Help Your Workforce Stick.
Andrew Brown helps skilled-trades organizations improve the first 90 days, strengthen frontline leadership, and build workforce experiences people want to stay in.
Keynotes. Workforce advisory. Storytelling.
One Mission. Three Ways to Work With Andrew.
Different starting points. The same goal: solve the workforce problems that keep skilled-trades leaders up at night.
Keynotes & Speaking
Get your leadership team, conference audience, or member base aligned on what is actually causing turnover and disengagement — and what to do about it.
Andrew's keynotes combine frontline research, practical frameworks, and real stories from the skilled trades. They work for conferences, associations, leadership meetings, workforce events, and company meetings.
Popular topics
- You Don’t Have a Hiring Problem. You Have a First 90 Days Problem.
- The Pathfinder Playbook
- Closing the Skilled Trades Gap
- Bridging the Generational Divide
Workforce Strategy & Advisory
Find out why good people are leaving before you spend more money replacing them.
Andrew goes inside skilled-trades organizations and talks with leadership and frontline employees to understand where the employee experience is actually breaking down. He turns those findings into practical recommendations around the first 30–90 days, onboarding, mentorship, apprenticeship, supervisor readiness, expectations, accountability, and early retention risks.
Ways to Work Together
First 90 Days Leadership Workshop
A 90-minute or half-day working session that helps leaders and supervisors identify where the first 90 days are breaking down and build practical improvements around ownership, expectations, progress, mentorship, and frontline leadership.
First 90 Days Workforce Assessment
A deeper engagement that uses conversations with leaders and frontline employees to identify where the employee experience is breaking down, uncover early retention risks, and provide practical recommendations.
Ongoing Advisory Support
For organizations that want Andrew's continued involvement after an assessment or workshop, ongoing support can be structured around implementation and the organization's specific workforce priorities.
Recent engagement: national skilled-trades employer with 600+ locations and 10,000+ employees.
“Thanks for all the effort you put into this review.”
Areas can include
- First 30–90 days
- Onboarding
- Mentorship and apprenticeship
- Supervisor readiness
- Expectations and accountability
- Early retention risks
- Employee progression and early wins
What This Work Can Look Like
A recent engagement with a national skilled-trades employer included interviews with executives, managers, mentors, apprentices, and frontline employees; analysis of the apprenticeship and early employee experience; identification of key retention risks; and practical recommendations around onboarding, mentorship, supervisor readiness, accountability, and the first 90 days.
Best for organizations asking: "Why are we still losing good people after we hire them?"
Podcast & Event Activations
Uncover and capture the authentic workforce stories already happening inside your organization, industry, or event.
Andrew brings The Lost Art of the Skilled Trades on site to record real conversations with executives, apprentices, members, educators, and frontline workers. The result is content that makes careers, people, programs, and industries more relevant and compelling to the people you are trying to reach.
Can include
- On-site podcast interviews
- Executive conversations
- Apprentice and employee stories
- Short-form social content
- Event storytelling and recaps
Andrew’s work is shaped by 1,000+ conversations with skilled-trades workers, apprentices, educators, executives, mentors, supervisors, and workforce leaders across North America.
Different problems. Related causes. One focus: the skilled trades workforce.
The three ways to work with Andrew are delivery paths. These are the problems he is usually brought in to help solve.
- Attracting the next generation
- Losing new hires during the first 90 days
- Weak onboarding and unclear expectations
- Mentorship and apprenticeship programs that aren't producing the intended experience
- Frontline leaders who haven't been equipped to develop new people
- Great workforce stories that aren't reaching the people who need to hear them
Not Sure Where You Fit?
Sometimes it starts with a keynote. Sometimes a podcast. Sometimes it starts with a workforce problem your organization is trying to solve.
If it involves attracting people to the skilled trades, helping them stay, or telling the stories that move the industry forward, let’s talk.