Episode 102 - Unlock the Secret: How a Former Ditch Digger Built a Million-Dollar Empire!
#102 | Ken Rusk | Rusk Industries | Unlock the Secret: How a Former Ditch Digger Built a Million-Dollar Empire!
In this episode of The Curious Builder Podcast, host Mark Williams chats with Ken Rusk, a successful blue-collar entrepreneur and author of "Blue Collar Cash." Ken shares his journey from being a ditch digger to running a thriving business, while emphasizing the value of blue-collar jobs and the importance of finding one's personal path to success. The conversation touches on disrupting the traditional college narrative, the potential of blue-collar careers, and the significance of the intrapreneurial spirit in fostering growth and happiness within companies.
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About Ken Rusk
Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction. He never went to college. Instead, he made goals, planned, and worked hard for thirty years. Now, Ken is a very successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses and revenue streams.
Ken Rusk specializes in mentoring and has coached hundreds of young people in areas such as short-, mid-, and long-term goal setting, life visualization, career paths, and sound financial planning. He is passionate about helping people achieve their dreams regardless of their educational background or past.
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Ken Rusk 00:01
The way I run companies, it's basically the same. It's the culture that you create, and then the service you provide. You could interchange those services, and I think that's why some of these people from these these higher education systems are saying so I don't necessarily need to go turn a wrench, but I love the fact of running the company.
Mark D. Williams 00:28
Today on the cruise builder podcast, we have Ken ruscom. And what a delight an author, 40 year veteran ditch digger. This is filled with tons of information. Very inspiring. If you know anyone that is looking to own a business. Anyone who's in middle school, high school, looking for a change of pace, this episode is for you. You're gonna learn so much about what it is, from blue collar to white collar to just, how about you just have a collar and be inspired, be passionate, find out what's out there. Without further ado, here's Ken Rusk. Welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host today, I am joined with Ken Rusk from Rusk industries, and the author of the blue collar, the blue collar cash book, which is very interesting. We'll spot most of our time talking a little bit about that, but you're a four year veteran from Rusk industry, so welcome to the show. Maybe just give us a little background on who you are and where you find yourself in the world today. Thanks
Ken Rusk 01:19
Mark for having me. I really appreciate it. It's interesting because I've been accused of being a blue collar entrepreneur, which could mean a lot of different things. Accused sounds
Mark D. Williams 01:27
a little harsh. I think maybe complimented, it would be a better word than a cue.
Ken Rusk 01:30
Yeah, it depends on what side of the aisle you're looking at, from a stigma standpoint when it comes to these things. But yeah, it was a simple process. I, like anybody else, had a bunch of part time jobs when I was 12, 1314, years old, and my high school shared a fence with an industrial park, and we used to cut through the hole in that fence after school to go hang out, to carry out. And going through that Industrial Park was always an interesting thing, because there was all these businesses that were hustling and bustling, grown up chunk of toys running all around. And I thought to myself, you know, I needed my first full time job. I wanted to buy my first used car, and so I inquired one of these businesses, and they what do you do? They said, We dig ditches. I said, I'm qualified for that. Let me rock and roll here. So I literally got started running in shovels and jet hammers for a couple three years in the summertime, and in the wintertime, I'd work in the office while I was still in high school. At the end of that time, it was either college or whatever, and they came to me and they said, listen, we're opening up franchises around the Midwest. You've seen the front and the back of the office, so why don't you help us do that? And so I literally lived out of a suitcase in Columbus and Cincinnati, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and that was three or four years. And then finally, I just got entire living out of a suitcase. So in 1986 I moved to Toledo, opened up my own foundation, company with six people, and we have nearly 200 today. So it's been a hell of a
Mark D. Williams 02:51
rush. Whoa. I'll say 200 Wow. We had someone on a week or two ago, Danny spears, and you didn't take long to top his number. He has 100 employees. You have 200 that's, that's, that's no joke all from digging a ditch at 15. I bet you had some solid blisters the first couple of weeks, but that's to be expected.
Ken Rusk 03:08
Yeah, I still had PTSD from all the vibrating jackhammers. That's just something that you never forget. Tell
Mark D. Williams 03:14
me if you can relate to this. So we had a cabin out in Montana, and it's a lot rockier. I'm in Minnesota, and so the soil is great here. That's why they grow everything. But same with Iowa for all the corn. But anyway, Montana a lot of rocks. So I remember my I was actually a penance. I was in trouble, and my dad was so mad at me, he said, I want you to dig a hole that's four feet wide and four feet deep. Here's the shovel. Go. And I couldn't dig it. It was just rock. I think he knew that. I think I was a teenager at the time, and I remember I didn't try this on purpose, but hindsight, it was a genius move. I broke the shovel in half because I was trying to pry it instead of digging around the rock, and it just snapped it. But then there was no more shovel, so I actually didn't have to complete the job because the shovel was broken. So fortuitous accident to avoid problems. Yeah, oh, man, that's a minute. Forgot about that story. We could talk the whole thing about Rusk industries, but I and we certainly can. I think what's really interesting about your story is I love books. I devour audio books. I devour podcasts. And I I'd love to hear the journey, and we will talk specifically, maybe at the beginning, about the book, what it is, you've got courses. People can understand that there's other passes. And the main point of this is to educate people, in my opinion, but we can go where you want with it. But a big part of it too is, I think a lot of people have this idea that, you know, I'd like to write a book. I should just speak for myself. I'd like to write a book. I don't know what the why is for me, and it's I don't know personally, what am I going to share? Why am I going to share? But I just everyone that I really respect and a lot of people that I find inspiration in. It's like they write a book, and I feel like there's something in the process that must give back to their author as well. So I'd love to hear not only like when you decided you like your process, like you didn't start Rusk industries to be an author, but you became one for a reason. I'd love to. It to the why and the how and what you've learned, and so somewhere, through these questions, you can think a little bit about that. But let's start with the book itself, the Bucha blue collar cash. It's a great, catchy title. I suspect I know what it's about. I haven't read it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about how it became to be and tell us what it's about?
Ken Rusk 05:18
Yeah. So I never woke up and said, Okay, today I'm going to be an author. I'm not going to say it happened by accident, because I always thought that I wanted to tell the story of coming from 15 to now, and how that all worked. And there was a specific thing that kept showing up with that my daughter, unfortunately had cancer when she was 12, and it was a pretty scary five years for her mother and I and for her as well. And when you're sitting in oncology rooms and doctor's office and you're sitting in ultrasound rooms and all that, you have a lot of time to think, unfortunately. So I thought to myself, if I was going to write her a very long letter, what would I write her about what's important in life? She's going to have some disabilities from this thing. And what should she really be focused on? What should she really be chasing? What's the ultimate prize in life? And it's funny mark, because the words comfort, peace and freedom, they kept showing up like red Volkswagens. One, you see a million of them, and I couldn't get rid of these three words. And they kept triangulating as though they were dependent on each other, and so I started writing a very long letter to her about you should be chasing comfort, peace and freedom, whatever form that takes. We're not all going to chase rap star careers or influencers or sports figures. We're not all going to want mansions and 15 cars and mega yachts. Everyone seeks their own level of their perfect Nirvana, their personal nirvana. And so what is that? And how can you define it? And then how can you go about chasing it? And through that letter, I started citing friends of mine who overcame mark the most unbelievably horrible situations to become really awesome, blue collar entrepreneurs, really successful people, and there was more than there was four or five of them. I could have written 10 of them, but I only had room for so many. And that telling their stories, along with telling Nicole story, along with telling my own story, it just melded into this, this self help, this is how you should look at life kind of thing. And I know I had 10 legal pads full of ink. I hand wrote the book with a pen, and many pens, did you really? Wow, yeah, every time I would type, I would just go blank. I'd type five words and I'd misspell three or four, because I'm a terrible type or so. I was literally on a plane one day, and the guy said to me, I'm shaking my hand like this, and he's going, what's the matter? What are you doing? And I said, I think I'm writing a book. He goes, No, I get that. But you're like, you're writing it. Why aren't you typing it? Because I can't do that. That. That's that stack of legal pads. I literally just googled editors in New York, and I found an editor there that had a whole stable full of ghost writers that could help me clean this thing up, and they were interested in it. And then it went to social media, then it went to they found me an agent, and then that went to a book proposal, and then it went to a bidding war amongst six different publishers, which was crazy, wow, yeah, I landed Harper Collins, which is one of the big guys, and then it just went nuts. From there, it just took off and became a best seller a year or two ago. And again, eternally blessed, very grateful, very humble, pretty cool experience. That
Mark D. Williams 08:31
does sound pretty amazing, so hot. It's been, what, three years. Yeah, it'll be four years in the fall, I think. Yeah. Does it have a audio version? Or No, it does. Yeah,
Ken Rusk 08:41
I have an audio version. I have a audio audio book. There's a Kindle version. There's a CD, believe it or not, there's still a CD out there. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 08:47
yeah, no, that's really fascinating. How I'm always interested in the why. Because I feel like I saw something the other day about when you sell something, and what's cool about your why is, it didn't start with you were trying to sell it. It seems like he's backed into that. It's the why was it was a letter to your daughter, and I think that's I can't I actually now I'm gonna have to read the book or listen to it when I'm running here this summer. But I just love that concept that so I feel like in this will dovetail into some of the messaging. I'm sure, like one of the things that I seek to do on the even this podcast, is I want listeners to get two to three business ideas out of it that they can apply to their business, sure, because most people, not all, but most, seem to get into whatever their career is, especially if they're entrepreneur, through passion, something that they like to do, some like most builders, became a builder not to run a business. They became a builder because they like building most. If you're an HVAC or a pipe fitter or whatever, like you were either good at it, you got skilled at it. But like to this Venn diagram of two circles, like lining up here, that you would be both great at business and also great at another thing. It's just really unlikely, even if you go to college and you become a doctor, like the idea that you're a doctor, but also good you're gonna be an entrepreneur at the same time. That is just so rare. And yet, why is it so many entrepreneurs? We all struggle? With business literacy, and there's always room to improve there, and then. I think that's also why you see a lot of very successful people. I think it's happening more and more now with how many people are retiring. I think we're seeing I just read an article maybe three months ago about Harvard and MIT grads saying, hey, I can go to Wall Street and work 100 hours a week for five years to get my chops and whatever, or I could buy a plumbing company or an electric company, it's an instant cash machine, and I could just own this business, and I could put all my time in this and instantly make money. And there's this huge Youth Movement, which I'm really excited about, but I just interesting that they are coming from a business background, and we'll see, versus coming it from the passion of starting the company, which I don't think you always have to start a company to own a company. I think one of the things I wish that someone had told me 20 years ago, when I was 23 starting a company, is you could actually buy a company. You don't have to start one. I don't know why we always think we have to start everything. Or maybe that's just a classic entrepreneur story, but I don't know what's your thoughts on that
Ken Rusk 10:59
you hit it on the head. So right now, there seems to be this movement towards control. And what I mean by that is, you know, the secret is out on the blue collar side, that when you're when you're doing a job, in working with your hands or doing something for yourself, you control a lot of things. Mark. You control your input, your output, the quality of that output. You control your day, your time, your schedule, you control your financial gain, and you don't always get that on the 15th floor of some cubicle of some auction house or whatever you're talking about, there some big multi nation Corporation. You wonder, how do I fit in here? So the ability to control a lot of a lot of who you are and how you work is getting discovered by that side, the white collar side, of our universe. And it You're right. I have five or six friends right now that want to sell their businesses that can't sell them, and they're making bunches of money, and they can't find anyone that that wants to buy those businesses, because there's the stigma, or the past 10 or 20 years, there's been this stigma applied, and it's mainly generated by colleges that if you don't send your kid to college, he'll never or she'll never, amount to anything, which has never been true. But somehow they've convinced parents that it is even high schools, I relish in that, because I think of like anything. If everyone's moving in this direction, the herd mentality, if you will, then maybe, if you want to be different, unique and special, you go over here, and maybe you go the opposite direction. And so that's what's so nice about contrarian thinkers in this particular example, because where in the blue collar side, where supply is low and demand is high, that's where the money goes. So you have less and less kids organically going into these these professions, through the high school path, like they used to through shop class or whatever. That creates the demand. And there's this hole for every 10 electricians retiring today, only five are coming online. So what does that tell you is
Mark D. Williams 13:02
that, is that true for HVAC and plumbing? I've heard a number of different stats that are very similar. Is that true for the mechanicals in general, or that one specific?
Ken Rusk 13:10
It's all over the map. It may not be that severe in HVAC or but like Plumbing, Carpenter, carpenters and welders, it's it's all that. And when you see that, you can say, I'm either going to follow what the society expects me to do, which is follow the herd through some college path, or I can say, Huh, I'm either going to go work for a guy and then learn his company and then go start my own or I'm going to work for a guy, retire him and buy his company. And there's this awakening now that's happening, where people are going? Wow, maybe that is the path, because the actual skill itself is interchangeable, and I got to be careful when I say that, because it's I'm not. I'm respecting all the trades when I say this. But in my case, I run a ditch digging company. I was a ditch digger, so I get it. I love those guys. I still am one, but I could almost replace ditch digging with selling windows or selling roofing or welding or carpentry, and have the same framework you follow me. So running the company is in the way I run companies. It's basically the same. It's the culture that you create, and then the service you provide, you could interchange those services. And I think that's why some of these people from these these higher education systems are saying so I don't necessarily need to go turn a wrench, but I love the fact of running the company, and so I think that's why some of that stuff has happened. There's
Mark D. Williams 14:37
a lot to touch on. One of them, maybe start at the top is and it's a great name, because everyone knows what you mean by blue collar. What's interesting? And I've mentioned this a number of times on the podcast, but I'd be curious to go back. I actually have not done research on this. I don't know if it came up in your book research at all, but like the term white collar and blue collar, like, where did it start? I know what it means, but. Did you ever look into that, like, where I would love to hear this
Ken Rusk 15:03
So way back in the day, if you were an educated person, or if you worked in the office, or if you were a lawyer or teacher or doctor or whatever, you had these really tall, starchy white plastic, not plastic, but like, really stiff collars. And you would put them on your suit, and you could interchange them. You could switch them to any suits you had. Oh,
Mark D. Williams 15:24
really. So it wasn't like it wasn't the collar was not integrated, like they are.
Ken Rusk 15:28
The collar, you could have four or five black buttons, and you could interchange it with any type of dress that you had. And so you were seen as a high hat wearing, cane using glove wearing. Was this
Mark D. Williams 15:38
what you are? We talking 1800 1700s 19 like? When was this happening? Yeah, you're
Ken Rusk 15:43
talking 1800s and through 20s. Okay, so people would walk around and they would recognize them as, oh, that's a professional person. Now, conversely, if you were a guy working in the ditches, you wore jeans and you wore Jean shirts, so you had a blue collar. You had dungarees, or you had the original Levi of company, and that kind of thing. You wore blue collars because it was a blue jean shirt and that was your uniform. So you were considered blue collar, and that's how that happened. So the interesting thing is, though, that, you know, this stigma started way back then. Well, he's just a ditch digger, and I'm this white collar wearer, you know I mean. But what happens is, over the years, as these jobs got more sophisticated, and I'll remind you that of the 160 7 million people in the US today considered full employment, 77 million of those people still work with their hands in some way, shape or form. So almost half of us are still in that mode this whole into the past. The 80s, it got really bad where colleges were saying, you either come to us or you're going to be flipping burgers the rest of your life. And they were selling people on that notion, which was not true, but it was working. And they started convincing parents that, hey, if your kid doesn't have a degree, you're not a good parent. You haven't finished, you haven't finished kicking that bird out of the nest. Yet, they were convincing high schools and guidance counselors they were actually monetizing high schools for sending them. People.
Mark D. Williams 17:13
Tell me more about that. What are we talking about here? There
Ken Rusk 17:17
were schools that were getting they were getting grants, or they were getting funds based on how many people they pushed through college, and then how many, how many scholarships they got.
Mark D. Williams 17:36
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Ken Rusk 19:59
I. Think two things. I think at one point, we were really looking for engineers bad, and so they were trying to really push people into engineering school, and that still is something that we're looking for you. Ian Musk talks about that, but I did a speech one time in Columbus for a bunch of guidance counselors. And by the way, you're not allowed to call them guidance counselors anymore, because that's like a negative connotation. So what do you call them? You had to call them school counselors. So when I heard that, the first thing I did is I stood in front of these 50 people, and I said, I'm so happy to be here in front of all you guidance counselors today. And they all start laughing. Oh, you can't say that anymore. I got, I know I heard, I can't say that anymore, as if that's some kind of stigma, because if you need guidance, then you're less than a normal kid, which is so stupid. But anyways, do you know that afterwards I had a book signing. 47 of the 50 people who had other classes to attend throughout this whole convention, they stayed behind so they could get a copy of my book signed. But that's not the story. The story was three cores of them said to me, Hey, you gotta keep talking about this. And you gotta talk about as loudly as you can, because our schools are telling us we have to push kids into college. And we know some of these kids would be better off as carpenters or plumbers or electricians or bakers or hairdressers or estheticians or nail techs, and we can't say that. We have to say, go to college. So please keep talking, because you're helping save some of these kids from debt and problematic futures by getting degrees they can't use or don't want. What's so it was pretty eye opening for me to have that happen.
Mark D. Williams 21:35
What's cool about that? And I was listening to a podcast that you did recently with a pipe fitter, and I know you're a big proponent and fan of teachers. They have a very difficult job, and so it's not that we're talking so I like to hear that these educators, these not guidance counselors, are wanting that what's interesting is the parents role in all this. And I had a interact interaction recently with a good friend of mine and his wife, and very close friends, actually, and their son is has horses, has all the stereotypes of working with his hands, and he's just great. I've had him on a number of my job sites, cleaning up and just the stuff that I did when I was a kid, on my dad's job sites, and just whatever, just he's interested, he's wants to get out. It's hard to find guys. He used to be back in the 80s and 90s, my dad would get a truck pull up after wrestling practice, and wrestlers and cross country runners were the best, he said the best high school workers, because wrestlers, they had really good work ethic. And he's no cross country runner who's going to run 40 miles a week is going to shirk responsibility. And so they've been good little helpers. But anyway, where I'm going with this is that he was taught. I said, Hey, so and so in his Gage, as a gage, where are you thinking about going and or what do you want to do if you want to? Because he had expressed to me, like, Hey, I to me, like, Hey, I love building. I love what Christina. I'm like, of course, I'm the podcast. I'm interviewing people all the time. Yeah, there's a great line, and I feel this big, sharp kick under the table. And I am not a subtle person, like, I'm like, I look across the table. Did you just kick me as mom kicked me, and I'm lit and I was like, I wasn't going to shut up. I understood that was her. I understood what she wanted me to do, which was to shut up, but I wasn't going to do it. And I said right in front of her son, it was pretty clear, I'm like, I'm not disrespecting you like you are the mother. I would never disrespect that. But I also knew well enough to say, hey, there is great careers here, and there is a huge potential to own your own business and do all these things. And I'm not saying college is for you or isn't for you. I'm just saying, let's just talk about what the options are. I'm just here to be a resource and help people on their journey. If I can do that great, my wife is a physician. You obviously have to go to college, and I'm glad that she did, because she's gonna have to learn a ridiculous amount of schooling engineering. It's just there's so many people that don't want to go that and don't think they have an option and like anything. If you take away somebody's hope and if you take away their options, it's really crippling. How much more passion like for me, I only care if someone's passionate, honestly, the rest of it doesn't matter that much to me. I want you to be like, pretty excited about it. And one of my favorite stories is a framer I had named Johnny, and he, like a lot of them, he loved hunting and fishing and all the stereotypes of a normal framer. But what I loved about it is, after every day, he would take a picture of what he did, and he would text me the owner of the company. I was a young kid at the time, I was in the 20s, and he would send me a picture, and he goes, how awesome is this. He was so proud of what he did. And there's very few industries where you can look back on a day's work, a week's work, and visually see what you've done. I'm not saying it's the only one, but there's a huge amount of validation and accomplishment when you can do that. And I just, I love hearing people's stories when they talk about that.
Ken Rusk 24:34
Well, yeah, so a couple things. There's a lot to unpack there, and I love this. So I call what you're saying. I call it the stand back moment. I was, I was on our landscaping crew, and we landscaped million dollar houses back in the 80s. So these were some big houses. These are big projects. And I used to, we used to at the end of the day, we'd stand back on our shovel, and we'd drink our pop or our beer or whatever we had, and we would live. Really look at what we did and say, look at that. How freaking beautiful is that? What we just we built stone pathways and pine trees and hills and ponds and all this kind of stuff, and it was amazing. And that is why they say that 65% of blue collar workers are happy with their jobs versus 35% of white collar workers.
Mark D. Williams 25:19
Can you repeat that stat one more time? 30
Ken Rusk 25:22
the stat was 65% of blue collar workers are happy with their jobs versus 35% of white collar workers. Wow. And the reason they say that is because when you get right down to it, there's that control factor, okay, there's that control factor that a blue collar worker has, that a white collar worker doesn't necessarily have the same Now, having said that, there are people that want to work in corporations because it's very secure, or at least they believe that it is, and there's lots of people in a big building that they drive to every day, and that's fine. I'm not knocking that at all. I'm just saying it's my job as a blue collar entrepreneur, okay, to present the options that are out there for everyone to see. I was at a I was at a party many years ago, and I couldn't believe this. I there was a bunch of gals there. My son is going to Ohio State. Oh, my son's going to Notre Dame. My son's going to wherever you pen, or wherever they were going. And the one gal said, What happened to what's her name's son? What's he doing? Oh, he's just going to be a plumber. And I'm like, Okay, I know who that plumber is, and he's now got six vans, 12 employees, and he's freaking killing it, okay? And that never even occurred to them, is it the title or the degree that's important, or is living well important is having a self sufficient, financially motivated problem solving? Isn't that the goal, or is it just a degree on their wall? When you say to someone, you're going to college because you need to get an education, can you please draw what that means? Here's a piece of paper and a crayon. Can you draw education and tell me exactly what you mean by that, because I'm not even sure you know what you mean when you say that I'm not an anti college guy like you said, if you're going to operate on my shoulder so I can get back on the golf course, I need you to know everything there's to know about a knife before you come at me with it. Believe me, I get that, and I believe that school specific, career specific pathways are great, but when you're talking about it's for everybody. It can't possibly be for everybody, because some of us learn with our hands, some of us learn tactically, someone. We all learn in different ways. And all I can say is, before you put your son or daughter through that path, at least think about what is it you want your life to look like? Tell me what your nirvana is. Tell me what your comfort, Peace and Freedom level is. Tell me what you want your car to look like, your house to look like, your vacations to look like your sport, your hobby, your give back moment, your charity, your pet. Is it a dog or a cat? What color? What would you name it? Let's figure out what you want your life to look like first and then find one of the many paths to getting there, because I get it. I am a parent myself. I wrote a letter to parents on my website, and I said, Listen, I understand you. You birthed your child, you swallowed them. You, you kept them clean. You bathe them. You, you fed them. You, You sheltered them, protected them. You try to teach them what you know? And now, for some reason, when they turn 18, you think the only way you can walk this earth and say, I'm a good parent is if they have an expensive degree on the wall. That's where the story goes south, because that's never been true in the history of our economy. Yeah, sure. If you're going to be a doctor, you're going to guarantee yourself some higher level, there's no doubt, and that's fine, but you can't say that white collar equals successful, blue collar equals unsuccessful. That's just not true, and you're actually harming your son or your daughter. And I have examples of this, if you put them into some bland business degree where now they have 100 grand in debt, and they come out and they end up being a carpenter anyway. You know what I mean? So you just got to be careful as you're parenting these kids that you aren't the one that that is. It's not feeding your ego for their degree as much as it is their life. You need to figure out what's really important.
Mark D. Williams 29:16
It's there's a lot of places to go with this, but one, I'm just going back to that, and I appreciate the historical detail on that blue and white detail. I was talking, I was listening to another builder friend of mine who is over in Switzerland recently, and they were talking about just the collar of your shirt. Why do we have to determine what the color of it is? And this particular one was in Switzerland. And to be a master craftsman is a very respected trait, and a part of it is the industry over there is like you can afford to live in your home. You can actually have a living wage support your family, being a carpenter, being a painter, and it's very respected. There's no shame in it. So I think words matter, education matters, the stigma of it matters. And I think there's a cultural thing, right? We're talking about it, but honestly, this is going to be years, decades, generations, possibly to change. Change some of this culture, if our culture even wants to change. And who knows that'll be probably, for sure, beyond you, maybe beyond me. Too hard to know how long this is going to take, or at all. But we're certainly not the first country or period of time where this was a thing like it used to be, right back in the old days, like if you were tan, that meant you were a field worker. And if you were, let's say your skin was white. If you were lighter in color, like you wore the hats they wanted to protect themselves, because the whiter you were, the wealthier you were. Or even, like gout, they called it the rich man's disease. Like, the fatter you were, the more prosperous our history, the human kind. This is not a United States problem. This is a human problem where we, I don't know that much about it, but like the caste system in India, you've got all these different layers of right? It's just really interesting, as somebody that doesn't really care about any of those things, like, I You're a person, like, I value as a person. And can we just go back to like, just normal, or we just be humans and get out of our own way? And we all have biases. I'm sure I have biases. I think that's the thing. We have to talk about it. You have to name it. What do they say? You have to name it, to tame it. And if you don't talk about it, how are you ever supposed to educate it? The other In fact, I won't go super political on the podcast, because that's not the point. But like the other day, something came up in the paper. My daughter's nine. She's sharp as a whip. She'd be amazing owner. I actually have had her done, do a few kids podcasts. I had her over break interview other builders kids as a nine year old, it was just hilarious. So have them talk. But anyway, I was explaining to her some history stuff that's a little controversial, but I'm like, I told her name is May. I said, May, I will never not tell you the truth, because this has happened in history, and if we don't talk about it, and this is a very dark time in history, it was terrible what happened. But for me to shelter that from you as a parent, this is my own personal belief, if people can do what they want with their own children. But for me, I was like, May, I just gonna tell you. What it is, and I'll help you understand what happened and how we can avoid it in the future. But the reason I'm bringing it up is we all have these teaching moments. They don't even have to be your children. They can be anybody. And maybe it's the parent kicking you across the table, and you standing up and say, You know what you could again, this is becomes a little controversial, because it's her son, but like just being open about it, there's a there's so many possibilities. What what do you want their future to be? And what do you want your future to be? A
Ken Rusk 32:11
couple things there. So when you put your feet on the floor in the morning, by the time you hit the floor and get to your home, office, school, church, whatever. But you're crossing, literally, you're crossing 10,000 very viable, very financially sound blue collar jobs that are still out around today. It's not gone. We're still this is still a huge industry. And the other thing that people don't understand is that the sowers came from Germany. People who make clothes, cabinet makers came from there. The stone masons came from Eastern Europe. They came from Scotland and Ireland. The carpenters came from from there, from Germany as well. The farmers, they all immigrated to this country from other parts of the world. But even back in the day that the tailors that made suits Okay, in Manhattan, they might have been looked down upon because they had a needle and thread in their hand. Those people made a killing. Even back then, they were out paying cash for houses and they were it's funny because someone asked me the other day, how come I never knew this? How come I'm being told I gotta put my four kids through school? I didn't know that I was making a $400,000 decision, and this is after I told him. I said, Look at can base construction jobs right now, where you can learn something now and then run your own company later. They're paying 30 bucks an hour. That's 75 grand after after overtime and everything, and after three years that, that's two, 300,000 to your plus side of your asset base. You go to school, you're spending 4050, a year. That could be 200,000 to the negative side. So what you don't understand is you're making a $400,000 decision right now for your child. And that's a very real economic situation. And they're like, How come nobody ever I never knew this. I didn't know that. I just found out that my neighbor over here owns an HVAC company. He's got this big, gorgeous house, and he's got these cars, and he lives a great life and goes on vacations. And I'm like, because nobody ever asks us, okay, everyone wants to interview the highly educated people you got east coast the United States, interviewing West Coast United States. And no one in between. No one ever asks us how good we're doing. No one ever asked us why we like what we do. Never. Ever asks us You didn't go to college, really.
Mark D. Williams 34:26
And the funny part is, and this is going back to your Pipe Fitter interview. For those that haven't listened to it, it's definitely worth Yeah, he has a super interesting story. But when the power goes out, people pay attention. When your internet goes out, people pay attention when your phones don't work, people pay attention. One of the most basic amenities of all is sewer and water. I guarantee, if your sewer stops working, what do you do? And obviously, a lot of this, I assume, like what happened in Asheville, South Carolina, and like some of the stuff the hurricanes, things like major outages, to being where you live, like you get reminded of just Whoa, there. Obviously. There's your life at the fires in LA and all those types of things, but on a not so dramatic level, but on an even more basic level, like in Minnesota, it was negative 25 I didn't hear about any power outages or things freezing, but you're shooting somebody had some pipes freeze, for sure. And so my point is you don't really realize that the layers of whether it's pipes or sophistication, it's just not layers of government, but layers of services that you depend on that you expect to be normal, that when they're removed from you, when there's a phone outage now, and there was one earlier the last summer, where I think our phones network for half a day. And being an entrepreneur, obviously, you want your phone, you want to be able to call people, you got to do jobs, whatever. But that's a pretty minor thing. But what if it went out for a week or a month or a year, the
Ken Rusk 35:41
most popular guy in in North Carolina right now is the guy with the end loader and a dumpster, okay? And he is making an absolute fortune. I live, I live part time in Naples, Florida in the winter time, okay? And we had, I went, I've been going there since I was a kid. I've been going there for 45 years. Never experienced a hurricane, ever mild ones, maybe thunderstorms, yeah, but not major hurricanes. And we had two in the last, what, four or five years down there. So there were 10,000 elevators that were broken in Naples, Florida, 10,000 10,000 in that area, in Collier County, in that area. What people didn't know was, let's just call an elevator repair company and come out and fix it, right? Okay, elevator repair guy comes out and he's might be from Wisconsin, right? Because they're, they're bringing people in these, these elevator repair guys are making 150 180 grand a year. I guarantee you, you you quiz or query anyone living in that building, they're probably thinking he's making 50 grand. Okay? These are people. These are the hidden gems out there. These are things that go on in this world that people just don't understand. They don't know about. And again, it's because they don't ask us, but I can tell you, we go home every night and we just smile and we we wave at those people that are driving down the road and doing what they're doing. And it's an interesting thing, because it's not like I want to go out and trumpet how much money I make. That's not the point. The point is I'm trying to get with parents and say, before you make this decision, like the kid, I had a car one time that they had to tear the whole dashboard out. It was a recall kind of thing. So they were going to take my car for three weeks. I had to get a replacement car. So I went to this rental place right down the street here, and the kid comes out from the high in the counter. He's got a three piece suit on. I think each piece was from a different suit, but he was doing it. He was cool, and he had his, like, little his name tag and everything. And we had to wait a half an hour for this car, and this kid was, like, down. And so I just started talking to him, what's going on. And I told him about what I was doing with the project and everything, and he said, he goes. I told my parents I wanted to be a carpenter, and they pushed me to go to school. Now I have 80,000 in debt, and here I am making 28, five a year, trying to work down that debt at this car rental place. I got a business degree. Nobody can't make it whatever. And I said, You need to leave this job right now and go become a carpenter, because you're never going to get out of this. You're You're right. You got, you got sold down the river a little bit, and I understand that, but you gotta get out and make a change. And I've had so many people Mark since I started this book and this course, call me and thank me, or email me, write to me, thank me and say I was 48 years old. I was in this cubicle, and I'm selling this medical supply thing, and I hated my life, and I read your book, and I'm like, screw this. I'm going back. I was a plumber's assistant when I went through college, and I loved it. I'm going back. I became a plumber, and I love my life now. Thank you so much. And it's just interesting how that shift, that pendulum shifted so far one way, and I'm pushing as hard as I can to shift it back to the middle, because that's where it belongs.
Mark D. Williams 39:07
Yeah, you're not alone. We're locally here in Minnesota, our building industry, Housing First is awesome at this, but they've actually created a speakers bureau and where we can go speak to high schools colleges, and it's been on a more local level. And so we'll just see what happens. I think I'm going to do my first one here this spring. This spring, so we'll see how the kids interact. But I actually had a you can sense the entrepreneurial spirit being one you. I'm not gonna say you have it or you don't, but there's certain people that when you interact with them, you're like, wow, okay, this is different. That's no different than I make it. Michael Jordan, someone once told me I think they called it a one, a one touch, not a one touch wonder. It was a one possession talent. And they were talking about when Michael Jordan famously got cut, but then the next year, he was at an all American camp, and knowing who he was, everyone was talking about all the other ones, and he took the ball one time, went up the court, and every single scout in the gym not grant us Michael Jordan, but everyone knew one touch. This kid's different. And where I'm going with this is. You can interact. I think teachers see it all the time, like you can just tell and there's something different about this kid and and their mindset, their whatever it is, it's just sometimes you can't even name what it is. You're like, they're just going places. And where I'm bringing this up is like, where are those places go? How can, like, guidance counselor? How can they help? It's funny. I'm thinking about my guidance counselor right now, I'm trying to think of what she told me. This is Huff. I played tennis with her son. Have to think about what she actually told me. I can't think of it right now, but just giving people good advice, and I think talking about it sharing. And anyway, a couple weeks ago, before your Episode will air, Brody cheetah. He's a 17 year old kid reached out to me, totally not in construction at all. I'm like, he's a 17 year old kid who reached out to me that wants to be on the podcast because he wants to talk about running a business in high school. I'm like, bring him on. This kid, sounds amazing, right? He was it was so sobering. He has a t shirt business in in school. And he talked about how half the teachers were supporting him and half of the teachers were suppressing him. It was really interesting. And I don't know if they felt their careers were threatened or what they necessarily it came out a little bit in the interview, but it was interesting. He had he was one teacher was helpful to him, that she helped him. She paid her own money, but she used school facilities like printers and whatnot to help him create some posters for whatever. And once the school found out about it, even though she paid out of it so that I can get the schools paying for it, although I would argue that I'd fine with that personally, they shut it down with basically the mentality of, if we do it for him, we have to do for everyone, kind of, honestly, it's a communist mindset. Come on, we got to stop. Yeah,
Ken Rusk 41:27
there's no doubt. There's no doubt they're pushing College on everyone's, oh, why? And
Mark D. Williams 41:31
so anyway, the kid is getting he's, I'm not gonna let that stop me. And I was just so impressed as demeanor, I was like, I was nowhere near that mature at 17 and just seeing and so I wanted to get his story on there, and I hope it inspires other people. Inspires other people, because you can actually start this a lot younger. Honestly, this goes back to anytime I see a kid selling lemonade, like, even if I'm not thirsty, I just, I pull over, I give him a couple bucks, because I want
Ken Rusk 41:52
I do this. I do the same exact thing, even if I and many times I don't want the lemonade because I don't know how they made it, so I just anyway. But I like the entrepreneurial part of it. It's interesting, because if you go to some of these high schools, and somehow my high school turned into a college prep school, it didn't change any curriculum at all. It didn't change the way it looks or the way it operates. It's the same school, but now it's got college prep words on it. Okay, what does that even mean? But what that harm? How that harms kids is, if my dad's a carpenter and I want to be a carpenter, I'm walking into these down these hallways, and it's all college prep everywhere. Am I like? Am I look down upon? Because I'm not following that path, it begins to to, you know, plant that idea in someone's mind at a very young age, and then you have these boards, right? And the board says, oh, Susie's going to wherever, MIT, or this one's going to Ohio State, or this one got a scholarship to go to here or there, Michigan, whatever. Okay, there's not a board over here that says, your your friend, yeah. There's not a board that says he started T Shirt Company. There's not a board that said this guy is going to follow in his footsteps and take over his father's plumbing company. There's not a board that says this guy is going to go become a carpenter and he's going to build houses. There's not a board for that. And I think that's really sad, because you're only celebrating what a finite group of people are accomplishing. You're not celebrating the rest of these human beings.
Mark D. Williams 43:29
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Ken Rusk 44:25
I was on Fox News one time, and they were talking about paying off all these college loans, and they asked me what I thought about it, and I said, Well, if you make a bad decision and you go out and get a degree that you can't use, that's nobody's fault but your own. Okay? You live in this romantic world of, oh, I'm going to study Eastern European language translation, and you can't sell that anywhere. That's on you. Just like it would be for me if I started a surfboard repair shop in Ohio, that would be a bad decision. I wouldn't expect you to bail me out. Okay? So my thinking is, if you're going to bail out kids who paid money for college, then are you also going to bail out the bail out the guy, or pay for the guy to start his own plumbing business by buying the truck and giving them some tools? Because it's the same thing. It's one to one. That's
Mark D. Williams 45:15
funny about that, because I'm in the Midwest too, although actually there's active surf scene on the North Shore at Lake Superior. I don't even seen these guys. They only they pretty much the best surf is in the winter, so like, January through March. It's negative. 25 these guys are out surfing. They've got these giant ice beards. They're wearing two suits. But like, maybe a surf shop in Duluth, Minnesota, you could reinvent it. I don't know what's happening in Toledo, if you got laser
Ken Rusk 45:38
with you don't have any surf in Lake Erie. That's pretty funny. One
Mark D. Williams 45:41
of the questions here before we'll modify here at the end, is you mentioned coursework. I was looking on your website. You obviously have the book. I assume the book is the feeder to the courses, or is the course a feeder to the book? Walk me through these eight platforms I was I didn't have enough to dive into each one and tell me a little bit about how this evolved. It started with this letter to your daughter, which obviously has gone way, way. And I'd love to hear her perspective on this at some point through you, but walk us through. So the book comes out. At what point did was the coursework kind of a manifestation after the book? Like, when did that start happening? Hey, I got to get people training steps to use this to actually help them on their way.
Ken Rusk 46:17
That's a great question. So your podcast I'm doing right now is number 285, that I've done in the past couple three years. And I had seen a lot of podcasters with a lot of books behind him, a lot of times they'll put the books on shelves behind him. And it got me thinking, do I want my book buried in one of those 1000 books that's on his shelf or her shelf? And I thought, you know, the answer is, No, I don't want my book to become shelf help. I really want to be self help, right? Oh, that's a good one. I heard that one, so I stole it. So for me, it was like, I asked people, I mean, pick a book, tell me what you learned from it. And they're like, Yeah, that was a great book. I read that. How did it apply to your life? I don't know, but it was a good book. I just read it. So I got miffed by that, and I thought, I want to force people to be better. I want to force people to design their life today, this afternoon. I want to force people to think about their future better. I want to force people to take control of their future. And I know you hear that a lot, but I this is my gig. I My business was very successful, and I'm very blessed and grateful for that. I'm not doing this to make money. I donate the money from my core sales anyway, but I wanted people to take my book, and you don't even need to read it. You could start the course and reference the book, or you can take the read the book and then go do the course. But it really changes how you see your future, like now today, this afternoon, and so it's eight sessions. They're 45 minute sessions a piece. You get to hear me talk for three or four minutes, and then you're off doing the task assigned. But it really just, it's really designed to clear your head, start from scratch, hit the reset button and say, Okay, I'm going to live for me. These are my choices, me, and only me knows how I want to live. No one else can tell me that. No one else could even guess. So it's it starts off with me figuring out what that looks like, and then finding one of the many ways to get there. And it's literally $179 it's not one of those two or $3,000 courses. You get a book with that, and then you take it, and then you can connect with me, and I'll ask you how you did, and I'll talk to you about your future. I even have some places you can go to college for six months and get into these jobs that are paying 7080, 90, 100,000 a year. I have some students in there right now. They're these micro colleges. So I try to take you from A to Z and make that happen. And again, you can find it at Ken rust.com, and the cool thing is, if you decide to help yourself, just know you're going to be helping somebody else in the process. So it's pretty cool thing.
Mark D. Williams 48:50
How does you had mentioned the, I guess I'll go there in a minute, about the pipe fitter, because it keeps coming back to me. Some of the wages in the book. Do you talk about, I guess we'll talk about it now. In the book, do you talk about wage expectations? Because the big part of is just, again, just naming it. For instance, I think that gentleman was making, I think he was $45 an hour. But then when the pipe goes out and the government says, Hey, we need power to or we need the plumbing, or we need it now, and we have 10 days to do it, they're being paid 85 bucks an hour. Well, 85 bucks an hour. I googled it was working out this morning. That's $166,000 salary. Now he's not making that all the time, and he's making six figures for sure. And the thing that people don't talk about because money is important, but honestly, if you look at the number, the reasons why people stay in a company, money is usually like fourth or fifth in the list. It's usually like culture, like lifestyle. Do they feel appreciation is usually number one validation at something. As owners like myself, I need to do a better job of we're so busy on the next thing or what we're doing or running the business, but we we need to do a really good job in the leadership role of validating our people and inspiring the entrepreneurs, which I want to talk to you about at the end of this podcast. But where I'm going with this is, and I lost my train of thought on that one. But yeah,
Ken Rusk 49:58
we do talk. Lot about dollars and cents in the book, and I will tell you your stat is correct, that money is usually fourth. However, most people aren't necessarily telling the truth there, because even if you feel really appreciated and you're making 25 grand a year, you're going to change jobs, right? But it is something. The way I see it as this. If I can create the life that I want with and through this company, that's when I stay, regardless of where the money's at. If I can say to myself, my boss cares about my future as much as I do. He's supporting me in getting to that future, and I'm in control of if I can, in fact, get that future. That's where people really tend to stay, and that's where you feel the appreciation, that's where you feel the culture, that's where you feel the inclusion. And then the money is there. It's money is like, it really shouldn't even be on that list, because it's like an underlying current of all those things. Because you do need to support yourself to live, but whatever money you make, you need to figure out a way to spend it in the best way possible, to make your life the way you want it. And that's where you end up staying and being a loyal interest. Jobs, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 51:09
wow, there's a lot there. How, as we go into the end, you had mentioned it before, and I just think it's really interesting line of thinking. I'd actually never heard the word. I know what it is now after listening to it, but why don't you tell the audience? My audience anyway, a little bit about that. We know what entrepreneur is, and they're celebrated, but the intrapreneur is interesting because I've got for sure one on my team, and I know plenty more explain a little bit about that for those that are listening that aren't familiar with that term. So
Ken Rusk 51:34
there are people that once they decide they can work within your framework, they may not want to go out and take the risks that I've taken. I I'm I own 40 dump trucks. Okay? I have the workers comp, and I have all the issues that I have to deal with. I have the banking and the payrolls and the risk and all the insurances and all that stuff. There are people that have grown with me and said, You know what? You let me be autonomous right now. So I am an entrepreneur. Within your framework, I'm an entrepreneur. So you let me control my space, you let me control the budgets, you let me control the hiring and the firing. You let me control the efficacy and the result, and you let me control my income by getting bonuses based on what I do. So I own my own company within your company, in a sense, and your goal as an entrepreneur, and this is where I always get the push back until they listen for a minute. Your goal as an entrepreneur is to become as irrelevant to your company as possible, as quickly as possible. And the only way to do that is to replace yourself on the tasks that you had. Because if you are a true entrepreneur, you need to be up in the air at 50,000 feet, looking 510, 15 miles out, seeing what's coming at you. Okay, and so for me, a lot of entrepreneurs will say, wait a minute, if I started this company and I'm I fix this, I repair that. I tell these people, I yell at them, I motivate this, I build that. Yeah, I get all that. But if you're really interested in like, dynamic growth and growth beyond your expectations, then you need to lean on the people within your company and raise them up and share part of that growth with them. It's funny because I learned this 20 years ago, when I was still working and working in this company, and I had a group of people that I wanted to surround myself with. I brought them into the conference room, and I said, I want you each to take this piece of paper and this pencil, I want you to write down how many more millions in revenue we can do next year based on what you think is possible. Okay? And so just write it down and keep it to yourself. I collected all their pieces of paper, and don't you know, Mark that all of their numbers were one to $2 million higher than mine was. Okay? So be careful that you're not your own self limiter. I didn't even tell him what my number was, but what I said was, as you're thinking about this, know that I'm going to share the difference between now and that number with you all, if we hit that, which means I was giving them money I didn't even have yet. So it was no expense to me whatsoever. It was found money. And what, you know, we've been doing that every year, and we've been hitting these new higher numbers. And just be careful that you're not your own self limiter, because once these people understand you mean, I can work within your framework, I can make decisions. I can be at the financial benefit of those decisions when they work. And you're going to let me have the autonomy to do that absolutely. Then, okay, Ken, get out of my way. Let me go do it. That's a
Mark D. Williams 54:41
little bit you mentioned you were just came back to me right now. You're talking about when you were digging ditches and working the jackhammer. I was very young, but I was a tall kid and big kid, and I remember they let me, and they should not have let me use the jackhammer, but I was so excited to just destroy the concrete, that thing was definitely bouncing me off the ground. But my point. It's like the enthusiasm, where sometimes you give someone some latitude, or you give them the opportunity to do something, and maybe they're not ready for it, that's okay. And I think as leaders, it's taken me, I've been building for 20 years now, but I think it's taken me a while to realize that, like someone said, if you can replace your skill set to like, within 60% of efficiency, like, you hire that person immediately. Now they can't stay at 60% they have to keep growing. But the idea is like, for one thing, bottlenecks. If you are the bottleneck, most owners are the bottleneck. I am the bottleneck of my company. I know that it's only been the last couple years that I realized for a long time I always wanted to balance. I always looked at people the wrong way. And it wasn't that I didn't love people, but the idea was like, more people, more problems, more things to manage, which is partially true, but every time I hired someone, my stress went down because they took stuff. And it's like, why has it taken me so long to realize that? And now scaling is something I'm interested in, not because I want to grow. I want to scale because I want to get my time back. And as I have three small children, I have 100 hobbies, like I want to do those things. I'm still I've never really worked a day in my life because I love what I do. That's not, I don't find that difficult, but it doesn't mean it's not stressful. It doesn't mean that there's not more opportunities for me to scale and grow. And then the other thing that's super sobering for most business owners is the line of, if you, if you walk out the door for a month, will your business operate or two months, or six months or a year? And I don't know the number, but I would say, let's say 90% maybe more. The answer would be, no. That means you have a job. You don't have a business. And one of my god willing, if I live another 20 years, because I got at least work till my kids are done with school and to see if they want to stick around or do whatever. But I would like to build my business now in a way that it can operate without me. And then my personal favorite place to be is that 50,000 foot I love idea generation. I love the creativity. I love seeing the team do things I'm like, That's a great idea. Continue on. This is great. Keep going. That's something that I'm very now awake to where I wish someone had told me about that when I was younger. Maybe it's a maturity thing. Maybe it's a me thing. Hard to know you just you find yourself where you're at, and you gotta, Okay, what's next?
Ken Rusk 57:09
You're either working on your business or your business is working on you. You're either working in it or it's working you. And I've always said, we don't live to work. We work so that we can live. And I want to know what the live part is first. Okay, I want to know what you look like on the eight hours that I don't I know you're not sleeping or I know you're not working. What are those eight hours look like? What's your life? I need to support you in developing that. Because you get these people that they come home and they're like, Yeah, I worked 80 hours this week. Ian, I'm like, overweight, I have diabetes and high blood pressure. I can't remember my kids first names. I don't know what sports they play in. I haven't taken my wife out at a date in months, but look at me go. I worked 80 hours. I'm like, good on you, man, you keep that going. Okay, well done. No, I realized early on that I didn't want that. I wanted to bring people along with me find ways to afford them through growth and then have a life. The whole reason you start a business, your own company, is so that you can run things and you can do what you want to do with your life. You don't start a business so that you can, you can become a prisoner to it, that that's for sure.
Mark D. Williams 58:15
I mean, amen, I 100% I talked a lot about that. We'll repeat everything I always talk about on this particular one. But you know, the wealth and how the wealth and hell in this space is something I'm very passionate about to what you're talking about. You know, there are, and I think this is a business. It is a cultural and education thing, and it does speak to the perception of blue collar, white collar, and some of that, I don't, I'm not intelligent enough to speak about it that eloquently, but essentially, it's in our psyche, in different areas, where, you know, maybe the person who's saying, Hey, I work 80 hours a week, that's their way of finding validation, in the sense like, Hey, I'm I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. But they've devalued their own time, their own they've devalued their life. And I don't mean to to put a big observation on this person. I'm only viewing it from my eyes and like life can be. I'm not saying you don't work hard, but is it, is quantity more important, or is quality more important? Again, everyone has to make their own choice. It's their life. To your point. Before you open the surf shop in Toledo, if it goes out of business, it's on you, like you have one life to live. What are you gonna do with it and everyone whether it's the birth of your children, whether it's your spouse holding you accountable, whatever it might be, I'm thankful for those little Wake Up Calls. Maybe it's a funeral, maybe it's someone selling their business. I think the lessons come in so many different ways. And you wake up, it's a health scare, you've got diabetes, you've got whatever. I think, just talking about it again, I think is super healthy, healthy. And I think being vulnerable and having people like yourself that write books that care enough to try to put it out there. I suspect you do a lot of public speaking as well.
Ken Rusk 59:45
Yeah, we do. We're actually doing a couple speeches up in your neck of the woods. We're doing North Dakota, Bismarck, North Dakota in two weeks. Well, I'm up there. And yeah, I mean, I think it's incumbent upon people that have been successful, the harder you. You work, the luckier you get. We all know that luck is labor under correct knowledge. We all know all those idiom or those things that those idioms or whatever they call them, but in my mind, if you've become successful, it's your turn. It's you're almost it's incumbent upon you to turn around and help the next entrepreneur come up the ropes and and maybe cut his or her learning curve a little bit, and that's what I'm doing with the book and with the course. I've had so many people tell me that their lives have been changed and their businesses have changed. They've reclaimed their time. They're going out to play golf with their kids, or they're doing things with their spouse, or even just refueling planting flowers in the yard on the weekends, and it's just a really gratifying thing for me, because I know that what I've done has worked. I know that these simple things, these plug and play, things that I talk about in the book work the course, is something that really changes the way people look at their future. And so, yeah, it's just, it's one really great product that I think I've built, and it's just my way of giving back to what I love that. Trying to make that happen. I
Mark D. Williams 1:01:01
heard something recently. It's been a while since I've mentioned again, but it's, you go through three phases in your career, the learn, earn and return. And I joke that I missed the earning phase. I'm in learning and returning, but I need to go back, and I could get to a second baby again. But my question for you is the book, and I'm thinking the coursework like for myself. And I know you don't know me, but for instance, someone who has been an entrepreneur for 20 years, so I've done something right, could have done a lot better. Would there be? I'm going to read the book for sure, mainly because I want to talk about it, give it away to guests and things like that. But would the course, still be beneficial to somebody like myself? Is it for everyone? Does it help more young people? Does it help people that are maybe already in the trades, that are aspiring to own their own business? What kind of value would existing entrepreneurs get out of it? Or is it just like
Ken Rusk 1:01:43
I'll tell you a story? First off, the entrepreneurship is critical, that the part of being of developing entrepreneurs that's absolutely critical for regaining your life back, okay, but I'll tell you a story. So the editor that I worked on with the book, she she helped me just rearrange the chapters and clean some things up, and which was nice, because they kept almost all the book and they only added about 10% and research I had to do. But one of the things that she learned, and she said to me, she goes, when I read this chapter on the Today club versus the Sunday club, she goes, I went home immediately and sat my family down and said, We're planning the Yellowstone vacation tonight. And they literally sat down. They rented the Winnebago they got the plane tickets, they got everything needed, and they went and they planned that vacation for six months from where they were at that moment in time. And she was out there in driving around the mountains, and she called me, and she said, Ken, I can't believe that I am a very well read. I'm published. I'm an editor, I'm Manhattan, Ian, I'm all these things where I think I knew it all, and yet, if I wouldn't have read that chapter, we'd have never gone to Yellowstone. We'd have thought about it, we'd have dreamed about it, wished and hoped, but we would have never actually done it. And she goes, and the cool thing is, we're out here in Yellowstone, and we're planning our vacation to Scotland to go see our extended family next year already. And she said, and I all owe all that to you, and I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that, because here I am coaching you on this book, and you've given me this gift of simplicity, but of actually doing something. And so yeah, I think the answer is you could probably read this book and go home tonight and say, Alright, hon, that thing we've always wanted to do, we're planning it right now. It may not happen for one year, two years or three years, we're going to plan it right now and just anticipate and have the joy of watching it. I'll
Mark D. Williams 1:03:46
tell you what I'll commit to going through it, mainly because I it's a little bit like basics or I guess I can't give it as high praises of the Bible, but I know the Bible I read the Bible, doesn't mean there's not value in reading it again and again. Because basic principles you're at different phases of your life, when I was single or before I was married, this thing might mean something to me, as I'm raising three small children and owning a business, it means something to me now, it might mean something different to me in 10 years. Now, I sure hope it does. And so I think that's where I was getting that. So I'm actually excited. We'll actually have to bring you back on a year from now, or something like that. Just thought through it, and that'll pick a different topic, but basically, an entrepreneur, re going back to the school of hard knocks, if you will, this air quote, but
Ken Rusk 1:04:21
by then I'll have my I'm halfway through my second book, which is going to be cool so, but you know what? It's called, it we have a couple of working titles. One of them is cool boss, which is how to how to be one, how to find one or change the one you have. And that that's really about. Since this first book was was slated towards the individual. This book is more slated towards the corporate culture, and I'm excited for them. They've been begging me to write it because they said, you've talked to those people now talk to us. And so I'm looking forward to having that one come out as well.
Mark D. Williams 1:04:54
That's great. Appreciate your time. Want to make sure respect it. I will have everything in the show notes and. And everyone can What is it? Ken rusk.com, is that the Yeah. Ken ruskin.com, then we'll have it. I appreciate your time. Come on the podcast and wow, this is i We could talk to you for I could do a mini series of talking to you on this isn't but now it's been a blast. Appreciate your time, and thanks again for coming on the curse builder podcast.
Ken Rusk 1:05:17
I really appreciate it. Thank
Mark D. Williams 1:05:20
you. We're excited to announce that the curious builder collectives are going into three other states. For those not familiar with what the collective is, it lives between what the contractor coalition is and a builder 20 group. What we do in each state is we have a group of 25 to 30 builders that get in a room and you break up into groups of nine. You spend 45 minutes talking about a set topic, whether it's branding, marketing, contracts, whatever that set topic is for that day. And then you talk for 45 minutes, you get up, you mix up the groups, and you do it again, and you're out of there. You'll be out in under three hours. We're going to be going to Phoenix Arizona. Brad Levitt is going to be leading a curious collective in Phoenix Arizona. We are going to San Antonio. We've got David and Angela Penske from Penske homes, leading a group down there. And we have Brad Robinson and Vince Longo in Atlanta, Georgia, also leading a collective as well as obviously me in Minnesota as well, for our second annual collective. So if you're interested in collaborating with other builders, if you really want to dive deep on your business in a person to person relationship. Ask a lot of questions. The collectives are for you. We also have in Minnesota interior design collective as well as the architect collective. Check out the Events page at the cures builder podcast.com. Thanks for tuning in the cures builder podcast. If you like this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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