New Substack is up, and the number in it is going to annoy some of you. $4.99 an hour. That's the honest step from 8th term to journeyperson on the BC inside-wire agreement - straight off the EJTC schedule, not an estimate. Which is exactly why "the raise" is a bad reason to book your exam. The gap that matters is the one to the classifications above journeyperson: $10.98 from 8th term, same page, and every one of them locked behind the ticket. If you're non-union or in Alberta, you can't look yours up. Run it: your rate, your journeyperson's rate, hours since your last write. Post your number in the comments. And if you haven't run the readiness quiz yet: https://will-doxbcyxm.scoreapp.com

Quick one, and it's the thing I'd change first for most of you. I ask every person who comes to me the same first question: do you have an exam date booked, yes or no? It sounds like scheduling. It isn't. Every candidate I've coached to a pass had one of two things going in - a date on the calendar, or a failed attempt already behind them. Something real to aim at. Here's why it matters more than your study plan: Without a date, every topic looks equally important. So you study the parts you're already good at, because those are the ones that feel productive. Nobody voluntarily spends Sunday night on their worst block. A date is what forces you to. Without a date, there's no end either. You can prep for this exam for three years. People do. They know more than half the guys who passed and they still don't have the ticket. Book sixty days out if you can get it. That's enough to rebuild exam technique instead of cramming it. Under sixty and you're managing a sprint - still passable, just know that's what you're doing. Already failed? BC's 30-day rewrite wait starts from your last write, not from when you feel ready. If you failed two months ago and haven't rebooked, you already burned the waiting period doing nothing. So - post your exam date in the comments. Month and year is enough. If you don't have one, say "no date" and name your trade, and I'll tell you what I'd book if I were you. That thread is going to be more useful than anything else in here this week. Will

New standing block on the calendar. Every Saturday, one hour, live. Starts tomorrow. Drop-in. No agenda required. Bring whatever is actually blocking you: - a code book section you can't navigate fast enough - a topic that keeps eating you in practice exams - a study plan that stalled out three weeks ago - a failed attempt you need to turn into a retake strategy Most of you can wire anything. The exam isn't testing whether you can do the work. It's testing whether you can find the answer under a clock. Different skill. Trainable skill. Come with a question. Leave with a plan. Book a seat: https://calendly.com/willnemo89/rsr-coaching-office-hours Twelve seats per session. The link shows your local time. Will

You've been trained to find the right answer. Nobody trained you for the other three. On a Red Seal exam, the wrong options aren't filler. They're written on purpose, by people who know exactly where tradespeople slip. Every distractor is a trap with a name. Once you can name it, you stop falling in it. There are four. They show up in every trade - electrical, millwright, HVAC/R, plumbing, automotive, instrumentation. Same four traps, different costume. 1. THE RIGHT ANSWER TO A DIFFERENT QUESTION The option is a correct action. It's just not the one being asked for right now. The question asks what you do FIRST. The option is what you do THIRD - and it's a step you'd absolutely take on the job. So it reads correct. Where it gets you: troubleshooting and isolation sequence questions. You know all five steps cold. The exam only wants step one. The fix: before you look at the options, say what stage the question is at. First? Next? After what's already been done? 2. TRUE, BUT NOT THE ANSWER A factually correct statement about the system, dropped in as an option. Nothing wrong with it. It just doesn't answer what was asked. Where it gets you: theory-heavy questions. You recognize it as true, your brain stamps it approved, and you pick it. The fix: "Is this true?" is the wrong test. "Does this answer the question?" is the right one. 3. RIGHT PROCEDURE, ONE WRONG DETAIL The whole option is correct except one value, one unit, or one step out of order. Wrong temperature. Amps where it should say volts. Two steps flipped. Where it gets you: calculations and spec questions. You skim, recognize the shape of the answer, and stop reading before the end. The fix: read every option to the last word. The trap is almost always in the tail. 4. THE KEYWORD MAGNET The option repeats language lifted straight out of the question stem. It feels like a match because it looks like one. Meanwhile the actual correct answer says the same thing in different words - so it feels less familiar and you pass on it.

Not because those guys can't do the trade. Because the exam tests a second skill nobody trains: reading a backwards-worded question against a running clock. You've seen it — or lived it. Strong in the field, frozen on paper. You read the question three times, you know it on the tools, but the wording won't sit still. You flag it, skip it, never circle back. Four more do the same, and now the clock's gone. That's not a knowledge gap. It's a clock gap. And it's fixable — but only if I know exactly where you're losing the marks. So, quick ask to everyone here, pass or not-yet: two minutes of straight feedback on what your prep's actually been like. What worked, what didn't, what was missing. Fill it out and you're in the next Pass Plan Clinic free — live walk-through of the weighting and where candidates bleed marks — plus the one-page Weighting Map on submit. 👉 https://forms.gle/uYEmTbWeWEi3qnNY8 Passed already? Leave a line I can quote to help the next guy who's stuck. That's the whole point of this room.