🚨 The Next Big Opportunity Isn’t AI. It’s the Trade

Hey listen, what if I told you the next gold rush isn't happening in Silicon Valley? It's happening on construction sites. It's happening in welding shops. It's happening in electrical rooms. It's happening in factories, mechanical rooms, data centers, and power plants. And here's the crazy part. Artificial intelligence? Yeah. You heard me. Artificial intelligence might be one of the biggest reasons why.

Entrepreneur with dirt on my boots, building dreams instead of chasing suits. Freedom paid and sweating time, a life that's rough but truly mine. Welcome back to The Tradepreneur Show. I'm your host, Patrick Somers. And this episode, man, it's something I'm passionate about. We've spent the last few years hearing that AI is coming for your job. But there's another side of the story. AI, it needs electricity.

It needs data centers. And data centers need cooling systems. They need HVAC systems. Buildings need electricians. Power systems need people who understand the grid. And factories need mechanics. Infrastructure needs welders, pipe fitters, plumbers, equipment operators, and technicians. So while AI is becoming more digital, The economy supporting AI is becoming incredibly physical. And with that, we get opportunity.

That creates the gold rush, or should we call it the blue rush? Let's start with something every entrepreneur understands, and that is demand. Because if you want to know where the opportunity is, don't just look at what people are talking about. Look at what the economy desperately needs right now. America needs skilled people who can build and maintain physical infrastructure. Take electricians. The U .S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics projects electricians' employment to grow 9 % between 2024 and 2034, compared with about 3 % for all occupations. You know, that's roughly 81 ,000 electrician openings every year over that decade. And here's another important point. A lot of those openings aren't simply because the economy is creating brand new positions. They're because experienced workers, yeah, the boomers, are retiring.

They're leaving the occupation. It's time for them to get to the next phase of their life. And that's creating a demand. And think about what that means. We've got an enormous generation of skilled tradespeople approaching retirement while simultaneously we're building an economy that requires more skilled tradespeople. That's a supply and demand problem. And whenever you have increasing demand colliding with constrained supply, opportunity abounds.

Look, I don't talk about this only from a business perspective. You know, while that excites me because I love business, the reality is I have a personal connection to this. Someone in my family built a successful career in welding, and I've watched what that kind of career can actually mean. Not the stereotype, not the joke about the guy in the dirty work shirt. I'm talking about a person who develops a skill that people are willing to pay for, a skill you can take with you, a skill you can turn into a business, a skill you can teach to someone else, a skill that doesn't disappear because an app got smarter.

That matters because we spent years telling young people that the definition of success. is go to college, get a degree, sit at a desk. But what if we've been overlooking another path? What if there are millions of dollars of opportunity sitting inside careers that we taught an entire generation to look down on? Yeah, can you tell I'm passionate? Watch my last episode on the trade career path versus the four -year college path.

BLS projects about 45 ,600 openings per year for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers between 2024 and 2034. The overall employment growth is only around 2%, but most of those openings are expected to come from people leaving the occupation, including retirement. That's the part people miss. A 2 % growth headline can make an occupation sound boring. But if tens of thousands of experienced workers are leaving, someone has to replace them.

If you're the person who has the skill or willing to learn the skill, you're suddenly very valuable. AI is increasing the amount of physical infrastructure we need. It's staggering the demand we're going to have in infrastructure. And here's the irony. We've been told AI is going to make the world more virtual. But to make AI work, we need to build a whole lot more stuff in the real world. Yeah, brick and mortars.

Brick and mortar buildings. Remember those? Data centers, power plants, transmission substations and cooling systems, fiber, backup generators, construction, maintenance, manufacturing, and people who know how to install and maintain all of it. The International Energy Agency, check this out. They project that global data center electricity consumption will roughly double by 2030. reaching around 945 terawatt hours.

Yeah, terawatt. And AI is identified as the most important driver of growth. But here's the number that really gets my attention. This is what really gets me going. In the United States, data centers are projected to account for nearly half of electricity demand growth through 2030. I'll say that again. Nearly half. We're talking about an... A revolution that is simultaneously creating a massive electricity infrastructure challenge.

I was at Norman Vincent Peale said in every adversity or challenge is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity. So here is my prediction for the next decade. One of the most valuable people in America might not be the person who can write the best AI prompt. It might be the person who can walk into a 500 ,000 square foot facility. That's big. Look at a problem and fix it. AI can generate an answer.

It can identify patterns. But it can't magically turn a wrench. It can't weld two pieces of steel together. And it can't run conduit. It can't replace a transformer. It can't climb into a mechanical room and figure out why the system isn't working. Listen, the physical world still needs humans. And right now, there aren't enough of them. There's not enough of them. available with the skill set. Let's zoom out, because even if AI disappeared tomorrow, America would still have an enormous infrastructure problem.

Check out this. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave U .S. infrastructure an overall grade of C in its 2025 report, and that's leaving out Arkansas. That's actually the highest grade the organization has ever given. That's the highest grade. It sounds like me in high school. It sounds encouraging, right? Except there's another number. ASCE, say that five times fast, estimates a $3 .7 trillion with a T gap between planned infrastructure investment and what would be needed to bring America's infrastructure to a good state of repair.

Man, think about that for a minute. And check this out. Nine of the 18 infrastructure categories. We're still graded in the D range. Oh, that's more like my high school grades. Think about that. Roads, bridges, water, wastewater, energy transit, dams, stormwater. Listen, all of these systems, they need people. They need people. We don't experience infrastructure as a spreadsheet. It's the bridge we drive across, the water that comes out of our faucet, the electricity that powers our house, the AC that keeps it cool, the roads our trucks drive on.

And trucks keep America moving. Former truck driver here, believe it or not. The building our businesses operate in, yep. The internet that connects our companies, the power that keeps a hospital running. And side note, I worked in a hospital when the two legs of power coming in went out and the backup generator dropped for about 20 minutes. You learn real quickly how important electricity is. When you're having to manually ambu bag patients on ventilators.

Infrastructure is invisible until it fails. And that experience I had in a hospital was a perfect example of it. And then suddenly everybody realizes how important the trades are. Because that example in the hospital, the company was Duffy. It was outside of Philadelphia. Duffy Electrical came and those guys worked around the clock. pulling huge, huge electrical cables underground and restoring power to the hospital.

But nobody thought about that until it was gone. And who did they call? They called the trades. They called the electricians in. Nobody makes a Netflix series about that guy who spent 20 years mastering commercial electrical or HVAC. But when the power goes out, the HVAC goes down in a 300 ,000 square foot facility or a hospital, everybody suddenly knows exactly who they need. The boring stuff becomes incredibly valuable when it stops working because every digital revolution eventually runs into the physical world.

AI needs power. And skilled people have leverage. That's why I think we're entering a blue -collar gold rush. Not because every tradesperson is suddenly going to get rich. It's not it, man. I mean, the money will flow, but the promise is something more fundamental. Demand is rising for skills that cannot simply be downloaded, creating opportunity. Next time someone say AI is taking everyone's job, ask them a question.

Ask them this one question. Who's going to build everything AI needs? The answer might just be you. You are. I've been working on a song. Check this out. Yeah. My D's in school paid off. I've been working on a song with the help of AI. I wrote it. AI produced it. It's about blue -collar work. It inspired me. I wanted to write something that really highlighted how important blue -collar work is. Morning comes too soon again Restless through the night Thinking about the things I can't change And the battles I still gotta fight But the life I chose I don't regret Though sometimes I forget Just how blessed I am to stand A blue -collar working man No college debt, no fancy degree that never served me anyway.

Just these two hands and a work ethic that pushes me every day. I build my house and work my land. I live life on my terms. My wife just smiles and understands this blue collar working man. working man. Lawyers and the doctors, they talk about their schools. Shoot me sideways glances like I'm breaking all their rules. I just walk right past them smiling, knowing something they don't see. You can't replace these hands with code or teach a machine to be mean. working man.

Entrepreneur with dirt on my boots, building dreams instead of chasing suits. Freedom paid and sweating time, a life that's rough but truly mine. Numbers tell you what's happening. Music reminds why it matters. Man, it gets into your soul, does it not? We dance not because we're awkward mechanical creatures, but because the music gets into our soul and moves us in ways we didn't know we could move.

So when you hear the intro and the outro, that's my tribute to the trades, the blue -collar working man. And women. It just didn't sound right saying blue -collar working man and women. You know, and something I got to share, I mean, blue -collar work to me is, it's the backbone of our country. In fact, I was just in Europe for two weeks, and it's the backbone of Europe. I saw more tradespeople working every single day, keeping things going.

And it just moves me. It truly moves me. You know, I come from a... a line of tradespeople, blue -collar workers. My grandfather started fixing truck tires in Philadelphia and ended up starting his own business. I worked in the trades off and on. I landscaped. I was a plumber. Now, let me rephrase that. I plumbed. I was more of a gopher. But when I was young, that's what I did. I love getting my hands dirty.

There is nothing like the feel of coming home exhausted, sitting on the couch, sitting in that easy chair and not being able to keep your eyes open because you've done an honest day's hard work. And I'm not bashing all the other jobs out there. They're all fantastic. But I just tell you, I see and I read stories and I talk to people and it seems like the most successful people I encounter. on a large scale, are blue collar. They're blue collar.

They're the ones turning the wrenches, digging the trenches, pulling the cable, whether they're welding a bridge on top or they're underwater welding on an oil rig or a bridge. Whether they're turning a wrench, fixing a car, I don't care what it is, man. It is passionate for me to promote the trades, to talk about the trades. And really, most of all, To help educate young people about the opportunity they have in the trades and to change the stigma. I am so sick and tired of the plumber crack cartoon and issue.

Now, I'll tell you, that's some of our own doing. That's some of our own making. But that's the old days. And the reality is that is a stigma that is here and everybody likes to laugh about. But let me correct everybody right now. That's not what a plumber is. It's not what an electrician is. That's not what an HVAC guy is. That's not what an auto mechanic is. They are professionals. And if you knew the amount of math, the critical thinking skills, the ability to read and write, I'll hand you a wiring diagram.

You tell me if that opens on high pressure or low pressure. You won't even know what the hell you're looking at. Listen, we're all specialists. I don't care if you're a surgeon, you're an orthopedic surgeon, you're a cardiovascular surgeon. You have a tremendous skill set. You weren't born with that skill set. You went to school and you invested tons of time and sacrifice to become educated. And then you put your time in on the job.

You did your apprenticeship before you could even really do your own thing on your own. There's no difference for you if you're in the trades. No different at all. And that's why I always tell our technicians. When you go to a house and you say, all I did was turn on the breaker because the breaker tripped, don't ever say that because that's not all you did. You probably went to the house of a doctor or a lawyer that doesn't do personal injury, does real law, and you probably turned on the breaker for them because they didn't know what the hell to do.

And if you did it correctly, you made sure it was safe to turn that breaker on for that individual's family before you turned it on. So with that said. Don't ever, don't ever look down on the trades. And if you're in the trades, hold your head high and be proud because you keep the lights on. You keep America moving. Listen, I'm Patrick Somers, and this is The Trey Panora Show. And remember, don't just learn a trade.

Build a business around it. Build a life around it. Build something lasting. And as always, win the day and be great. See you on the next episode. The Tradepreneur Show is brought to you by Patrick Somers. Executive production by David Field Producer. Producing and editing by David Field and Kristen George. Original theme song, Blue Collar Working Man, written by Patrick Somers, created using Suno AI.

To be a guest on The Tradepreneur Show or for sponsorship and partnership opportunities, contact Patrick Somers. Patrick at... thetradepreneurshow .com.