MI277: Blue-Collar Cash w/ Ken Rusk

24:48I created that beauty. I created that. And that will be here. That will stand the test of time. I don't think you get that kind of satisfaction when you're on the 15th floor in some cubicle and you don't know how you fit into this major corporation. Like, what am I doing? How am I in this little piece of me is in this big wheel? How do I fit? So the fact that you can control and, you know, they talk about the happiness. They talk about only 20 percent of white collar workers consider themselves happy. But over 50 percent, up to 60 percent of blue collar workers claim that they're happy. I think the reason that is, is because those people are solely in control of everything, their day, their life, their financial gain, their future.

25:32It's up to them to make it happen. They're not beholden to a bunch of other people, either above them or below them, telling them what to do, how to think and how to act. I think those are some of the major differences. And again, like you saw in the book, I've got a lot of friends that are really, really successful having no education and taking on a blue collar career. What are you seeing for average blue collar salaries over the last couple of years? And how has that changed? And how does that compare to how white collar career averages have been historically and also now? Are they getting closer together?

26:04Have blue collar potentially even passed white collar? What are you seeing? Years ago, when I was in high school and the teacher said, raise your hand if you're going to college, only about a third of the people did. So two thirds of the people were going to go to work in some other thing. some type of blue-collar trade. So the supply was a lot higher back then. And therefore, because college was a little more rare, you would come out and they would make a little bit more money than the blue-collar workers would. That has completely changed. And I know that there are some people out there that still try to tell you that white-collar workers make more than blue.

26:40Well, what they're doing is they're lumping all of the part-time jobs where you work at a burger place after school or you have a paper route or they're lumping all those lower paying part-time starter jobs that are in the blue collar category. Take those out because they shouldn't be there to begin with. And if you go full-time to full-time, blue collar workers are making a fortune out there. I mean, they're starting at like 60, 70 ,000 when some of these overproduced college kids are coming out at 50 ,000 thinking they were going to make 70 or 80, but they're not because there's too many of them.

27:18So the company's supply and demand works in the opposite way for them. If there's too many of them, then their wages go down. And that's what we're seeing now. Everyone's going to college. We don't know why, but we have to have those 78, 77, 78 million workers still working in our society or else things aren't going to be running smooth, like infrastructure and those kind of things. So yeah, it has changed, but it's changed for the better. And the best part is this pendulum isn't going to swing back anytime soon until the stigma goes away from blue collar workers and the younger people are willing to do them.

27:53We're going to have a supply and demand. I call it a blue collar crisis. And that's going to be around for a very long time. But if you're smart and you're a contrarian thinker, if everyone's going this way, you should go that way because that's where the money's going to be. And that's where your financial reward is going to be as well. I mentioned this before, but it's probably a little late for a lot of listeners of this show to change their career to go into a blue collar career. Like that's probably not going to happen. I'm sure we have some people who are maybe in high school still that listen to the show, but generally most people are probably either in college or out of college already.

28:25So they're probably already set in a career. So they're probably not going to make a massive career switch to go into a blue collar trade. But it's interesting from maybe their children's perspective, if they have kids or if they're going to have kids in the future? How do they plan for that? For me specifically, I have a son, he's about to turn five, and I'm not necessarily putting money in a college fund for him because I'm not going to go into the technicalities of this, but generally that money has to then be used for college. And if not, you pay some penalties and taxes, et cetera. And I just don't know what college is going to look like for him in the future.

29:01I don't know if he's going to want to go to college, if he's going to go into a trade, if he might take over a business that I start and run that for me. So even if you're already in a set career and you're maybe not going to switch your careers, it's interesting to at least consider these for maybe your potential children. But you also then talk about, I just mentioned my son might take over my business, but he might not want to. And you talk about this in the book, how there might be an investment opportunity for people who are listening to the show because there are a lot of people who are a bit older that have been in the trades that they're getting ready to retire and their kids don't want to take over the business.

29:37So there could be an opportunity for people listening to the show who maybe are in white collar careers have some savings. They could either invest in these businesses or buy them and then perhaps they could run it. They don't even have to be on the boots, have the boots on the ground doing that work, but they could learn the business well enough and they could run it. There are just in my small town of Slovenia, Ohio, there are five people that wish they could find someone to take over their businesses. And these are businesses that are paying them in excess of$200 ,000 a year. You're talking about stonemasons and drywall people and bricklayers.

30:12And again, they're running these really cool small businesses. And here's the other thing. This guy rolls up into my driveway because he actually did an outdoor kitchen for me. He rolls up into my driveway. He's got this brand new pickup truck, gets out of his car. He's got his huge coffee. He's got Led Zeppelin on the stereo. He's wearing his T-shirt, his jeans, and his boots. And he's just whistling while he's working, laughing and joking with his buddies while they build this amazing thing. You know, there's something to be said about that, right? I mean, again, he helps when he wants to and doesn't help when he doesn't because he's running the company.

30:46But these are people that have these great businesses and they have nobody to give them to. I think it's something that you at least need to think about as a parent, because you can put your child into one of those businesses and within four or five years, he or she could take it over and know it and run it and make a great living for themselves. Because again, this isn't about how we get there. It's about what it looks like when we get there. I mean, what do you want your life to look like? And this is why I designed this entire course that goes with my book. I wanted to make sure that people would say, okay, I'm not just going to read this book and put it on the shelf and forget about it in three months, okay?

31:26Like I did all the other ones. I'm going to go 40 minutes a week into this computer. I'm going to learn how to think differently. I'm going to learn how to reprogram my priorities. I'm going to learn how to visualize my future. And I'm going to be forced to take the knowledge from the book into my actual life. And again, look at my future in a different way. And I think to me, it's one of the most powerful tools. I've gotten so many people that have said, wow, I took this course. And I mean, It's crazy because this course is$99. You get a free$25 book with it. And if you buy one, I give you one free to give to your friend or neighbor or a family loved one, whatever.

32:05It's not about making money for me. I've already done that. It's about me shortening the learning curve to entrepreneurship for future generations. And if I can make that happen, then I've done my thing. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley. just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows.

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35:42All right, back to the show. What do you say to someone who feels stuck in their career, whether it's blue collar or white collar? Maybe they're in white collar and they do want to make a switch to the trades, or maybe they're in a blue collar career and they don't necessarily love it and they want to try a different trade. What do you tell them? How do you guide them through this situation? So in the old days, that would have been tougher. I mean, before technology, that would have been a lot more difficult. So many people I know, they were in their company and they weren't happy with it, but they had their hobby, their thing that maybe they built river edge tables, or maybe they had a craft or something.

36:19So what they would do is they would do that and they would get a website going. They would build these things on the weekends or after work, and they would slowly kind of transition from their full-time job to this new side gig. And then when that would take over, then they could kind of like lop one off and go full on into the next one. And it's really cool because when I was younger, we had long pieces of graph paper and pencils that we kept all of our accounting tools on, right? Now, if you have one of these things and a pickup truck, you got a business, okay? And you can run your apparel off of it.

36:55You can run your accounts receivable, accounts payable off of it. You can do all your accounting with it. It's so much easier now to transition from a job to your true passion or whatever that hobby that you can monetize will be a lot easier now than it was in the past. So that's what a lot of people do. They kind of run both things at the same time and slowly move across. I've had so many people say, Ken, thank you so much for doing this because when I was in college, I was a plumber's helper. That's how I got my way through. I didn't even want to go to college, but I had to according to my parents.

37:29Now I'm in this job that I hate. I slowly transitioned on the weekends to being a plumber again, and I've never been happier. Now they have their own business and their business is growing and they're making a lot of money doing it. So you have to say to yourself, enough's enough. It's me time. I'm going to start focusing on what I want my life to look like. Okay. I'm going to focus on visualizing my nirvana, my comfort, peace, and freedom. And then I'm going to figure out a way to get there. What advice do you have to somebody who is early on in their entrepreneurship journey? I would say this, if you did it because you visualize your future, and I know I keep harping on that, but that's the first step.

38:12If you did it that way, then find as many other people that you can to work in your business that think the same way. Okay. Find other people that have a clear vision for their futures or help them create a clear vision for their futures because that's how you grow. They call those people entrepreneurial employees or they call them intrapreneurs. What that means is they come to your company and they feel like they own part of it and they run their division or their area just like they would run their own mini company. Collect as many of those people as you can, which is what I've done over the years.

38:46And we started with a staff of six, and now I have over 200. You collect as many people that think like you, and your company just goes crazy. Now, just so you know, people will say, well, Ken, you're lucky. You're an entrepreneur. Okay, here. Here's a crayon and some paper. Draw entrepreneur. You can't because it's just a concept. Entrepreneur at what? Hmm, now I can draw that. We all have, and I talk about this in the book, we all have these nine characteristics of being an entrepreneur. Things like initiative, faith, generosity, resistance, persistence, all those types of things. We have these characteristics within us.

39:29We just need a reason for them to come out. I mean, they may be hidden behind the shoes in your closet that you haven't worn in a very long time. But once you get this reason, once you get this vision or this future or this picture or this path drawn very clearly, all those characteristics start coming out in you. If you're good enough to plan a vacation, you're good enough to plan the future of your life. And we're all pretty good at planning vacations. We know we need the suntan lotion and we need the beach chair and we need the towels and we need the, you know, the sunglasses and the music and the hat and the, you know, the palm trees and the sun and the ocean and all that stuff.

40:11The sand, right? We're all so good at envisioning that. Why aren't we as good at envisioning the rest of our lives in the same exact detailed way? Those same things that you think about when you think about, man, I can't wait to go on vacation. you should think about all the rest of your life that way, because then the power of anticipation, which is what you're doing when you're waiting for a vacation to happen, you're anticipating it. The power of anticipation should be happening in all aspects of your life. It is the only way to live. I think it's pretty safe to say that entrepreneurship has become a little bit trendy over the last couple of years, five years, maybe, but I don't think it's necessarily for everybody.

40:49So who do you think entrepreneurship is not the right route for? I think if you're somebody that is very, very comfortable, and I have to be careful how I say this, almost dependent on other people's structures. If you feel like you need to be in a corporate environment because you need all that stuff around you to help you function, the structure, the time, all the meetings, the ladder you have to climb, all of that corporate governance and all that mindset stuff. If you feel like you need to be part of a huge organization, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you. But you have to always question, well, why do I think that way?

41:32Is it because, you know, I'm uncomfortable taking risk? Well, I can tell you that no growth ever came to anybody without being uncomfortable first. OK, risk makes you uncomfortable, but it also makes it so much more rewarding when you when you come out the other side. Right. So I think you need to examine why being in a corporate structure makes you feel so comfortable or so incubated. Like, that's really good for me. Why is that? Well, take a look at why you think that. See how how much you see your future or maybe don't see your future, because maybe you're feeling that company is going to make the future for you.

42:10That probably isn't going to happen until you come forth and say, OK, I need to know what I want. And then some of that stuff kind of goes away. And it kind of just plays into human psychology as we just kind of naturally want to be comfortable. And almost like in the state of homeostasis, we don't want to feel uncomfortable because that would mean that there's maybe a threat or something bad happening. When in fact, that's probably when the biggest and best rewards or opportunities happen is the highest risk, highest reward. And sometimes maybe that'll be a way more fulfilling path than just living a very comfortable and steady life.

42:47I can tell you that there's this one thing that all of my friends who own businesses or are blue collar entrepreneurs, they all have in common. They all kind of have this eerie calm about them. And when you talk about the fact that they're being stigmatized because they're blue collar workers or whatever, and college is the only way to go, we all kind of look at each other and just kind of get a little grin on our face, you know, like, yeah, okay, you're right. Yeah, that's true. Knowing it's not. So yeah, there's really something to the fulfillment of saying, okay, this is kind of like my baby and I'm running this thing.

43:21And again, you come out the other side with all the things that you want for your life. And these aren't necessarily always material things. I mean, it could be your charity or give back moment. It could be walking your dog in the park or your whatever, a dog, whatever you decide to have as a It could be your sport, your hobby, something you share with others. It could be the fact that you're now spontaneous, where before you were overly stressed and overly scheduled. Wouldn't it be great to be spontaneous again where we could say, you know what, I think I'm going to call my friend up and take him out to lunch, you know, instead of having your whole week planned out for everything in front of you.

43:56So there's a lot of mental side of running your own thing and being in a blue collar trade that I think is really invaluable and something people should definitely take a look at. What have you seen from a work-life balance perspective for blue-collar and white-collar jobs? Do one tend to offer better work-life balance than the other? Yeah. Sometimes in corporate life, they don't necessarily look at what the individual is doing as much as how hard they look at what they're doing. You know what I mean? Like, oh, they came in early and they stayed late. They must be a really great employee. Well, what if they're not?

44:33What if the one person sitting next to them can get more work done in six hours than the other one gets done in 10? So there is a lot of that where it's like, I feel like I have to like really overachieve in order to get my boss's attention. I hate that because that takes the control away from you. It takes the control and puts it in somebody else's hands. Whereas in a blue collar scenario, again, I think you can paint the picture any way you want it. You can say, I'm happy and comfortable working 60 hours a week running my company, or I'm going to get some help so that I run it 50 hours or more helps that I run it 40 hours and allow yourself to build the amount of freedom that you want.

45:15It's up to you. No one's going to come to you and say, Hey, Ken, I think you should start working less than 60 hours and you should go play golf more. You're the only one that's going to come up with that conclusion. And what happens is the older you get, the more you conclude that quickly because you realize life isn't forever. So I think the fact that you don't have that rat race of I need to climb to the top and I need to do all these crazy things till my boss notices me. That's not for me. Being in control of my time, my freedom, where I want to be, when I want to be and how I want to be there.

45:48It requires that you have some other people help you with that. But you know what? You share in your good benefits and your good fortune with them. And they'll push your company a lot further than you can do it yourself. That's for sure. In your book, you also talk about the importance of financial responsibility. And you talk about ways to better manage your money and finding a career that's more fulfilling and really allowing you to live the life that you want. Walk us through some of your top tips for our listeners. Yeah, this one is so easy. I can't believe that this isn't like the first thing you learn in high school, like the very first thing before even where your locker is, you need to learn this.

46:25And that is, if you take the first$60 that you ever make, you go to high school and then you come out and maybe you're getting a job paying you$50 ,000 a year. You look back at the person paying you that money and you say, thank you for paying me$47 ,000 a year, but I offered you$50 ,000. I know, but that first$3 ,000 or$60 a week, I never had it. I can't spend it. I won't miss it because I'm not using it in my budget. I take that$60 a week, I put it into a 401k program where that money, every dollar you save becomes a dollar or a dollar and a quarter tax-free because your employer will match what you save.

47:05In 10 years of that, you can stop saving that money. You'll have saved$33 ,000. And by the time you retire at 65, you'll have over a million dollars in your 401k account. even if you stop saving. Now, I'm going to suggest you keep doing it because if you're used to that $60 being gone, you might as well just keep going. And if you wait to start this process, and it's all about the time value of young money, this is what it's about. You have to start this process between 21 and 25 years of age in order to make this work because you need the time for the money to keep doubling. If you try to start this when you're 35 or 40, you're going to have to save way more than the other person did to get half the benefit when you retire.

47:51People that start when they're 35 have to save way more and they only get$600 ,000 in their account when they retire. It's the simplest, easiest way. And by the time you're 21 and 10 minutes old, because it takes 10 minutes to fill out that form, in the time it takes to do that, you can say to yourself, I'm now a 401k millionaire. I don't have to worry about my retirement. I'm done. It's over with. I don't have to think about it anymore. How crazy cool is that when you think of all the other people that you see at a bar or restaurant or wherever you're going, they're like, man, I don't know how to find my money.

48:26I got all these bills and blah, I can't even think about retirement. No, pay yourself first. You heard Ramsey say that all the time. Pay yourself first, get yourself into a 401k program where the company's giving you money, they're paying you to save and never look back on your retirement. That's just one way. It's something that's relatively simple, but so powerful. And it's almost like anybody, no matter what their circumstances can do that. So I like that advice. As we get towards the end of the show, I want to wrap up. What is one piece of advice you would give our listeners today to help them live a better and more meaningful life?

49:02You and only you know everything there is to know about you. Okay. You know, your favorite color, you know what your favorite car is. You know, what your favorite house would look like. You know, what your favorite charity moment would be. You know what your favorite vacation might look like or your favorite sport or hobby, whatever. You and only you know these things. So why are you relying on other people to tell you how to go get them or what they even should be? I say take control of your life because you're the only one who knows these things. OK, I did a drawing one time and I had 30 people draw their favorite vacation.

49:34Every one of these drawings was different. And that's good because it's unique to you. So why are you letting other people tell you what to do, how to get there, and how to make that happen? You know how to do this. You know what your favorite things are. You have these characteristics within you that can be awakened once you know what your picture looks like. So just go start it. Just start on it. Someday never comes. Do it today. You'll be so happy you did, and you'll live the life that you want. Thanks again for coming on the show today, Ken. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join me.

50:07before I let you go, where can everybody listening today go to find you, your sources of information online, social media, your book, et cetera? Where do you want people to go? Well, if you can start with going to kenrusk.com, you'll see what we're up to there and you can get the course. You can get it and get it for half off and then donate one to a friend. And that's really cool because then you can both do it together and kind of learn together, which is really neat. You can also find me on all the socials at Ken Rusk Official, and you'll see what we're up to there to try to help out with these mindsets as well.

50:42All right. I will make sure to put a link to all those resources in the show notes below for anybody that's interested in checking them out. Thanks again, Ken. Well, thank you so much. It's been great talking with you, and I'd love to continue these conversations because it's something that needs to be taught, and we're certainly willing to talk about and help people out. All right, guys, that's all I had for this week's episode of Millennial Investing. I'll see you again next week.

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