 I've been in the trade now for 23 years. In that time, I have been an apprentice. I've been a journeyman. I've been a foreman. I've been a site supervisor. I've been an estimator. I've been an operations manager. I've owned a couple of my own contracting businesses and now I'm an instructor. And in that time, I've seen apprentices make a lot of mistakes. In this video, what I want to do is talk about the five biggest mistakes I see all apprentices make and what you can do to avoid them. So let's get going. Okay, these are in no particular order. So don't think that I'm ranking them, but they are, I think of equal importance. Some may resonate with you more than others, but what I really want to get across is these five points I find are the ones that it doesn't matter what trade you in or what level you're at, you need to really consider avoiding them. So number one is staying with the same company for too long. Now I get it. I had such a great experience myself and I speak from experience on this one. I did my entire apprenticeship with one company and it was fantastic. I had the best bosses. I had great foreman, great experiences. The problem is when you're sticking with one company is you lose out on experience working with other people. And you can get into bad habits. And what can happen sometimes is you can end up learning bad habits from the company you're working with. So they might have their ways of doing things that you might not even discover is wrong. And when you go to another company later on down the road and you start finding better ways to do things. So sometimes what you're gonna do is you're gonna take experiences from this company and this company and this company and you can kind of put them all together and you're gonna get a great experience. So it's something that you'd wanna consider is branching out. And the same thing, you end up stuck in a niche whereas if you're with one company you might just end up doing nothing but residential or commercial or industrial for myself, my experience. I did my entire apprenticeship on climate control systems for greenhouses. That is an extremely niche market. So when I actually had a chance to get out and experience what else was out there the whole electrical world just opened up to me and I just fell absolutely head over heels in love with my trade because of that. So that's number one, do not stay with the same company for too long. Number two is working in unsafe conditions. There is no excuse for that these days. Those days of having to work in those situations where your boss tells you to do something they're long gone when it's an unsafe situation. It's not worth it. If you have the right to refuse unsafe work do not put yourself in those situations thinking that you've got to impress your boss, you don't. There are so much work out there. If you're worth your weight you're gonna find another job if they're gonna let you go because you're working in unsafe conditions. So if you do not feel comfortable working in the environment that you're in mention it to somebody. And if they don't agree with you and tell you to just suck it up then maybe it's time to start moving on and looking elsewhere. So number two is make sure you do not work in unsafe conditions. Number three, and this is a big one I see a lot and I see this with my students as well is never asking any questions. Now I know you're gonna be new to the trade and some of you this might be your first day on the job and so you think that you have nothing to add or you don't wanna bug anybody but you've got to ask those questions because if you don't ask those questions you're gonna make mistakes and you're gonna make mistakes regardless but you might make dumb mistakes that could have been avoided had you asked the questions and that's only gonna put you in a bad light with your boss and with your journeyman and whoever else you're working with the team. So you wanna make sure that you're asking lots of questions. Now that being said, there's a little caveat to that. Don't be that just chatty, chatty person that is constantly asking questions that you might even know the answers to. People see through that stuff. So just ask the questions that you actually have. Don't be making excuses to ask questions. So that's number three is not asking any questions. Number four, treating school as though it's a joke or some sort of hoop you've got to jump through. Now this is something that gets to the very fiber of my being being that I'm an instructor in electrical trades. I sincerely believe, and I believe this when I was going to school too that it's so important this school time. First off, the foundation of what you're learning the theory behind it is actually important. There are things that you're going to need to understand and you're going to learn those things in school. So that's really important to get those foundational parts down and understood. Secondly, the relationships you form in school will change everything. With these classes that you have to go to, you start actually getting involved in some great relationships and you start networking and you start getting to know people. It's amazing what you can happen in this. So keep in mind that going to school is not just about the theory, though that is very important, it's also about the relationships and the networking that can happen within it. And number five, our last point, acting like you know more than you do. This goes right back to ask questions. Make sure that you ask questions. This kind of goes into, when somebody asks, can you do that? And you say, sure, I know how to do that. And then you don't know how to do that. I got a friend who's the site supervisor of a construction renovation company. They go in and they renovate and fix up condos and they're constantly having problems because they're hiring these people that they ask during the interview, can you do this? Can you tile? Can you frame? Can you board? Can you mud and tape? Can you do electrical? Can you do plumbing? All this stuff, they're asking these questions. People say yes, and then they come in and they don't know what they're doing. So they end up getting the boot because they've been completely useless and basically they've lied. So don't act like you know what you're doing when you don't. And as an apprentice, you don't know enough. And there's one thing that really struck me hard. When I was on my fourth year and we just passed our TQ, which up here where I go to school, we just passed our final exam, which meant that we probably had our certificate of qualification, basically the first part of our ticket. Our instructor stood in front of the class and he said, now that you're a journeyman, the real learning can begin. So even, and I'm saying this through all four years, like yes, as a first day of your apprenticeship, you don't know anything and you probably don't think that you know anything. But when you're a fourth year apprentice, you still don't know as much as you think you do. And that's one thing you start learning over and over again. And like I said, I've been now in the trade for 23 years. I don't know everything. There's still things that I run into that my students are teaching me. So don't think that you know everything. Now that's it for tonight today. What I would love for you to do is in the comments below, what are some of the other mistakes that you see apprentices making? Let's get this community going and sharing about this because I think that we can change things if we let apprentices know the mistakes that we made and they can learn from our mistakes. And are you apprentices that are out there that are in your higher levels? What are some of the mistakes that you made that you wish you could go back in time and tell others about? All right, make sure you hit click on that subscribe, hit that notification and we'll see you next week at the Electric Academy.