Modern Apprenticeships New Face

Locate Yourself

I use my map tool on my phone to drive to locations, even ones I’m returning to.

Two weeks ago, I drove 50 miles to a speaking engagement, to a location I had visited before.

After arriving, I looked around for 20 seconds, and realized I was actually exactly where I needed to be.

A great tool gets you there more quickly, conveniently and accurately.

Do you use your GPS? Why? Because it’s important to know where you are.

Similarly, at WA, I am at a fabulous ‘place’.

I’m in a form of voluntary apprenticeship.

And I’m grateful it exists.

Apprenticeships passed valuable skills and knowledge down from a master to a learner. Usually the apprentice entered this contract voluntarily, agreeing to work for no pay for a specified time.

Why did I find need a mentor, and guidance of a master?

Why? - Seismic Economic Shifts

Corporate down-sizings, and ground-shifting changes in world and local economies, have changed the work-landscape.

Great cracks formed, and some fell in and others were gobbled up in societal and cultural changes like slow-moving earthquakes and mountain-flattening glaciers that altered the work- topography.

Whole companies vanished, and industries evaporated.

Can you say ‘rust belt’?

Employees were ( you and me) stranded like polar bears on shrinking ice flows.

I was told in the 80’s that a typical worker would have ‘7 job changes in their career’.

For a time, I felt safe from that, ‘not me’ I said.

Tail-Twistings

What do the statistics show?

Displaced workers number 6.8 million in the US. Folks that lost their job through downsizings, or job eliminations, and more.

Whoa, did I.

And I am by no means unique.

Has this happened to you or yours?

They say every problem is actually opportunity in disguise.

Realizing Where I’m At

Definition:

Apprenticeship is a combination of on-the-job training (OJT) and related classroom instruction under the supervision of a journey-level craft person or trade professional in which workers learn the practical and theoretical aspects of a highly skilled occupation.

I Find myself in a surprising new position here.

I looked around for 20 seconds, and realized I have arrived at exactly the right spot.

Do you react that way to what you receive at WA as I do?

I have chosen to work in a niche I know from personal experience.

The under-employed. The skill-gapped. All the workers and ex-workers who feel like they are sitting, afloat and adrift on a shrinking chunk of ice and want something better, an opportunity.

Think of all the niches and sub-niches by the thousands, and tens of thousands!

WA is prepping me to help get the news out, and it’s my goal to provide quality information and content that brings hope, inspires and instructs, guides and teaches.

Food for stranded polar bears. Ropes for climbers and hikers stuck in a crevasse.

That’s what we do at WA.

Sometimes you are not the GPS, but you know how to help others find one.

Thanks for your encouragement, kind words and hard-working examples.

Wish me well.

Rick