You Will Learn, and Earn More Chances to Grow!”
Jacob Kern wanted to be an artist. He enjoyed it throughout elementary and into high school. Kern had a visual challenge with one eye not tracking properly, so he struggled in many classes until therapy made it possible for him to read.
Art didn’t rely on his eye tracking perfectly. He contemplated making a career in art, but everyone counseled him that he would be unable to support a family if he pursued art.
Kern decided to pursue engineering, but he found that he struggled with chemistry and math. He realized that if he was determined he could do it, but it would be an uphill battle to pursue something that didn’t come naturally. He thought that there must be something that was a better fit for him.
Kern then considered business as a viable path. He had enjoyed the idea of it as a child, painting rocks and trying to sell them in the neighborhood. Then he launched businesses offering pond cleaning and lawn mowing.
He enjoyed business class in college. However, when he left college, he found himself working in dead-end jobs. He felt he didn’t have the skills to build a career, at least nothing he could rely on.
One day he was at an auto shop and, while he waited, another customer started talking to him about his career in welding. He told him there was a lot of money to be made, and that there were so many opportunities because no one wanted to do it.
Pursuing a job nobody wants
Enthusiastically, Kern applied for a welding job at a semi-trailer plant in central Pennsylvania. However, a welding test was part of the application process. He failed miserably and realized that if he wanted to pursue this track, he would have to go back to school. He looked around for the best program in the area and enrolled at Triangle Tech, working for a Specialized Welding Technology degree.
Kern learned to weld, along with a gold mine of tips and tricks and ways to make life easier in a welding career. If the instructors saw that students were truly motivated, they were great mentors and Kern made the most of his time with them.
Students were encouraged to apply for scholarships, and the mikeroweWORKS Foundation Scholarship was recommended. Kern couldn’t understand why he was the only one in the program who applied for the scholarship.
“It wasn’t a grueling process, and I looked at the S.W.E.A.T. pledge and thought, Yes, I can agree to this,” Kern said.
His motivated, go-for-it attitude paid off; he was awarded a Work Ethic scholarship. At the time, he was the sole provider for the household. He was working at a gas station and not making ends meet, so he went to the Great Dane transportation company and negotiated himself into a part-time welding job. He was the only one in his class who got real work experience while in school, but it was hard. He was working the night shift building trailer frames, going to school at the same time, and not getting much sleep. The scholarship money helped immensely as he paid off some of his debts.
Expanding Skills
Upon completion of his degree, Kern found that there was not much opportunity in the area, but he saw that Washington state had a lot of opportunities. He applied at six places and was offered a job at each company. The job he chose worked out well. Kern believes that the company was surprised that he actually made a cross-country move to take the job, but he had the opportunity to weld structural assemblies and work on various other projects. It was a great chance to expand his welding skills.
Then COVID-19 hit and suddenly there was no work. Kern was becoming depressed, but then he remembered that a fellow church member had started a railing business. He contacted him and went to work for him.
Railings and gates are everywhere, and many welders make their bread and butter off of them according to Kern.
His boss took Kern under his wing and taught him so much, and he quickly became shop manager, learning pricing and project management.
The boss moved his company to Arkansas and Kern had to evaluate what he really wanted. He decided he wanted to move back to Colorado, his home state, to spend time with family.
Kern found work at a custom fabricating shop outside Denver, and he found himself working on everything from automotive to railings to ornamental projects. It took creativity and really broadened and pushed his skills to the utmost. There were a lot of failures, picking himself up, and trying again.
As Kern found working for someone else less and less satisfying, he began a welding side business with his wife helping with customer relations, marketing, scheduling, and contracts. Alex has a paralegal background. When their son, Finn, was born in June, 2023, he went to work on his own business full time.
The company is called Madsen Made Welding & Fabrication. Running his own business is not easy Jacob said; on a bad day he asks himself if he really wants to continue. But the answer always comes back to YES, because he thinks that it’s the best thing he’s ever done. He loves being able to help people using skills he enjoys.
Career Advice
Looking back at his younger self, Kern said he had an idea in his head about what success looked like, and it definitely involved going to college and getting a white collar job. Now he thinks that there are definitely other ways to be successful and that he would have been better off working for a while before he went off to school.
“I’m not knocking school; I am working toward a business degree now,” Kern said. “but school means more if you are working toward something you really want.”
At this more mature stage of life, Kern knows who he is and what he wants, and he is now able to bring together some of his passions into a career. Welding is creative, as is marketing for his business. He always enjoyed the idea of owning his own business, and he has worked very hard to get what he wanted, but it is paying off.
Kern’s advice to other young people starting out is to get an apprenticeship or enroll in a trade school if you are not sold on any particular path at a 4-year college.
“Just try it out. Some people knock it, but you can learn a lot,” Kern said. “Adopt the mindset that you are going to learn from every experience and every experienced person who offers you advice or whose criticism doesn’t feel constructive; you may still learn something from them.
“If you do one of the jobs no one else wants to do,” he added, and get good at it, you will grow, you will have more freedom and more opportunities to grow and prosper.” RB
