BCL School · Founding 25 cohort
AI for tradesmen.
No fluff. No CS degree required.
A 4-week applied program built by working tradespeople — for the workers, not just the bosses. You ship 5 real AI workflows you can use Monday morning: estimating, ordering, invoicing, customer comms, and shop-defense basics. The first 25 students get founding pricing, weekly office hours with the founders, and lifetime access to every future module.
Pay for it yourself or get your boss to expense it — either way, you walk out the one who knows it. Free seat every cohort for low-income tradespeople; flag it on the form.
Format
4 weeks · self-paced · live calls
Pre-recorded modules you watch on the truck or on the couch. One live group call per week. Direct DM access to the founders inside the cohort.
Outcome
5 working AI workflows
By week 4 you've built and used: an estimator helper, an invoice cleaner, a vendor-callback drill, a phishing-spot checklist, and a voice-first jobsite note-taker.
Founding 25 perks
Cheaper, deeper, forever
Founding pricing locked in. Weekly office hours with Paul and the team. Lifetime access to every future module BCL ships.
Curriculum preview
What you'll actually learn
Week 1
AI on the truck
Prompts, photos, voice — daily-driver workflows for jobs you're already on this week. By Friday you've used it on three real jobs and saved ≥ 30 minutes on at least one.
Week 2
AI in the back office
Estimates, invoices, customer comms, scheduling. What to paste, what to redact, and how to keep customer info out of public chatbots.
Week 3
Defending against AI-powered scams
Voice clones, vendor-spoof BEC, fake invoices. Run a drill in your own shop. Write the BCL callback rule on a sticky note where it'll actually be read.
Week 4
Building an AI-augmented week
The cohort ends, the habit stays. Plan your first AI-augmented Monday end-to-end. Pick the one habit you're keeping. AI-Ready Tradesman cert for grads who clear all 12 boxes.
A question we get a lot
"Isn't this the same as the free Microsoft + NABTU AI courses?"
Take both. They're not the same thing and you don't have to pick. The Microsoft + NABTU free courses give you AI literacy and an industry-recognized credential — they're well-built and we recommend them.
They're built for NABTU's three million unionized building tradespeople — mostly large commercial and industrial work, delivered through the union training-center system.
BCL is built for every trade — and the part of those trades that isn't union — the residential service shop, the 1-truck owner, the booth-rental stylist, the line cook, the body-shop tech, the small independent outfit, the apprentice whose JATC isn't running an AI module yet.
We go deeper on cybersecurity and fraud defense (which the MS+NABTU curriculum doesn't cover), we're cohort-based with founder office hours, and by week four you've shipped five working AI workflows — not just earned a credential.
Already taken the MS + NABTU courses? Great prep. The cohort picks up where they leave off.
Live now
The community is open.
Daily AI-for-trades drops, live workshops, real-job wins. Apprentice, journeyman, owner — every trade welcome. The Skool community is where the cohort lives, where the prompts get tested, and where new modules ship first.
- • Daily prompts and worked examples — by trade.
- • Weekly live calls. Recordings stay in the community.
- • Direct access to the founders inside the threads.
Skool community
Blue Collar Academy
Join free. Pick your trade thread. Start posting wins.
Join on Skool →Opens in a new tab.
Founding 25 cohort · Paid
Lock in lifetime grandfathered pricing.
25 seats. NJ priority. The full apprentice-track AI-Ready Tradesman certificate program. Founding pricing locked in for life — every future module BCL ships, included.
- • 25 seats. First-come, first-served.
- • Founding price locked in for life.
- • Weekly office hours with Paul and the team.
Enroll
Founding-25 enrollment
Enrollment runs through the Skool community — same place the cohort meets. Find the "Founding-25 enrollment" thread pinned at the top.
Open Skool →Free seat every cohort for low-income tradespeople — DM Paul inside the community.