Growing up in Concord, North Carolina, just outside Charlotte, Jacob Palmer was a classic academic achiever. “I was a good student,” he says in an interview with Fortune. “In high school, I participated in all types of extracurriculars, student leadership, I did a lot of public speaking. I had all sorts of friends.” But he said something changed during the pandemic. “School looked drastically different doing online classes and Zoom calls. It felt very intangible.” He says he figured out pretty quickly that online college “didn’t work for me. I hated it.”
Palmer said that instead of sticking with college, he tried things out, including a stint at a FedEx warehouse for several months, and a change of scenery at his grandparents in rural Virginia, where he worked at a factory for a few months.
When he returned home, in need of a job, his mom was putting in a hot tub and she mentioned the electrician working on it was “super passionate and loved his job.” Palmer said he sounded him out, estimating that he was about 29 at the time, and liked that he worked for himself. “I had a general interest in working with my hands, fixing and making things, as well as a basic understanding of electrical theory from my time in AP Physics class.” Soon afterward, he started as a full-time apprentice at a small, Charlotte-based contracting firm, earning $15 an hour at first and working his way up the ladder…