Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking on Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, and improve yourself overall, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to give a rating and subscribe to this podcast. Today, my guest is Ken Rusk. He is an entrepreneur with the construction company.
00:28
And he also coaches in and out of his company when it comes to blue collar workers. Because a lot of the time when high school students are canceled, they are usually canceled to go to college. But today we are changing the conversation and introducing what is usually not a common concept, which is the possibilities that exist in the blue collar industry. And before I go any further, please help me to welcome Ken. Hi, Ken.
00:58
Hey, good morning, Roberta. How are you? Thanks for having me. Good morning to you, too. Thank you for being on the show. I was really happy when you reached out to me because I feel like what you do is usually not talked about. And I'm not saying it's a replacement for college or it's one or the other, but I just feel like it doesn't get the traction that it deserves. But first of all, before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself.
01:21
So again, my name is Ken Rusk and I've been accused of being a blue color entrepreneur, whatever that means. And basically I started at a very young age. I did a lot of different jobs. I ended up in a construction job at the age of 15, which took me all the way through to the career that I have today. We dug a lot of ditches in our lifetime and we had a long and arduous path. And now I have my own company. We started with six employees about 35 years ago and now we're nearly 200. So it's been a heck of a ride.
01:51
So you started at 15 in construction. I thought that 15 year olds do, you know, you're McDonald's, you're Burger King, you're food delivery. How is it that you got into something a little more serious like construction at that age? Well, my high school shared a fence on its property with an industrial park. And we would cut through a hole in that fence after school to go hang out at the carryout when we were younger at the local store.
02:17
Whenever we'd walk through that industrial park, there was always a lot of energy. There was lots of businesses. There was lots of things that young guys liked. There was, you know, dump trucks and tractors and equipment and all these kinds of things. And one day I just walked in and I said, hey, what do you guys do here? And they said, well, we basically dig ditches. So I said, well, you know, I can do that. I need money for my first car, or I need money to take out my girlfriend for pizza, or maybe to go bowling with my friends or whatever.
02:44
So I signed up and I started working there when I was 15. And in the summertime, I would dig ditches and in the wintertime I'd work in the office. So I kind of learned a lot about the company and three years later, when I was 18, they asked me to travel the country, setting up franchises or satellite offices of our original company. I did that for three or four years and I got tired of that and said, okay, I'm gonna open my own business. So I opened a version of their company here in Toledo, Ohio and I've been doing it ever since.
03:14
So you went from part-time job at 15 at 18, you were opening franchises across the country. Yeah. They needed somebody that kind of knew all the ropes. So they just threw me out like a guinea pig. And you went with it. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I'd never done it before, but I said, I know the business well enough, so I think I can replicate it. I started going to Chicago, Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, all over the place, setting up these companies.
03:43
It was great because that was a real education for me to start something from scratch. So it helped me out a lot when I opened my own company back in 1986. It's been a heck of a ride. Here we are today. That is amazing. So you are basically the type of person, if you are in something, you want to learn as much as you can about it. In my book, Blue Collar Cash, one of the things that I talk about is if you've never done something before, act like you've done it. And so I would say this.
04:13
I've never built a skyscraper before, but if I did, I guess the first thing I'd have to do is buy some land. I guess the next thing I would do would be to hire an architect to design the building. If you keep going through that process, by the time you do it for 15 or 20 of those questions, you kind of already did it in your mind. So to me, it was all about, I knew what the picture looked like. I just had to get from here to that picture. And that's kind of how I did it. Very, very impressive.
04:42
It sounds to me like you actually didn't even opt for college after high school. Did you think about it? Or because you were already doing this construction job, you just thought, let me just fully immerse myself in this. Well, that's a really great question. I actually tried to go to college after I got this offer to open these companies. I thought, well, I'm supposed to go to college. Everyone says I have to go to college. So I guess I have to do that. So I started in college for about three or four months.
05:10
I remember sitting in those classrooms going, this isn't for me, I need to be out doing something. I need to be out working with my hands. So I left and I went back and said, hey, you know that offer you were telling me about, I wanna do it. And I had consulted with some people and they had all said, hey, this is a golden opportunity for you to, you can always go back to college, but you should go learn this first. Right. So that's what I did. And I never looked back. You could say, well, do you regret that? But.
05:38
When I think of everything that I've accomplished in life, I owe it to hard work. I don't owe it to a degree. I look back on that and I'm not upset that I never did that. Or I'm, it's not something that I feel negatively about because really, Roberta, no one's ever rolled into my driveway and they've seen everything that I've accomplished and said, wow, what degree do you have? I mean, it's all about. Or do they think, wow, you've accomplished so much. It would be twice as much if you had a degree.
06:07
I don't know. I was asked, well, how did you grind this life out? And I'm happy to talk about that. Yeah. That's interesting. Isn't it? It really is. Now I understand how you saw yourself and thought about those four months and thought, ah, this is not for me. Usually the bigger question is the parental disappointment. Didn't your parents say, Hey, stay there, get your degree. What are you doing with your life? You're ruining your life. Cause that's usually where most kids come from.
06:37
My father was real pragmatic about it. He looked at the experience I was about to get and he said, you can't learn that in school, you can't learn how to open a company in school and use other people's money and make mistakes and learn from those mistakes and correct them and, you know, replicate a business. So he was very down in the middle of the body. He said, I want you to do whatever you think you should do for yourself. I was really happy about that because I knew that he wasn't walking around this earth going.
07:06
I've got five sons that graduated college. Look at me. He wasn't one of those people at all. He said, do what you got to do to make your life work and whatever that is, I'll back you. So that was pretty cool. Now, like you just mentioned, I've seen exactly the opposite of that where you could have the best opportunity in the world and your parents say, no, no, no, you can't do that. I mean, you got to go to school because that's what you're supposed to do. I need you to do that for myself. Yeah. That's the sad part when that happens. Or somebody listening might think.
07:36
Oh, that's great, Ken. Your dad thought like that because that was 35 years ago. Times have changed and hence parents today think the best route for my kid to take is a college degree and a white collar job. Well, let's just take the United States, for example, okay? So there's 167 million people considered full employment. 77 million of them, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, do something with their hands.
08:04
So nearly half the population is involved in some type of blue collar trade or skill or manufacturing or something. If we try to take 100% of our future generation, our future kids and put them all through college, what's gonna happen to bridges and roads and flower shops and welding shops and electricians and plumbers and carpenters and where are we gonna get those people? I've said this before and it normally shocks people.
08:34
By the time you go from your bed in the morning to your office or school or church or wherever you're going, every day you've crossed over a thousand blue collar jobs that are still viable today. We don't even think about that. Yeah, I mean, from the cloth in your bed sheets to the rubber in your shoes, to the metal in your belt buckle, to the car that you drive, the roads, the lights, I mean, everything. Those are all jobs that somebody's doing in order to get you from there to there.
09:04
those jobs aren't going away. So the thing I always talk about is let supply and demand be your friend here, okay? If supply is low, in this case electricians, and demand is high, people who need electricians, guess where the money's gonna go? It's going towards the electricians. Where demand is high and supply is low. Yeah, and it's simple economics, and yet all the trades are like that, because right now, for every 10 contractors that are retiring,
09:33
and their average age is 55 to 58 years of age, only half of those people are coming back online. Only five are coming online. So you can see what's gonna happen with the supply and demand real, real easily. I'm just saying it's sometimes it benefits you to be a contrarian thinker. If everybody's going this way, you might wanna go that way because there's probably a lot of opportunity that way. Already crowded to this way. Already crowded. We are so overproducing
10:02
these regular bland business degrees, where now the wages that used to start at 70,000 are dropping down to 60,000, dropping down to 55,000. And yet blue collar wages are skyrocketing. So are we living to work or are we working to live? I think we're working to live. There's just a lot of opportunity out there for someone who's thinking that way. Why are trades not as well marketed as college?
10:32
It's simple. It's just the power of the money. I mean, if you think about it, colleges are holding on to billions and billions and billions of dollars in their endowment funds. And they're really good at buying up property, building these unbelievable palatial buildings and really enticing you to come to college. I mean, they almost influence or shame high schools into becoming college kid producers. And then they work through their counselors and to get to the parents,
11:01
And the parents are like, well, it's college or else I failed, which is ridiculous on its face. But yeah, it's all about that big college machine. There's a heck of a lot of money and a heck of a lot of influence and power behind that. A guy that's swinging a hammer or welding and a piece of metal or wiring an outlet. He's just kind of doing his own thing. He doesn't really feel like he needs to march on the street and say, Hey, everybody become an electrician. He's just doing his own thing. So you're right. It's about power. It's about marketing. It's about influence.
11:32
If they have billions, why are so many of the graduates in so much student loan debt? Especially because that debt is usually way higher than the $50,000 per year wages that they started off with. So why are they just freely giving the scholarships away if they're holding onto billions? That right there is the billion dollar question. No one seems to be able to answer that. I've wondered aloud many times, what is a Ivy league school doing holding onto $80 billion?
12:01
no one will give me the answer to that. So I don't really know what they do with the money. I mean, if you have that much money, you could give away college for free to every student you had for the next 50 years. Literally, yeah. And the other thing is, is the banks are just, it's just so easy to give money away to these kids and hook them and hook them into this debt. And again, I'm not anti-college. No.
12:25
Just lay my, this is not what this is about. Yeah, if you're going to operate on my shoulder so I can get on the golf course, I want you to know everything is about a knife before you pick it up. Exactly. The same is true with engineers and teachers and financial people and architects and whatnot. They need to learn those skills. Those are job specific degrees. The ones I worry about are the kids who really wanted to be an electrician or a plumber or a welder or own their own bakery shop or a flower shop or whatever it might be.
12:53
Those are the kids I worry about because they are going into school without a job specific degree waiting for them on the other side. Like you say if you decide you know what I want to be a carpenter want to be an electrician a plumber. You don't need to go and collect all that debt when you could just go straight to start working and making money and building your asset base.
13:22
What is her son doing? Well, he's just going to be a plumber. I know that plumber. He now has six employees, six vans and makes $200,000 a year. So, I mean, if you think about it in just simple terms of math, if you're spending $50,000 a year in college, all in, and I mean, books, travel, gas, food, everything, that's $200,000 after four years, you could leave high school and go make 50,000 a year as a plumber's assistant, a carpenter's assistant, whatever, and learn that trade.
13:52
You could make 50,000 a year starting day one. Four years later, that's 200,000 on the plus side. So now that's a $400,000 swing between college and becoming a carpenter. That's a lot of money when you think about starting a young person's life out when they're 21, 22 years of age. I'm not saying that college shouldn't be looked at. I'm just saying you need to look at all of your options before you make these decisions, especially if you think about what you want your life to look like ultimately.
14:21
Exactly. It's the parental pressure sometimes because parents themselves, not to blame them, but I think they were sold the idea that that's what's best for their children. Because every parent wants to give their children what they consider best. I understand what parents go through. I mean, they birth their children, they have fed their children, they've clothed them, they've protected them, they've tried to teach them basic things, they've educated them, and now they feel like they have to finish them off with a fancy degree. And
14:50
that would mean, okay, well, I did my job. I did a perfect parent job. Again, if your kid wasn't meant to go to college and you put him in there, have you really done that well? If you think about the goal here, is the goal to have an independent, goal-oriented, self-sustaining happy child or one that's just educated because that's what you thought they had to have? I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive. I'm just saying that I think your goal should be to explore what makes that person tick. What are they good at?
15:20
What could they build into a business for themselves, perhaps? At least look at all those options before you make that very expensive college decision. One of my previous guests on this podcast, her book is titled dump your degree. She mentioned how when she coaches these kids who are finishing high school, they will come to her and confess to her that, you know what, I really don't want to go to college. I'm passionate about this and it doesn't need a college degree. I said earlier that we work to live.
15:48
Well, what does live mean? Well, live means there's a picture in my mind of what I want my life to look like, okay? And I mean in every asset. What kind of house do I wanna live in? What kind of transportation do I wanna drive around? What are my hobbies gonna be? What's my sport gonna be? What's my charity or my give back moment gonna be? What's my family gonna look like? What's my vacations gonna look like? What's my pet gonna look like? Is it a dog or a cat? If so, what color, what would you name it? So you go through all these...
16:17
really defined details and you, we actually have people draw them out on a poster board with crayons in beautiful color. I always say let's start with what you want your life to look like first because we all have a different idea what that is but our own ideas are unique to us, right? Right. So let's start out with that picture first and then let's find one of the many ways that we can get that. Just another option. Just another option and
16:47
Again, college was always one of probably six options. There's tech schools, trade schools, apprenticeships, working right out of college, going into the military and learning a skill there, and then there's college. So it's only ever been one out of six, but yet right now we're led to believe it's all of it. It's only that or you're gonna be working fast food the rest of your life. And that is, it's never been true in the history of our company and it's still not true today. So even as white-collar workers sitting on our corner offices,
17:16
All the furniture is from a tree. I get a lot of phone calls from people who are in their thirties and forties who say, you know, Ken, I was a plumber's assistant in college and I really loved the way we could control our own schedules, our day. We could control our input, our output. We could control our financial gain, control our time and the quality of it. We worked for ourselves. We were outside. I really loved doing that. Then I got talked into college and I went there.
17:44
And now I'm sitting on the 15th floor of this building in a cubicle. I'm selling medical supplies and I hate it. I left. I read your book. I took your course and I said, I'm done. And they went back to being a plumber and they've never been happier. So it's never too late to make your life look the way you want it to be. And it's never too late to jump on that path. To go back to what you loved in the first place. That's a really beautiful story. Yeah. I've heard a bunch of those. I mean.
18:14
I've had people that they always wanted to do furniture building. So they started furniture building on the weekends. They got a website and then they got an e-commerce plugin. They slowly turned their side gig into a full-time gig where they wound down what they were doing for a living and wound up this new passion that they have. And they're all over the place. You can see them all over the internet. These young entrepreneurs, middle-aged, even older entrepreneurs that have decided.
18:42
I want to do what I want to do for me. And they do it and again, they never look back. That is amazing. You told me a story earlier, I'd like you to narrate again. There's a customer who complained that the plumber made $800 after working a few minutes. Tell us that story again. It's hard sometimes to break into the media with my message because most of the media people are very highly educated people. And they really are. And that's good because that's how, you know, they learn their-
19:12
after their trade or their skill. And so I remember hearing this one gal who was so for college and she was so for master's degrees and getting as far as you could get through school. And in the same breath, she was telling me, yeah, I know the other day I had a plumber come to my house. He was only there for a half an hour. He charged me $800. So $1,600 in an hour. Yeah. How many jobs give you that much in an hour? Sorry, go ahead. Exactly. And I said, did you hear what you just said? Because
19:41
You can't on the one side say everybody has to go to school and then complain that you're waiting a month for a plumber and he overcharges you. There's this thing that I call a stand back moment. And what that means is when I was younger, I planted a lot of pine trees and did a lot of landscaping on beautiful houses, big, beautiful new houses. We would plant those trees and move the boulders around and put the mulch in and put the flowers in, build fountains.
20:09
and little koi ponds and all these things. And at the end of the day, we would stand back and lean on our shovel and we would look at what we accomplished and we would go, wow, that is so beautiful. That is so amazing. What I just did is going to test time. It'll be out there forever and it'll grow and be just amazing. I don't often think that you get that. I think blue collar workers are generally very happy people because they are in control of their own life.
20:36
No one's telling them where to go, what to do, how to do it, what ladder to climb. No one's knocking them down from a promotion or getting bought out or merged or sold. It's like you kind of run your own life and they're very, very happy people. The ultimate level of freedom, yeah. I have a friend that I met here in the US. She left a very abusive marriage and she has three kids. She decided after leaving that she's gonna learn how to be a carpenter. Wow.
21:04
Excellent. Three kids. Not only is she happy, I remember one time I was FaceTiming her. She drives with her children whenever she feels like it. She controls her schedule, the level of freedom when she talks. You can just see that. You know, I knew a gal that I interviewed. She was 27 years old. She told me, she said, I was told I had to go to college. So I went for a two-year degree and I couldn't do it. It just wasn't for me. But I busted my way through it.
21:33
And finally I had one class left to graduate. Then I had a couple of kids and time went on and I said, you know, I'm going to go back and finish that degree. She's 25 years old. She said, my friend told me to take a welding class. I'm like, I don't know anything about welding. She's just take this class. You'll love it. So she takes this welding class. By the time she's done with her class, she already has a job offer. And now she stands on top of 300 foot tall windmills and she welds.
22:02
pieces and parts together. He makes $150,000 a year and she's never been happier. I mean, she has her hard hat and she has her vest and she's such a cute person. She's an awesome gal and she's totally in control of her life. She's paid off her house. She's got cars. I mean, she's got everything that she needs to just get her life going. She's helping her kids out. They're young and giving them the things that they want and need. And it's just a really cool thing because like you just said, she controls her life now.
22:33
funny because she holds a sign that says caution men at work and she just laughs like I'm not. I'm about to say that we've just both given female examples of blue color because usually the image is it's a man's job. What do you think? Why is that stereotype pushed? It's only because they don't know the possibilities. That's really all it is. I mean it used to be harder to do some blue color jobs because the technology wasn't there.
23:01
taking a hammer and swinging it all day long. Now you have nail guns, just boom, boom, boom. You know what I mean? So- Everybody can hold. Everyone can do this, okay? Yeah. And there's a lot less barrier to entry now for women. I think if you remember the old Rosie the Riveter poster back in the World War II days, a lot of women went to work to build stuff for the war effort. Why that ended? There's so many great opportunities for women in blue collar jobs. It's crazy because everyone's starving for people.
23:31
and they'll teach anybody how to do these things. That's what my friend said, yes. She said, just being a woman, the men were so willing to just teach her everything they knew and take her through the ropes. They'll teach her even the financial part of it on how to control her business. She said the willingness for them to just teach you everything for free. Not only that, but it has never been easier to open your own company. If you have a pickup truck and one of these things,
24:01
You can run your own payroll, your own accounting, your own purchasing, your own payables. You can do all of that. So I agree with you. I think women should take a good, hard look at the different opportunities that are out there because the companies are starving for people. And like you said, to have someone come in who's a gal who wants to learn carpentry, I would think that would be the coolest thing. They were excited. Yeah. I look at it this way. I think every one of us is really good at planning a vacation. We all know how to do that, right?
24:30
and you anticipate that over the next three or four months until you go, right? So what I teach is, since we're all so good at forecasting that and visualizing that and drawing that out and planning for that, why can't we anticipate all the things in our life? Why can't we anticipate what our next house might look like? What our next transportation might look like? What our next hobby might look like? What our next charity or give back moment might look like? Why can't we anticipate
25:00
the growth of our life, the same way we anticipate the onset of a vacation. If you look up the word to anticipate, it's to look forward, to be excited about, it's to be drawn to, it's to be followed. Like you can't wait in order to get there. Why can't we anticipate four or five or six things in our life all at the same time? It's not that difficult to do if you just draw it out and see what you want it to look like. So.
25:27
If I could give one message to anybody, it would be, I even have a course that's built to teach you this, by the way. And it's not expensive. Is it something ever anybody can sign up for? Yeah. So if you go to kenruss.com, you'll see this course and it teaches you how to do exactly what I'm talking about. This is $99 and you get a free $25 book with it. Okay. But if you do that and you purchase this course, I'm going to donate one to somebody that you want donated to in your name for free.
25:57
But just know that if you're helping yourself and changing your own life, you're also gonna help someone else and change their life. I think living in a life of anticipation is the only way to live. I do it every single day. I have for a very long period of time and it just makes life a lot better way to live. That sounds so beautiful. And it's actually something a lot of people dip down. They want that, but sometimes it's just not having the knowledge and the tools and the resources to know how to get there.
26:25
That is so true. You know, there are so many people that read books and then they put them up on the shelf and they kind of look at them like trophies. So I was like, you know what? I want to almost force people to read my book and then change their life by looking at this course. It's simple. It's 45 minutes once a week for eight weeks. You can do it in a weekend if you really want it. But it's all about how you look at your future. And I just thought it's time that we help anyone, whether you're 15 or 50. Think about.
26:55
I'm in control of the rest of my life. I'm in control of what that looks like. I'm in control of what would make me happy and how I would do that. Nobody else is. So I'm gonna start today. I'm gonna take control of my life and make it happen for myself. Ken Rusk, the entrepreneur with over 200 construction company employees and the author of Blue Dollar Cash. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your wisdom on the blue collar workers and the so much that we take for granted.
27:24
Well, thank you, but I really appreciate you having me today. It's been a lot of fun. And then before you go, so other than kenruss.com for the course and the book, is there anywhere else our listeners can reach you? Yes, you can go to Ken Russ official and they'll get you to my Facebook page, my Twitter, my Instagram, the Tik Tok. We're all over the place. I have a group of people that help me do that because that's not my forte. So. Okay. So Ken Russ.com for the course and the book.
27:53
Ken Roscoe Fischel for all the social media handles for Ken. So Ken, you mentioned that you have some executives who buy the book and create a book club for their companies. Please tell us more about that. This was one that I didn't see coming. I knew that I could get people from 15 to 25 years of age to read the book because they're starting their life out. And I knew that there would be some people who were going to switch jobs and transition back to what they loved, even if they were in their mid thirties. What I was surprised about is
28:21
There are a lot of small business owners that are trying to grow teams of effective people. And what they're doing is they're buying the book and they're using it as like a book club. And one of the things that's happening that the feedback that I got was we're all trying to find as many people on our team as we can who are self-managed, self-directed, goal-getting people, goal-oriented, and they want to be selfish. In other words, they want to work for you, but they also want to build their life for themselves.
28:50
When I say selfish, I mean the positive selfish, not at the detriment of others. What's happening is they're getting these people to share with them what they want their next one, three, five, 10 years to look like. They're getting these goals crystal clear and they're posting them up on the wall for all to see, and they're finding that they have all these, again, self-motivated, self-directed, they come to work early and they work hard and they're in control of their own money and their own futures.
29:20
And now they have this team of go-getters and their companies are exploding way past where they could ever do it themselves. So that was something that I didn't really see. It happened here in my own company, but I didn't really see that coming. And that's been a really cool kind of sidebar to this whole book writing and horse building scenario. So that might be something that someone out there wants to take a look at, even if they don't feel like they have the ability to be a cheerleader or to effectively communicate that.
29:48
they can use this course and this program to build it for them and then just watch it work and you get out of the way because you're not gonna believe what's gonna happen to you. I think that means it's not only applicable to blue collar workers, even here on the podcast, we promote being a self-starter, taking initiative because that's what leaders are looking for. So if you have your goals and you plug them into the bigger company goals, it turns into somebody totally different.
30:18
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I've said this and it's somewhat controversial. You have to just let it sink in. Your goal as a business owner should almost to become irrelevant to the running of the business. And what I mean by that is you want to pull yourself out of the day to day, pull yourself out of being the answer person. Well, I did this and I said that and I told him this and I told her that. No, you want to have your company run to the point where you kind of watch it.
30:46
and then you plug yourself in where you need to be, but you're not like chained to anyone specific type of job that you have to do every day. It's great because if you take this book and this course, get it into your staff, you're gonna find out that they're gonna start answering those questions. They're gonna start thinking for themselves. They're gonna become entrepreneurial employees, which means even though they work within your company, they feel like they have ownership of their departments because you gave them that.
31:15
You gave them decision-making. You watch over it, of course, but you give them the ability to make those decisions, even financial ones. And man, look out, because your company is gonna go way further than you could ever run it yourself. Those are exactly the soft skills that you don't get from college, which we keep emphasizing that suddenly companies are looking for. So where do you get them? You have to rely upon the experiences of others who have walked that path. It took me 35 years to figure this out.
31:45
I've been doing it for a very long period of time, but to get all the different pieces and put them in this particular package, it took a while. But I wish that when I was 21, starting my company, I wish that I had somebody like me telling me these things because I would cut the learning curve in a half or a third. Yeah, I think you have to learn from other people who have walked that path before. Follow the advice of others that have walked that path before you and make it happen for yourself.
32:11
which means everybody. The principles start there, they're universal. Exactly. Thank you, Ken Rusk.