did before, which is a great thing, but I, I wish we were doing it sooner.

Manja Horner: Yes, I know, right?

It's like, yeah. So there's, I mean, there's a lot of challenges. It's not perfect, but we like to support people who have a vision to be better and who have a vision to leave a great legacy, who wanna be a great workplace, who are open-minded. That's who we work well with. We don't work well with people who don't wanna change.

Mm-hmm. I'm basically like, "Yeah, we're not the right company for you," because we are gonna disrupt a lot.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

Manja Horner: It's for the better, but like sometimes that middle part, um, you know, there's, there's a little bit of pain in change, and one of the things we do work carefully on is not having too much change.

'Cause as we can see, there's lots of real examples in, over the past number of months and years with too much change too fast is very destabilizing. Yeah. So you have to be careful.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You know, you touched on it earlier with regards to the essentially using a GPT style model to start to take a whole bunch of information and make it really easy to access.

I think that's incredible. I think every business that has databases at all should be incorporating this, and it's not as hard as people think. It can be done very cost-effectively nowadays. So I love that you guys are doing that. One of the other questions that I have is, what does the future look like for learning?

Um, obviously, AI is coming in. There's different tools. Where do you see the future of learning design going for businesses, um, specifically in the trades or field-based industries?

Manja Horner: Yeah. So I think we're gonna be levering techno- leveraging technology way more. We have the ability now to retrieve information and interact with LLMs or learning language models.

Chat GPT is one, Claude's one. I don't recommend that. Honestly, I think it's better to do a local LLM so that it's more secure. Yeah. So it's just your company, just the information you're feeding it and training it. That way it's, it's only you. It's not AI randomly making stuff up based on the internet.

You don't want that. So I definitely see re- uh, retrieval augmented generators or RAG for short. That'll be very much something that companies are doing to pull from big documents, databases of information, software-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Manja Horner: interviews or videos. It's going to be pulling from that, so you can interact and ask questions in a real language, and then get real language responses.

So that's definitely the way things are gonna go. We're prototyping, we're building that. By the time this episode comes out, it's gonna be implemented in companies all over the place.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing.

Manja Horner: So yeah. So for sure, that's happening. I see continuous practice being something that's important, so live coaching, live feedback.

The human element isn't going anywhere. Working with a person who can give you really strong feedback is going to become a way to accelerate people's skill set. So we're doing that with communication training in the trades, as well as leadership training in the trades. We're not putting people in a classroom and sitting them down and telling them stuff.

Um, we're actually just doing individual practice so people get better at crucial conversations. That's something we're doing. For sure, that's a way of the future. Skip the crap and just go right to the practice. Another one is learning in the flow of work, so really carefully curated on-the-job training that's intentional.

Not just like, "Hey Jim, get over here. Let me show you this," but more systematic. So, "Let me show you this. Here's a peer to help you. Now I want you to show me, and I can attest to the fact that you've done it properly." That's gonna be a lot more useful in the field. Um, and then just having access to technology on your phone, being able to pull up information- Yes

in the moment, that's certainly gonna be very, very much the way of the future. This idea of having your own repository of how we do things around here, so kind of your own YouTube channel.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep.

Manja Horner: I say YouTube in air quotes. Uh, but just, like, encouraging companies to collect data and training and store it Better so people have access to the way you want it done.

Kelly Kennedy: I love

Manja Horner: that. 'Cause they're gonna go looking how to do something, and you don't want them looking at, Tom on YouTube. You want them looking at how we do it here-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Manja Horner: in our own internal video repository.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh. W- why have I never heard of that before? That's an... every company should be doing that.

Manja Horner: Yeah, and it's so available. I mean, we can set up tripods on, on the job, and just, like, video stuff.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: You know? We can hire a dude to follow people around on a job site and video them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: Like, it's not that expensive.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. 'Cause, like, it seems very simple, right? But I don't think I've worked at any company that sat me down and said, "Hey, why don't you check out these videos on how we do things?"

It's like, we could've been doing that for 20 years.

Manja Horner: Yeah. Well, and just think, okay, so going back to my experience within the heritage trades, you're talking real craftsmen, okay? And so I remember work- the company I worked for with my dad, we had a, an amazing Eastern European guy named Bronco. So Bronco, his English was pretty tough, even after a long time being here, it was hard to understand him, and he, his English writing skills were really poor.

You needed a decoder- ... to understand what he was doing. Yeah. Handwritten time sheets.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: Okay. So you've got this amazing guy, but he's a master plasterer from, you know, the old country, again, in quotes, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, like that area. Yeah. So everything that he did, like you, if you got to work alongside him, awesome, but, like, he couldn't describe what he was doing.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Manja Horner: He wasn't gonna write an SOP on how to do it. His time sheet was barely legible. So a guy like him is now retired. Where's all that information? Where's all that knowledge? Like, it's captured a little bit in a couple people. I've got some of it. You know, a couple other people that worked under him learned about it, but not enough, so that's a shame.

I've worked alongside guys from England who built and restored wooden windows with old hardware. Like, that's lessons learned that are just gone.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yeah.

Manja Horner: And it's not that hard to video them doing something, and then have them talk through what are you watching for, and what mistakes should you avoid here, and what would you do differently next time, or if you were telling me Giving me feedback on it, what would you tell me?

You know, like just asking some questions and getting them to talk through a process while you're videoing them, you could take that into something useful

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, could you ever. Like, really what we're talking about is YouTube, but essentially on a corporate level.

Manja Horner: Or TikTok.

Kelly Kennedy: Or, yeah, exactly. But like on like a corporate level- Yeah,

Manja Horner: lots of TikTokers

Kelly Kennedy: it's like this is now internal information. You could take those videos and that data, you could upload that into, you know, a GPT style whatever you call it.

Manja Horner: Yeah, right.

Kelly Kennedy: And you could have all of that data in one place to be able to just search at the snap of your fingers. You're absolutely-

Manja Horner: Yes

that's amazing. That's the way to go. So we've built that out, and it's in companies, and it's... I'm so excited that this technology is here because-

Kelly Kennedy: So cool ...

Manja Horner: 15 years ago, we had intranets. Intranets, okay? Big companies have their own internal knowledge management. We had them full of stuff, and it was all stuck 'cause nobody- Yeah

knew where to get the information. So yeah we're at a good place technology-wise. I know a lot of people are really worried about what AI's gonna do, and, "Oh, it's gonna take our jobs." If you're worried about that, start learning it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep.

Manja Horner: Because if you don't know how to use it, yeah, it's gonna be scary.

Kelly Kennedy: And if you think about it from the standpoint of right now, we're all at, like, an even learning level, right? Like, anybody listening to this show right now could learn a new AI-based program in three weeks. Just pick one and start learning it. Uh, and over time, you'll learn 5 and 10 and 15, and you will be able to 5 to 10X your productivity overnight, making yourself incredibly valuable.

I think w- the people that are afraid, like you said, I love what you said there, you shouldn't be afraid. Just start learning how to use it.

Manja Horner: Yeah, and start learning the core fundamentals. If you're worried about ChatGPT or Claude or Groq or any of these things, just start learning about what is an LLM, what is machine learning, and read a book that's maybe, you know, eight years old, and just understand, like, the core fundamentals.

It's not as, it's not as alarming when you look at it at, from that perspective. Yeah. And you can then start to see the value for your own industry. Lots to think about and talk about in AI. I mean, every six months we're seeing even in shorter time, we're seeing huge leaps, so.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Yeah. It's, uh, st-

Manja Horner: It's hard to predict where this'll go.

Kelly Kennedy: They're saying that AI doubles in power every six months, and basically it's like, I forget the number, but let's call it, like, 1,000 times more powerful in 2028 than it was in 2023. I believe that's the statistic, and it's like we can't-

Manja Horner: That's wild

Kelly Kennedy: can't even imagine what that looks like yet, right? But it's gonna be big, and it's gonna change everything. Can't even imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Manja, take us into Boost LD. Uh, we've obviously been talking about your experience and learning design. W- what is Boost LD specifically? Who is it for? What do you do? Who do you help?

And how do people find it?

Manja Horner: Awesome. Okay, so we've got two divisions for Boost LD. We have BoostUnions.com, and there we're working with skilled trades unions across North America, mainly modernizing the way that they handle their operations. So that's business optimization at the office, it's HR foundations, and it's just helping those offices run better w- mainly from a people perspective, so leadership and then all the staff at the office.

You're taking tradespeople who got elected and are now running multi-million dollar businesses, and they've never had that business training, Or maybe two weeks, but not a lot. Yeah. So we're really a lifeline there, and I love it 'cause they're-- we're helping people who wanna leave a legacy, who wanna leave a place better than when they got the job.

So I love that. Uh, we also build training that goes to union members, so communications, leadership. A lot of times they already have their skill-based training 'cause they're some Red Seal trades or things like that, so we're not as much in that category at this point- Yeah ... but would love to be. And so that's Boost Unions.

The other side is Boost LD. So that's our Boost Learning Design side of things, and there we build out learning ecosystems for skilled trades companies. Typically, we're the right size when a company's about 50 employees and growing because they are just at the size where it's really time to have a small learning department.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: But maybe you can't quite afford to invest in multiple people to run your HR and training. So we're a fractional team, so you get the benefit of HR people, training people, compliance, technology all in one. We kind of manage that function until it's time to hire yourself internally. So we're building courses, uh, for skilled trades.

We're setting up this knowledge capture engine within companies leveraging AI.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: There's some foundational HR stuff that we do. But yeah, really, if it's, if it's a skilled trades company that needs help with their growth on the people side we're the ones. You know, we're, we're on a mission to be the number one provider of skills, uh, skilled trades training

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing

Manja Horner: Yeah.

Did I say that right?

Kelly Kennedy: You did. Skilled trades training. It's,

Manja Horner: like, a lot of, like, a lot of words.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. Yeah. No, it's, uh- Yeah. ... it's incredible. And for the business owners listening who, you know, you said 50 people, but that shouldn't be the point at which they're starting to consider something like Boost LD, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. What's the point at which an organization should start to bring, you know, an organization like Boost LD into the radar?

Manja Horner: Well, yeah, good point. I think you start to know when you're wearing too many hats. And you may be... You can see that people are leaving, so there's turnover. You've got frustrations.

Maybe you need to hire leaders. That could be a place where you start to bring us in. "Oh, we need somebody to manage that team or manage those operations." We've got, companies that have technicians and salespeople, and they're a little smaller, and they go, "We wanna invest in you now 'cause we know we're growing."

So I suppose, you know, 35. We have worked with some clients who are a little smaller like that. You just have to be at a point where you're willing to invest 'cause you know you're growing. Yeah, so some of the triggers are just you're doing too many things yourself. Uh, you need to expand your leadership team.

There's a lot of hiring happening, and you wish you had somebody else who was taking that on for you. People aren't performing the way you want them to perform, so that's a, a training issue usually. Maybe there's a lack of clarity in the work and the roles, and you just wish things were tidier and more organized, and you had a system in place.

That would be when you'd start to identify. And, I mean, it's not cheap. You know? Like, you're talking a professional salary. So you can expect to be spending 120, 150, 180,000 in a year to get this all set up and working. So it's an investment. But in the back end, you're getting the benefit of four, five people on a team who all have different skillsets coming to the table on a project.

So it's really a, actually, a powerful-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah ...

Manja Horner: model.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: And you don't have to try and tie them together. Like, we manage all of that and go, "Here you go," and you're like, "Wow." So I can give you an example of one client if you're curious.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Yeah, please.

Manja Horner: So they're a transit maintenance company, so they maintain a train line.

There's only 40 employees and technicians, but they're very skilled, and there's a... It's highly regulated, so this is a compliance issue. So it's like, okay, we built out the entire learning ecosystem for them, from the technology, the learning management system, all the training courses, all the learning paths, teaching their leaders how to coach.

Yeah. Like, we did everything for them. That's also, you know, a, a- An AI-powered tool to be able to have people search the thousands of pages of manuals on switches and train components and all these things from the manufacturers. So yeah, we built that out. Wow. So that's an example of a project.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay.

Okay. And obviously, like you said, if something goes wrong, here's the other side to that. You've put together a very robust training system. These people are obviously not just certified, but you know, they're checked for competency, which is the big thing- Yes ... about learning design.

Manja Horner: Yep.

Kelly Kennedy: And if something goes wrong, if, if something, you know, God forbid, happens to that train line, and, and eventually obviously, you know, regulatory is gonna come down on anything like that hard, these people can actually say, "Hey, look, we actually trained our people.

We've put them- Yeah ... through, you know, robust structured training. They have access to everything they could ever need on their phone. We've done everything we could to make them successful and, you know, it sucks that that happened, but we did what we could." And at least they have that in place.

Manja Horner: Yeah, it definitely reduces risk, and a lot of industries require this kind of reporting to show that people have the qualifications. Yeah but it also reduces cost because it's very costly in the trades when people make mistakes. Yeah. So the more you can give clear direction and monitor and make sure they have the skill set the more you can reduce costs with mistakes.

Um, obviously there's safety risks and cost. That's why health and safety is such a giant training sec- sector 'cause you've got hu- human lives at stake there. Yeah, so reputational risk, you wanna have a high quality. You want your customers to keep coming back. That's definitely a reputational monetary risk.

So, uh, it, it's a big part. I mean, when you're in a business of people moving things, creating things, tearing them down, building them up, um, you need a well-skilled, well-trained workforce to be able to be profitable.

Kelly Kennedy: And it's, it's interesting because I think your particular services kinda fit in this spot that people aren't thinking about until they think about it, right?

Like when we look at an organization, we think about operations- Sometimes ... we think about HR, we think about safety, we think about, you know, the workers in the field, but, it hasn't come up a ton, and I'm not saying that it doesn't. But just in my experience, it hasn't come up a ton where it's like, how do we actually teach these people and make sure that they're competent and they know what they're doing?

Uh-huh. Obviously, it comes up in the conversation, but I think the idea that someone can hire a company like Boost LD to help them with this, it feels a little bit revolutionary to me.

Manja Horner: Oh, well that's cool. I love it. Yeah, right now we're just trying not to be the best kept secret.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Well-

Manja Horner: So we're quite actively-

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah

Manja Horner: out there talking about what we're doing. We do a lot of door knocking and handshaking. Um, you know, it's a little old school in some of the trades, especially unions. We're fine with that. Um, it's real relationship building. I go on podcasts like this, um, you know, trying to put out more long form content, uh, online.

But yeah, it's really just about not being the best kept secret.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Manja Horner: And we really do have a heart for the trades, as you can probably, hopefully has come out in my stories. I do genuinely care. I care about this issue with skilled labor being at a shortage. It's not good for our company, uh, like our country.

It's not good for our economy. Yeah. This is the backbone of our economy and keeping infrastructure well-maintained and stable, so it is important.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. That takes us to the end of today's show, Manja. If people wanna get ahold of Boost LD, what is the best way for them to do so?

Manja Horner: Probably just look for us online. Um, you can connect with me personally on LinkedIn. Love to hear from you or on Instagram. But check out our website, Boostld.com. Probably most of your listeners are gonna be in that category rather than the union side.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Manja Horner: Um, but yeah, Boostld.com. Feel free to go check us out and see what we're up to right now, and if you or you're, you know somebody who could use this help, um, reach out.

I have lots of things that I can send you, and you can share with your, uh, friends or colleagues. We'll be happy to have a conversation.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And if you're hearing this right now, obviously the links for Boost LD will be in the show notes for this. It'll be all over LinkedIn. We'll be tagging Manja, so you'll be able to click her and follow her.

Uh, Manja, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thank you for coming.

Manja Horner: Great. Thanks for inviting me. This is such a great platform. I appreciate it.

Kelly Kennedy: It's my pleasure. Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website@ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.