Feb. 20, 2025
Craftsmanship and Professional Pathways with Matt Kitzmiller
Discover the transformative power of lean methodologies in the construction industry with our insightful conversation featuring Mr. Matthew Kitzmiller, a professional shooter, journeyman electrician, and lean trainer for Rosenden Electric. Gain practical insights into the crucial role of discipline and communication in developing craft professionals, as Matthew shares his extensive experience and introduces a groundbreaking handbook for continuous improvement. With contributions from experts like Rob Light at Penn State, this resource bridges the gap between theory and practice, promising to revolutionize efficiency and culture in construction.
Embark on a journey through the unpredictable career path of an electrician, starting from an initial curiosity in the trade to navigating challenges and triumphs across various roles. From the elevator industry to unexpected opportunities in Building Information Modeling (BIM), witness how resilience and adaptability lead to alignment of passion and profession. Get inspired by stories of significant projects, learning new technologies, and embracing leadership roles, illustrating the importance of mentorship and technological adaptability in career growth.
Explore the critical impact of training and development on employee retention with a focus on emotionally intelligent workplaces that prioritize soft skills and cross-training. Through personal anecdotes, Matthew recounts the negative effects of outdated teaching methods and highlights the shift towards supportive environments that foster workforce satisfaction. This episode wraps up with reflections on life lessons and mentorship, where strong relationships and dedication become the foundation for success and fulfillment, leaving a legacy of positive impact in the industry.
Connect with Matt:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kitzmiller-229a378a/
Make yourself a priority and get more done: https://www.depthbuilder.com/do-the-damn-thing
Download a PDF copy of Becoming the Promise You are Intended to Be
https://www.depthbuilder.com/books
00:00 - Learning and Development in Construction Trades
11:16 - Navigating the Electrical Trade Journey
23:00 - Transitioning to BIM in Electrical Trades
28:28 - Diving Into the Electrical Industry
36:34 - Career Trajectory and Skills Development
49:29 - Training and Development Impact on Retention
57:56 - Life Lessons and Promises for Success
WEBVTT
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So when you teach people that, hey, man, you don't have to yell and scream, First of all, I'm right here.
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Second of all, I don't need to be yelled at.
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And third of all, your message.
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I don't even know what you're trying to say because your tone is so offensive.
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Discipline and hard work are supreme currencies that will always be there.
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You don't have to be as sexy as I am to be a plumber.
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I was drinking whiskey and Coors Light.
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From the second I got home to the second I went to sleep every day.
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So my relationship with my wife at the time was pretty rough.
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What is going on?
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L&m family?
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I got somebody here that's got some serious street cred.
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I just learned that he's a professional shooter, which is interesting.
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I think we'll learn a little bit about that.
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He's also an adjournment electrician maybe a master by now.
00:00:50.354 --> 00:00:52.582
He's in the learning and development space.
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He is a lean trainer for Rosenden Electric.
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Mr Matthew Kitzmiller and, if you can't tell already, some of y'all that have been here before some of you repeater fenders probably have an inkling now of why I'm so interested in having this conversation with Matthew.
00:01:09.069 --> 00:01:27.162
I got to see him present at LCI Congress in San Diego and he's had some major, major impact on training and developing and educating craft professionals, which is just the thing that moves my spirit, and so we're going to get to learn more about Mr Matt.
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And if this is your first time here, if you're a first timer, this is the learnings and missteps podcast, where you get to see how real people just like you are sharing their gifts and talents to leave this world better than they found it.
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I'm Jesse, your selfish servant, and we're going to get to know Mr Matthew.
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Mr Matt, how are you doing my brother?
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I'm good sir.
00:01:52.561 --> 00:01:56.081
A little bit of technical difficulties, but we got it done, my man, we got it done.
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Amen, man, we made it through that bad boy, which, of course, that's like just further evidence of you haven't spent time in the trades, because the tenacity that you displayed to do all the things that needed to happen for us to be on here, that's rare.
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I might've thrown in the hat myself if I was on the other side.
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So let's just get to it.
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I've talked about you being in training and development, or learning and development, and I suspect that you didn't do it cowboy style the way I did, and why?
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I suspect that is because I got to see your presentation in San Diego, and so there's this handbook that I kind of read about.
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What is it?
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What's that handbook of continuous improvement?
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So we have a handbook.
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Well, let me back up.
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So there's a couple of the people that presented with me at LCI this year we present with each other pretty much every year for the last three or four and one of those guys is a guy by the name of Rob Light and he works as a faculty member.
00:02:52.989 --> 00:03:02.201
He's basically a teacher at Penn State here in Pennsylvania, so he basically his job is to collect data, like one of the parts of working at Penn State is.
00:03:02.201 --> 00:03:12.769
They're a very big research institution, like probably one of the biggest in the world, so they do a lot of white papers and they do a lot of research and they're a very active bunch of people.
00:03:12.769 --> 00:03:18.111
I've been there to Penn State and presented in front of some of their PhD candidates once last year.
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Yeah, pretty neat, definitely different, but he was.
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He came to our Rosadin office and in Tempe, arizona, which is in the Phoenix area, and I basically he was handed off to me like hey, take this guy, yeah, yeah.
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So I took them and we went to a couple of jobs that looked good, a couple of jobs that didn't look so good, and kind of had the opportunity to compare and contrast and we shared a lot of information back and forth as far as you know what good lean products look like from the production standpoint and what's some that could use a little bit more, a little bit more in culture.
00:03:54.770 --> 00:04:17.192
So all of and he did that with several other organizations other than the one that I work for, rosendon Electric and he basically started putting together this handbook and used a lot of the research that he got from his site visit to putting this handbook together and it's basically it's a collection of ways that lean resources are applicable to actual trades.
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There's a lot of things in that lean sandbox that play well with perfect star alignment, but there's a lot of them that really lend themselves to actual trade work as well.
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So that's basically what that handbook is.
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Awesome, all right.
00:04:32.541 --> 00:04:36.701
Well, let me know what you think about this, because I have this debate.
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It's probably more of a complaint, or maybe even more of me just whining.
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But, gcs, this is me saying this out loud.
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This is not you, this is me.
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Gcs seem to believe that they need to teach the trades how to be lean.
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My argument is, if anybody understands and for clarity, folks, if you don't know what kind of lean we're talking about, we're not talking about losing weight and working people to death.
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We're talking about continuous improvement.
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We're talking about respect for people we're talking about.
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We're not talking about losing weight and working people to death.
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We're talking about continuous improvement.
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We're talking about respect for people.
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We're talking about developing people, which, for me, is the whole damn purpose of this lean philosophy, ideology, cult, whatever you want to call it.
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And so if anybody understands the value of eliminating waste and developing people, it is trade contractors.
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I think again, this is me a lot of what's in construction, because I haven't seen the same type of problem outside of construction.
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But in construction, most of the lean tools that are available are about organizing, coordinating, kind of higher level type stuff, and maybe blind to how these concepts can be attached to work at the point of installation.
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What do you think about that?
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Yeah, I totally agree.
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You can see it in P6 schedules, right?
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Or any of those tools, right?
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You can see that on this date the electricians are going to be on the site.
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On this date they're going to install gear.
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On this date they're going to energize and then, by God you know, on the fifth bullet point, they're done.
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You know?
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So all the stuff that takes place in between the predecessor and successor work to all of those things, those are the most important parts, right?
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Yes, right, yes, and that's the part that you know.
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When you look at most GCs, specifically like superintendents, you don't see a whole lot of superintendents that are electricians or that were previously electricians before they took their current assignment.
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So the likelihood of them understanding the intricacies of our work as electricians or carpenters or painters or pick your poison, the likelihood of them understanding that is not very likely, right?
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It's not very clear.
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So, when it comes to the education piece, yeah, they can educate on some things, but they're surely not equipped well enough to educate us on most things.
00:06:57.899 --> 00:07:01.930
Yeah, yeah, and it's not because they're inadequate, it's a frame of reference.
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They haven't walked in it.
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I don't know if you know this, but and folks out there, this is a rare thing, so you might want to save this and share this with people as evidence.
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But before that we're going to do the LNM family member shout out, and this one goes out to Mr Lance Furuyama.
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Lance dropped me this note.
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He said I was fortunate enough to join the second session of the time management workshop and it changed the way that I look at my calendar.
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For those that know me, it looks like I'm a master of organization and planning, but what I didn't realize is that I wasn't.
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I wasn't allowing time in my calendar for myself or the things that I really want to do.
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So, lance, first of all, thank you for taking the time to hang out with us in that workshop and leaving this awesome comment to the rest of the L&M family members out there.
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Drop me a comment on the socials.
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Leave us a review on the wherever and everywhere, because that gives me the opportunity to celebrate you on the future podcast.
00:08:07.831 --> 00:08:17.735
I'm a plumber and so the reason I'm saying that is it's rare for a plumber and electrician to have a, we'll say, civil conversation.
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I know that was not going to happen, bro, I ain't got time to talk to them.
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Yeah, that's a fact, sir.
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You should have told me you were a plumber when we first met.
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I probably wouldn't be here today.
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That's why I kept it a secret.
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Yeah, and it's interesting that, like, the common point that you and I have is Henry Nutt.
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Right, he's a sheet metal guy Right, like what is happening out there, man, it's amazing.
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Yeah, all right, so when was it like sixth or seventh grade when you discovered that you wanted to be a lean leader and train and develop people in the construction industry?
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No, it was probably a 20th grade.
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I would say Something close to that.
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Yeah, yeah, I had no idea about the trades most of my younger days, as far as that being a viable path for me.
00:09:03.346 --> 00:09:05.134
Yeah, yeah, I had no idea about the trades most of my younger days.
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As far as that being a viable path for me, yeah, yeah, not at all.
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It wasn't at all something that was on my mind.
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I was.
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I was pretty hell bent that I wanted to be a Navy SEAL.
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That was my calling.
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10-4?
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Yeah, I went and took a, took an ASVAB test in the 11th grade and did really well, and I had a an old, an old injury where one of my pinkies didn't close all the way.
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It kind of you can kind of see it, doesn't.
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Oh yeah, I see that blast, yep, yeah.
00:09:34.581 --> 00:09:47.993
So the interesting thing about that is that they basically the recruiter, the Navy recruiter that I was working with told me that you know, you can do pretty much anything you want in Navy Navy, but you're not going to be able to go to BUDS because you're not going to be able to pass a physical examination.
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So from there, you know, I kind of asked him a couple other questions like hey, well, what else prevents me from being in the Navy?
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And he started telling me you know well, tattoos and all these other things.
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And so, in my infinite wisdom, at 17 years old, I kind of took that as all right.
00:10:04.298 --> 00:10:11.984
Well, I'm going to start getting tattooed a lot, I'm going to show you people what's up and I'm literally like covered in tattoos present day.
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So from there I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
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I wound up dropping out of school.
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That was my 11th grade, the end of my 11th grade or going in my 12th grade.
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I dropped out of school and I didn't really know what to do.
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I had a friend that had an opportunity for me to go to this aircraft mechanics school and I'd met somebody.
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The next I don't know week or so, as I was kind of getting my paperwork together to apply for the school, I met this person that said hey, you know, my friend owns this elevator company, you know, and I know he's looking for people.
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So if you're interested, you know, let I know he's looking for people.
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So if you're interested, you know, let me know.
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And I was like, eh, I didn't even know people work on those things.
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And, yeah, this is, yeah, it sounds horrible.
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This is like in the South LA area where I lived at the time.
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So so, yeah, I took this job for this crazy, this Turkish dude named Ted, in the Long Beach area, and after I don't know probably three or four weeks, we were building residential elevators there and after about three or four weeks of being on these jobs, I started noticing that, you know, there was these guys that were, you know, a different trade and they always seem to be shooting the shit and having fun and carrying on.
00:11:15.831 --> 00:11:18.525
I remember asking my journeyman one day.
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I was like, hey, man, oh, don't worry about those guys you know.
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And I'm like, well, who are they, you know?
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Do they live here?
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Do they work here?
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Oh, those are the electricians.
00:11:26.210 --> 00:11:27.734
Bro, don't worry about those guys.
00:11:27.734 --> 00:11:33.842
You know, that's so awesome.
00:11:33.863 --> 00:11:41.787
So a short, a very short amount of time later, and I, as an elevator guy or elevator person I wouldn't really call myself an installer at that point in my career, but working in that craft, you do a little bit of everything.
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You do some electrical work, you do a lot of plumbing, you do a lot of everything, and I had already, like, kind of fallen in love with the wiring portion of my work, which is, you know, I was very new to the job so I did very little work, but they did throw me a couple of bones here and there, you know, allowing me to work on some electronics and some electrical stuff.
00:11:59.123 --> 00:12:06.534
So, yeah, probably the end of 1997, something like that, I went to work for an electrical contractor in the South LA area.
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I did that for probably two or three years.
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Then I moved to Central California.
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So three hours north of LA or three hours south from the San Francisco Bay area is an area called San Luis Obispo, California, which is one of the pretty much God's country, the most beautiful place I've ever lived, yeah, okay.
00:12:25.567 --> 00:12:35.504
Which is one of the pretty much God's country, the most beautiful place I've ever lived, yeah, yeah, I mean, if you imagine where a country kind of living in in the ocean come together, the Pacific ocean kind of come together, that's what.
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This place is just expensive to live there.
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But I made it work, figured it out.
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I stayed there for about five years.
00:12:40.061 --> 00:12:45.513
I moved to the Phoenix area and I'd been working as a non-union electrician the whole time.
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So did you go to like apprenticeship or you just went straight to work?
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I went straight to work.
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Yeah, so, so 2005,.
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I got to the Phoenix area, took a job in a similar kind of shop as I worked at in California some light commercial but mainly, you know, heavy residential, like custom home type stuff Got it.
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So I was working there and I was jackhammering this footing for this guy's garage that he had.
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It was like a I don't know a 20,000 square foot garage and the service was coming up.
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Yeah, it was a humongous thing.
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The service was coming up off the side of the building and there was a footing in the way that was kind of preventing my conduit to smoothly transition up the wall outside.
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So I'm jackhammering a little bit and I slipped and I hurt my back.
00:13:34.091 --> 00:13:34.712
Oh damn.
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My boss is hey, man, you know we still need to get some distances for and I need to buy wire, you know.
00:13:39.868 --> 00:13:43.754
So I need to get some distances from the actual street to this building.
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I'm like dude, I don't think you understand, like I can't even barely pick up my tools.
00:13:47.567 --> 00:13:50.929
Man, like, my back is pretty bad yeah, yeah.
00:13:51.340 --> 00:13:54.250
Yeah, and I'm at that point in my life, I'm 25.
00:13:54.250 --> 00:13:58.412
So I'm not like overweight, I'm pretty fit.
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You know, I've always been pretty fit.
00:13:59.785 --> 00:14:02.823
So I mean, this is just one of those things that happens, right, Right.
00:14:02.823 --> 00:14:12.005
So he's kind of upset and I go through a worker's comp claim, miss a week of work or something like that, probably not even a full week, and when I come back they lay me off.
00:14:12.779 --> 00:14:15.389
Oh, that's yeah dirty, that's dirty.
00:14:16.461 --> 00:14:19.269
Arizona is a right-to-work state and there's some things going on there.
00:14:19.950 --> 00:14:21.150
But me coming from California.
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I'm like I'll show you sons of guns, you know, and I call a lawyer and they basically laugh at me.
00:14:25.092 --> 00:14:27.154
You know, hey, dude, that's not how this works.
00:14:27.154 --> 00:14:33.701
So so I called the uh, I called the local IBW, the local electrical union in Phoenix, and let them know my scenario.
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And they're like well, you know, and this was about two hours from where I was living I was living about two hours away from from Phoenix, in a town called Prescott Valley, prescott Valley.
00:14:42.149 --> 00:14:43.532
So so I basically let them know what was going on.
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They're like hey, you know, it's about a two hour drive to get here every day, but if you're willing to make the, make it work, you know we'll put you to work tomorrow.
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Damn, all right.
00:14:53.097 --> 00:15:00.087
And it was for like two bucks, maybe three bucks more than what I was making after, you know, I don't know, five or six years of being doing electrical work.
00:15:00.087 --> 00:15:02.150
So I'm like shit, dude, I don't care about that.
00:15:02.230 --> 00:15:09.340
I'm in, you know, so I got my little four speed, you know, toyota, and I started making the drive every day, wow, yeah.
00:15:09.340 --> 00:15:10.182
So I got there.
00:15:10.182 --> 00:15:17.533
You know, I was telling them how much experience I've had and you know, I thought, like most young people, I thought I had it all figured out and knew pretty much everything.
00:15:17.533 --> 00:15:28.153
But I immediately started working on a convention center, a brand new convention center in downtown Phoenix, and it was a pretty heavy commercial, like bordering, some light industrial work that I was doing there.
00:15:28.153 --> 00:15:34.284
So they told me, you know, we're going to put you through some school, you're going to take some classes and you'll be a journeyman electrician in no time.
00:15:34.284 --> 00:15:36.721
So I'm like, okay, you know, this is perfect, right.
00:15:36.721 --> 00:15:39.508
So I started dumping my money into these classes, right.
00:15:39.528 --> 00:15:50.796
A couple of years I start, you know, just putting more and more time in and all of a sudden, the program that I was a part of that gets me from being a sub-journeyman to a journeyman.
00:15:50.796 --> 00:15:53.663
It wasn't an apprenticeship, it was just some classes, right.
00:15:53.663 --> 00:15:55.726
That program was thrown away.
00:15:55.726 --> 00:16:02.326
The contractor that I was working for at the time they weren't accepting apprentices to work for them.
00:16:02.326 --> 00:16:11.052
So there were zero apprentices at this contractor because we were going to school, you know around one, 32 o'clock, you know, a couple of times a week.
00:16:11.052 --> 00:16:13.385
So they needed bodies on the job.
00:16:13.466 --> 00:16:20.101
So to basically say, hey, you know, this daytime school is bullshit, we're not going to hire any apprentices how do you like that?
00:16:20.101 --> 00:16:23.886
You know, I never met an apprentice, never heard anything about the apprenticeship.
00:16:23.886 --> 00:16:31.191
So I kept on going through these classes and going to these classes and then, you know, it finally got to the point.
00:16:31.191 --> 00:16:32.375
It was like you know what I I in my time on the planet.
00:16:32.375 --> 00:16:46.056
At that point I come to the realization that it's time to cut my losses, right, yeah, so so I joined the apprenticeship and started from scratch, you know, and took about a three this is what seven years into it now, yeah it is Ooh, baby, yeah, that's huge.
00:16:46.301 --> 00:16:56.488
So 2008, I took a I think it was like a three somewhere between a three and $5 an hour pay cut in the apprenticeship as a first year apprentice and it was horrible.
00:16:56.488 --> 00:16:58.706
It was another very close friend of mine.
00:16:58.706 --> 00:16:59.360
Current day.
00:16:59.360 --> 00:17:03.183
There was another guy in my class and basically had the same thing happen to him.
00:17:03.183 --> 00:17:08.248
But yeah, I graduated my apprenticeship in 2012 and went straight to it.
00:17:08.248 --> 00:17:12.311
Man, pretty rough way to get it done, but got it done.
00:17:12.311 --> 00:17:14.913
Kind of went to Alaska via Mexico.
00:17:14.913 --> 00:17:15.454
You know what I mean.
00:17:15.454 --> 00:17:16.214
I do.
00:17:16.516 --> 00:17:18.196
I think there's some critical points there.
00:17:18.196 --> 00:17:28.612
First of all, good on you for sticking it out, because I know a lot of people that would have said, oh, it's never going to work, the world's against me, and just floundered around.
00:17:28.612 --> 00:17:38.171
I think one important, really valuable point that I'm assuming has played forward in your life is sometimes you got to take a step back, to take a big leap forward.
00:17:38.171 --> 00:17:43.923
Apprenticeship folks, if you don't know, for electricians it's five years, isn't it?
00:17:44.343 --> 00:17:48.665
Yeah, it's between three and five years and it all depends on the frequency of your class date.
00:17:48.665 --> 00:17:52.028
So if you go to school one day a week, it might take five years.
00:17:52.028 --> 00:17:53.849
Two days a week, and so on and so forth.
00:17:53.849 --> 00:17:55.210
You get there faster.
00:17:55.451 --> 00:17:57.672
And so you've been in the trade.
00:17:57.672 --> 00:18:00.753
You signed up for this special program.
00:18:00.753 --> 00:18:15.228
You were taking classes to accelerate, to earn the journeyman license and status, and then you had to go back as if you had just graduated high school first day on the trade as an apprentice.
00:18:15.228 --> 00:18:21.064
That's a lot of, I'm going to say, humility and maybe an understanding or appreciation of the long game.
00:18:21.064 --> 00:18:23.086
So props to you.
00:18:23.689 --> 00:18:27.862
Now, what would you recommend to people out there that are interested?
00:18:27.862 --> 00:18:32.220
I want to be electrician or you know, maybe they want to be super cool, like for real y'all.
00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:35.126
You don't have to be as sexy as I am to be a plumber.
00:18:35.126 --> 00:18:37.992
I want to be clear about that.
00:18:37.992 --> 00:18:52.811
But would you recommend, if you knew, going back then, because part of the problem is they don't tell you this, right, they don't talk about the opportunities that are in the trades, and when I say they, I'm talking about the adults that young students are interacting with.
00:18:52.811 --> 00:18:56.820
Would you choose or recommend to say you know what?
00:18:56.820 --> 00:19:05.537
Just find an apprenticeship and start there, or would you recommend go out there, get some dirt on your boots and do a couple of jobs before you pick an apprenticeship?
00:19:05.916 --> 00:19:26.467
I think that working as a summertime helper or anything that you can do to kind of see what's happening around you and have the opportunity like maybe working for a general contractor on a cleanup crew or anything like that, you know, once again, this is good summertime work for a lot of young and you'll probably make more money than you could imagine.
00:19:26.467 --> 00:19:39.088
You know, just working as a summer helper, I think, seeing it and understanding it and having the opportunity to see the different folks and how they do what they do, I think a lot of times we think about, we think of plumbers and we think with those two things.
00:19:39.088 --> 00:19:45.799
You think about light switches and toilets, right, and it's a very small portion of our job, right?
00:19:45.799 --> 00:19:54.603
I mean, the very last finished product is that toilet or that sink or whatever fixture you're dealing with, or light switches or outlets.
00:19:54.723 --> 00:19:55.064
Yeah.
00:19:55.104 --> 00:19:55.705
Whatever it is.
00:19:55.705 --> 00:19:56.827
Yeah, it's.
00:19:56.827 --> 00:19:58.118
There's a lot out there.
00:19:58.118 --> 00:20:11.276
You know, the term electrician or the term plumber or the term painter is open for interpretation, right, there's so many different alleys and avenues that you can kind of pursue within any of those, those, those different jobs, different careers.
00:20:11.276 --> 00:20:12.178
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:12.398 --> 00:20:20.425
I mean there's service, there's new construction, there's renovation, there's residential residential right and all those four.
00:20:20.425 --> 00:20:24.834
My dad's a plumber, that's how I got into it and he liked doing residential service.
00:20:24.834 --> 00:20:28.925
Plumbing man, I couldn't handle that, like cleaning out somebody's stuff.
00:20:28.925 --> 00:20:35.667
Laugh at me because I I gag right, you're not a real plumber, I'm a commercial plumber.
00:20:35.667 --> 00:20:39.182
I like new stuff or I don't have to smell the stink or see the stink.
00:20:39.182 --> 00:20:40.425
That's my style.
00:20:41.027 --> 00:20:46.342
I tried service for a little bit and the guy that I was riding with two days into it, he's bro.
00:20:46.342 --> 00:20:47.728
You're not a service guy.
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