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The Survival Podcast

Screw the Degree ~ Learn a Trade – Epi-3744

The Survival Podcast

The Survival Podcast

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 107 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tune in to hear how one young man walked away from the college conveyor belt and found purpose, skills, and a paycheck in the trades. Dave Feeney is a fourth-year electrician apprentice with the IBEW, and he’s got a message for anyone stuck thinking college is the only way forward. In this episode, we dig into what it really takes to get started in the trades—from structured union apprenticeships to the pay-to-play game of trade schools, and everything in between. You’ll hear how Dave went from labor jobs and plumbing gigs to discovering that electrical work offered cleaner sites, better Continue reading →

Transcript

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0:00.0

there's a better way to do this let me show you,744 of the Survival Podcast.

0:24.6

I got a good one for you today.

0:26.2

We are going to have a guest on in just a moment.

0:30.4

And we're going to be talking about, as you saw from the title,

0:36.3

building a career, building a profession, and doing it without college, from the

0:42.2

angle of trades.

0:43.7

Now, my guest, David Feeney, he is an electrical apprentice, but I think this is much broader

0:49.9

that, like, that's his path.

0:51.7

There's a lot of trades like this.

0:54.3

I was just talking to Dave right before we went live about a new project,

1:00.1

over a quarter million square feet being put in in downtown Fort Worth.

1:04.2

That's one job.

1:05.4

That's one job.

1:05.9

Another friend of mine named David, it just recently wrapped up project managing and building the entire Tesla facility down in Austin

1:16.6

and then went on to help start building the Samsung facility.

1:19.6

Those two projects are acres and acres under roof, and all of that has different systems

1:26.2

that need to be installed, plumbing systems, electrical systems, pipe fitting work that needs to be done.

1:31.3

All the steel work, right?

1:33.5

There is so much work out there, and we are entering, I believe, a huge building phase in America.

1:40.3

It doesn't necessarily mean all our problems are going to go away, but we're building new things.

1:44.5

The amount of data centers that we're going to be building.

1:46.8

The amount of electrical infrastructure to build.

...

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