Attending carpentry trade school prepares you for a potentially lucrative career in a growing industry. I’d like to provide you with an overview of what to expect from trade school, how to find a good program and why taking this route is a smart choice for learning a hands-on vocation.

In a society where service industries dominate, carpentry remains an essential trade. When you go to carpentry school, you develop skills in high demand and differentiate yourself from a large part of the workforce. Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Why Choose Carpentry Trade School?

I know how frustrating it can be to wade through two years of prep courses in a college program before delving into the subject you want to study. Trade schools, however, get right down to business. If you’re there to learn carpentry, you start right away with relevant academic courses and practical application. Classes are taught by people with experience in the field, so you spend your time learning from the best.

Trade school programs are often shorter and cheaper than four-year degree options and offer impressive career opportunities. Many people who attend trade school make just as much as or even more than college graduates without the additional burden of excessive student loans. Getting into carpentry gives you the added advantage of having skills not likely to be taken over by machines and with applications in a variety of industries.

What to Expect in Carpenter School

It’s not an exaggeration to say learning carpentry is hard work. If you’re not ready to apply yourself to a hands-on program requiring attention to detail and a head for numbers, my advice is to find another trade. However, for those who love working with their hands and being productive on the job every day, training to be a carpenter should be a delight.

As you go through a carpentry program, you’ll attend a combination of courses involving both book learning and actual building projects. Master craftsmen will show you how to avoid small errors with the potential to cause big problems in real-world situations, and you’ll become comfortable working with a variety of tools and materials.

If possible, I recommend attending a trade school offering an associate degree. This gives you the option of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the future, and degrees can make your resume stand out to potential employers.

What are Carpentry Classes Like?

Although it’s not as diverse as a traditional college program, carpentry school packs a lot of information into just a couple of years. You can expect to take classes covering subjects like:

• Math and science, including algebra, geometry and physics

• Tool selection, use and care

• Understanding principles and procedures of construction

• Architectural drawing

• Blueprint design and reading

• Building codes

• Choosing and measuring materials

• Framing and roofing

• Interior and exterior finishing, including siding and molding

• Door and window placement

• Machine woodworking

• Project management

• Making accurate estimates

• Technology and mechanical systems

Each of these courses provides you with some of the tools you need to become a skilled carpenter. The best way to put it all together is to seek out an apprenticeship where you can see how what you learn in school works when you’re out on the job.

The Benefits of Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships have been around since the Middle Ages when young people learned trades from masters in local craft guilds. This practical method of on-the-job training has endured for so long because it plunges participants right into the careers they want to pursue while providing skilled guidance every step of the way.

To become an apprentice carpenter in the U.S., you must be 18 years old and have at least a high school diploma. Coming out of trade school and into an apprenticeship or overlapping your apprentice work with classes gives you a chance to become much more familiar with the trade. It also provides the experience employers look for when hiring carpenters, giving you an advantage over those who opt to go straight into the industry. Your transition to a career will be smoother, and you’ll feel confident in the skills you were able to refine as an apprentice.

Taking part in an apprenticeship can also serve as guidance for your future job. In my experience, the longer you work at something, the more you realize what activities you like and what you’d rather avoid. Fortunately for aspiring carpenters, there are plenty of interesting niches in which to specialize. Your time as an apprentice can point you toward your particular specialty and simplify your career path.

After You Graduate

Upon graduating from trade school or finishing your apprenticeship, it’s time to decide how to use the skills you’ve learned. Prospects are good for those who have attended carpenter school. The industry is expected to grow 6 percent between 2014 and 2024, and the median annual salary in 2015 was $42,090. Many carpentry jobs also include benefits, such as health insurance and retirement savings plans, and careers in the field are fairly secure.

Other options after graduation include:

• Framing and residential construction

• Commercial construction

• Industrial construction

• Crafting wood products

• Restoring furniture

• Assisting other carpenters

• Working from home

You can also take what you learn in carpentry classes and apply it to a different type of job requiring the same skills. Any career in which pattern recognition, keen visualization, precise calculations and an understanding of how to translate drawings into physical objects is a possibility for students of carpentry.

As you consider carpentry classes, I advise you to look into several trade schools and apprenticeships. Talk with people already working in the industry for their opinions on the available opportunities, and carefully review the course materials for the programs you’re considering. When you find the right trade school, be ready to work hard and apply yourself to learning the craft so that you have access to the best career opportunities after graduation.

Some time ago I was approached to do an interview by a major online publication, but for whatever reason they never actually used the material.  I spent a good deal of time putting together my answers for the questions, and have decided that instead of the whole thing being a complete waste of time that I would instead publish it here at Rich Contractor.  Have a read…maybe you’ll actually pick up something helpful:

What is your top advice for a beginning contractor to get his or her business started on the right foot?

For those just starting out, it’s imperative that they have all their legal and administrative ducks in a row before they even think about swinging a hammer on somebody else’s property.  This protects both the contractor and the consumer.  Specifically, he or she should register with their state as an LLC or S corporation, they should secure a license if required, and they should be fully insured and bonded.  It’s surprising how many aspiring contractors skip one or more of these very basic steps in the beginning, but those who do are playing with fire in my opinion.

Is there a fast track to success for contractors? If so, how does one get on it?

In order to ramp up quickly you absolutely must have a presence on the internet.  Consumers continue to move away from more traditional forms of marketing (like the phone book) and are instead looking online for service providers.  A good-looking business website is critically important, and it should also have a built-in blog that is routinely updated.  Smart contractors also leverage Google My Business, the Google Pay-Per-Click program, and social sites like Facebook to completely flesh out a web presence that will pull in leads over and over again.  Many new contractors are reluctant to take this route and would rather just bang on doors, but marketing online is the way things are headed.  Those who embrace this reality will leap over their competitors in a relatively short period of time.  I’ve done it myself and I’ve seen it done by others countless times.

What is the best way to distinguish yourself as a contractor in the eyes of a potential customer?

The most common trait I’ve noticed with the contractors who find success is that they excel in communication with their team and with their clients.  They articulate well during the bidding process, they return calls and emails right away during the work phase, and they follow-up after completion to ensure that their customers are thrilled with the final product.  Homeowners love this kind of attention, and it tends to result in repeat work and lots of free referrals for the contractor.  Most service providers aren’t very good with this aspect of their business, but that opens up huge opportunities for the ones who are.  For those who have amazing construction skills but simply aren’t good with people, I would advise that they partner with someone who IS – perhaps a spouse, friend, or trusted associate.

What are the most common mistakes that beginning contractors make?

Aside from not communicating well and not leveraging the power of the internet, perhaps the most common rookie mistakes are wasteful equipment spending and under-pricing work.  It’s a double whammy that can doom a business from the very beginning.  For example, the new contractor who runs out and buys a brand new $40,000 work truck on credit is kneecapping himself from day one.  The $1000 monthly payments will seriously hamper his ability to buy other necessary tools and products, and he’ll be scrambling to stay afloat from the get-go.  A perfectly good, no-frills, used F-150 can be purchased for under $10,000, and this can free up all kinds of cash on a month-to-month basis.  Perhaps unexpectedly, this is quite often the same kind of contractor who will lowball his estimates in a desperate attempt to get work so that he can keep up with his bills.  It becomes a slippery slope where he makes less and less money for his time but his costs continue to climb.  It’s just a matter of time before he has to throw in the towel and call it quits.  This can all be avoided by keeping costs as low as possible while charging a fair market rate in the beginning.  As the business proves itself and becomes larger then increased spending on better equipment becomes a more viable option.

Success story?

Just in a general sense, what I’ve discovered is that my efforts to improve my businesses have had the unexpected side-effect of improving myself.  The occasional issues that have arisen with customers and vendors have forced me to get better when it comes to conflict resolution, communicating effectively, and negotiating.  I feel it’s made me a better all-around person, and these are improvements I’m not sure would have happened otherwise.  So it’s been a story both of financial and personal success.

Horror story?

One of the first jobs we had seemed like a horror story as we experienced it, but in retrospect I see that it taught us some valuable lessons and forced us to get better.  What was supposed to be a one-week project turned into three weeks of misery.  The homeowner questioned every single thing we were doing, she watched over our shoulder almost the entire time, and she complained about everything from dust in the air to the noise of our tools.  To cap it off, she accidentally sideswiped my truck in the driveway one day, causing thousands of dollars of damage.  We couldn’t wait to finish it up and get out of there.  Yes, the customer was kind of nuts, but I see now that we did a lot to fuel the problems.  The difficult clients are the ones who make you better, oddly enough.

What does the contractor industry look like today versus 20, 30 years ago? Any big changes?

I think the big thing is how technology and the advent of the internet has forced contractors to evolve and to work more on managing their reputation.  It used to be that hiring a contractor was a roll of the dice.  Now, prospective clients can go online and get a more transparent look at your company from the likes of Angie’s List, Google reviews, and the BBB.  It’s great in the sense that truly great services and companies tend to be rewarded for their efforts.  There’s never been a better time to be a contractor if you’re honest, competent, and professional.

I recently had the opportunity to interview a contractor who has grown his business from $500,000 to $2.5 million a year in sales over the span of four years, largely because he began to reach out to mentors. Check it out:

1 – How exactly has having a mentor(s) been beneficial in growing your business at such a rapid clip?

Goal setting was the biggest thing.  My mentor had me envision where i wanted to be in 12, 36, and 60 months. I answered with a very conservative number, he then had me rethink the numbers without any possibility of failure, and my figures or “goals” instantly increased. My next step was to share these goals with my staff and keep a score card (white board) in the office which I saw every day but my employees also saw, keeping me accountable for the target sales. The data was updated regularly, and this allowed me to make the proper decision every day on how to distribute my time. I wanted to go to the jobs and put my nail bags on, but if my sales weren’t where they needed to be I would focus more on finding more work. This also allowed me to rely more on my employees which in turn gave them more ownership of the projects.

2 – For those who have never approached a potential mentor before, what are some best practices for how to go about it? Any big do’s or do not’s?

The most important thing about utilizing a mentor is to be humble and to listen. When they give you advice write it down. Implement their advice; my mentors were multi-millionaires in their fields, and I would listen intently and take notes.  When I had questions regarding a specific topic I would always start by referring to something they had told me prior and how I implemented that advice into a specific scenario I had encountered and whether or not it had worked for me. Mentors are willing to give you their time but not if you don’t listen or they feel you are looking for the easy answer. Every mentor I have has worked very hard for their success – respect that and you will learn from every discussion.

When approaching a new mentor, do so in a way that is very specific – do not generalize. One of my mentors is in the restaurant business, and he became my mentor due to asking specific questions about retaining employees.  This grew and developed into an ongoing mentorship that I continue to utilize. Most of my major decisions do not happen until I have gotten input from this person.

Be able to share your results from the mentor’s advice, and let them know you’re listening and trying to utilize their input.

3 – What kind of help should one realistically expect from a mentor in the industry, and what can you do to make it a win-win for both parties instead of just using the mentor and giving nothing back?

First of all, the mentor does not need to be from the same industry.  In fact some of the best advice I’ve received is from mentors that have nothing to do with construction, which is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned. To be a good contractor you don’t have to be good at building but rather a good businessman.

The amount of help you receive is directly accountable to how you implement the advice. If you are willing to accept the help and forego any ego you may have, you will benefit.  That is why you seek out mentors that are already where you see yourself headed to.

In order to make a win win scenario for you and the mentor, update them with results you’ve achieved from their advice. When I’ve mentored young contractors, the most rewarding moment is when they call me and tell me how successful their last project was due to utilizing something I had shared with them. Regardless the size of the success for them, it always puts a smile on my face that they listened to my advice and it paid out for them.

4 – Other than reaching out to mentors, are there any other pieces of advice you’d like to offer up to those who are trying to make a go of it in remodeling / building? Something you wish you had known when you first started?

I think the biggest thing I wish I had known going into business for myself at the age of 19, was that no matter how skilled I was at building, there is so much more to running a business.

Anyone that is thinking of starting a contractor business should read the book “the E myth”.  It will change your life. Most people start out in the trades and once they have achieved a level of skills they feel is beyond that of their employer they feel they should be ready to start their own business. If you were to look at most of the top construction companies, not one of the people running the business could build a dog house, yet they run companies building some the greatest architectural achievements of our time.

One of the biggest points I would suggest is to invest in self growth: books, CDs, anything to motivate you is worth it. Before any sales meeting I always listen to Donald Trump’s “think big” CDs.  He is not my favorite person, but he thinks big and motivates me to do the same.

Before I started reaching out to mentors, I hired a business coach at 200.00 per hour.  That seems crazy and I agree, but the things I learned from him increased my bottom line multiple times more than what I paid him.

Strive to improve yourself daily, set goals and post them somewhere you see them everyday.

No matter what you want to do, someone has done it and most likely written a book about how to do it. Learn to ask the questions that give you the information you need to succeed.

I’d like to get some feedback from you all. There are gobs of people who visit this site every day but only a small fraction of you ever leave a comment or engage in any way. Lots of lurkers, very few voices. So it’s difficult for me to know what more you’d like to learn or read about on this blog. Here’s your chance to sound off. Please leave a comment below and tell me what you’d like to learn more about! I appreciate it.