In 1986, CBS news anchor Dan Rather was attacked while walking home on Park Avenue in New York. His assailant repeatedly demanded to know, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” The bizarre, unexplained phrase took on a cultural life of its own. Eight years later, R.E.M. used it as the title of the lead single from “Monster.” Michael Stipe later described the song as being about a character trying desperately to understand a younger generation and failing to connect with it.
I am not going to pretend that young people entering the tile trade in 2026 are the same as young people in 1994. They are not. But the central question still feels remarkably relevant to our industry:
What’s the frequency?
I see people throughout the tile industry who possess tremendous knowledge and genuinely want to pass it along. I also see younger contractors, installers, and business owners who want to succeed. Yet after years of participating in committees, training programs, and industry events designed to bring those groups together, I sometimes wonder whether the problem is not what one generation knows or what the other generation wants to learn. Maybe we are simply broadcasting on different frequencies.
There is another reason this has been on my mind now: trade show season is beginning. We just wrapped up Tile Solutions Plus, TISE follows in Las Vegas in February, and Coverings comes to Orlando April 6-9. Over the next several months, many of the people carrying decades of industry knowledge and many of the people who will eventually inherit responsibility for this industry will be in the same convention centers, classrooms, committee rooms, receptions, booths, and hotel bars.
Those events give us an opportunity to do more than see products, attend sessions, and reconnect with the people we already know. They give us a chance to solve—in person—the very problem we keep discussing. But simply putting generations in the same building does not guarantee that knowledge transfer will happen. We still have to be willing to cross the room.
We have something worth passing down
The tile industry has an extraordinary amount of institutional knowledge. Some of our most respected contractors, consultants, inspectors, educators, and technical professionals have spent decades learning their craft. They have participated in successes and failures, studied methods and standards, served on committees, debated technical details, and learned lessons that are difficult to capture in a manual or a social media post.
ANSI A108, A118, and A136 did not appear out of thin air. Neither did the installation methods in the TCNA Handbook. They represent generations of people investing the time to document what works, examine what fails, and create a common technical foundation for the industry. That knowledge matters, and so does the experience behind it.
But many of the people carrying that institutional knowledge are getting older. Experienced ceramic tile consultants and inspectors are retiring. Standards and handbook committees need new participants. Companies need future leaders. Associations need future volunteers. The industry needs people willing to take responsibility for work that is currently being done by others.
For years, I have sat through meetings and participated in committees where people ask some version of the same question: “How do we get the next generation involved?” From what I have seen, the established leaders asking that question sincerely want younger professionals to succeed. The difficulty is that good intentions do not automatically create connection.
Maybe the problem isn’t always willingness. Maybe sometimes it is frequency.
Broadcasting isn’t the same as communicating
The established contractor may communicate in the way he or she learned: meetings, committees, association events, technical discussions, and relationships built slowly over years. The emerging contractor may live in a world of group chats, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, podcasts, and peer networks that span the country. One group may be asking younger people to come into the room, while the other is wondering why the conversation is not happening where they already are.
Neither one is automatically wrong. But having valuable information is not enough if the intended audience never truly receives it.
There can also be a certain amount of pomp and circumstance around established organizations and long-standing industry traditions. I understand why a younger professional might look at that world and wonder whether it belongs to them. At the same time, what feels formal, dated, or unfamiliar may simply be the environment through which an earlier generation learned to build relationships, earn trust, and do the work of the industry.
I can use myself as an example. I have always been somewhat of an old soul, and early in my career I gravitated toward people who had been in the industry much longer than I had. I was not interested in them because they were older. I was interested because they had something I did not have: experience.
At the Noble Smoker during Coverings in 2013, I was in my mid-30s and having a conversation with James Woelfel. Somewhere in that conversation, James looked at me and said, “You know what…I like you. I hope you stay around.” I did. I kept showing up, asking questions, listening, and becoming involved. Over time, relationships with people who had already made mistakes I had not yet had the opportunity to make changed the course of my career.
There is an important part of that story, though: I had to show up where they were. Today, I think those of us who benefited from that model also have to ask whether we are willing to show up where the next generation is.
Reach is not the same as credibility
Social media has changed who has influence, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. An installer can now share an idea with thousands of people in minutes. That reach can be incredibly valuable to an industry trying to educate more people and attract new talent.
But reach is not the same as credibility.
If someone wants to invest seriously in the craft of influencing our industry, I believe that comes with a responsibility to invest seriously in the industry itself. That means getting your hands dirty in more ways than one. Attend the meetings. Learn how standards are developed. Understand why methods exist. Sit in the room with people who disagree with you. Listen to manufacturers, contractors, consultants, inspectors, and technical experts. Volunteer for a committee. Ask questions when you do not know the answer. Influence becomes far more valuable when it is supported by depth.
The responsibility runs in both directions. Those with tremendous depth cannot simply dismiss modern forms of communication because they are unfamiliar, informal, or uncomfortable. Some of the people who should be influencing the next generation most strongly may no longer appear “sexy” enough to attract a large online audience. That does not make their knowledge less valuable. It means we have to become better at connecting the knowledge with the audience.
The answer is not to water down standards, abandon proven methods, or turn every technical discussion into entertainment. Standards matter. Methods matter. Experience matters. Craftsmanship and professionalism matter. What may need to change is how we introduce those things, explain them, and invite people into the work behind them.
Who is receiving the signal?
This is more than a communications problem—it is a succession problem.
Established industry leaders are looking for the people who will come next, but leadership is not transferred through an anonymous follower count. Trust is built through participation. People receive opportunities because someone has watched them work, listened to their ideas, seen them show up, and learned what they care about.
You can’t pass the mantle to someone you don’t know.
That means younger professionals who want a meaningful voice in the industry’s future need to become visible beyond their social media profiles. They need to engage deeply enough for others to know what they stand for and what they are willing to contribute. It also means established leaders have to create places where those people can actually become known, rather than repeatedly asking why the same familiar faces are the only ones in the room.
I am becoming less concerned about where the table is. It might be an association meeting, a bar after a training event, a contractor forum, a Zoom call, Reddit, a message board, or a conversation that starts with a two-minute video and eventually puts a TCNA Handbook in someone’s hands.
The experienced contractor may need to step outside the familiar meeting room and engage somewhere new. The younger contractor may need to step inside that meeting room long enough to understand why the people there have kept coming back for 20 or 30 years. Somewhere between those two places is where knowledge becomes relationship; and relationship becomes stewardship.
So… what’s the frequency?
The tile industry does not have a shortage of knowledge. It has an enormous amount of knowledge stored in people who have spent entire careers accumulating it. What we cannot afford is to let that knowledge retire with them.
The next generation does not need to become the previous generation. They will build different companies, communicate differently, use different technology, learn in different ways, and eventually change this industry in ways we cannot yet predict. That is what generations are supposed to do.
But before the mantle can be passed, both generations have to find each other. Leaders looking for new leadership cannot pass responsibility to people they have never had the opportunity to know. Emerging leaders cannot inherit the full value of an industry they have only experienced from the periphery.
That is why I want to make trade show season part of this conversation. At each event, I challenge established leaders to look beyond the people they already know. Invite someone into the conversation. Explain what a committee does. Introduce a younger contractor to someone whose experience could help them. Ask what they are working on and where they want to go.
And if you are newer to the industry, do not assume the invitation has to arrive first. Walk up. Ask the question. Attend the meeting. Introduce yourself to the person whose experience you respect. Sit in on something that feels unfamiliar. You may be surprised by how many established leaders have been hoping someone would do exactly that.
Coverings has special meaning for me because one of those moments happened there. In 2013, I was the younger contractor talking with James Woelfel at the Noble Smoker when he told me he hoped I would stay around. That simple exchange did not hand me a career or a leadership role, but it made me feel seen by someone I respected. Years of showing up after that did the rest.
Leadership does not transfer through proximity; it transfers through relationships. So, if you want to become more involved in the tile industry but do not know where to start, reach out to me. Find me at a show. Send me a message. I may not have every answer, but there is a good chance I know someone you should meet. If I can help an emerging professional connect with someone carrying knowledge worth passing along, or help an established leader meet someone ready to receive it, I am happy to be part of that bridge.
I am not exactly the 30-something contractor walking into the Noble Smoker anymore. Somewhere along the way, I suppose I became one of the people in the middle. Maybe that is not such a bad place to be.
Come to the table. Come to the bar. Come to the training. Come to the committee meeting. Come to the virtual meeting. Come to the message board. Come wherever the conversation needs to happen.
The frequency may change. The responsibility to pass along what we have learned, and the responsibility to listen closely enough to receive it, does not.
Brad Denny
Brad Denny CTI #1190 has been intensely active in the tile industry for many years. He has served as Region 6 Director for the National Tile Contractors Association (NTCA), received the NTCA Dedication to Membership award – a recognition specially created just to honor his passion for methods, standards, and the internet – and chaired the NTCA’s Social Media Subcommittee as well as moderated the Tile Geeks Facebook group.
Brad also served as the Co-Chairman of the NTCA Training and Education Committee with Sam Bruce of Visalia Tile for 2020 and 2021.
In 2021, Brad received the prestigious NTCA Tile Person of the Year Award. This award is given to someone who has positively impacted NTCA through participation in the Association's programs.
Before becoming Executive Director for CTEF, Brad was vice president and COO of Nichols Tile & Terrazzo Co, Inc., a family-owned tile contractor business located outside of Nashville, Tenn., and NTCA Five-Star Contractor Member of the NTCA.
