Crafting a Blue-Collar Future Beyond Conventional Careers

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Part of being proactive is being spontaneous and loving people and actually going out to lunch and saying it and meaning it when you say it, or visiting people or helping others or giving up your time.

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So the freedom to do those things is driven by getting rid of some of the junk in your head that prevents you from doing that.

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Comfort, peace and freedom is what you should all aspire to.

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Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back.

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This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast and I'm your host, john Gallagher.

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Today I've got a really cool guest, ken Rusk.

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Ken is the bestselling author of Blue Collar Cash and a successful entrepreneur with a passion for empowering young people to take control of their futures.

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In this episode, we dive deep into Ken's inspiring journey from a small-town upbringing to becoming a formidable advocate for blue-collar careers.

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He shares heartfelt stories from his childhood, valuable lessons from his father and the motivation behind writing his impactful book.

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We also tackle some pressing issues in today's society, such as the pitfalls of the traditional college path and the undervalued benefits of pursuing a career in the trades.

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Plus, ken introduces his unique concept of balancing comfort, peace and freedom to achieve true happiness.

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You don't want to miss this episode, so let's get started.

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Ken Rusk, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast.

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Great to have you on the show.

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Man, am I looking forward to our conversation today?

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How are you doing?

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I'm doing great Thanks for having me.

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I really appreciate it.

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Absolutely.

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I've had a chance.

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We're going to get a chance to talk about your book, Blue Collar Cash, and a little bit more about what you have coming after that as well.

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I'll start you off the same way I start all the first-time guests here on the Uncommon Leader podcast, and that's ask you to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today as a person or as a leader.

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Well, great question.

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So I grew up in a very small town of Amherst, ohio.

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I had four brothers.

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My father was an ex-Marine and so he ran a very tiny house like a barracks, which was really cool most times it was cool, but, um, what I learned that I still use today.

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So he, he, you know, worked really hard.

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Um, I think he was making 12 or 14 000 working as a produce manager at a grocery store and trying to feed all of us.

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And, um, it was tough.

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I mean, we didn't know whether we had money or didn't have money.

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We didn't, but we didn't know any different.

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We still went outside and played in the backyard and did everything normal, like normal kids did, at least we thought.

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But I remember that he would say you know, I can feed you, I can shelter you, I can protect you, I can give you basic things, but if you want something beyond that, then you have to go out and find a way to earn that.

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And so, from the time I was 12, 13, 14, I learned real quick how to trade labor for things, and I wanted a new aluminum baseball bat.

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So I couldn't believe that I could go out and work somewhere for 10 hours and then end up with that aluminum baseball bat.

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It was just a foreign thing to me, but I still use that very same method today.

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The things get bigger and the hours get longer.

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But yeah, I think you know, working for yourself and looking to have a goal and looking to create some eventuality, um, and having the control over that, it's just a really cool thing.

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The essence of blue collar cash, right In terms of starting out early.

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Uh, you and I again, while we didn't grow up in the same town, I grew up in Northern Panhandle, west Virginia, and steel town and that's really.

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You mentioned even the aluminum baseball bat.

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You want to get that done.

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You go move some things around to get cash in your pocket and make that happen.

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For me, it was working at a car wash early on as a high school junior, trying to learn how to drive cars as I pulled them out of the car wash and spun the tires and earned some tips and things like that.

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So I can see how that got started in the steel towns of West Virginia and the space that you're from Really cool.

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So you wrote this book, blue Collar Cash, who did you write it for and why did you write it as well?

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Well, it started out with a pretty challenging situation.

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So my daughter had cancer when she was 12 and pretty scary five years for her and my wife and I and you, um, you know you have a lot of time when you're sitting around in oncology rooms and waiting rooms, doctor's offices, you know, ultrasound rooms, all those kinds of things, so you just start racking your brain, you just want to give so much to this, this poor child that you're trying to take care of, and so it started out as a long letter to her.

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You know what?

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What's important in life, what should you be chasing in life?

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What have I learned about what you should chase and what you shouldn't chase, and, um, how to live in anticipatory fashion in life.

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And so I just started writing stories to her and then I, I, you know she was going to lose half of her sight in this project, in the, in this process, in this process and um, I just wrote about friends of mine that overcame the most unbelievable tragedies to become successful entrepreneurs.

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And uh, story after story, interview after interview, and pretty soon I had this pile of words and um, between that and the, what I call myself an involuntary life coach, here at my office where I coach a couple hundred people on a daily basis.

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It kind of just all came together in a weird way, john.

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And yeah, my wife said I think you got a book here and I said, well, ok, so here we go.

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So yeah, I just literally filled up 13 legal pads worth of words and then Googled editors in New York and one thing led to another and pretty soon I had an agent and a publisher and all this other stuff.

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So it became a bestseller last fall and couldn't be more thrilled, more grateful and more happy about that.

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Love that and it's good to hear, too, that continues to move as well.

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That's some of the things when you get that first influx in there and again we'll talk about some things you're doing on an addition toward the end of the podcast today.

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I want everybody to hang on in terms of some of the new things you got coming out, but I want to jump right into the crux of it and at least some of what I started to take away from it in terms of the challenges that our economy faces.

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And again, even going back a little bit, when I think about writing a book or coaching or whatever it is, I often go back to this.

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We're most powerfully positioned to help the person that we used to be and I know that that's the person that you're helping go through this and probably through some of the errors that you made inside of this book.

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But telling me in a story format is really cool, but we have a crisis in America today.

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I don't think if we did this interview 10 years ago.

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To me it feels about the same way.

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But that's you know, college in America, and you talk about this inside of the book.

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What's the problem with education and college in America today?

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Well, first off, there's this.

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There's this perfect storm that happened as I was leaving high school.

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You know when, when, when I was in high and I'm assuming you were at the same time you could walk down the hallway and look on one side and see someone changing a transmission on a Mustang.

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You could look over here and see somebody wiring an outlet.

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You could look over here and see somebody spinning a table leg on a lathe for a dining room table.

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You had trades, you had people that could do cooking, and you had people that could do, you know, hairdressing, whatever, and that's where millions and millions of kids almost accidentally discovered how cool the trades were.

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And so somehow we decided let's move the computers out, or the tools out of there, and let's move computers into those rooms, which I never really got, because I know we needed to learn computers.

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I get it, but why did we have to replace one with the other?

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Why couldn't we have had both Right?

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So you have that situation where that's now gone.

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You have another situation where kids, instead of, like I said earlier, instead of being in the backyard playing with hammer and nails and building tree forts, raking leaves or, you know, digging plants or whatever you know kids are just sitting there on their iPhones working on games like Minecraft, and you know.

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That's just not the same thing, john.

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So if you couple those two problems with the fact that colleges have done a really good job of getting all the high school, as if we're all going to be losers if we don't go to school and you've got this perfect mixture of it's college or else, in fact, my old high school is now somehow a college prep school, and yet it still does the same thing when I was there.

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So this is what the result of that is 40% of kids go to college without knowing why they're going.

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That's scary.

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25% of those people change their degree in the first couple of years.

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That's scary and wasteful.

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But the worst one is today, as we sit here, only 33% of college degrees ever get used ever.

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So if that was a business, it would go out of business.

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If you were the CEO of that company, you would be terminated for the ineffectiveness of that.

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Now, I'm not an anti-college guy.

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If you're going to operate on my shoulder so I can get back out on the golf course, I want you to know everything there is to know about a knife before you come at me with it, okay.

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Same goes with managing my money or building a building for me or doing whatever.

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Those are job specific college degrees it's the ones that I worry about are the let's just go, cause everyone says I have to go.

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I'll just go get good at beer pong for three or four years and come out with a bunch of debt and a degree that I can't really find a job for.

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Those are the people I worry for, because they're being led down the wrong path by supposedly smart people who are just all too eager to take their money and then not care about them.

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One iota when that degree is done.

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Well, you think about that again.

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It's generally not their money that to your point.

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They either come out with debt or it's an investment that parents are making in them and when they come out, that investment is not yielding the fruit that it could.

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What are you seeing in then society?

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You touched on the data and things like that.

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What are you seeing as the trend in society today that's ultimately contributing to this mindset of go to college?

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You mentioned the, the, at least the counselors in the high schools, but what's happening in the outside space is driving this as well.

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Well, you know, I wrote an open letter to parents on my website at kenruskcom, and one of the things that I said was I get it, I'm a parent myself.

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You feel like, okay, let's see, I birthed my child, I clothed my child, I protected them, I gave them food.

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I, you know, I educated them as far as I could.

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And now I feel like society is telling me that I'm not a good parent unless they have a degree hanging on the wall.

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Okay, I'm not a good parent if I didn't put them through school.

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Well, again, that's just the product of a parent being led down the wrong path or oversold what the value of that degree is.

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You know, some of the most successful people that I know right now are all blue collar entrepreneurs.

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Now, that doesn't mean, you know, you're not going to be successful as a surgeon or a banker or whatever.

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When I look at the parents' expectation so that when they go to parties and they go, well, my son's going to Vanderbilt and my son's going to Ohio State and my son's going to Michigan or my daughter's going to here or there I was at this party once where someone said, well, what's her son doing?

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Well, he's just going to be a plumber and they were like, oh you know, like, ooh, like too bad, he's just a plumber.

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Well, you know, I know that kid.

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Okay, he now has six vans, he's got 12 employees that he's making probably close to a half a million bucks a year.

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He's killing it, but he's just a plumber.

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So it's the outside to answer your question.

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In a long way, it's the stigma that just isn't going away.

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It's so underdeserved and we're just trying to find a way to fight that and that's what we do every day.

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I think, how it changed so much.

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I listen back because I remember, even with my parents, who go back that many years and again, I think we're probably pretty similar in age where they would say so that you don't have to do this, you need to go to college, you don't have to do this shift work and things like that to get done.

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You look back on that and the generation prior to that was saying that's how they came out of high school and went right into that.

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They provided a really good way of life in terms of going to understand so much data that you have.

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That shows that it's not a perfect situation for everybody to go to college.

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As you said, it's not that we shouldn't go to college, but there's a reason not to.

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What are some of those unique benefits that you're seeing now?

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You mentioned the individual who's got 12 employees and a van running his own business, but the unique benefits they have of a blue-coll collar lifestyle that are often overlooked in today's society.

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Well, first off, let's start right off the jump.

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Okay, you put four years of 50,000 a year into college.

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That's $200,000 all in, and I'm talking about every expense you can imagine related to that, not just the tuition.

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Okay, you're 200,000 in the hole and you hope that you find a job that's going to pay you enough to get you out of that hole.

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Now you start your own business or you work for someone in the blue collar field right out of high school.

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You're going to make $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year as someone that works within that organization before you even start your own company.

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Let's just call that a $200,000 swing over four years on the positive side of your asset base.

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That's a $400,000 swing from one way to the other.

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So all I'm saying is you just need to at least think about that before you just automatically shove your kid into college.

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That's the first thing.

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The second thing is this there is a certain amount of control that you have when you work in blue collar trades.

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You can typically control your input.

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You can control your output and the quality of that output.

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You can control your day, your time, your schedule and your financial gain.

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I don't think you get that on the 15th floor of some cubicle selling medical supplies for some conglomerate, somewhere where you really don't know how you fit in or what's the beginning, what's the end, and while some people seek the comfort of a large organization and the security of that, I get that, but for the most part I don't think there's any other way to live than you running your own show and you controlling your own effort and your own gain from that effort.

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So yeah, I just think there's a lot of things.

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I heard a study once and studies are studies, but I believe this one.

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They said something about 58% of white collar workers are, I'm sorry, 58% of blue collar workers to 65% are happy with their life, but only 32% of white collar workers were.

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So I have to believe that the reason that is is because there's so much outside influence that a lot of white collar workers have, where someone's trying to beat them to a promotion or someone's trying to, you know, exercise control over them, or there's a bunch of red tape to doing everything they want to do, whereas you don't have that necessarily in the blue collar world.

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You're kind of free to do what you want to do and make your own rules.

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I think that's really cool and again, I'm going to assume part of the coaching that you're helping out is maybe some of the things that they might miss.

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So that individual who became a plumber and now has six vans and 12 employees.

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The crisis in the workforce I see is twofold.

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One is we're going to have a lack of skilled workers because they're not going into the trades.

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Whether the trades are leaving or not, I think we'll always need plumbers, we'll always need construction, we'll always need electricians, we're always going to need those things, and computers are another program in and of itself.

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But how do you then get them prepared to grow into business as well?

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How do you use the tools that you're teaching them to say you're starting out as an individual, but now you're going to grow a business, you're going to have employees that you're going to deal with and all the problems that exist there as well?

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Well, the first choice, the first thing I do is ask them to make a choice.

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I mean, you can either be an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, and both of those are good.

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Sometimes I think I'm the only one using the word intrapreneur out there, but that's okay, because there are people who don't necessarily want to take the risk like I did of.

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Currently, I think I have 45 dump trucks, okay, and there's a lot of risk in all of that of 45 dump trucks and there's a lot of risk in all of that.

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So I think people have to decide how much risk, how much reward.

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So that's the first thing.

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The second thing is I also explore the entrepreneur route, because there are so many businesses out there, john and I mean thousands where you have a guy that owns it or a gal that owns it and now they're getting older, they're getting ready for retirement and they have no one to give these businesses to.

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There's a half a dozen of them that I know that are friends of mine, that are making big money and they have no one to leave these companies to.

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Nobody wants to step in and take over.

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So I tell people to look for that as well, because there's an opportunity there for you to go work for somebody four or five years, learn the ins and outs of that company and these are thriving businesses with demand and customer lists and everything and then retire that person, buy them out, take that over and just hit the ground, not running but sprinting.

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So you have to kind of figure out how much of that risk you want to take on.

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But what drives all that?

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Whether you're an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur, I truly believe that every one of us has the characteristics that we need to become one of those people Persistence, resilience, courage, faith, initiative, vision, charity, all those kinds of things.

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I believe we all have that.

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We just need a reason for those things to come out.

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So my whole thing whenever I talk about coaching is well, why are you doing it?

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Let's start with why and I know you hear that a lot but I mean I want to get damn specific on everything that you want to come into your life, everything that you want to manifest in your life.

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What do you want your life to look like, exactly Down to the color, the style, the size, the horsepower, the breed of pet, whatever it might be.

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I want to know exactly why you're doing it and then we'll match that up with the amount of risk that you want to take.

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Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you.

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Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations.

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If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me.

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It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team.

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Okay, let's get back to the show.

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Love that, ken, and it just actually feeds into one of the questions I wanted to ask you a concept out of your book that you talked about in terms of being so.

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You talked about making the decision first that's the route you want to go and then you talked about being clear on that vision and what that looks like, and you talk about a 64 Crayola crayon exercise.

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Tell me a little bit about that exercise that you take folks through?

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Sure.

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Well, some people when they hear about the crayons, they're like all right, ross, come on Crayons.

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Really, I mean I'm 55 years old, but the thing is, the last time you held a crayon in your hand was probably when you were five, six years old.

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Maybe you were at your most creative point of your life ever, free to draw inside the lines, outside the lines, create your own lines, whatever you wanted to do.

00:20:11.607 --> 00:20:19.275
So I kind of try to bring people back to the artistry and the creativity of when they were young.

00:20:19.275 --> 00:20:30.084
Then what I do is I get them a big poster board three by five poster board, okay and I tell them in the center I want you to draw things that you want to surround yourself in this life.

00:20:30.084 --> 00:20:33.330
Start with something easy what kind of pet would you want?

00:20:33.330 --> 00:20:35.717
Dog, cat, what color would it be?

00:20:35.717 --> 00:20:36.558
What would you name it?

00:20:36.558 --> 00:20:37.761
What breed would it be?

00:20:37.761 --> 00:20:40.895
Then go to something like vacations.

00:20:40.895 --> 00:20:47.920
If you can design the perfect vacation, let's think about this Toes in the sand beach chair on the beach.

00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:59.556
You got the palm trees waving, you feel the ocean breeze, you can hear the roar, you're listening to the music, you're tasting the margarita, you smell the number eight, copper tone, suntan lotion.

00:20:59.556 --> 00:21:00.417
I mean the whole thing.

00:21:00.417 --> 00:21:03.375
Now, keep getting that sensory as you move about the board.

00:21:03.998 --> 00:21:05.325
What would your health moment look like?

00:21:05.325 --> 00:21:06.770
What would your charity moment look like?

00:21:06.770 --> 00:21:08.174
What would your sport moment look like?

00:21:08.174 --> 00:21:10.101
What would your peace moment look like?

00:21:10.101 --> 00:21:12.521
What would your house look like in the center?

00:21:12.521 --> 00:21:16.444
What kind of vehicle would you want to traverse this earth in?

00:21:16.444 --> 00:21:24.115
What would your give back moment be if I gave you a hundred bucks and I said here, use your time, talent and your treasure to go help somebody else?

00:21:24.115 --> 00:21:33.438
So you actually create this and I know people call them vision boards, but I'm talking about on steroids, I'm talking about if you could live like that.

00:21:33.438 --> 00:21:37.644
That would be so cool, because it's usually.

00:21:37.644 --> 00:21:46.708
It's usually the way that you, you stop living an if then life and you start with the then and go go from the beginning.

00:21:46.708 --> 00:21:55.881
That way, if you understand what I'm saying, so many people, so many people wait for life to happen to them, and I'm saying no, man, you're supposed to happen to your life.

00:21:55.881 --> 00:21:57.248
You, and only you, know these things.

00:21:57.248 --> 00:21:59.134
So why are you letting other people tell you how to do it?

00:21:59.836 --> 00:22:01.641
I often talk about the framework, just as you said.

00:22:01.641 --> 00:22:02.892
I call it the so that.

00:22:02.892 --> 00:22:10.303
But it's ultimately you got to make that choice first and once you make that choice, you know you have to make a change, you have to take some action to make that happen.

00:22:10.303 --> 00:22:11.163
But there's really that.

00:22:11.163 --> 00:22:22.026
So that moment and that's that, poster, is what it sounds like to me is that something you're looking to create over a period of time into the future that can be so powerful.

00:22:22.026 --> 00:22:25.539
And I would say, don't underestimate the power of those 64 Crayola crayons I love.

00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:38.999
My mom would tell the story that her favorite gift to get every year for Christmas was a box, a fresh box, of 64 Crayolas and that sharp tip that exists on those Cause you never wanted them to wear down but you loved having that little sharpener inside of the 64s.

00:22:39.500 --> 00:22:40.664
And it was just a few years ago.

00:22:40.664 --> 00:22:48.471
I bought her a box of 64 Crayola crayons for her and a coloring book for Christmas, and I think she does really valued that.

00:22:48.471 --> 00:22:59.718
But I'm a big fan of you know and today's might be a little bit easier as I teach dry race markers and using three or four different colors, as you draw those pictures, as you teach, so that you can bring it more to life in terms of understanding that.

00:22:59.718 --> 00:23:04.038
So I actually love that as a story and I wanted to make sure you got a chance to share that.

00:23:04.038 --> 00:23:08.757
And the other thing that you talked about and you mentioned in terms of happiness and and who's happiness in this world.

00:23:08.757 --> 00:23:15.759
You talked about three components, a triangle comfort, peace and freedom that there was a balance to that in terms of happiness.

00:23:15.759 --> 00:23:18.479
Tell me a little bit more about that and how you came to that framework as well.

00:23:19.650 --> 00:23:26.291
Well, sometimes I think this was a gift from God, because I was during Nicole's being, when she was ill.

00:23:26.291 --> 00:23:31.976
One of the things that I kept coming back to was okay, comfort, peace and freedom should be the goal.

00:23:31.976 --> 00:23:37.382
And, john, I don't know where those words came from, but I started seeing them everywhere.

00:23:37.382 --> 00:23:42.664
I mean, it was like you see a yellow Volkswagen and now you see yellow Volkswagens everywhere.

00:23:42.664 --> 00:23:43.647
Right your mind, kind of—.

00:23:43.808 --> 00:23:47.539
Right, yeah, the reticular activation syndrome, yeah, syndrome, absolutely.

00:23:47.730 --> 00:23:49.518
So I went through that like crazy.

00:23:49.518 --> 00:24:07.800
These words just started popping up, maybe not together, but as individuals, and I just couldn't help but think that they are a triangle where they're interdependent on each other.

00:24:07.800 --> 00:24:20.298
Rap stars or professional sports players or whatever, with 15 cars, mcmansions and boats and everything else, that's just not in everyone's purview.

00:24:20.298 --> 00:24:22.163
Not everyone's going to want to be that.

00:24:22.163 --> 00:24:25.154
So what is the perfect Nirvana?

00:24:25.154 --> 00:24:34.161
Well, it's you feeling comfortable in who you are, as a person, in your skin, being the best possible version of you.

00:24:34.161 --> 00:24:38.117
You can be the hell with everybody else and what they think about.

00:24:38.117 --> 00:24:42.173
That, I think it's once you're comfortable.

00:24:42.173 --> 00:24:45.778
That gives you a certain amount of peace.

00:24:46.039 --> 00:24:48.871
And peace can be created in a lot of different ways.

00:24:48.871 --> 00:24:51.173
It could be by being financially free.

00:24:51.173 --> 00:24:53.738
It could be by being stress-free.

00:24:53.738 --> 00:24:57.884
It could be by managing your life, your retirement.

00:24:57.884 --> 00:25:07.297
There's so many ways to have your retirement booked done and over by the time you're 22 years old, so you don't have to think about it.

00:25:07.297 --> 00:25:32.496
You arrange your life in such a way where now you have that comfort in who you are, you have that peace of knowing where you're headed, and those two things, john, will give you this enormous amount of freedom Freedom to do things like being spontaneous, which I think is one of the most underused words in the English language, because we're all so overly scheduled with everything that we do and we're all also reactionary.

00:25:32.958 --> 00:25:39.990
You know we react to all the stimulus that comes at us constantly that we lose sight of the fact that we should be proacting in life.

00:25:39.990 --> 00:25:54.135
And part of being proactive is being spontaneous and loving people, and, you know, actually going out to lunch and saying it and meaning it when you say it, or visiting people or helping others or giving up your time.

00:25:54.135 --> 00:26:04.998
So the freedom to do those things is driven by getting rid of some of the junk in your head that prevents you from doing that.

00:26:04.998 --> 00:26:13.943
And so comfort, peace and freedom I'm saying you know three chapters in five minutes, but comfort, peace and freedom is what you should all aspire to.

00:26:13.943 --> 00:26:17.898
Your perfect nirvana is in your head.

00:26:17.898 --> 00:26:55.214
You just have to get it from your head down on paper and then stare at it, because Tony Robbins you know him and his son, jarek Robbins no-transcript, using the most powerful part of our brain.

00:26:55.214 --> 00:26:57.521
And, moreover, why are we not teaching that in school?

00:26:59.011 --> 00:27:03.112
Oh, my goodness, when you think about that from an education standpoint, why are we not teaching that?

00:27:03.112 --> 00:27:07.381
You're exactly right, ken.

00:27:07.381 --> 00:27:08.564
I want to talk to you about.

00:27:08.564 --> 00:27:12.561
You know you mentioned reading the book and I've been through all the way through your book.

00:27:12.561 --> 00:27:16.434
I've not read it a word for word, but folks are going to read your book and you've sold a bunch of copies.

00:27:16.434 --> 00:27:17.519
Wall street journal bestseller.

00:27:17.519 --> 00:27:18.992
Uh, I made that happen.

00:27:18.992 --> 00:27:22.207
I often talk about the book test when folks are done reading it.

00:27:22.207 --> 00:27:25.133
Ultimately, the the tendency to say I've read that book.

00:27:25.133 --> 00:27:30.559
You know, especially as personal development, I put one on the shelf, just like I got a big shelf of books behind me.

00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:38.098
But after they're through reading your book, what is it that you want them to think and what is it that you want them to do after they read Blue Collar Cash?

00:27:39.671 --> 00:27:41.277
Well, I would certainly want the book.

00:27:41.277 --> 00:27:46.419
I heard this the other day and I stole it, so forgive me, but I don't want the book to be shelf help.

00:27:46.419 --> 00:27:50.421
If it's really going to be self-help, I want it to help people.

00:27:50.421 --> 00:27:58.411
I wrote it because I really believe that I learned a few things that I could pass on to the next generation to cut their learning curve down.

00:27:58.411 --> 00:28:06.994
So I actually created a very simple course where you listen to me, jabber, for about eight different sessions.

00:28:06.994 --> 00:28:19.690
Each session's about three minutes long, and then you have about a half an hour's worth of work to do and in these eight sessions I want you to absolutely say okay, I am now looking at my life completely different.

00:28:19.809 --> 00:28:28.565
Ken has shown me that I am actually really in control of tomorrow, the next day, the next month, the next year, the rest of my life.

00:28:28.565 --> 00:28:31.616
So I call it the path to a successful life.

00:28:31.616 --> 00:28:41.857
It's on my website at KenRuskcom and I just want people to know that my life was very blessed and I'm very fortunate before I wrote the book or the course.

00:28:41.857 --> 00:28:52.984
So I donate the money from the course charities and like Mom's House and Make-A-Wish and Boys and Girls Clubs and Junior Achievement and those kind of things.

00:28:52.984 --> 00:28:57.771
So if you help yourself with this course, know you're going to help somebody else in the process with that money.

00:28:57.771 --> 00:29:04.632
And I just want people to walk away and say, wow, I read that book, I remember it, I own it.

00:29:04.632 --> 00:29:06.194
My life is different now.

00:29:06.194 --> 00:29:10.884
I'm taking control of my future, and here we go.

00:29:11.690 --> 00:29:12.971
I love that, ken.

00:29:12.971 --> 00:29:16.335
I appreciate you doing that, especially for a charitable purpose.

00:29:16.335 --> 00:29:25.865
We'll make sure to put the link in the show notes to your website there and, in terms of staying in touch with you, is that the best way to go to your website or is there other places you want them to go to be in touch with you?

00:29:31.049 --> 00:29:33.737
Well, kenrusk R-U-S-K dot com is the best way to go.

00:29:33.737 --> 00:29:35.622
I'm also on socials at Ken Rusk Official.

00:29:35.622 --> 00:29:41.630
You can see what we're up to on Instagram and you can see what we're up to on Facebook and TikTok and those places.

00:29:41.630 --> 00:29:44.759
So, but yeah, you know.

00:29:44.759 --> 00:29:48.838
Again, I thank you for having me on.

00:29:48.838 --> 00:29:53.318
I love what you're doing and we just have to.

00:29:53.318 --> 00:30:00.583
It's incumbent upon us, isn't it, to turn around and say how can we help those behind us that are struggling?

00:30:00.583 --> 00:30:07.144
So maybe if they miss one or two struggles that you and I had, they'll be better off for it.

00:30:07.144 --> 00:30:08.734
So I'm glad we're doing this today.

00:30:09.356 --> 00:30:09.980
Absolutely, ken.

00:30:09.980 --> 00:30:14.493
I appreciate your time today investing with the listeners the Uncommon Leader Podcast.

00:30:14.493 --> 00:30:15.817
I know they're going to find value in it.

00:30:15.817 --> 00:30:18.896
I'm going to finish off I'm going to give you the last word here with one question.

00:30:18.896 --> 00:30:20.671
I always ask my guests as well.

00:30:20.671 --> 00:30:21.814
I'm going to give you a billboard.

00:30:21.814 --> 00:30:23.460
You can put that billboard anywhere you want to.

00:30:23.460 --> 00:30:27.220
What's the message that you're going to put on that billboard and why that message?

00:30:36.430 --> 00:30:38.914
The message is simple you create everything that happens and that can be good or that can be not so good.

00:30:38.914 --> 00:30:39.476
So focus on the right.

00:30:39.476 --> 00:30:41.279
Know that your emotions are a choice.

00:30:41.279 --> 00:30:42.804
Clear out your head.

00:30:42.804 --> 00:30:44.814
You know you're in control.

00:30:44.814 --> 00:30:47.840
So tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.

00:30:47.840 --> 00:30:48.362
Go get it.

00:30:49.510 --> 00:30:50.353
Excellent, ken.

00:30:50.353 --> 00:30:53.201
I have appreciated and enjoyed our conversation today.

00:30:53.201 --> 00:30:56.221
Thank you for investing the time and I wish you the best, okay.

00:30:56.864 --> 00:30:58.329
Thank you, john, thanks for having me.

00:31:01.896 --> 00:31:04.682
And that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast.

00:31:04.682 --> 00:31:05.830
Thanks for tuning in today.

00:31:05.830 --> 00:31:13.300
If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared.

00:31:13.300 --> 00:31:19.944
Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform.

00:31:19.944 --> 00:31:27.792
Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders.

00:31:27.792 --> 00:31:30.936
Until next time, go and grow champions.