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By the time you’re 25, you will be 15 years ahead in life. Then the other person you’ll be twice more ahead. So when that person finally gets his stuff together, there’ll be knock on the door 3840 and now they’re getting that you would be at 25, 26, 27, having your own house, having your own cars, having your own vacations,
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Welcome to the Builder Hacks podcast. Or 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 Mills, seasoned contractors who are not just in the trenches but are also pioneering the future of the industry through Concord University. 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.
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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. This is the Builder Hacks podcast. Build your future. Building America’s.
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Let’s just say, you know, for. For the average year. So. Or what they consider your average work year. So it’s usually 2080 hours is what your average worker isn’t. That usually includes like for for our company we provide vacation and things like that. And that’s part of it. So you’re getting paid during that time whenever you’re off at the same way.
00:01:40:11 – 00:02:05:26
so 2080 hours. So let’s just say if you’re making $20 an hour. So that gives you a $41,600 is what it would give you. That’s what a $20 an hour wage would start out at. Now that’s your gross, not your net. Those stars that part goes. Oh, the claim that. Yeah, that’s a whole nother podcast on its own and a whole set of rants go with that because someone’s got their hand on pocket way to way too deep.
00:02:05:29 – 00:02:28:24
but but whatever. So that’s what that looks like. So $20 an hour, that’s where you’re at. It’s $25 an hour. That’s a $50,000 a year job. So that’s what it comes down to. You get the 30 year to $60,000 a year job well on the hourly rate. So that’s the way that starts. And I see a lot of these that are starting out, at least here in Texas.
00:02:28:26 – 00:02:51:08
a lot of them are starting out in the construction trade for apprentices or around that $25 an hour. You know, started in the requirements that they’re having for them. Can you push a broom? Can you pick up some tools? Can you help clean up? Can you help every day. Can you show up every day. Right. Like and if so, we’ll pay $25 on.
00:02:51:10 – 00:03:16:28
And that that’s gonna get it to bowling. Does you go work at Chipotle A and make $18 an hour. You know standing in one spot and saying do you want rice, white rice or brown rice. I get it. You can do that. You know nothing wrong with that. If the thing upstairs isn’t working and you just want to stay in a monogamous or, you know, lane and mean, honestly, I did the same thing over and over and over, so it’s easy for you.
00:03:17:01 – 00:03:39:14
Yeah. Great. That’s perfect. Go for it. Yeah. If you like to be challenged a little bit and you want to expand on that career, look at some of these are other choices. I mean there’s window installers. There is you know fencing you get. And here’s the one thing to look at with some of these things, the things that are the more obscure jobs.
00:03:39:17 – 00:04:01:20
Yeah. Like I was checking online and stuff like that. So elevator installers would just guess how much they’re making starting wages for an elevator installer. Man, I would probably say like, I don’t know, 70, 75, $88,000 a year for an elevator installer repair person. And I will say starting that may not be starting that maybe with a little bit of experience.
00:04:01:21 – 00:04:18:29
Well, they’re probably putting through school. They’ll probably go on. And even if you did on the job apprentice training and things like that. Yeah. Well, and like you said, for the school part, there will be certain things because the suppliers of like the lifts and stuff like that have their own specialized certification programs that you’re going to go and attend and things like that.
00:04:19:02 – 00:04:39:19
Yeah. But when he started looking at things like that, like heavy equipment operators and things, oh, you can operate heavy equipment. So you’re looking, you know, somewhere around, you know, 55 to $60,000 a year with a little bit of experience. So once you get into that, can I, can I drive a big truck? It’s exactly it. Yeah. I drive that super oversize dump truck.
00:04:39:25 – 00:04:57:12
So just hauling dirt back now, I’d get real bored of that. So that’d be bored in like ten minutes. I’m like, this is all we’re doing today. I’m just driving back and forth. Hey, those are the guys that deliver out the concrete for me when I’m doing a pour. Yep. They make great money. Yeah, I think most of them are knocking down $100,000 a year just to drive the dump truck.
00:04:57:15 – 00:05:14:22
Well, and that’s in those cases because a lot of them are catching overtime too. Yeah. It’s one of the and and here’s the so here’s the piece. If you’re looking at getting into construction in most cases there’s an opportunity for overtime with most of these places. And most of these companies are going to pay you time and a half for overtime.
00:05:14:24 – 00:05:31:25
So let’s just use that $20 an hour thing. So for the first 42 hours of the week. So you’re making 800 bucks if you’re at $20 an hour. Basically that’s what it comes down to. Well, as soon as you go over that and let’s just say you work an extra couple hours a day. So ten hours for the week is what you end up with extra.
00:05:31:27 – 00:05:51:17
So that now jumps up to $30 an hour. So you had $800 an hour and base pay and another $300 an hour for the extra ten hours that you worked that week. So $1,100 gross before you go and pay taxes, though. But that’s $1,100 that easy. And there’s there’s no one in my construction in any of my trades who aren’t one.
00:05:51:17 – 00:06:14:21
They need to working overtime in every one of them. So needs to work right now. It’s they don’t have enough people to be able to do the overtime the way they would do it. Well, part of this too is that we need people. Right. And so if you need people and you have demand, which we have demand, we’re we’re, you know, booked out for four years, you have to get the stuff done.
00:06:14:21 – 00:06:32:26
If you can get it done faster. Absolutely. I’ll pay for it. I’m at speed and quality. Let’s get let’s get this thing going. I mean, whenever you talk about that, there’s definitely times where we’ve where I’ve had a deadline on a project where I have to hit a deadline like a home. Homeowners moved out of the house, their lease is expiring, and they’ve got to get back in.
00:06:33:00 – 00:06:46:25
You know what? I’ll pay more money for the guys that are in there to finish. For them to come out on a Saturday or Sunday, to go ahead and knock it down and and get it open. Their their guys are usually willing to go ahead and do it if they’re making extra money like that. So especially above what they would normally get on there.
00:06:47:02 – 00:07:08:08
And those are the types of things. As a worker, that’s a great opportunity for you and especially when you’re young. So this is one of the big fallacy pieces that so many young people buy into. So is that those younger years from like your 18 to 25 year old years are when you should be having a good time and partying and, and, you know, and experiencing life and things like that.
00:07:08:11 – 00:07:27:15
I’ve got a little different theory. So 18 to 25, you should be head down busting your ass. So because if you take that seven years, if you put seven years like that into the construction industry and any trade, so you can literally by the age of 25, so you’ll definitely be earning six figures in whatever trade you’re in.
00:07:27:15 – 00:07:46:18
So if you do that during that time, well, and for those of you who are interested in it, you could literally own a company by the time you’re 25 years old. And then you can be earning multiple six figures a year. So going ahead and doing that, wouldn’t it make more sense to do that, set yourself up financially as far as a starting base and then enjoy life?
00:07:46:21 – 00:08:17:28
Well, the oh god, yeah, it’s the wisdom. The wisdom. How do we go, Nate. Yeah, yeah. The wisdom is is is wasted on the is right I mean it. If, if I could go back in time I you know I was one of those kids that I always had multiple things going on all at the same time. But one of them was, I had a, a party business that I could enjoy being out and about, but I still wanted to make money.
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I mean, that was right. That was just part of my mentality.
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And when I started teaching people, I was I was like, let’s say, with what you’re saying, if you cut out all of the going out to the nightclubs and interacting with everybody else, that’s your same age and you start transitioning over into a more, let’s say it’s an adult lifestyle, right? Where you go to a job every day and that becomes your main focus, not your social life, but your main focus.
00:08:50:18 – 00:09:19:19
Let’s say that you can enjoy a social life and go out and have that, but become let your what? Let your career be your focus, how you keep your head down. Like what you’re saying for seven years and you start looking at it and everything that you spent all that time, or that seven years that you spent or are spending in your social life, spending money, you you transition and you take that time and you start making money.
00:09:19:27 – 00:09:47:19
By the time you’re 25, you will be 15 years ahead in life. Then the other person you’ll be twice more ahead. So when that person finally gets his stuff together, there’ll be knock on the door 3840 and now they’re getting that you would be at 25, 26, 27, having your own house, having your own cars, having your own vacations, going off and enjoying the world.
00:09:47:21 – 00:10:05:23
you’d be ready to have a wife and kids that are, you know, husband and kids and lifestyle and, and interact and, and now you have friends that are also making money. So you’re not all being broke together, sleeping on each other’s couches, and you’re not having to have hand-me-downs and you’re not having to ask your parents for money.
00:10:05:26 – 00:10:29:00
Yeah, but you actually have your stuff together. And I’ve got a few examples of that that, that have come through my, my organization were there beyond that. Now they they don’t they’re not living at home with their parents. They’re not they’re not doing these things. They have gotten themselves together in life. Right. And I think that’s the big piece, right?
00:10:29:00 – 00:10:49:28
Nobody wants to be at home at 45 or 30 or 35 and and having to ask mom, like, I’m having a date over tonight. can you, like, be quiet or leave or. You know what have they want to they want to have their own space. But in order to have their own space, you have to be able to afford your own space and be able to afford your own space.
00:10:49:28 – 00:11:06:12
You have to be able to be diligent in what you’re doing, and you have to be. You have to think about like, where am I spending my money? Where am I spending my time? Because we’re not really we’re we’re talking today about the construction industry or or the residential. This is generally a life lesson is what this is.
00:11:06:17 – 00:11:35:23
But this is yeah, this is life, right? We’re we’re talking about like, how do you prepare? Nobody talks to you guys about how to prepare for life. They say, oh, if you just do it then you’re fine. Well, yeah. Making choices that benefit you and making the choice that you are not the sum of your friends, that you need to step away or break away from some of those bad relationships and those bad friendships, the people that are holding you back or want you to go down the path that they’re going down, you need a break away from that.
00:11:35:23 – 00:11:55:21
You need to stand alone and do your own thing. And part of that is making some choices, making some decisions that are going to better result. What is it that they say, you’re the average of the five people you hang around with the most. So that’s it comes down to and and that means in every way. So if you hang around with five broke people, guess what?
00:11:55:21 – 00:12:10:28
You’ll be the sixth. If you hang out with other people who are millionaires, you will be the sixth guaranteed. So because you’re going to learn, you’re going to do you’re going to see what they’re doing, they’re going to be helping you out. Because whatever they’re doing, you’ll be doing, which means you’re going to grow to that same level.
00:12:11:01 – 00:12:40:15
Well, and here’s the other thing. If you are if you’re trying to be a millionaire and your buddies, let’s say you have 3 or 3, right? You got three people that are be millionaires, three people that are, you know, want to go out to the bar every night. You have to make a choice or the choice is going to be made for you, because I guarantee you the millionaires aren’t going to want to hang out with you because they got a different plan and the guys that are over there not doing anything that are broke are going to be begging you to come back to them.
00:12:40:17 – 00:13:07:07
Yeah, guess what? That choice is going to be impactful on your life. So think about those things. And one of the big pieces to realize in life, anytime you want to achieve anything so massive success only comes through diligent work. Effort and sacrifice is what it comes down to. So which means that like I was talking about those choices you make.
00:13:07:09 – 00:13:21:20
Oh, it’s like I’ve, I’ve literally trends at whenever I went ahead and I started out later in life making these types of choices, which is which, you know, you learn it when you learn it is what it comes down to. So if you’re younger, awesome. Take advantage of this now because this is your chance to really kill it.
00:13:21:22 – 00:13:35:02
And when you go ahead and do that and you make that choice now to really go after it and surround yourself with the people who are at a much different level than you are at a, at the next levels. So that means you’re going to get a chance to grow, but it also means you’ve got to be strong enough.
00:13:35:02 – 00:13:49:16
And that’s the part that needs talking about. You’ve got to be strong enough to be willing to accept being different than what everybody else says is the thing you should do. You know you’re 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. You should be going out to the bars, is what they’re all going to say. You should be God. All right, I get it.
00:13:49:17 – 00:14:08:29
There’s nothing wrong with do not a few times. But if that’s your life, meaning that’s what your social life consists of. If you’re doing that five nights a week, something’s wrong. Well, in the it’s a and it’s, it’s the results that you get from every choice you make in life is what it comes down to. And those results may not be what your overall goal is in the future.
00:14:09:04 – 00:14:26:00
And that’s the part that you’ve got to look at, is who do you want to be in five years? Well, and then align yourself with people who can help you get there. I mean, it’s like the one study where they say they offer people, hey, we’ll either give you a $100,000 or I’ll give you a penny today, and I’ll double it every day for the next 31 days.
00:14:26:00 – 00:14:51:24
Would you be happy with that, Penny? Yeah. What? That. And that’s because Nate and I both know that. Because what that actually equals out to if you double that is like $1.3 million is what it is by day 31 whenever you’re doubling like that. And what that’s wise though, that is a life. That is life. Because if you look at it, let’s say it’s not a let’s look at it from a realistic, point of view.
00:14:51:26 – 00:15:22:23
What if you double that penny or that dollar over 31 years, like a lifetime of working, right? Or you just get $100,000, right? And that’s really what people are buying into. They’re buying into. Let me just get a safe, secure hundred thousand dollars over the next 30 years, and I am going to be financially okay. Reality of it is that interest rates are going up.
00:15:22:25 – 00:15:43:02
All kinds of disruptions can happen over 30 years. It’s probably not going to be okay. You’re probably going to blow through it. There’s going to be nothing left. but if you invest in yourself and you invest in an industry and, you know, you take it in in stride and you double it every single year over 30 years, let me tell you.
00:15:43:02 – 00:16:05:00
So by the time you get to year ten, you’ve already exorbitantly doubled over the money that you gotten. If you just had that steady paycheck. Right. You want to go work at the Chipola and you want to put in five years at Chipola? Guess what? In five years you’re not going to be making $100,000. Nope. But you can put that as into yourself.
00:16:05:00 – 00:16:26:27
Learn a skill, learn a trade, put it in, and in five years be making more than $100,000 and then more of that, and then more than that. And then by the time you get to 30 years, if you do it right, you’ve got investments, you’ve got companies that you own, you’ve got things that are paid off. You’re you’re pretty much debt free.
00:16:26:27 – 00:16:59:13
Unless you have debt that’s going to be making you money. That’s a whole lot of conversation, right. But you’ve now set yourself up for a future life that you’ve always envisioned for yourself. And anybody that says they haven’t envisioned what their future in life is going to be, well, then you need to, it’s and one of the things that that so many people and like when you hear that decision to take, I’ll take the penny and double it or I’ll take the $100,000 right now, so many people look at things in a short sighted what’s the easiest thing for me?
00:16:59:20 – 00:17:23:08
What’s going to give me the most benefit right now? And part of what me and I are talking about, especially when it comes to the construction industry and this is literally every career, not just, yeah, it’s every career. Well, but whenever you look at it, if you put that time, effort and energy into the beginning. So even though the results may not show up as fast as what you would like to see them show up, and especially when it comes to investments and things like that, it takes time to build the exciting time.
00:17:23:08 – 00:17:44:11
Unfortunately, this is definitely it’s it’s a curve. So it’s what it comes down to. And it it starts out and it goes up slightly. And then all of a sudden you’ll see it go up dramatically. And that dramatic piece happens after a certain point in time. You know, like if you look at that, that graph, if you have the penny into that 1.3, so it’s going along and it’s going up very minimally.
00:17:44:11 – 00:18:06:00
And you get out to like day 20 that thing starts to almost go straight up. So it’s what ends up happening because you’ve got it’s no different than being in any industry. You’ve got the skills now to really go ahead and create momentum. And that’s where the results come from. And that’s why we encourage you, you know, with that, with whatever you’re going to do in life, put your head down, go after it.
00:18:06:02 – 00:18:27:13
So it doesn’t mean don’t do anything else. What it does mean though, so is whatever you’re going after, go after a hard find the right mentors and people to be around. So whether that’s something like Concord University to go ahead and learn more about the construction trades in which trade you might want to be in. So whether that’s going ahead and going out and apprenticing with someone who’s in the industry, so who owns a business and is willing to teach you those things, whatever that might be.
00:18:27:13 – 00:18:44:25
So we’re looking for this to be an opportunity for you. And whether it’s this or something else, that whole investment side of things like Nate’s talking about, that’s a whole life lesson piece on that side about what you can create whenever you can do it in the beginning, when you’ve got less responsibility, you’ve got the most time and you’ve got the most energy.
00:18:44:28 – 00:19:03:01
This is the time for you to go ahead and excel in your life. Lift it up to the next level, though, and really be able to create the foundation that creates the life and lifestyle you’re looking for. And that’s part of what we’re looking to do here. So whether it’s on the Builder Hacks podcast or other stuff with Concord University is helping you go ahead and figure that piece out and create that.
00:19:03:03 – 00:19:22:17
So for your next step in life. Well, and also if you guys feel and I know we’re talking to, you know, 20 year old, but if you’re in your early 30s or mid 30s or early 40s, there’s still time for you to change. There’s still time for you to get involved. There’s still you’ve got enough life experience and you’ve gone down a bunch of paths.
00:19:22:19 – 00:19:41:29
You know it’s going to be uncomfortable for you. But yeah, life is uncomfortable. You now have to make up for the whatever decisions made in the past. So don’t let that be a deterrent from taking advantage of opportunities. You know, they always say, what’s the what’s the best time to have started something. So there’s yesterday. So what’s the next best time now.
00:19:41:29 – 00:19:59:10
Hey now. Yeah. And that’s that’s always is. The piece is go ahead and do that. So jump into that piece. So take advantage of the opportunities that are out there whether it’s in this or not. I know I didn’t start until I was in my my mid 30s is whenever I actually got started with this one, I wasn’t working for somebody else.
00:19:59:10 – 00:20:14:00
And I want to and created my own business. All of the things that you want in life happen by taking the action, how it happened, by you putting your head down, you being focused on your goals, which is part of what Nate was talking about, those figuring some of those pieces out and they’ll change over time. There’s nothing wrong with that.
00:20:14:02 – 00:20:27:23
Figure out what those are now. Figure out what it’s going to take to get there, who it’s going to take to help you get there. So and get aligned with that person as soon as you possibly can. So again, whether it’s through us listening to the Builder hacks podcasts or attending this, please do. We’re more than happy to help you out in any way.
00:20:27:23 – 00:20:49:11
We can obviously post any questions you might have in any of the comments down below. You are happy to answer those so as they come along. And so make sure to go ahead and join us in Concord University. For those of you who know construction is something you want to give a shot to, so we’re here to go ahead and make sure that’s a successful piece for you and that you can help build America like we’re talking about, and create a life and a lifestyle that you’re going to love to live.
00:20:49:14 – 00:21:10:18
Well, until next time, everybody. I’m Keith. Keith. I’m Keith. So I’ve changed my name this week so I’m Keith. So that’s Nate. We look forward to talking to you on the next builder hacks podcast.
