Leadership in the businesses nobody romanticizes and everybody depends on.

There is a whole economy that does not get a documentary made about it. The people who keep the water running, the trucks moving, the power on, the buildings standing. Essential work, done by essential people, and almost nobody stands up to say their leadership matters.

I am part of a team that invests in and backs mission-critical, blue-collar businesses, the trades the country cannot function without. I have sat with the owners and the crews. The leadership lessons in a trades business are not softer than the ones in a tech company. They are harder, because the stakes are physical and the margin for error is real.

This talk makes the case for the dignity and the leadership of the trades, and it hands the people in those businesses something they rarely get. Language for why what they do is leadership, and a way to build a team that stays when the work is hard.

It ties back to where everything I believe starts. The position nobody claps for is the one holding everyone else up. Leadership is service, and nowhere is that more literally true than in the businesses that keep the lights on.