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not necessarily the money. It’s what the money can do for you. And you’ve got to know what’s going to make you happy. And the people who think money makes me happy now. Money makes things. Money can make things easier. Money doesn’t make happiness. And that’s more than it’s talking about. There’s a lot of a lot of people who are millionaires and billionaires.
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Who are some of the most unhappy people in the world because in their mind, money was the only thing. Welcome to the Builder Hacks podcast, your go to destination for cutting edge strategies, time tested systems, and invaluable insights to revolutionize your construction business and elevate your life. Join your host, Nate Piper and Keith Neil’s seasoned contractors, who are not just in the trenches but are also pioneering the future of the industry through Concord University.
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In each episode, we dive deep into the minds of the industry’s most accomplished building professionals, uncovering their secrets to success, and sharing actionable tips to help you thrive. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, our goal is to empower you to build a brighter future for yourself and for America. Tune in. Level up and let’s build a better tomorrow together.
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This is the Builder Hacks podcast. Build your future. Building America.
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Talking about some money. And it’s got it right on the head. Well, one of the questions we get because, you know, whenever you’re considering in your life what you’re going to do. So because as we’ve talked about previously on other podcasts, you know, there’s such a push towards going to college because everyone’s been trained that’s, you know, that’s exactly what you need to do to be successful, to be able to have the life and the lifestyle that you’ll want.
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for some people, that works well. Well, for others it doesn’t. And whenever we start looking at life and lifestyle, one of the things that goes in the life and lifestyle definitely income. and that I think that’s something that people don’t necessarily realize, Nate, of what that means in the construction industry, you know, what are the ranges and how much money can I possibly make doing this?
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You know, because in my mind, I’ve always heard that if I don’t go to college and get that, that degree or possibly even an advanced degree. So I’m never going to be able to have the money that I want. So what’s your impression of that? What do you know what’s different maybe than what that opinion is? Well, so I have a unique perspective on money.
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I think of money as a tool that utilized that I can utilize to move forward. Right. Whether, you know, I’d take money that that’s there and I created into more money and those money then pay for things and everything else. So my perspective, Nate’s getting into a stacking concept for you all. And that’s something you want to stay around for.
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We’re not going to go as deep. And that is what Nate was just talking about. Well exactly. We don’t have enough time today to kind of go into that. But I love finance. I love money. I love not that to the point where it’s like encompassing everything in it, but I love how it’s used, right? I love the bartering system.
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I love, and that’s really what we’re talking about because we do something in exchange for these bank notes and these bank notes that help us. Then pay our trades, pay ourselves, pay our house, pay our bills, pair of things. We’re trading these things in and out. Right. And that’s really what money is, is it’s a it’s a bargaining tool to trade.
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What most people are doing is they’re trading their time for money. And and how do you trade time for money? Well, you have to have a skill set that people want in order to be able to give you money or give you part of their bargaining token that they have for something that’s done right. So we have an understanding of like money and money philosophy.
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It’s like I need money to have a life, and a lifestyle is what you’re telling me. Nate, I want to go on vacation. I want to hang out with the wife. I want to have a nice house. I want to have a car that actually gets me to wherever, where I want to go, so that I can have a skill set, that you can have a skill set, you can barter to be able to have those things.
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Right. Got it. What I what I don’t what I don’t want to recommend anybody doing is going out saying, oh, I want to be a billionaire. Most billionaires are miserable. So we just put that out. And and that part that Nate just said that that’s the balance piece. And that’s exactly what it is. Because it’s not necessarily the money.
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It’s what the money can do for you. And you’ve got to know what’s going to make you happy. And the people who think money makes me happy now, money makes think money can make things easier. Money doesn’t make happiness. And that’s what the Nate’s talking about. There’s a lot of a lot of people who are millionaires and billionaires who are some of the most unhappy people in the world because in their mind, money was the only thing.
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And they realized, unfortunately, too late that that isn’t the case, or they get trapped into it and they can’t get out. Right. And and golden. So it works. It works two ways, right? But when we start talking about money, we start talking about careers. We have to understand that that money is just another tool to to exchange, right?
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It’s no different than a hammer or a saw or a drill or a, a compressor. Right? It is something that that’s going to be exchanged for things. If you go to college and you give somebody a ton of money for them to teach you what you do, and most of the time you have to go borrow that money with an interest rate.
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But that’s that’s compound. That’s a whole another story, right? I mean, but I think if you are familiar with that, you then have to then pay that to receive something which is supposed to be knowledge, and then that knowledge is then supposed to be able to use to be able to go back out to you have that knowledge skill set and then be able to give that knowledge skill set out there, then be able to get more money back than what you originally paid for in the first place.
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That’s the theory, right? The reality is, is that that rarely ever happens because you spend more to get the knowledge that then have a theoretical way of how thing is, how the thing is done. But by the time you get that knowledge to the time that you have to use it, something’s changed in technology where that then is no longer prevalent in that society, or that mean I’m going to invest 5 to 6 figures, Nate, and not be able to turn that into anything.
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Yeah, exactly. It’s great for you to have, but it’s not going to be something that you can give to somebody else in exchange for something back. What I love about the construction industry, and what makes it a little bit different than any other industry, is that you actually can go out there and learn something and then use that in a physical way.
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That then brings back value to somebody else. So somebody who doesn’t want to do the physical aspect of it, and then they pay you for that. And that’s the, that’s the beauty of, of construction because everybody’s getting older. And at some point in time they don’t want to physically do the work anymore. And they have the capital to then give it back to somebody who has the physical capability.
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And your skill set will never go, you know, it will never be deleted. It will never be outdone. You will always be. That’s a world of art right there. So that you’re talking about that I think that’s the huge part is what you learn in this industry. So typically as long as you keep learning more about your trade, you only become more valuable.
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And technology in the construction industry doesn’t change dramatically so that you’re not always having to, you know, that’s they talk about right now with the IT age that we’re in is er the information age where. So every is the 18 months. So most things cycle and you have a brand new version of whatever it is, which means you’re constantly having to learn just to stay even.
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And that’s just to stay even. That’s not even to get ahead. Whether that means you’re constantly having to pay to learn a new technology to stay current. Yeah. And therefore, by the time you’ve gotten current on the new technology is already outdated. Already outdated. It’s a cycle. It’s an endless cycle that you’re going to that you’re not going to be able to do.
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Where I come in, what’s different was that when I came into the trade, I was working on homes in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and now was. Fast forward 25 years. I’m working on all the homes that are in the the 2020s, the 20 tens, the 2000, but where my expertise and skillset goes back all the way back to 1940.
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And I worked on those homes and I know how they’re laid out. I know about the cast iron pipes. I know about the the bobbin up for it. I understand the old, cedar shake shingles. I understand how that was born. And guess what? They pay me more now today for the stuff that I know than I did 25 years ago, because I knew how to work on the thing that was done in 1940.
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Right. And that never goes out of style, because having to learn those systems along the way now makes my skill set invaluable. So now I get to go out and charge an exorbitant amount of money, be able to work on it. It’d be no different than somebody that’s working in the computer industry today that said, hey, this IBM computer from 1960s past to work tomorrow, who can fix it?
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So I do houses now. Well, where we where they were built in the 1930s and 1940s. So in some of the downtown parts of Orlando, and then you get the ones that were built in the 70s, in the 80s, and you see how the construction changes and you get that. We do new construction stuff. So stuff being built now, you get to see the evolution of everything.
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Yet that skill set in that knowledge that we have is applicable because you’re always going to get that call from that person who just bought this house, so wants to go ahead and do a whole bunch of stuff to it. And it was built back then. While the people who built back that are no longer around the alarms, when it comes down to yet the knowledge that we have to be able to do that means we once we open it up, it’s like, all right, well, outside of this, we’re going to need to check for a cast iron pipes like I was talking about.
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So now I’m into wiring. So all those types of things, we have to check all of that stuff. So we know that when we go in there we’re someone else who hasn’t been, wasn’t around or didn’t see that or didn’t participate in that, hasn’t seen that before, doesn’t know that that’s got to factor into things, which makes you more valuable.
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So and and they said exorbitant amount of money. I always say that’s my value. So it’s not exorbitant as far as I’m concerned. that’s true. That’s true. Well, that’s what it comes down to. And that’s what we bring to the table. So Nate, let’s actually talk numbers okay. What can people expect to learn or earn whenever they come in?
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You know, one of the things that that I looked at is, all right, if you come in and you’re doing, let’s say you’re being a framer and you’re on, you know, you’re on the framing crew and you’re a laborer on the framing group. So what kind of money might you earn doing that? Well, you’re coming in, you’re starting out.
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You’re probably going to start out somewhere around 45 to $50,000 a year as an apprentice on a framing crew. And but that comes with some responsibility, right? That comes with you got to get up early, right? Most framers are there before sun sign up. Right. They’re going to be there on site. They’re wanting to learn, but you know, they’re making about $1,000 a week.
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And that’s that’s typical. You know, entry level framing, right, is $1,000 a week. Well, at least it is in Texas. I don’t know what it is in Florida, but you’re close to that. So you’re probably somewhere between 900 $1,000 for most carpenters on that end. So yeah. Yeah. And that’s a great place to start. But the key to that is, is that you’re not in that position very long.
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And so that apprentice is going to turn over in about six months to nine months. And that 50 is going to turn into 70. And then by the time that you’ve gotten to be in the lead on a crew, you’re looking at making about $120,000 a year, and that’s about a three year period. And it’s amazing how fast that goes.
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it most people think three years is like a long time. Right. And it is when you’re looking at it in like today, oh three years from now, that’s so far in the future, I can’t see that. Four well, don’t look that far. Look. Six months. what knowledge can you learn in six months that is going to have you better skills, better better understanding, better knowledge between now and six months from now.
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And then look at okay, what about the next six months and then the next six months. Break it down into smaller pieces. But know that at the end of the road that there is more money to be made by learning the thing that needs to be learned today, it’s and that’s one of the key pieces I look at that that and I mean obviously everyone’s going to vary.
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So Nate takes care of his people very well. on that side of things, which is good. That’s key. That’s why they’re still around. So if you take care of people while they will work for your company, they will be there for a long time. They’ll buy into your mission. So now deliver the way you want to deliver.
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And those are all key pieces of when you own the company. and when people feel like they’re being compensated fairly, they’re able to do the other things in their life that are important to them, you know, and not one of the things that I’ve seen across the industry, though, no matter whether it’s, you know, for me as a business owner, whether it’s for my electricians or my plumbers, whether it’s from the drywall guys that we use know anybody who does well.
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So and this is something for a lot of people, it’s like, you know, they complain. I get the 3 to 5% raise every year, which barely keeps up with the cost of living in depending on the inflationary environment, might not even do that. Well, as far as that part goes. It’s like I know most of the people in the industry, Paige is my daughter.
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She’s worked for me. So pages raises have never been less than a couple of dollars an hour. So whenever she started and that she’s been bumped up that way multiple times. So whenever you look at that, it’s like, oh, it’s only a couple dollars an hour. Well, look at the average work year. So there’s 20, 80 hours. So is what that is.
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So a couple dollars an hour. So it was $4,000 a year that you’re getting your pay bumped. Yeah. And that’s and that’s if you only have one raise throughout that year. So if you’ve got multiple of them. So which is what happens a lot of times because in realize this part two, you come into the industry and you’re doing a good job.
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Your values high which means and I don’t want to encourage you to be hopping around to different places if you happen to be working for somebody who doesn’t value and doesn’t doesn’t appreciate the skills that you have and you have developed skills, this is the big piece. Just because you’ve been there and you’ve been there six months, doesn’t mean that you deserve a raise.
00:14:28:29 – 00:14:49:14
So if you have busted your ass, learn what you’re supposed to learn. So got the skills and actually are able to apply the skills so effectively. If you’re able to do all of those things, if they’re not willing to pay you there, I guarantee there’s another opportunity. So right around the corner, whether that’s working for somebody else, which in the beginning you’re going to need to do because you don’t have enough experience, you have to run your own business and be successful at it.
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Well, but there’s always somebody there that go ahead and bump you up. So when you bring that kind of skill set. Yeah. All right. That’s a great point. You know and and it is I mean it’s it’s something that especially here in especially now. Well one of the things that we’ve talked about before is you’ve got so many people who are aging out of the industry.
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This is the demands on them going to get bigger and bigger, which means, I mean, and when the demand is high and you’re the supply, so that means your supply cost also goes up, which is a great place to be. whenever you’re a worker, there’s no question about it. Yeah. So you want to be in charge? Yeah.
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You definitely have to be in charge. And when you’re in charge, obviously when you’re in charge, you make more money because of the fact that you’re responsible for the job itself and for the people who are working with you on that job. and with responsibility comes extra compensation. Typically. Yeah. It does. All right. So that we talked about the framer a little bit.
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who do you actually who do you think is probably the highest paid trade? Well, on your job site tonight? on my job site. It’s always the plumber. It’s always the plumber. and and for good reason. You know, if you’re going to want to put your hands in, in the crappy craps, then, you know, I, I would pay more.
00:16:12:20 – 00:16:33:08
I mean, you know, that’s just part of it. what? Plumbers. Oh. What do you think the plumber makes? What are your plumbers make as far as the workers, not the owners of the company, but the guys working in the field. So whenever they start out, what do you think the average starting plumbers making? I’d say the average third plumber is probably making about 70, 75,000 a year.
00:16:33:11 – 00:16:51:10
What? What is it? That what is it there? It’s you’re actually closer to 5560 down here. So as far as that part goes, it might be closer to 60 starting out at it. It’s been a while. I’ve got a couple of journeyman plumbers that that work for me. So it’s been a long time. But I like to pay, I like I like to pay people.
00:16:51:16 – 00:17:11:02
Right? I mean, that gives me I enjoy it because I know that they’re coming to work hard for me. I want to compensate them. Well, you’re trading time and effort and energy for money, right? And a lot of that has to do with like, what kind of skills do you have and what are you willing to put up with.
00:17:11:08 – 00:17:34:18
Right. And plumbers, they have to have a high skill set because they have to understand where the water’s coming in. Where is it going out, how to do the fit in, how to make sure that the pipe is, you know, secure, not leaking as to clean out the drains. They have to there’s a lot of things that are moving in there that that is a specific skill set, a specific knowledge base.
00:17:34:20 – 00:18:00:26
And then they have to deal with nasty junk, wet sloppy things. Right. Yeah. And and so that they get composite, right, like tight spaces or underneath the house or in an attic or what have you. And they should be compensated for that. And their, their time spent should be shorter than what others are spending. Right. So like my plumber, he I use them this week.
00:18:00:28 – 00:18:21:15
He, he had a swap out. You know, it’s a 1960s house here we are working in 1960 home again. But he’s working a 1960s home that had copper coming in for the gas line and that had to be swapped and updated. And so he had a he had a pipe in, for, for gas. But while he was there, he also had to rerun some PEX line for a hot water heater.
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He had put in a pan. He had to do, he had to do a lot of things. And he ended up submitting an invoice to me for $6,600, and it was for two days worth of work. but it was worth it. It was worth it for me to have somebody who had knowledge to do it. It was worth it for him to go out there and spend two days.
00:18:40:25 – 00:19:03:11
It was. But that covered all of his materials, that covered his gas. It covered his time and covered his insurance, all of his pieces. And I’m happy to pay him for that. I’ve got another guy. he does finished, right? Work for me. And he’s been with me for about, oh, yeah, 7 or 8 years now. I, I’ve known him, and he’s a great guy.
00:19:03:11 – 00:19:22:18
He’s one of those guys that you love to hate. Hate the love. And, you know, he halfway there and halfway out. But I love to pay him. And I wrote him a check this week for $12,000. and and that’s pretty consistent. Every week it’s 11, 12,000 now, he has a couple of crews that work underneath him. They’re doing multiple projects.
00:19:22:20 – 00:19:44:06
They’re going to house their, you know, their way, and he pays his guy. But I’m paying him $600,000 a year. He’s taking a chunk of that. He’s doing his work. He’s making money on top of that. He’s talking about he’s knocking at about $200,000 a year. His guys are all making good money. He’s been able to provide for his family.
00:19:44:06 – 00:20:15:02
His guys are being able to provide for their family and everything works. And and so there’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of money invested into people that have time, effort, energy. moving through this and, and it’s a boggling fact to me that I can’t figure out why so many people want to sit behind a screen in an office, in a, in a cubicle that they’re miserable, never go outside and never experienced anything, and that’s their life.
00:20:15:02 – 00:20:34:01
But, you know, and everybody has the, you know, there’s certain people that that’s their ideal. They’d rather be able to do that. You know, office life is where they want to be. But there’s others like Nate. I are two of the people. It’s like one of the we both say, this is that in the day I start my day off every day, even if I know it’s going to be an office day, I usually go out and do something first and then come back.
00:20:34:03 – 00:20:49:04
Yeah. So because of the fact that I just want to be out. So I like being out in the field. I like seeing my homeowners. I like seeing my, my tradespeople. So I like talking to my team in the field. I like checking up on my projects. So doing meetings and things like all that kind of stuff is all fun stuff for me.
00:20:49:04 – 00:21:13:11
And it’s all out and about and I just feel better about it. Which makes me feel better about me and about the company. And it raises the energy everywhere, because everybody loves the owner of the company out there. So that type of thing, you know, and that that to me is fun. So if you’re someone who hates sitting behind a desk or you’re someone who doing the monotonous thing every day, you know, like I always said, there’s no way for the people who work in a factory, you’ve got great skills and you have it even better.
00:21:13:11 – 00:21:32:11
Patients level to be able to do that same thing over and over and over again. So I want to and that’s, you know, we we definitely need people who do that. And if you love to do that same thing like that, something like that could be the thing for you. I like different now. If it’s different, I get that, that that actually excites me because anything else, I just get bored really easily.
00:21:32:14 – 00:21:48:29
and construction for me, no matter what trade you’re in, is going to be different. You know, the frame or show up on a job. It’s not the same job every day because you’re doing different things. So the same thing and definitely with the plumbers or the electricians or the Hvac people, the type of thing that you’re doing, the skill that you’re doing is consistent.
00:21:49:02 – 00:22:08:28
Yet the work that you’re doing, how you’re going to accomplish it on that specific job. So there’s always a different set of problems and challenges to go ahead and actually recognize and solve. And that to me is one of the fun things. So if you like, if you’re someone who likes that, who likes it different, likes to be able to challenge, solve those the way we refer to it now is if you’re able to do that and love to do that.
00:22:09:00 – 00:22:31:26
So any of the trades are a good place and they really range. I mean, it’s one of those things where you know, for, you know, different things right now for a lot of the trades, I don’t know any of the trades where you’re going to make less than probably between 40 and 45 to start out at.
