The $3,500 Apprentice Incentive: How to Claim Your Share of a $35.8 Million Fund | Ep. 53

[0:00] So what is the incentive? What do I get if I do this? Yeah, yeah. Very good question. That’s what most people want to know is where’s the money.

[0:09] Right. Is it worth my time? Yes. So essentially what you get is $3,500 per eligible apprentice.

This is not a tax credit that you’ll see on your tax forms. It’s a incentive payment. It’s known as a pay for performance model.

It’s to incentivize employers for each new apprentice hired and retained for at least 90 days. This is federal funds. Yes.

[0:37] And I think you had said earlier, there’s, is it 35 million or? Yes, $35.8 million. And it’s first come first serve. So once these funds have initially been used up, the program will either be refunded or cease to exist. Right. Welcome to Buy the Numbers. Each week, we’ll explore the numbers that drive your business from accounting and finance to operations and the exciting realm of mergers and acquisitions. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, our discussions will equip you with the insights and strategies you need to rein in the power of data to elevate your manufacturing company. Let’s crunch some numbers. Bill, welcome back to Buy the Numbers. Thanks for having me, Mike. Appreciate it. I like having, uh, alternating you and John coming in and co-hosting with me.

[1:33] That way you don’t get tired of us. Yeah, right. Yeah.

If it was just one of you. That’d be painful. Yeah, maybe.

I don’t know. You’re both, you’re both pretty easy to talk to. So probably be all right.

So speaking of co-hosting with me, you brought a guest this time. Yeah. Today, uh, we brought on Abby, who is in our incentives group from a tax perspective.

[1:54] Abby, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here.

[1:57] Share with the listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do. Sure. Yep.

My name is Abby Matea. I am currently located in Peoria, Illinois, where I work as a part of our state and local tax practice, which we refer to as SALT. I currently lead our state and local business incentives team, where I work on various business incentives.

I started my career here at CLA. It’s the only place I’ve really ever worked since college, graduating from Southeast Missouri. I’m going to interrupt you right there and tell you that, like, most of the people I’ve talked to from CLA, it’s the only place they’ve ever worked.

[2:34] And I love that. I think that says a lot about CLA, honestly, because I’ve been in the accounting world and like my daughter’s in the accounting world and that’s not all that common. So anyway, sorry to interrupt.

[2:48] Yeah. They care about what they call our inspired careers, which I could go on forever. But, um, as I was mentioning, I was eager to explore the many different career paths we have in accounting.

Not long after I started, I was introduced to what we’re talking about today, business incentives, and also tax credits through the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, or we call WOTC program. And I immediately felt my niche. I, through working at CLA, I’ve earned my CPA license and expanded my knowledge.

[3:21] What drew me to this work is the impact it has on businesses. You can see it over the years. I’ve had the opportunity to help clients secure over millions of dollars in tax credits and incentives, allowing them to, you know, take that money and invest in their operations, create jobs and strengthen the communities.

[3:40] I love that topic in general, the incentives, incentives as a whole. You know, Phil, I know we talked on previous episodes about, you know, taking advantage of different incentives. And I know we’ve also talked quite a bit about like grants, you know, and those can be some government grants that can be organizations, whatever.

But we haven’t really spent as much time talking about, you know, just some of the straight like federal, state, local grants that are available. So I really, I love that we’re going to kind of introduce some of that today. And we’re going to talk today specifically about one related to apprenticeships.

[4:17] And Abby, my notes here call it the AMAIF, which we probably need to spell out. Which, by the way, you dropped like four acronyms in your intro. We do like acronyms.

[4:29] Yeah. So we’ll probably have to have some definitions in the show notes, which that’ll be okay. Yeah.

What is AMAIF? A-M-A-I-F. Yeah, sure. It is a mouthful.

It is American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund. That is a mouthful. Yes.

Essentially, what this is, is a federally funded workforce incentive. It is backed by $35.8 million of federal funds designed to, you know, support manufacturers that participate in what is known as a registered apprenticeship program. Eligible sponsors may receive $3,500 per qualifying apprentice enrolled in an improved advanced manufacturing apprenticeship program.

It supports both, you know, newly hired apprentices, as well as current workers that are being upskilled with a new skill. Excellent. So let’s touch on part of that right there.

These RAPs, these registered apprenticeship programs. If I understand the apprenticeship programs correctly, you can have that privately inside your organization and or there’s like groups and sponsors and so forth that are RAPs. Is that correct? Correct.

Yeah. Technically, you can like design your own registered apprenticeship program, which is, you know, it’s a formal earn and learn training program. It combines paid on the job work and it’s with the structured classroom instruction.

So you can team up with a sponsor, which would I would think of as a technical school, community college trained school. Yeah, I feel I know we’ve had and maybe we can throw it in the show notes. I know through our workforce development program series that we’ve been doing on the Making Chips podcast, we’ve talked to some companies that have approved apprenticeship programs that they’ve built in-house.

So if people are interested in that, maybe they can go hit those episodes and learn how they did that. But I also know like locally, I think like in our case, I think our Tulsa Tech has a RAP. And I think even one of the industrial parks has a program.

[6:42] One of the local industrial parks has one. Again, maybe we can throw it in the show notes. I would assume there’s probably a list of those somewhere if you went and looked for it, correct? Correct.

Yeah. Hey, it’s Paul from Making Chips. If you’ve been burned by recruiters who don’t understand manufacturing, you are not alone.

That’s exactly why we created Hire MFG Leaders. We’re not just recruiters. We’re current and former shop owners, and we know what it takes to lead in this industry.

[7:11] Whether you’re hiring your next operations leader, sales manager or production supervisor, we’ll help you find someone who actually fits. Learn more at makingchips.com slash hire. How do I qualify for that? What types of companies can do this, etc.? So what they’re targeting here for this American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund is these advanced manufacturing skills.

What they’re going to define as there’s over 120 advanced manufacturing occupations. It’s including, but not limited to, general advanced manufacturing, nuclear energy, shipbuilding, biotech, automotive manufacturing, aerospace and defense, as well as supply chain and automation. I guess one thing we’ve kind of skipped over thus far is, so what is the incentive? What do I get if I do this? Yeah.

Yeah. Very good question. That’s what most people want to know is where’s the money? Is it worth my time? Yes.

So essentially what you get is $3,500 per eligible apprentice. This is not a tax credit that you’ll see on your tax forms. It’s an incentive payment.

It’s known as a pay for performance model. It’s to incentivize employers for each new apprentice hired and retained for at least 90 days. This is federal funds.

Yes. And I think you had said earlier, is it $35 million? Yes. $35.8 million.

And it’s first come first serve. So once these funds have initially been used up, the program will either be refunded or cease to exist. Right.

And it’s kicked off in January, right? Yes. Do you know how much has been dispersed at this point? Program administers, we’ve tried to get that information. They’re not telling us at the moment, but based off of what they told us is that plenty remain back in April of this year.

[9:16] Okay. So there’s still money available. Yes.

And for every hire I make that I register in, in a wrap, I’m in 90 days, I’m then eligible to receive $3,500 per person. Within the identified advanced manufacturing occupation. Sure.

Yeah. If I hit all those criteria. But I think you said it covers 120 different occupations.

Yes. So it’s broad. Yes.

[9:43] And it can be new hires or incumbents. So I could have a current employee that I put them in the apprenticeship program. Learning a new skill is how I think of it.

Right. I guess if you don’t already an approved apprenticeship program, you’re probably, these funds will probably be gone before you build one in house. But if I were to look out and see some, some sponsored programs in my region, I could take somebody who’s worked for me for 15 years and they could learn robotics or whatever.

[10:14] Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s, it’s a unique opportunity for sure. Phillip, talk a little bit about, you know, not necessarily directly related to this program, unless you have some, you know, some, some good stuff to share, but you know, when we talk about incentives and, and, and, or grants, whatever, I mean, talk a little bit about, you know, some of the impact you’ve seen from your role on companies that, that do things like this. Yeah.

I mean, I think, and this goes back to, I mean, a lot of the podcasts that we’ve talked through Mike is when we talk about like succession, I know we’ve had some episodes on that and investing in your business. I mean, when you think of like an apprentice is yes, they’re young, they’re usually hungry. They want to learn, develop, grow is when looking from a business structure standpoint, getting somebody who’s young, ambitious, and then not only that being paid financial funds to essentially go and invest in that individual’s essentially growth, you know, from a stickiness standpoint is I think you’re going to get more bang for your buck.

I was actually, of course, you know, financial brand and just started running some numbers, you know, at $30 an hour, assuming a standard 40 hour work week is you’re getting paid roughly 5% of their compensation for the year for, you know, it’s a 90 day window to essentially receive that. So that assumes a whole year investment into that apprentice. And, you know, when you start to tack it on and look at the investment that you’re getting and the retention, you know, I think it’s a really good incentive that any size business has an opportunity to take advantage of.

[11:53] And, you know, when you think of, you know, I’ll just use some of the examples that I see when I walk through shop floors. Some of the best things I see is when you see young apprentices on the floor, learning from, you know, I think of the machine shops that are listening is many of them have tenured employees that literally sat in that same seat, learned, grew. And, you know, essentially we have tax dollars that are available to the listeners to continue to invest in their business by bringing on young talent.

Well, and what’s so often great about a lot of the incentives and, you know, even the grants and stuff, this may or may not always be the case. And it may, may or may not always be the purpose, but, you know, lots of times these are investments you’re going to make anyway. Right.

I mean, like I need to hire people and I need to train them. Right. So, so to, to be able to leverage, you know, like a local rep to tie into that training and recoup $3,500 of, I mean, it costs money to hire somebody, right.

And onboard them and train them and, and, you know, to, to be able to, to recapture $3,500 of that goes straight to my bottom line. Right. I mean, there’s, that’s, that’s $3,500 I was going to spend regardless, you know, why not capture part of it? Agreed.

Completely. And, you know, Phil, you know, I always like to talk about value too, right? Like, so let’s say you’re doing that with 10 people, that’s $35,000. If you look at that as the value of your business, you know, if you’re trading at a three or four X that actually had a $150,000 valuation multiple on your company, right.

Your enterprise values that much more because, because you recaptured those expenses. Right. Well, and when you think of like an investor, many investors, if, if you’re getting to a point where you’re looking at from a sales perspective is they do look at demographics.

[13:47] Sure. You know, of your workforce. And so, you know, there are other, I’ll call it non-monetary components that does have an impact, you know, not to go back to one of our previous episodes on, Right.

[13:58] on valuation, but that, that does have a factor when it comes to buyers. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Okay. So Abby, you mentioned that when the funds run out, the funds run out, and I guess there’s really probably no way to predict that exactly, but it’s not something you should just think about, right? I mean, if this, this is something that it’s timely and, and should dig into. Right.

Yeah. Based off of what we’ve learned so far is there’s no fixed public end date found, which is means it’s treated as available only while the 35.8 funding pool remains unobligated. Yeah.

So let’s talk a little bit about what that looks like. So again, like I said, I’m, you know, we can use Hill as an example. I mean, I, I would venture to say right now, if I could hire 10 people, we would, and some of them are going to be experienced, go straight to the floor, probably don’t need to, I mean, they need our training, but maybe not, you know, apprenticeship type training, but we’ll say half of them do.

And I get involved with the program. I, I run through that. What do I do now? How do I, how do I get this credit? Yeah, for sure.

They would, you would go through the application process. What’s interesting is that the, the state of Arkansas Commerce Department is, who is technically running this program, even though it’s available nationwide. So they’ve basically made the roles and obligations through the Department of Labor’s, you know, guidance.

So you would go through them and you would submit your application. From there, they would review it, just, they would verify if you either have a registered apprenticeship program, whether that be federally or a state run apprenticeship program, and they would just check your occupation. They use that through what they call the O-Net codes, is if you have the right occupation.

And from there, they will send you a memorandum of understanding. It’s just a fancy way of saying a contract saying I’ll do this and you’ll do that. 90 days passes.

You do some compliance reporting, basically collect some data on those apprentices and the payment should be a direct electronic payment sent to you. So is, is any company too small for this? Absolutely not. It can, you can have one person and you would get the funds.

Is anybody too big? As of now, they are doing what they’re calling a trial period. So actually from January 28th, when the application’s open till today, July 31st, they are doing a six-month period, trial period, where employers are limited to 100 apprentices and sponsors are limited to 10 employers. So if like a technical trade school is applying for those employers, they are limited to 10 employers.

Okay. Okay. So speaking of, so, so if you’re going through a sponsor, you know, they’re probably all different, but I mean, generally, have you just seen people are just reaching out saying what’s your apprenticeship program look like and, and getting an understanding of just how that works? And do you have any, based on the people you’ve worked with, what does that generally look like? I mean, I’m assuming it’s a combination of like on the floor training and classroom training? Yep.

Yep. It really kind of varies based on what state you’re in. So some states, they follow the federal apprenticeship, registered apprenticeship program, which is goes by rapids.

And then other states, they say, we want to create our own standards and rules. So those are called the state-run apprenticeship program. So it’s basically, it’s just saying the states make the rules and regulations for that apprenticeship program.

Okay. Again, we need to, if either of you know, great, say it now. If not, we definitely need to get in the show notes.

Do you know where to find the wraps? Yeah, it’ll be based off of if they are a federal or if they’re a state-run program. If they’re federal, they’ll be through the database of rapids. And if it’s a state-run program, it’ll be within the state apprenticeship agency.

So. Which probably is rolling through either the state department of labor, maybe department of commerce or something like that. Department of labor.

Yep. Department of labor. Yeah.

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If you’re heading to IMTS and you want to invest in your leadership, your network and your place in the future of manufacturing, make time for Elevate. Learn more at the link in the show notes or head over to IMTS.com. So, okay. So Abby, I want to stay focused on the apprenticeship program, but I would like to hear, you know, maybe since you work in this area with across the firm, what are some other incentives that we should dig into later, you know, maybe on another episode, but that people could maybe go research, reach out on their own that people should be thinking about that are similar to this that you’ve seen? Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. You’re right. As the key is knowing what programs exist and how to take advantage of them.

There are practical incentives. So what we’re talking about right now, AMAIF, that is a, if you’re not ready right now for that program, there may be alternative programs that you should take advantage of. The state workforce training grants are widely available.

Many states, as you mentioned previously, offer grants that reimburse employers for onboarding, upskilling, and customized training programs. The AMAIF is what you know as a federal program. They also have state run programs where they go by different roles, but it’s still basically the same kind of idea of encouraging employers to hire apprentices.

[20:23] And that comes in a many different ways. It could either be through tax credits or training reimbursements. Like I said, it varies on states, but definitely working with an advisor like CLA or Likewise is definitely a good way to identify those available opportunities.

[20:42] Yeah, I’m kind of curious, and there’s probably no way to answer this because it’s going to vary by program and incentive and grant and so forth, but, you know, I know in my experience, I feel like I leverage grants and incentives pretty well. I’ve just worked with them so long, I’ll chase them down and leverage them. You know, sometimes you can stack too, right? Like sometimes you get that state and the federal and that $3,500 becomes $7,000 or $10,000 maybe.

I’m actually kind of curious right now, Oklahoma has an intern incentive going on right now that I have an intern that would qualify that we’re kind of going through that process with. And I’m kind of curious what the difference is between, you know, an intern and an apprenticeship because it’s, we’re only calling him an intern because he’s still in school, but he’s going to be working full time in a apprenticeship type role, right? So I’m kind of curious if, like, if I can stack those, you know, I can get the state internship and the federal apprenticeship. Yeah, I don’t know, like I’m going to look into that.

Yeah, yeah, that’s an interesting thought for sure. Do you know, does this one prevent you from stacking the incentive? No, based on our knowledge, you can definitely stack additional incentives based off of that same employee. Well, and I, you know, another way I could see it stacking is, so again, I mentioned earlier, like Tulsa Tech is probably who I would reach out to to participate in an apprenticeship program.

They have workforce development grants that they do that we participate in on a regular basis that in most cases, like in their apprenticeship program, their grant would cover 50 percent of the apprenticeship costs partnered with this incentive and potentially that internship. I mean, honestly, I could be looking at a free intern apprentice. Yeah.

If I stacked all three of those. Yeah. Because I know their cost would be covered by that state incentive I’m talking about.

And then you throw this on top of it. I potentially could actually make a little bit of money bringing in someone new and putting them into this program. Definitely.

Workforce incentives. Some people think they’re difficult to access or only available to large companies, but in reality, they’re designed for small and midsize. They’re designed for everyone.

Yeah. I think what you said there about I do think most, you know, most of my peers I talk to about grants and incentives, if I bring it up, like, oh, I’m not big enough for that. Right.

I think that’s a really common misconception that, you know, those are because the only time you see it in the news is, you know, when the state attracted a new employer that’s hiring 5,000 people. Right. So everybody thinks they’re, they don’t qualify for that.

In my experience. Yeah. I mean, it’s, you can be as small as, you know, you can add one job and still get that same incentive.

Right. Well, and when, and Mike, when you think about like the reason why they’re doing it, as you allude to large companies, like they hit the news, but really like any of these type of incentives is there. Yes.

They’re trying to attract a business, but they’re also trying to retain business. Right. Right.

They’re investing in the communities that they’re in. So, you know, no matter your size is the intended purpose is to support the local economy, which is machine shops, like. Yeah.

Create and retain jobs. A hundred percent. Years ago, I, it’s kind of, when I first started learning about kind of grants and incentives and starting this is probably 20, 25 years ago, this industry, especially in our Oklahoma economy, for example, I mean, it was driven by small to medium-sized businesses.

[24:17] Right. I mean, there’s, yes, there’s massive companies and all that, but average 10 employees or whatever. Right.

So if these incentives are built correctly, this is just, this is probably my opinion, just more on the, the political landscape of creating grants and incentives and all those types of things. You know, if they’re done well, you know, if every small manufacturer in the United States listened to this and this type of incentive was available to them and it was able to create one job at each one, you’d wipe out unemployment. There’s so many more small people, you know, small companies than there are big companies.

Right. Like I do get annoyed sometimes when, you know, you see the states and or mostly the states, you know, do these massive benefit packages to, to create a thousand jobs. And you do have to be big to get that.

It’s like, if you just helped a thousand small businesses hire one person, you’d go back to what Phil just said. Right. And like, it’s a small, it’s seemingly a smaller impact, but you’d create three times as many jobs.

Right. So it’s, it’s good to see like a program like this, you can’t be too small for. Like if you just, if you’re just doing one, that’s great.

Apply for this, get it. You know, the other thing in my, again, my experience with grants and incentives, it’ll be interesting to see how fast this money runs out, but I know the state and I know a lot of these other grants that happen, you know, sometimes they can’t give all the money away. Like there’s not enough applicants to it, which just blows my mind.

It’s like free money. And all you gotta do is fill out the application or, you know, whatever. The one thing that I notice with at least some of the, you know, companies that I’ve dealt with is they don’t even like, they’re not, they don’t even know what to ask.

[26:07] Right. And so like, if I had one, any word of advice to the, to the listeners is whoever your tax professional is, whether it’s CLA, whether it’s a local shop, like you should be asking like what is out there, what is available and, and challenging them to think of like what you do in the day to day and what’s out there and available. Cause you know, Mike, you make a good point is like some of these things, they can’t give the money away because the people aren’t there to actually apply for it and ask for it.

And so, you know, I would implore anybody who’s listening is if you’re not asking your tax professionals about these and getting quality answers, or if you hear, you know, if you’re here and you’re like, gosh, this sounds like something that I should be getting or I could qualify for, I highly, highly recommend is reach out to another provider who might be able to provide it. Well, I’ll, I’ll say that a little more directly than you’re willing to say, cause I’m going to flip that around a little bit. If you’re not being asked by your provider about these things, find a different provider.

100%. Right. Honestly.

I mean, you’re, you’re being too kind by not saying that, but I’ve worked across a lot of different industries and a lot of different providers and you know, the good ones bring these ideas to you. And if you’re not getting these types of questions and ideas, then you need to call Phil and he’ll make sure you’re getting asked those questions. So speaking of using CLA though, like along that line.

So we talked a little bit about the process of getting this. Abby, this is what you do. Like if a listener says, hey, I think I want to do this and they don’t know how to get started, they could call you and you guys could do it for them, correct? Yep.

Absolutely. Okay. So I do that.

So you mentioned earlier, there’s a 90 day window, right? So let’s say I’ve called Abby. I’ve said, Abby, I’m hiring this person. I found a rep I want to work with.

You submit it. We get the MOU, the contract in place. 90 days has passed.

This person’s working out great. Love them, keeping them. What’s required now? Yeah.

Well, definitely be some compliance reporting just to verify that the apprentice actually worked those hours and days of 90 days. There will be a reporting requirement that you will have to turn in for compliance and we can support definitely with those things as well as, you know, coordinate with those employer partnerships documentation to make sure you understand that MOU that you’re signing, the employer agreements, and ensure that the proper fund disbursement is initiated. How long is it? How are you seeing it take to get that incentive back? Based off of my understanding is it would be pretty quick, but we haven’t had a full process yet.

Yeah. I mean, anything with the government, you don’t know, right? Is it going to be, you file on the 91st day, I bet you don’t get the payment on the 92nd day. Right.

But, you know, maybe within, you know, 30 or 60 days of that, you’ll see that payment back. So the, you mentioned they’ll, you know, there’s some compliance and show the work. So, so essentially like some time tracking records.

Yeah. You know, those types of things. Be able to show invoices of, you know, the cost of treating that person is always good to keep in mind as well.

Gotcha. So yeah, if you’re, if you’re partnered with someone and you’re paying for the apprenticeship program, I mean that, that would suffice on that, I assume. Yes.

If they leave before 90 days, nothing, right? There’s no partial payments, unfortunately. It’s either you get it or you don’t. Yeah.

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[31:06] So Phil, kind of going back to you, and we talk about ROI and effect on value and, you know, do you have any like practical experience and or like general statistics? Like what does turnover cost? You know, you talked about stickiness and all that. I mean, we all know it’s expensive. I can’t sit here and tell you what it costs me.

I probably should know, but I don’t know. But I know it’s expensive. You have any practical guidance on that that you see with your clients? Yeah, I mean, from a dollar value, it’s a little bit nebulous.

[31:38] When taking into consideration like loss production as thinking about like not having operators on the floor, you know, the way the space I always go to is, you know, capacity is if you’re not producing because of not having that head count. Yeah, there’s a massive opportunity cost, right? Correct. You know, and, you know, simple math says, well, you take the cost of that employee that you’re missing and take that to consideration offset with what the revenue generation is off of that employee.

And, right, it all of a sudden becomes real dollars. It’s not like hundreds of dollars. It’s got a comma, right? You’re getting into the thousands of dollars of lost opportunity.

And then, you know, when you start… Per day? Yeah, for sure. And then you start thinking about, okay, then you start to layer on the cost of trying to hire somebody. Then you go into potential recruiting costs, which also, by the time you start looking at that, is it hundreds of dollars? I mean, obviously, if you’re not doing a ton of recruiting, if you’re just putting a post out there, yeah, it’s minimal.

But then it gets to the overall, you know, quality of the individuals that you’re potentially getting. You know, it’s… I always like to look at it as, you know, as we talk about this tax incentive, you have an apprentice. It’s somebody who’s young, who you can mold and develop and grow.

I’ll look at our own business. We do the same thing from a public accounting standpoint, is we bring in interns who learn a lot on the job and that’s how they grow and they develop. You know, you started off, you know, this podcast about retention.

[33:17] Abby’s an example. There are countless others. So we do the same thing where we bring in people young, interested in learning and growing.

And so I view this as it is a low cost to entry from an apprentice standpoint. And also you’re getting the added benefit of the incentive to bring them on board. Sorry, a little bit of a tangent there, Mike, but in short… No, I mean, looking at it as a talent pipeline thing is brilliant, right? I mean, that’s how you need to look at these type of programs because you got to invest in people, which is investing in your company, you know, and as you mentioned a couple of times now, I mean, the stickiness that creates, I mean, again, Abby’s a great example, right? She had a great early experience.

You guys, because I’ve talked to so many folks from CLA, the way that you guys let them explore all the different avenues of services you provide lets them find their niche that she found in SALT, right? And it’s no different in manufacturing, right? Maybe you love lathes or mills or welding or, you know, whatever the case might be. Yeah, you find that niche. It’s a whole talent pipeline development strategy.

Yeah. And when talking to business owners, like it’s interesting how many that I’ll talk to and we start talking about like, who are your core employees? And it’s Jim. Oh, Jim’s been here for 30 years.

And it’s, you know, the business owner I’m talking to, it’s like, he was here before even I owned this business. Right, right. And it’s like, where would you be if he wasn’t here? And he’s like, you know, a lot of the commentaries, I have no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. It could be a very, very painful transition if I don’t have the next Jim, I need that guy.

[35:02] So, you know, in that regard, you know, it’s turnover is super painful, especially in smaller organizations that don’t have hundreds of people sitting around where you can fill gaps. Yeah, I was going to say probably more painful the smaller you are, really. I mean, for sure.

In my experience. All right. Well, so as we kind of wrap up, like, I mean, clearly this is a program everybody should be looking into.

I’m going to be looking into it for sure, because I know we’re hiring. I know I’ve got it on board. I know I’ve got to train people.

So why not leverage some of the resources that are out there and get some of that covered through this type of incentive? So if I’m going to do that, like, what are kind of my next steps to, you know, Abby call you up and say, hey, I’m doing this or how do I how do I reach out and make this happen? Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure we could link our article in your show notes. And at the bottom of that page, there’s a little fill in the blank.

You just put your email in and your contact name. And from there, you will hear from me directly. I will reach out and I’ll just start to learn about your apprenticeship ways, like the way you are currently and maybe see if this specific program, which it is very specific, does it apply to you? You know, maybe there’s a different opportunity there that invests in your workforce and we’ll dig into it.

[36:21] Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s such a great idea, too, is to reach out first. Right.

Because I know on more than one occasion when I’ve done some sort of incentive, a grant, you know, whatever, you know, maybe we had started a process and and one little simple decision we made made us where we didn’t qualify. Right. So so maybe reach out first and say, OK, this is what I’m thinking.

Give me some guidance. Make your decisions within the parameters of the incentive and then let you do your job to get me my incentive. Absolutely.

[36:53] Bill, this is great. As always, you brought another awesome guest that brings real value and, you know, just practical advice that we can we can work with starting tomorrow. So thank you very much, Abby.

Thanks for being here. Yeah. Honored.

[37:07] Well, we will definitely link the show notes. Any other good way to get ahold of you there? Email, LinkedIn? Yeah, you can definitely. I’m on LinkedIn and you can email me directly if you just go to CLA Connect dot com and search my name, you will find me.

And there’s my email. Happy to include it in any notes. Yeah, perfect.

Bill, you got any closing thoughts? I think the only thing is, if you need another contact, if you forget, obviously my contact info, you know, is included as well as LinkedIn. Always a great place to reach out if you are just looking to find out more information. CLA Connect and the resources page has lots and lots of articles spanning many different topics.

So always a good resource. If it’s you know, you don’t want to reach out, that’s a good place to start. Perfect.

Well, thank you both so much for for doing this. Yeah. Let’s let’s hope the some of the listeners found something in here that makes a lot of sense for them and, you know, go get some of that money.

[38:07] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, guys. Have a great one.