From Lineman to Top 1% Podcast Host: Bridging the Field–Office Divide in Construction | Ryan Lucas

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Today our guest is Ryan Lucas. Ryan, welcome.

Ryan Lucas (00:46)
Thank you very much, sir. I’m glad to be here.

Rishi Srivastava (00:48)
First section is on from the field to the executive table. You spent about 15 years on the tools before moving into management and now into brand and communications. What moments most shaped how you see the gap between field and office?

Ryan Lucas (01:08)
I heard my CEO say this in a recent like safety brief and it kind of hit home. He was talking directly to the safety professionals that work for the company, but this really applies to anybody that works in that office setting. I think anybody that works in the office and then as it relates to the people in the field, he says, he usually sees

safety people on one side of the road drinking coffee and the the workers on the other side of the road drinking coffee and he’s like you need to get your butts across the road to each other’s sides and sit and talk with it was a was a basic statement but like I think if you just take that principle to heart the idea is that you need to get away from the the group that you’re just hanging around all the time and you need to get in with the other group and it’s about

that human connection. I think that that’s something that I’ve learned by being in both roles, being on the tools, working as a journeyman lineman for so many years and then being in the office. The more that you can get around each other, the better off everyone’s gonna be.

Rishi Srivastava (02:10)
The world is so rich because we all do different things, you know, and we together when you combine that output, suddenly we become very powerful.

Ryan Lucas (02:21)
100 % right? There’s so much to learn from each other. And the idea is that you just have to get around each other and start building trust with each other through regular human connection and communication. And as soon as that trust is built, then you can really dig into like whatever else you got to dig into whether it’s it’s regards to the work that needs to get done or, whatever that is, but you need to you need to get on each other’s side of the fence and start working together.

Rishi Srivastava (02:46)
trust is invaluable in construction. I was talking to a prospect yesterday and he said he trusts me more than my competitors. And again, it’s not easy to earn.

Ryan Lucas (02:57)
No, no, no, it’s not. It takes serious time, I think is what it takes to earn trust.

Rishi Srivastava (03:02)
You’ve talked about always having a creative side while working in the trades. How did those two identities come together over time?

Ryan Lucas (03:12)
So I’ve always been a creative. I call myself a creative. I was always been into the arts, whatever that may be. Recently photography, videography, things like that. But back when I graduated, I graduated high school in 1999. And when I was heading into the workplace, I was thinking originally graphic design, things like that.

photography existed, but videography really wasn’t a big thing for me back then. But I ended up deciding to follow my father’s footsteps and become a trades person, become a journeyman lineman. And so I always kind of took that with me. I’ve always taken that creative side of things I’ve done and applied it to whatever I’ve done in the trades, whether I’m thinking different and creatively in the job I’m doing as a trades person.

or whether I’m actually applying something artistic. Like I was always the guy that was packing a camera around with me wherever I went. I would do my trade job, but I was always documenting it with a camera, either in photo or video. So that’s the piece I always took from the creative side. I always kind took that with me through whatever I did.

Rishi Srivastava (04:20)
Yeah, you’re a pretty powerful influencer now. as an influencer, you have to combine several different traits together to be successful.

Ryan Lucas (04:28)
For sure, for sure. Yeah, I agree with that. and I think it’s a, I think it’s a valuable tool. And I think a lot of people, I don’t think that I’m indifferent to anybody really. I think as human beings, we’re all creatives really in some way, or form, we are all creatives. And I think with the tools available now it is through, you know, photo, video, social media, podcasting, whatever, whatever platform.

that is that you use, there’s a medium out there for you to use to creatively get your voice in front of other people. And I think more people need to take advantage of that. That’s one of my messages as well as I think more tradesmen needs to need to take advantage of that.

Rishi Srivastava (05:09)
You know, with AI, there is so much garbage text content out there. I think video and audio is kind of the only content which seems like it’s more realistic from real people now.

Ryan Lucas (05:13)
Thank

Yeah, I like this kind of swing back to, to more of an authentic presentation of your thoughts, ideas. I do like, because the artist in me loves, you know, editing and presenting things in a visually attractive way. I still love that. Don’t get me wrong, but AI is really kind of messing with that right now. And, when I go to social media to like learn something,

I go to find authentic people, setting their iPhone down, hit and record, and sharing their thoughts and ideas, and learning from that. I find myself learning a lot from that recently, and really drawn to that.

Rishi Srivastava (05:55)
When Quanta services brought the podcast in-house and hired you full-time, what changed about your role and what stayed the same?

Ryan Lucas (06:06)
So that was a cool story. Actually. I started powerline podcast. so I’m, I’m a brief history journeyman lineman. Like I said, I spent 15 years on the tools, working as a lineman, power lineman on power lines, building and maintaining power systems. And when I left the tools and went into more of an office type role, I started as a manager, then moved into an executive position. I started to lose touch with the people that I was around in the field.

And really those were like, those were really great relationships that I built with trades, trades, in the field. And I wanted to connect with them again. So I thought about, okay, how could I do this? I wasn’t much of a good writer. So I wasn’t going to write a book or anything like that. So I decided to start making a podcast. I didn’t like, could connect with people just like you on the internet and sit down and have a conversation and put that out for other people to listen to. And I just started doing that in 2019 on my own time. I just started

you know, sharing stories because Linemen we’re very transient trade, meaning we travel a lot. we do really unique work. It’s some of it’s extremely dangerous and thrill seeking and might be seen as thrill seeking and dangerous to some people safe to us that do that because we’re trained for it, but it’s seen that way and we meet really unique people. So I just wanted to share those stories with whoever wanted to listen and it started to grow.

And once it grew to a certain point, I think it took three years to grow it to a certain point where it just was recognized by a major organization that they just reached out to me through the DMS on Instagram and said, Hey, we we’ve been following what you’re doing. We really like what you’re doing. Could we get on the phone and talk about how maybe you could just do this full time for us. So I got on, I got on the phone with them a couple of months later, ended up deciding to sell them the podcast IP.

and the social media accounts and then stay on through salary to just do it, host the show full time and help grow their voice, their brand voice through the podcast.

Rishi Srivastava (08:05)
Sometimes these corporate companies, they don’t have a real soul. They come and buy the creator and pretty much force them to do things. So maybe I’m saying something which is not correct for you. So maybe you can talk more about it.

Ryan Lucas (08:18)
Sure. What I really love about the organization, it’s, quanta services. They are, they’re a big organization. They’re a fortune 200 company. What I really love about what they’ve allowed me to do is they’ve, they said right from the beginning, continue to run it like you, you ran it. they really enjoyed the way I ran it. They saw that I always walked a fine line. I wouldn’t, you know, draw too much politics into it or things like that.

I really just wouldn’t give too much of my own opinion either. I give a little bit of my experiences, but not heavy on my opinion. And I would really let the guests share their thoughts, ideas and opinions. And I’ve just walked to that line and they’ve seen that and enjoy that. And they realized that what I do is about giving value and it’s not about pushing the organization. That’s very much not a commercial for quanta services. I don’t.

promote them in everything that I say on the show or say this is a quantum services plan. They just allow me to through myself and the guests provide value for the public or anybody that is thinking about getting into the trade or anybody that is in the trade. And I’ve really appreciated that. And I think that’s something that other organizations could really take value from themselves. And

and apply that. And if they apply that, they’re going to be more successful than just trying to take something over and make it a big commercial for themselves. Cause that just, that just turns into nonsense in my opinion.

Rishi Srivastava (09:46)
This country, and even Canada, they’re so short on real skilled tradespeople. Someone like you who goes on and tells people real stories, being in trades is not a bad idea.

Ryan Lucas (09:59)
I get so many messages, emails, DMs, whatever phone calls. Whenever I’m out in spaces like trade shows and events where lots of linemen and these trades people are gathering and I talk to them in person even, they say how hard it was in the beginning for them to find information about this industry and about the trades and this trade in particular, because there’s just no public information out there. if I…

I’ve had people, so veterans, like military veterans, leave active duty. This one guy I interviewed, he left active duty and a few days later he was driving up the coast of California and this is back when California was having the wildfire scenario. And he saw these people up on a hillside with these big bucket trucks and they’re way high in the air and they’re working on power lines and he was like, what is that even? I didn’t even realize this existed and he started kind of doing some research on it.

And he realized that these are, this trade is called lineman trade, the power line trade. And these, these workers are lineman. And so he started diving into it and Googling information about it. And my podcasts and a few other podcasts and a couple other YouTube channels were it. That, that’s all that popped up. That’s all the information he could find out about this trade in the industry. And a lot’s changed since then. A lot’s more, a lot’s more is blown up on social media and things like that.

So it’s a little bit easier, but it’s still difficult to really find out what this trade is about. And that’s what I mean by I think more tradesmen need to start exercising their creativity through these mediums and platforms and just sharing information about the trade and about the industries. If we want to get more of the next generation in the trades, we need to start, you know, it’s up to us to start talking about it.

Rishi Srivastava (11:47)
For those of our listeners who do not know what linemen are and what type of companies they work for, could you elaborate?

Ryan Lucas (11:55)
Sure. So lineman is a broad term. We do a lot of different sorts of work on power lines, but it’s basically in its simplest form, we build and maintain power lines, power systems, whether that’s underground power lines, overhead power lines, like the ones on wooden poles that you see running through your cities and towns.

or the big steel transmission lines we call them, the big steel towers that run across the country with the big lines on them. We work and build and maintain those as well. Substations, so the big power plants and stations you see in the middle of town, we also work and build and maintain those as well.

Rishi Srivastava (12:39)
What type of companies linemen

Ryan Lucas (12:42)
Sure, so there will be utility companies. The familiar

ones are like companies like PG &E, know, the big utility, Duke Energy, the big energy utilities in America. And then there’s also contracting. So there’s contractors that work for the utilities and other privately held power systems.

Rishi Srivastava (13:01)
The next section is on the field office disconnect. From your experience, where does the biggest disconnect between executives and boots on the ground? Crews show up.

Ryan Lucas (13:14)
It’s kind of goes back to my first answer of getting out of the office and into the field or getting out of the field and into the office. It works both ways. a, it’s a little more difficult for a field level person to walk into an office than it is for the office person to get out of the office and move into the field. But I think that that is the biggest disconnect. It’s that, you know, who are you drinking coffee with again, you know,

With the safety professional example, the safety professionals are kind of out in the field a little bit more anyway, but they’re still on the other side of the road. Whereas the office workers are completely different. They’re in another city, in another state a lot of the time, but they need to get themselves out more and in the presence of the people actually doing the work. That’s my opinion on that.

Rishi Srivastava (14:02)
People often say leaders should get out of the office. What does a meaningful field visit actually look like versus a surface level one?

Ryan Lucas (14:12)
A meaningful field visit would be showing up with a level of humility, like showing up, not thinking that you understand how to do their job better than they know how to do it. Because building a job in on paper or on a computer looks a lot different than building the job physically. And a lot of people, a lot, it sounds crazy, but like so many people don’t understand that because a lot of

You know, it’s no, it’s really no fault of either sides. You know, when people go to engineering school or design school or, you know, college, university and learn that aspect of it, project management, even they’re learning one way they’re learning from a university or college. They’ve never learned the hands on construction of it. And sometimes they get, sometimes they think that they know better than the people that actually build it. And it’s completely the opposite.

the people that actually are building the job, a lot of the times will know more than you about how to build the job because they do it every day. So it’s just understanding that it’s getting together and building that relationship so that you can build that trust to talk to people, to talk to each other about each other’s aspects and about what each other knows about building the job, if that makes sense.

Rishi Srivastava (15:27)
When you’re designing something in the office, you’re making so many assumptions about the field. This is going to be the level of dirt, that type of conditions are going to be there. And those assumptions may not be true.

Ryan Lucas (15:40)
1000%. They’re often not the case, right? When it comes to building things, you know, when you build things in a factory, I would assume I’ve never built things in a factory. So this is an assumption. But when you build things in a factory, you get a lot more of an ability to control environment settings. Like things are kind of rigid and laid out, right? But when you’re building things in the natural environment, like power lines, you’re 1000%, right? You don’t

you kind of know the elevation, maybe it’s been surveyed, but you don’t know if it’s a dip in the ground, like a slight dip could be the difference in two feet, which makes a lot of a difference, you know, on a power line in the air, you know, things like that. You really do have to get yourself out of the, out of the office and into the field and talk to the workers because they can point these simple things out to you sometimes, but they’ll make a world of difference in how you execute your job.

And the same for the other way as well. it works the same. I’m kind of harping on the guys in the office, but the guys in the field also don’t know what the guys in the office have to do for their job and what that takes. an understanding on what that actually takes really does wonders for both sides.

Rishi Srivastava (16:51)
Yeah, the guys in the office, they’re the ones who are the bids and trying to get the business in.

Ryan Lucas (16:58)
Yeah, 100%.

Rishi Srivastava (16:59)
On the flip side, what are a few realities about the office, finance, planning, risk, or compliance that field teams often underestimate?

Ryan Lucas (17:11)
Field teams often don’t really understand the, like especially the financial side. They don’t get how things that they do on a daily basis impact the bottom line of the organization. And again, no fault of their own. They’ve come up building things and.

They think they, a lot of them think they understand how the money works and how the finances work, but they, they really have no idea of actually how the financial side works. So I think that that’s probably one of the biggest things that both sides could tackle is like some, simple education for the trades people on the finances and how the finances work. That’s often like a real gate kept, like people gate, keep that side and

I understand why, because you know, like that could mean winning or losing the job. I understand that, but some simple education on cause and effect. Like if you break this piece of equipment, it costs me money, therefore I can’t, you whatever, whatever the scenario is, but some simple education there could go a long ways.

Rishi Srivastava (18:16)
The next section is on safety, risk, and financial reality. Having worked in high risk environments like energized and helicopter based work, how should finance leaders think about the return on investment of safety programs and training?

Ryan Lucas (18:36)
Let’s talk about the cost of a human life. You can’t replace a human life. When we lose somebody, you can’t replace that. You can’t bring them back to their families, their kids, their wives, their husbands, their mothers, their fathers. That’s irreplaceable. we’ll just, we understand that. So park that. But then there’s the actual business cost of losing a human life, which is very real.

to a business financially, trauma wise, everything. If you lose a human life on the job, there’s, there’s the cost of it. The sheer cost of it is massive. It’s enormous. Just, you know, the, all of the legal you have to go through all of that side of it. There’s the trauma to the crew that my, may have witnessed that the loss of production, the costs there. So there’s very real costs that

can and have completely sunk companies. So that saying all of that, if you can invest in training to prevent that, it is massively worth it. And I think a lot of organizations rely too heavily on somebody else’s training these people, you know? We don’t want to absorb the costs of training because I understand training is expensive. It’s expensive to develop training.

a loss of production to bring people in and train your employees. But on the flip side, if you were to have something like a massive incident or a fatality or a bad safety record, even not even not even fatalities, just bad safety record, you can lose jobs that way, lose productivity that way, create a poor environment that people don’t want to work in. Therefore, you’re not getting the best employees that you can get in order to execute the work that you’re doing. So you could debate this back and forth a lot, but

Training is very, very important. And I think a lot of organizations massively miss the opportunity to invest in training.

Rishi Srivastava (20:32)
Yeah, and always evaluating the dollars spend on the training versus, you know, how much safety you get out of it.

Ryan Lucas (20:42)
but they cross their fingers and hope and hope. If you’re hoping for a safe outcome, especially in the trades, you’re gambling, you’re 100 % gambling. And maybe you’ll be able to pass that cost on to somebody else because it was somebody else’s job to train those people, but that’s a silly way to operate. And I would bet that you’re not gonna be in business very long if that’s the way you operate.

Rishi Srivastava (21:10)
What risks tend to look small or abstract on spreadsheets but feel very real to crews in the field?

Ryan Lucas (21:19)
Time, time, time can be a single digit number on a spreadsheet, but can be massive to the person in the field. Cause is that time already, is that single digit number already coming? Is it being added onto the end of a 14 or 16 hour work day already?

is that single digit number being added on the end of a job where that worker’s already been in the field for two, three weeks and they haven’t been home in a month and you know, that sort of stuff. So I think time to somebody in the office can just be another entry in a spreadsheet, you know, very easy to do and you don’t really think about it, but to the actual worker in the field.

It can really mean a lot. can mean a decline in mental health. It can mean a, you know, a break, physical breakdown of their body. And it can mean so many other things. Yeah. Time. I go with that one.

Rishi Srivastava (22:17)
Yeah, I

feel fortunate to be an office worker, not having to be outside of my home for so long.

During storm response or emergency work, how should office leaders adjust expectations and communication with field teams?

Ryan Lucas (22:34)
Again, I think this is where, this is where building trust with your field teams and your field workers before something like storm work happens is extremely important because when storm work happens, goes back to that whole, it goes back to the time thing. But it’s an understanding that everybody understands that, you you’re gonna have to work longer hours. You’re gonna have to be away from home, especially line crews.

line crews will go into storm work. You know, everybody will be leaving Florida because of a hurricane and linemen are driving into Florida waiting for the hurricane to stop so they can start fixing things. And then when they get there, they’re quite often sleeping in their trucks. They’re eating whatever food they brought with them because there’s no food available. There’s, know, no good beds available there’s, and they’re working long hours, 16 hour days, 18 hour days, just trying to do a very physically demanding and mentally demanding jobs.

So that connection between the office workers and the field workers, if you have trust built and understanding built that these workers are gonna be tired, exhausted, mentally taxed. If you can build that trust with them ahead of time, that interaction, that communication is gonna be a lot easier with them both directions, if you understand that and you’ve built that trust ahead of time.

Rishi Srivastava (23:48)
I’m glad that word trust came back again.

Ryan Lucas (23:51)
Yeah, it’s, it’s everything. Trust is everything.

Rishi Srivastava (23:54)
The next section is on metrics, KPIs, and what they miss. Which KPIs or metrics do executives rely on that can be misleading without field context?

Ryan Lucas (24:07)
KPIs that can be misleading without field context. Again, I’d have to just go back to the time thing. I just think it’s so important. there’s another example that Lineman often, we often fit into the time bracket as well. We get, we get pushed to work hours that, are ridiculous a lot of the, a lot of the time. And this can cause fatigue. It’s often been said that

a lack of sleep or sleep deprivation is equal to being drunk. And it’s a hundred percent true. And I think that that’s something that office workers and not just office, not just office workers, it’s, it’s really just an industry thing. They’ll get us to work hours, especially in storm response that are just incredibly dangerous to have us work. And I think that’s something that needs to be looked at. Firefighters are often like that too, the firefighters work.

these ridiculous shifts that often mean they’re up for 48, 62 hours straight. And then you put them to work again after 62 hours or after like minimal rest. And that’s kind of what linemen go through as well, especially in storm response where you’re working incredible hours and then just put right back to work again. But that’s not very good for, you know, for safety for those metrics.

Rishi Srivastava (25:25)
Yeah, you know, I’m always worried about water and electricity together. You so you think about storm response and there’s a lot of water there and you’re supposed to go fix the electricity.

Ryan Lucas (25:36)
Yeah, it gets very dangerous.

Absolutely. Because electricity is not something that you can see, you know, you can see it in the way in when it arcs across something and creates a, you know, a heat transfer and you can see that arc, but you can’t really see electricity and you can oftentimes not even hear it either. Again, you can only hear it if it’s raining and there’s some static happening and, and arcing. You can hear the arcing, but you can’t hear it.

in a wire really until it gets really high voltage. So it’s yeah, it’s very dangerous.

Rishi Srivastava (26:06)
Yeah, and electricity is responsible for so many benefits we have right now.

Ryan Lucas (26:14)
everything really. It’s, it’s an industry. So that’s another thing that I keep in this world of AI and people losing their jobs to AI or worrying about losing their jobs. The trades and especially the electrical industry is one industry that is going to be around for a little while. The demand is there for more power and more electricity and the people to build it.

Rishi Srivastava (26:15)
Yeah.

What kinds of insights can leaders only gain by spending real, informal time with crews outside the office?

Ryan Lucas (26:46)
So what it takes to actually do the work from the workers perspective, it’s it’s irreplaceable. It goes back to that. You learn so much in college and university. You can only learn so much in college and university. You can only learn so much from a book or from a computer or even from AI about how to do the work, but actually getting out of the office into the physical environment with the crews that are actually building the stuff that you’re designing and working on and do.

is irreplaceable. have to do it. If you want to be good at your job, you have to get out and see how it’s actually done because it’s completely, you’ll learn so much by it because it just, it’s not what it is on paper or on a computer out in the real field. It just doesn’t get built the same way. And you’ll learn so much by removing yourself from the building that you’re in and getting out into the work and seeing it done firsthand and even trying it.

getting hands-on experience too, irreplaceable.

Rishi Srivastava (27:41)
Listening and let’s say reading up on the computer, you don’t get that full context of the field, the real work when someone’s actually using their hands to figure things out in a physical world. There’s no way you can teach that by words.

Ryan Lucas (27:57)
No, there’s this type of energized work that, energized electrical work that I used to do. It’s called bare hand work. And it’s where the lineman, you get a special training for this, but it’s where a lineman wears a suit that’s made of 25 % stainless steel thread and 75 % fire retardant material. And it’s a complete suit.

The reason it’s the reason the suit is made with stainless steel thread is the idea is it comes from Michael Faraday. If you enclose a man in a metal cage and then energize that cage to whatever voltage the energy flows around the man, not through him. So it’s like essentially a bird on the wire and something that you can’t explain to somebody is the feeling of becoming energized at 500,000 volts with 500,000 volts of electricity.

Rishi Srivastava (28:39)
Hmm.

Ryan Lucas (28:54)
So I used to get placed on wires by helicopters or insulated platforms or ladders or ropes, insulated ropes. The second you would bond on, we call it bonding on, where you make contact with a conductor energized at 500,000 volts, the second that you bond on and make contact with that, you all of sudden feel and hear the harmonics in the wire and you can hear the generation. It’s just the…

This you can’t hear it until you actually make contact with it. And then it’s like this hum. And you’re just like, you’ve become one with it. Something like that. You cannot explain to somebody. They will. They will not grasp that in college and university or in a book until you actually experience it firsthand. So it’s things like that, that you really got to get yourself out and you can, we used to take people from the office and put them in these suits and

put them in an insulated bucket truck and take them up and actually allow them the ability to feel what that’s like and give them that experience in a controlled environment. And it’s a super, super special moment for that bond between the field worker and the people in the office, because it’s this moment where they get to understand that and what that’s like in that environment that we work in every day. So it’s things like that.

Rishi Srivastava (30:14)
I was listening to a big AI researcher today and he said physics, computer science and math. He was saying that’s the kind of skill everyone needs to have to be able to fight with AI, the jobs it’s going to take.

Ryan Lucas (30:28)
Yeah, or moving physical matter. So if you still work in a trade where you move things with your hands and with your own strength and back, like I think you’re gonna be doing good for a while still.

Rishi Srivastava (30:30)
and

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. The next section is on culture, communication, and trust. What behaviors from leadership immediately earn respect in the field, and which ones quickly erode trust?

Ryan Lucas (30:56)
Show up with humility, show up, show up asking, show up with an attitude to learn, learn from the workers in the field. Even if you do know more than, you know, maybe like maybe show up on a job site where you actually do know more or maybe you’ve done the work in the past, but just showing up with that level of humility. And from that point of view, like I’m not above you. I’m, know, at your level, like

It’s that, it’s true leadership. It’s servant leadership. It’s showing up like, what can I do for you versus what can you do for me? I think if you show up with an attitude like that, you’re gonna build trust way quicker than somebody’s gonna show up with the opposite attitude. Like I already know everything, just do your job, you’re below me, that sort of attitude, that’s not gonna go very far in the field.

Rishi Srivastava (31:44)
to people so important everyone has a role to play in this world.

Ryan Lucas (31:49)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you can learn something from everybody, you know?

Rishi Srivastava (31:53)
The

last section, Ryan, is storytelling and niche audiences. You built a highly engaged niche audience. How can companies use storytelling internally, not just for marketing, to improve alignment and understanding?

Ryan Lucas (32:14)
Storytelling is everything. It’s how humans learn and especially, especially now in this world of AI where you can ask AI to, you know, make you a post for LinkedIn. The actual experience and the story transfer from your experience and your perspective is so important because that’s what AI can’t provide. They can’t provide your taste, your experience, your personal experience through it as a human. So I think

Organizations need to start really thinking that way and adopting that way. And that’s one thing that I love still about podcasting so much is this is a conversation that you and I can’t fake. All right. You’re asking me questions and I’m just giving my perspective from my experience, right? I can’t fake. can’t fake that it’s long form. it’s real, it’s authentic. So that’s why I think it’s so important and why organizations can use tools like podcasting and podcasting is not the only one.

but use tools like podcasting to really reach their workers, their employees, future employees, just other people interested in the industry. They can reach them in a real meaningful way. And I think they need to do more of it.

Rishi Srivastava (33:23)
think the storytelling is somehow, it’s put in our DNA that we easily understand things by a story. You try to give somebody facts and figures. It’s very hard to understand. there’s those analytical guards, they come up. like storytelling, you give them a good story and immediately they get like 10 points that would have been so hard to get.

Ryan Lucas (33:46)
I think good storytellers can break something down into very simple concepts and terms. If you can explain it to an eight year old, chances are anybody’s gonna be able to understand that. But that’s the gift. If you can take something down and break it down and explain that to an eight year old, you’re gonna do really good at getting that out to a wide variety of people, right?

because not everybody’s educated at the same level, know, not everybody, but everybody does understand stories. We’ve been telling stories since the beginning of time. I’m sure when we learned about fire and sat around it and told stories and that’s how we transferred our, things we learned, the knowledge we have from generation to generation was through stories is baked into who we are. And you know, we think we’re so much smarter now because you know, the world’s

We’ve created AI and we’ve created these big organizations and capitalism and we have these big companies and no, if you can just learn how to tell a simple story, you’re gonna be way better off than everyone else. you know, sometimes I think we think we’re better than that, which we’re not.

Rishi Srivastava (34:53)
With a focused audience rather than massive scale, how do you personally define success for a podcast or content platform?

Ryan Lucas (35:04)
That’s a great question. I’ve been, I’ve been asked this before because I’ve been asked this by leadership before, especially when they, when they own the podcast, they kind of would say at the beginning, you know, what’s, what’s the ROI on this podcast? And it’s a tough one to answer. It’s like, it’s like marketing, right? Like what’s the ROI on marketing? Well, you can see click through rates sometimes and things like that, but there’s this thing called like

breadth and depth and breadth is like the click through rate on a website. You can that, but the depth is something you can’t necessarily measure. And again, that’s what storytelling does and that’s what creating a niche audience does is you can really go deep with them. And the effects of that aren’t often measured. You can’t necessarily measure them.

So I had this story that I gave them. like, okay, well, what’s, I turned it around to the leadership and I was like, well, what’s the ROI on, on a human life, on saving a human life. And they’re like, it’s, it’s irreplaceable. We, you know, I said, would you, would you spend thousands, millions of dollars to save them, save a human life? And they’re like, absolutely, without a doubt. And I’m like, okay, well, here’s a story for you. I, I was,

two years into podcasting, I think maybe 50 ish episodes. And I get this DM on Instagram one day from a military veteran, air force veteran. Uh, his name was Noah. Uh, Noah sent me this DM. He said, Ryan, I’m not on social media much. Uh, he’s like, I don’t even think I follow you on social. He’s like, sorry for that. I’ll follow you now. And, he said, I’ve got a really great story about how you helped save my life. I’d love to get on the phone and talk to you about it one day and tell you it. So I gave him my phone number. got on the phone with Noah.

And I said, okay, well, what’s your story? And always like, I spent two years in the military in the air force, two years, two tours in Afghanistan. And in my second tour, I came back very messed up. I saw a lot of stuff. I was involved with lot of stuff. I had to be medically discharged from the air force with extreme PTSD and trauma. So he’s like, I lost my purpose. I lost my direction. I wasn’t sure where to go. And I was pretty messed up. So he’s like, I was looking for something to do for work.

So I found, I bought my uncle’s bread route. He had a bread truck and a bread route delivering bread. He’s like, delivering bread for eight hours a day as a veteran with PTSD and trauma is not a good thing. So he’s like, I was looking for something to do. found your podcast. So I listened to every episode. He’s like, I knew nothing about line work, power line work. I knew nothing about this trade, this job, but I started listening to the way you passionately talked about this trade and this industry and just shared the stories. And I was intrigued by it.

So he’s like, found myself home alone one night sitting at the edge of my bed with a gun in my hand. And I was thinking about ending my life. I was in a bad place. And he’s like, two things were in my head going through my head at the time. He’s like, I had a new baby on the way. So that was one, I was obviously thinking about that and the effects of leaving that, that child. And he’s like, I kept hearing your fricking voice talking about

this trade in this industry that is a camaraderie, brotherhood, it’s a sense of purpose, it’s exciting, you build things with your hands, all of these things that I talk about on a regular basis on the show. And he’s like, I decided to put the gun away and pursue a career in line work. Well, fast forward six months, he was able to find a co-op to give him a shot at an apprenticeship. He became a journeyman lineman. So fast forward five years now.

He’s got a wife, four kids, a purpose, he’s a lineman. They’re even gonna take him and they offered to pay for engineering school, so he’s gonna learn how to become an engineer as well as a lineman. So he’s got both sides of it, the trade side and the skill side, the engineer side, which is incredible, but he has purpose and it helped save his life. And I told that to the executives and they’re like, okay, I understand, I get it. I says, how many Noah’s are out there?

that don’t reach out and say, I’d love to tell my story. And I’m like, that’s the part that you can’t necessarily measure through a KPI, but it’s very real. It was real for Noah. And that’s why I continue to do it is for guys like him. And there’s countless other stories that aren’t maybe as extreme as that, but, that’s, that’s what’s so important to me about building an audience. And I’m not going for massive views or, or massive reach. That would be wonderful. But I understand like,

My audience is a very niche audience that there’s only a few hundred thousand of us, you know, in North America that do this work. I get it. so if I can reach as many of those people as possible, that’s great. And any, anyone outside of that, that’s interested, that’s extra and awesome. But, I wouldn’t chase the vanity metrics of I got to, I got to hit Joe Rogan numbers. It’s just as important to have.

100 or a thousand followers or or true fans or people listening That’s just as important as the millions or billions in my mind

Rishi Srivastava (39:54)
Actually, I was following a big marketer and he said, if you can get one true fan, they are better than like thousands of people who are just neutral about you.

Ryan Lucas (40:05)
Yeah.

If I can go into my day and make the content that I make and make a piece of content. say it’s a podcast or say it’s a social media post and I can make that one podcast or that one piece of content affect one person in a positive way. I’ve done my job. That’s, that’s all I need to do that day is affect one person in a positive way because that scales, you know? Yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (40:29)
Yeah,

your story is phenomenal. I hope one day my podcast will have that kind of impact on somebody.

Ryan Lucas (40:35)
I’m sure it will consistency is the key, right? That was the other thing too is like, I, this didn’t happen for me on day one. It happened over being consistent and just showing up as many times as I could show up and keep, and keeping on doing that.

Rishi Srivastava (40:49)
Yeah. And my audience are very different compared to your audience. CFOs and controllers. the, no, they don’t want to know your world too. Right. Yeah. The work that they’re doing, the accounting or finance, I mean, it’s actually accounting for something in the real world.

Ryan Lucas (40:54)
Well, I hope this is interesting for them.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that actually.

Rishi Srivastava (41:10)
The very last question for you, Ryan, is if a CFO or controller wanted to strengthen their connection with the field over the next 30 days, what practical steps would you suggest they start with?

Ryan Lucas (41:24)
removing themselves as many times as they can. Okay, here’s a story. My father, he’s a lineman as well. I’m a second generation lineman. So my father is a lineman and he actually owned his own power line company. So he knew the work and then he became an owner and entrepreneur and ran the business side of it too. So the business, the bidding of the work, the financial side, he did everything, him and my mother.

My mother ran the office side of it and my father run ran the back end side. Anytime that my dad came down from upstairs, he ran two to three crews. So small organization, two, three crews was, you know, maybe 12 guys, 12, 12 workers, max throughout the time that he, he operated his business. But whenever he took the time to pour a cup of coffee,

walk downstairs from the office into the shop and come and spend time with the people that did the work for him. Whenever he did that, the effects of that, the positive effects of that cascaded for days, weeks, months, sometimes. It was so important for him to do that. So I understand that these big organizations, it’s really hard to get out of the office because sometimes, again, sometimes,

You work in an office in one city or state and the people that actually work for you work in a separate city or state. I get it. It’s difficult, but the more times that you can do that, the better off you’re going to be, the better, the more trust you’re going to build with those people, the better that the better those workers are going to work for you through that trust building. You know, the more bought into your organization, your company, your vision, they’re going to be the more you do that. So I can’t stress.

that enough, you need to get out in some way, or form. And getting out doesn’t mean physically getting out either, it just means making time, right? So organizing a team’s call or something once a day, once a week, that’s just like five minutes and it’s an update from the high level perspective. Maybe it doesn’t give anything, any information away that’s proprietary, but it’s just some.

general purpose and direction. And you know, it’s, you telling your guys and girls out there that are working for you, that you’re proud of them. And you know, they’re doing a good job and you know, this is where we’re going. This is where we’re at. It’s a motivation. It goes a long ways. And I think that we could go, we could do that a lot more.

Rishi Srivastava (43:53)
You know, – Einstein that time is illusion anyways. So even if they do one or two times in a year, that’s probably okay too. The one thing they probably shouldn’t do is just not talk to the field people. What do think?

Ryan Lucas (44:05)
Yep, yep.

It’s the worst thing that they could do is not communicate with them.

Rishi Srivastava (44:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Ryan, thank you so much for your time. I had a great conversation with you.

Ryan Lucas (44:15)
Yeah, it’s pleasure. Thank you.