A new company focused on technology repair has opened its doors in Jenkins, Kentucky.

Mohawk Energy is training people to repair everything from iPads to Bitcoin mines.

Many of its employees are former coal miners.

Or worked on surface mines for almost 17 years.

I worked on like mountaintop removal jobs.

I was a heavy equipment operator.

I actually started doing it when I was about 17.

But, I mean, I liked it.

It was a challenge I was interested in.

I made really good money doing it for a long time, but I just saw the industry decline over time.

You know, by the time I got laid off the last time, which I decided it would be the last time because I was tired of getting a job and getting laid off and getting a job and getting laid off.

It was kind of a boom bust cycle.

From North County.

I spent 12 and a half years in the National Guard and I was kind of lost when I first came home.

I had substance abuse issues and mental health issues.

And I've been clean for about six years in recovery and still was really lost in the world.

And I met Brandon during volunteering for during the flood recovery efforts.

We're an anomaly.

We're a tech company.

I have more certified technicians than anybody.

We're in Jenkins, an industrial park that's empty.

That doesn't cost you anything to get the mod we actually pay you.

And so when you go through your training, if you're which would you decide which particular company you're interested in?

So just let's say this would be a bitmain.

Then you will go through a 15 day glass and then that 15 days we actually pay you a salary to go through the class and we do room and board and we have a stipend for food.

And then when you graduate, now that's the most important they have to pass that test.

But when you graduate, then we assign you to an account with that company where you'll start doing that repair, and then your salary goes up to 40 to $46 an hour.

We could be the world leader in technology repair in a very short amount time and work that could do for our part of the state is amazing.

And that really means a lot to me.

You don't have to go in debt and spend and spend your whole life trying to pay back a college degree.

It's going to be a real amazing thing for people from Kentucky.

It's it's it's been good.

I've enjoyed it.

I think these people have really become like a family to me.

And they went out of their way to show me everything that, you know, everybody really shows everybody else each other's jobs.

And we've learned a lot.

I've learned a whole lot about.

How they treat me like we're all the same.

Is universal here.

Just like the military was.

The expectations are the same, the results are the same.

So the training that I received already, the many different things I've learned since I've been here, is invaluable, really.

It's increased our quality of life.

I mean, my family's quality of life tremendously.

I'll make as much money now as I made in the coal industry, and I was very comfortable working in the coal industry when, you know, I was kind of at my peak.

But, you know, every time I've ever been laid off before, I always felt like this was the the high watermark.

You know, I've been laid off because that's par for the course with coal.

We've been burned so many more times before.

And even me as a leader, I've seen these companies come and I've worked with them.

I stood at the ribbon cuttings and then I've watched them leave.

I would like to do something to restore that, to let people know that not everybody is like that, that there are companies that can come in that are from here, that have a mission that don't need your money.

They're not here for those reasons.

And that that if we could do anything to kind of put some of that back, this has not been success overnight.

This has been a lot of failure and a lot of years of just nobody thinking that it would work and we just never gave up.

Brandon Smith is also a state senator representing Kentucky, his 30th district in eastern Kentucky.