00:00:00:00 – 00:00:16:12
Look at it this way. If you’re looking at industries now, whenever Nathan our younger, the big push was you’ve got to go to college. You’ve got to be able to go ahead and do these things because this is the way to be successful. And if you really look at at anything like that, any, any narrative that’s being pushed, why are they pushing it.

00:00:16:14 – 00:00:30:21
Yeah. And and back then the push was because they needed those white collar workers. They need people to be. That was when computers were just really getting going. So it’s like we need people to be able to do these types of things. And they didn’t have them. So the push was go to college, learn this stuff so we can go ahead and fill those pieces.

00:00:30:21 – 00:00:58:12
Well guess what? They did a great job of marketing, a great job of pushing it. And now you’ve got a huge lack of people in the trades, which are the foundational things of literally everything we’ve got in our lives, from our roads to our buildings that we live in. So all the places we go and shop.

00:00:58:14 – 00:01:44:09
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 Meal’s 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. 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.

00:01:44:11 – 00:02:06:00
This topic, Nate, I think is going to be a huge one, for a lot of people because it’s something that’s out there for so many and I think it holds up the, progress in the industry early. So it’s really what it comes down to, I think. Yeah, I think this is one of the things that, is that blinking, flashing red light that, you know, causes people, you know, concerns.

00:02:06:00 – 00:02:30:07
And so, yeah, I’m glad that we’re going to have this conversation today. So. Well, let’s dive into it. Let’s go. Let’s let’s dive into it. So, the question that comes up is, what are the things that are preventing people to come into an industry, especially an industry that is considered, you know, less than other industries, right?

00:02:30:10 – 00:02:57:07
And what makes it appealing and what doesn’t? And so I want to kick this conversation off with a question in the keys. What have you noticed, over your time period in this industry that, prevents people from coming into, the construction trade or into the remodeling business? and what successes have they had along the way?

00:02:57:09 – 00:03:21:18
You know, I think one of the biggest ones, Nate, I think in new and I, I’ve talked about this before, there’s no question about it, is literally the social stigma around it, meaning you know, what people say. What are other people saying about you getting involved in this or you possible exploring this? And that’s one of the biggest challenges, because no matter what we want, no matter what people say, most people are still very worried about what others think about them and what others might say about them.

00:03:21:21 – 00:03:37:03
And whenever you’re a young, impressionable, especially a teenager coming out of high school, that’s one of the biggest challenges. I mean, half the time, you know, the majority of teenagers I know are looking for acceptance, which means that, you know, schools going ahead and program them. You got to go to advanced education. You got to go to college to be able to be successful.

00:03:37:03 – 00:03:52:12
If you don’t do that, you’re never going to go ahead and get where you want to go. And that’s the huge challenge that ends up occurring, is they get stuck in that mindset, and they never even get the opportunity to look at something like construction. As soon as it gets brought up, it’s like, no, no, that’s the last thing in the world.

00:03:52:14 – 00:04:18:05
So we want to go ahead and do because we’re supposed to go get the higher education. We’re supposed to go ahead and do what all our friends are doing. They’re going to college. That’s how they become successful. Well, and I think that’s one of the biggest challenges. So in front of the construction industry right now is just getting the younger people, the people in high school and getting ready to decide, am I going to college or am I going into a career right off the bat just to give it an opportunity even to look at it well and to see what might be out there?

00:04:18:07 – 00:04:38:13
So what do you think about that? I, I agree with you. And I kind of expand on that a little bit more because, you know, I’ve got I’ve got all age groups of kids, but the teenage years are always the challenging ones. It’s like kids growing up. They listen to their parents until about the age of about 14.

00:04:38:13 – 00:04:57:07
Some of them are a little bit younger, 12 and and 13. But those preteens, the teenage years, you know, they enjoy their parents and they listen to them. And then all of a sudden that transition is over. And now they’re in this group like you’re talking about and they’re going through in school and in most of the schools are teaching them.

00:04:57:09 – 00:05:27:07
You all have to do the same thing. And if you want to be successful in life, this is the path to go. And there’s no other alternative. And and so they look at, you know, doing manual labor as, as a horrible thing. And the other part of it too, is that, you know, a lot of kids today do not have the the parents that have, experience in, in doing things themselves, like fixing up, around the house.

00:05:27:07 – 00:05:50:16
They, they usually have somebody that they’ll bring in. So these kids are never exposed to it. And that makes their child. Yeah. And they’re, there’s a lot of them that the doting parents that don’t encourage the children to kind of like step into those careers. They, they have a stigma of what that career path is, and they project that image onto the child as well.

00:05:50:18 – 00:06:30:19
And so it becomes like this overwhelming force they give it, they get it from home. They get it from, their friends, their peers, the schooling institution, everything. And, and it’s really kind of it’s like a full force, you know, stigma that that kids are, are absorbing and saying, oh, no, I’ll never do that. And the flipside to that is, is that I’ve had the opportunity to work with kids who’ve never picked up at school, who have never been in the industry, who who have no idea what this is, and starting on day one, they actually enjoy it.

00:06:30:22 – 00:07:01:09
They actually enjoy getting a little dirty. They actually enjoy having some dirt or some grease on their heads. They actually enjoy picking up something and getting some instant gratification just by seeing something move. And I agree with you, I think. I think the stigmatism that’s been shadowed over it through their peer group, through their parents, through their school, all those pieces have been a heavy influence that, prevents them from even trying.

00:07:01:11 – 00:07:22:02
It’s and I think that one of the biggest things, like what you said, earlier is that it’s that impression and that belief. So that this isn’t the thing to do. And one of the pieces I’ll put out there and I challenge everyone, whether you’re, you know, in high school and figure out what you’re going to do or whether you’re older and you’ve been doing things for a long time, is when beliefs are given to you from somebody else.

00:07:22:04 – 00:07:37:06
Is question that belief? Why did they have that belief? And it’s all that’s a great question to ask. You know, whenever your counselors are saying, hey, you’ve got to go to college to be successful, I always ask a question, well, there isn’t another option, because anytime you say there’s only one option to anything, that’s very rarely the case.

00:07:37:06 – 00:07:52:25
And, you know, in this industry, I mean, we’re all about, you know, I call a challenge solving as one of those other people call it problem solving. So but it’s solving the challenges that are in front of you. And rarely is there only one way to do anything. Yeah. And whenever that’s being brought up, it’s quite a question, at least asked question.

00:07:52:25 – 00:08:07:01
And it’s not that you’re challenging the authority or challenging the person who’s bringing that to you. And that’s the way you have to approach it. You want to approach it as an inquisitive, like, I, I’m just asking what you know, what other ways is there to do this outside of college? You know, what other opportunities are out there?

00:08:07:01 – 00:08:24:16
What other options are available? You know, what does that look like? How does that translate? And if they don’t know, then start looking for other people who do have that information who might be able to enlighten you. Someone who’s in those types of fields in different types of industries that you may not have thought about before, that aren’t necessarily a traditional college.

00:08:24:16 – 00:08:51:08
Right? Absolutely. you know, I think challenging that question or asking that question, is imperative to, to the individual to kind of like seek out what it is that they’re wanting. What I, what I hear a lot of times is like, kids go off to college, they have no idea what they want to do, what they want to be, and they just kind of go through the motions like, well, Bobby’s doing it and Susie’s doing it.

00:08:51:08 – 00:09:17:23
And, you know, I want to just, you know, tag along. I want to stay inside the lane that everybody else does it. whoa. All of a sudden here them my my opportunity is going to arise when I get my degree. Well does it I don’t know. Most of the time they they either change degrees or they don’t even make it to the finish line and then they’re left with or what else do I do?

00:09:17:23 – 00:09:36:12
And this is where we come back, and I and I don’t have anything against Starbucks, but it seems like everybody ends up at Starbucks at some point in time and, and they all become baristas or, or whatever convenience store job. So yeah, but it comes down of it and I get it. It’s that’s the old stigma. And, the world needs bartenders, right?

00:09:38:03 – 00:10:44:04
they all need, you know, coffee, you know, but they’re right there were you say that night that’s and that’s one of the most interesting pieces that goes with that is that the world literally needs everything. Everything. And when you look at it, whether it’s construction, whether it’s going to college or getting a degree to be an attorney or an accountant or something in business or a doctor, whatever the case may be, there’s positions out there for everybody in realizing that some of those positions you really don’t find much about, if you go just that, or if the only route you look at is just the traditional higher education route, because that isn’t they don’t talk about this stuff there. And as a lot of people are aware, they don’t talk about it in high school and a lot of places anymore, which is unfortunate. Yeah. They don’t talk about it at all. I mean, nowhere, you know, it’s kind of funny. I did a quick research, on the U.S labor, statistics and there are 48,000 different types of jobs in the U.S, 48,000.

00:10:44:07 – 00:11:10:26
How come we only talk about, like, seven, right? You know, there’s so many different jobs, there’s so many different positions. There’s so many things that need to happen. But we talk about like 7 or 8 categories and then everybody wants to strive for the top piece, but nobody knows how to get there. And it’s only the lucky few and it’s a and, and and it always, it always boggles my mind that.

00:11:10:28 – 00:11:41:01
People don’t ask the question. They don’t ask. The question is like, is this the only route? Is this the only way to get to the finish line? Is this the only path through and they just fall into it and get into that line. And then then they get stuck and they’re miserable and. Yeah. And it’s, you know, one of the other, the one of the big misconceptions, one of the other big misconceptions when it comes to the construction industry is that you’re going to have to work really hard, that it’s a labor intensive industry.

00:11:41:03 – 00:11:55:27
And like the one piece that I put back out of that. And you know this, Nate, because, I mean, we both started in construction and yet now we’re business owners. Yeah. And when you look at it, it’s like I work harder now as a business owner than on what I used to work whenever I was in the field.

00:11:55:27 – 00:12:15:14
So actually doing one of the trades and no matter what your industry is or what your job or career you’ve chosen is, when you want to be successful at it, you’re going to work hard. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, it just depends on the type of hard work that works for you, you know? And that’s so like looking at those things, it’s you’re going to put effort in.

00:12:15:16 – 00:12:33:18
So find something that you can do that you can do well. And a lot of that comes down to exploring. And I mean this is one of the great times like especially if you’re a young person right now. So in your in your teen years, so you’re especially your mid to late teen years, this is your opportunity to go out and test so many different opportunities to go work at Starbucks to check it out.

00:12:33:18 – 00:12:50:03
If you want to, you know, go to and volunteer at a hospital. So and do some things there to find out whether if that’s if that’s a route that you like, you know, go and work with someone who’s working in construction. And, you know, there’s so many different places that you can go and get some experience and just get a taste of it.

00:12:50:07 – 00:13:08:02
Now, the one thing I will warn everybody about when you go and do that in the beginning, so you’re not going to be good, and that means that it’s going to feel like a lot of effort because it is you’re learning something new, that’s all. That’s what it comes down to. and go and look for some of those signs like you were talking about earlier.

00:13:08:07 – 00:13:23:02
You know, people get out in the field and they start doing stuff, and they love getting their hands dirty. So it makes them feel good, you know, and they see what’s being accomplished, you know, pay attention to how you’re responding to those whatever you’re doing for that type of thing. Are there things about that that you like that really excites you?

00:13:23:02 – 00:13:47:07
Maybe it’s something in customer service. I mean, I’ve worked at Disney property before. I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories. I love being able to go ahead and help them get whatever they’re looking for. As far as at Disney, it was the experience of being a Disney, and I’ve carried that through in my business, and I realize that’s part of what led me up, and that’s part of what I’ve included with my construction company is it’s not just about the business of me going ahead and renovating someone’s house or building a new house.

00:13:47:09 – 00:14:07:22
It’s the experience I deliver to them that’s above what everybody else does. Oh, and like that lights me up and creates a great a great piece of great product for my homeowners is what it does at the same time. And that’s to look at some of those pieces. And the other way you do that is really getting out there and experiencing it, as opposed to just taking people’s words for this is what you’ve got to do.

00:14:07:25 – 00:14:35:01
Yeah. And I think the other part too is like there’s a mental aspect and there’s a physical. That’s right. And it boggles my mind that people will pay a ton of money to go to a gym and go workout on free weights or, you know, go to their CrossFit or what have you. But then they look at this other thing where it’s like, it’s not as it’s not as strongly.

00:14:35:01 – 00:15:00:00
It says all of those others and you get paid to do that versus paying somebody else to go to the field is good to their gym. And so consider it as like a paid workout experience. The other part of it, too, is that as you progress the labor, the physical side goes down and the mental side goes up because everybody’s got to start somewhere, right?

00:15:00:00 – 00:15:17:13
And the lowest part of the totem pole is working your muscles to be able to make money. and that’s a short time period because then you elevate up into the next piece, right? Like once you know what to do because you’ve physically done it, now you can move it to the point of teaching somebody else how to do that.

00:15:18:04 – 00:15:35:16
and most of those don’t last long. I mean, you can have a three months, six months, a year in a position to learn how to do it. And then next thing you know, you’re teaching somebody else. So you’re running the crew at that point, you’re the one planning the job out. You’re the one going ahead and laying out what’s going to happen that day on the job site.

00:15:35:18 – 00:15:49:06
And that’s I mean, like I had that same experience when I was younger working for other people. It’s like I was in Boston, my brother’s a laborer, and they saw what I was doing. And they’re like, all right, well, we’re going to give you a little bit more so and a little bit more and a little bit more, and all of a sudden now you’re the one running the group.

00:15:49:09 – 00:16:08:23
Well in a very short amount of time. And that’s like that career progression piece. So in construction is great because you really there’s you there’s you’re not able to get topped out in any way, shape or form when it comes to construction, because when you start out as a laborer, then you turn into the skilled person on whatever crude is, whether as a plumber, as an electrician, as a framer.

00:16:08:25 – 00:16:25:14
So you become the knowledgeable person who’s now running things. So which means you get to do different things. You’re the ones figuring out that what you’re working with, like you talked about working with your brain and your body at the same time. So when you get to play back and forth a little bit that way, and then you get that opportunity, if it’s something that appeals to you, you get to be the person.

00:16:25:14 – 00:16:41:17
You can open up your own company and start doing the same exact thing and bringing people into the industry, and that just elevates it to a whole nother level. And then you become that business person at the same time, outside of just outside of just being in your specific industry. And that’s the great thing. And once you do that, sky’s the limit.

00:16:41:21 – 00:16:56:06
So for whatever you want to go ahead and do and now you you create where that boundary is. And that’s the nice thing is that like I said, you just don’t get that. There’s no one saying you’re unable to do this. It’s like whatever you put the effort, the effort into will go ahead and and translate into where your results are going to end up.

00:16:57:14 – 00:17:21:06
and I would encourage anybody who has, somebody, a younger person in their life, like you’re a parent and you have a child or you’re in your, you know, 40s and 50s, 60s and you’ve got a nephew or, or a niece or a grandchild or whatever. And they’re in that, that range of like, I don’t know what I’m doing in my life.

00:17:21:08 – 00:17:46:07
I would encourage you to, to push them into something that’s going to be like this kind of industry where it’s needed. It’s got a long future because that it’s, it, it’s unremarkable by by all the ups and downs from the economy and, and give them some stability in their life and give them a direction and push them into something like this.

00:17:46:10 – 00:18:01:02
And I sincerely encourage you that that piece that you’re talking about, there need about that stability piece. I think that’s huge because there’s so many people that are like, like I right now is obviously one of the huge pieces that’s coming out. And people are like, well, what does this what’s this going to mean for my job?

00:18:01:02 – 00:18:13:18
And what’s it going to mean for my career? And how is it going to affect me? Who’s going to take my job? the one thing you and I have talked about before is that I is not taking over anything in construction. It’ll be a piece. It’ll be a tool that gets added. It’ll be a tool to be able to help out pieces.

00:18:13:20 – 00:18:33:05
The things in the field right now, there’s no way. And that’s like people like, well, what about robotics at this point right now that hasn’t developed for 50 years or 50 years away from robotics in the in the construction and, and even and then there’s still going to have to have somebody driving the piece behind there. Yeah. But I I’ll tell you a story.

00:18:33:28 – 00:19:04:12
when I, right before I got married, I went to my future mother and father in law, and we were having a conversation. I was asking them that I want to get married, to their daughter. And they asked me a question back and they said, well, how are you going to be able to provide for her? And I and I looked at her and I, this is my mother when I, when I told her, I said, is it, my industry is unbreakable.

00:19:04:14 – 00:19:23:09
And she looked at me all crazy. And she comes from a corporate world and she comes from, you know, having a retirement plan in a for okay, and, and structure and everything else. And, and she looked at me side and she was like, what do you mean? I said, I said, my industry has been around since the beginning of time.

00:19:23:11 – 00:19:45:22
Right. It is it is the it is the one of the foundational industries of the world, right? Everybody needs a place to live. It will not be. It will not go away tomorrow. It will not go away in 50 years. It will not go away in 100 years and will not go away in a thousand years as that people live on this planet and they have to have shelter.

00:19:45:24 – 00:20:12:13
That’s number one. Number two, my specific industry of restoration is recession proof because I don’t care what happens in the economy. I don’t care what happens across, you know, the world. People living in houses, things are going to break. So they’re going to need to be restored and repaired. And so therefore I will never be out of a job ever.

00:20:12:15 – 00:20:41:29
And here we are many years down the road, and I have not missed a day at work. And my, my, my mother in law, my father in law, they they understood what I was saying to them and they gave me their blessing. But over the years, they’ve had me do many projects for them around their house and around for their friends and, and it’s one of those things where I think they’ve got to a point where they understand, like, this is a respectable career.

00:20:41:29 – 00:21:04:13
When they started out, they didn’t right that right because that wasn’t a part of their minds, their mind frame. Right. They were like, this is corporate America. This is how we structure, this is how we build. Right? And and so I’m glad that I didn’t follow the traditional path. I’m glad I didn’t get off of my path and meet their expectations of what they wanted.

00:21:04:16 – 00:21:21:03
It’s been a great life for us, you know? And that’s the that’s the part that I put out the challenge. Anybody right now is thinking about it. One of the biggest things, if you look at people who have been successful in anything in life, so the majority of them have done the opposite of what everybody else was doing.

00:21:21:05 – 00:21:34:19
Because when the herd is moving one way, that means you’ve got saturation. Just look at like if you look at the example of the stock market, no. Whenever everybody’s pumping money into the stock market, that’s your time to get out of the market, because the people who are going to make the money have already put their money in.

00:21:34:19 – 00:21:49:25
All these new people are raising all the prices up, which means that the people who originally got in pull out their money now and make their actually realize their profit. and then all these people who are pumping all that money and now their stuff starts to go down because those big investors in the beginning have now pull their money out.

00:21:50:02 – 00:22:04:22
So and now everything starts to shrink, which means that those people walking in on the back end are the people who actually get hurt. The worst, unfortunately, is what ends up happening, and it’s literally the same thing. Look at it this way. If you’re looking at industries now, whenever Nate now were younger, the big push was you’ve got to go to college.

00:22:04:22 – 00:22:20:09
You’ve got to be able to go ahead and do these things, because this is the way the be successful. And if you really look at at anything like that, any, any narrative that’s being pushed, why are they pushing it. Yeah. And, and back then the push was because they needed those white collar workers. They need people to be.

00:22:20:13 – 00:22:33:19
That was when computers were just really getting going. So and it’s like we need people to be able to do these types of things. And they didn’t have them. So the push was go to college, learn this stuff so we can go ahead and fill those pieces. Well guess what? They did a great job of marketing, a great job of pushing it.

00:22:33:19 – 00:22:52:25
And now you’ve got a huge lack of people in the trades, which are the foundational things of literally everything we’ve got in our lives, from our roads to our buildings that we live in. So all the places we go and shop, you know, and like I looked up a quick stat before we got on today. So for the number of construction workers, this is just residential.

00:22:52:25 – 00:23:14:01
This isn’t construction across the board. This is residential construction workers that we need right now. So and there’s three different states so that the top three states and you can probably guess which ones they are. So you live in one I live in one. And then California is always one. Well as far as that goes. So but California needs 665,000 residents, construction workers to meet their demand.

00:23:14:03 – 00:23:48:17
Yeah. Oh, you guys need 568,000. So. And in Florida, we need 398,000. Well, and part of that I mean that’s a that’s an incredible stat right. That’s a million and a half people in three states Nate. That’s not right now. Right now right now. And here’s and I’ll and I get I’m really adamant with this right. And it’s a great stat but it one of the reasons that we need that many people is that we have more people that we have housing.

00:23:48:20 – 00:24:18:04
And and if you get into the real estate investment world and you understand all of the ins and outs about, you know, construction and real estate and everything else, understand that residential drives the path, right? So I have to have enough homes for people to live. And then build buildings that they can then shop in. And then I also have to build roads for them to get to the residential pieces and get to the construction or the the shop, the buy and the grocery store in into this.

00:24:18:04 – 00:24:45:21
Right. So residential leads the path into these different industries, right? And right now across America we are in and I’m gonna, I’m going to speaking of probably a foreign term. Right. But in the in the investment world, we look at how many houses, how many days on market, how many months of inventory do we have. And the months of inventory is really important, right?

00:24:45:22 – 00:25:06:18
Right. Because for a sustainable society, we a typical days of inventory or months of balanced market and balanced market should be somewhere between 4 and 6 months. and right now we’re sitting at a month and a half. Yeah. So some of the sites where Florida’s out right now. So it’s I think it’s even less than 45 days right now.

00:25:06:21 – 00:25:27:02
Yeah, it’s a month and a half worth of inventory. And some of them are, you know, some of the slower states, middle of the road, you know, middle of the country. I mean, or, you know, two months, but we’re still below across the board, which means all of the workers that were in Texas are now in Idaho.

00:25:27:09 – 00:25:52:04
They’re in, Michigan. They’re over there. They’re spread throughout the country because they need work, too. And there’s no there’s no workforce there. You know, Texas used to have a huge workforce that came over the border, that that was just there to do work, and they would work for six months, and then they would go home for six months, and then they come back for six months, and then they go home for six months.

00:25:52:07 – 00:26:16:29
They can’t go back because there’s nobody else to fill in the spot. So they’re having to stay here. Right, which is part of the migration problem or the, you know, immigration problem. But nobody wants to bring that up. But there’s a reason why we’re allowing so many immigrations to come across because we need to fill positions right. And not everybody can be a manager of a position without actually doing a position.

00:26:17:01 – 00:26:59:06
And so on a whole other topic, as I say, in construction, there is only one path to be the manager owner, and that’s through. So I actually do that. But I come back and I’m sorry to get off on a tangent. We’ll probably dive into this conversation a lot, for later. But, the reality of it is, is that we are so far behind that it’s going to take so long to get caught up that even if we injected every college student that’s currently there in, across the across America, engaged every college student today into this industry, we still wouldn’t have enough kids, not even close.

00:26:59:08 – 00:27:16:29
And that’s the, you know, the statistic that I’ve heard repeatedly, you know, throughout the years. And what we’re looking at right now of just getting people in the industry just to go ahead and fill open positions right now. And the part that no one or very few people look at is how many people are retiring now because the age, the average age right now, people in construction is older.

00:27:16:29 – 00:27:40:08
Like I said earlier, the younger people coming in are really the, the, the strength, the labor, the actual physical portion of it in the beginning. And that’s not there right now. I mean, literally one right now. And for every 100 people that retire in construction, they’re seven coming in. So that number that we’ve been talking about is going to get dramatically worse very fast, though, is what’s going to happen.

00:27:40:10 – 00:28:02:12
Yeah. So that what that presents for anyone who’s thinking about it, that this is a huge opportunity because of the fact that there’s no one there, you can come in, put the effort and still learn from people that know and then be able to literally go ahead and write your own ticket. And I mean, that’s part of we’re going to get into another podcast later on where we talk about some of the options as far as what industries are open as far as that goes, what some of the options are for you, and then what the pay is.

00:28:02:12 – 00:28:19:19
But just to give you an idea right now on the pay range, so your range anywhere from the mid 40s. So all the way up to six figures in this industry. And that’s for the workers. That’s not for the owners of the companies. Yeah. That’s that’s for like people getting started. The first 2 to 3 years correct.

00:28:19:21 – 00:28:44:16
That’s 40 to $100,000. Starting out to about three years. It. Right. I don’t know it makes sense to me. You can go to college. You could spend $250,000 and be in debt. Or you can go to work, make $40,000 a year, then $50,000. You’re setting 5000 $800,000 a year in less time than it would be to get your degree.

00:28:44:22 – 00:29:03:26
I don’t know, make sense, but I I’m not I’m not a genius. And I, I’m with you like the the math and math as far as I’m concerned. You know, whatever you go ahead and get that degree, unless you’re in a specialty that you have to have that. So if you’re going ahead and doing anything else, you’re accumulating a ton of debt that you’re not going to have to pay back at a salary of.

00:29:03:26 – 00:29:22:08
A lot of times the college graduates are coming out or making less than the guys who are starting in construction all right now, which means that I’ve you know, you’ve accumulated high five figures, low six figures of debt to come out and make 30 to $40,000 a year. It’s a long road to financial freedom at that point. Even if they come out and they’re making $60,000 a year.

00:29:22:09 – 00:29:49:21
Yeah, you got $250,000 worth of debt, and you got $60,000 a year in salary, right? Well, how long does it take you to pay off the $250,000 in debt? 25 years at least. And at the same time, while you’re paying that off, then you have the challenges of everything else that comes in the life of your cars, your houses, your family and your own children and your aging parents and all of those pieces that you have.

00:29:49:23 – 00:30:11:18
I don’t even think about that now. They’re just they they they’re, you know, people are still worried about like, oh, Biden’s going to give us a, free, debt free college tuition. Just kind of keep going. And I hope that he does. Right. you know, I think college has gotten to a point where it’s too expensive and there and the faculty is making way too much money, and they’re pushing agendas that don’t need to be pushed.

00:30:11:18 – 00:30:48:08
And and it was supposed to be about higher education. Right. And we don’t give higher education. We just give. And if you dated, component to it and push them along and then charge them into an extreme amount of money to learn their thought process, what’s great about it, whatever. But they never come out with tangible skills. And that’s the problem that I have when I see so many people that come out with general studies as their degree, and they struggled for six years to get the general studies degree, and they go out to get a job, didn’t anything, and then they end up becoming a waiter.

00:30:49:00 – 00:31:15:23
me personally, I’m upset. I’m I’m I’m mad about it because that’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of energy. It’s a waste of just moral fiber, you know, and anyway, so but and that’s the that’s part of where the challenge comes into all of this is that there just isn’t a good route whenever you go down that unless you’re doing whatever you’re looking to do, you should have a direct route to what it’s going to mean to you and how it’s going to translate.

00:31:15:23 – 00:31:33:10
And you come out to, like Nate said, general studies. But I mean, some of the hits, some of the degrees you’ve got, you know, ancient European history. All right. How many jobs in the world are there going to be for those types of things? And what’s the I mean, if it’s your passion, awesome. If it’s your passion, if it’s not, though, you know, you want to look at some possibly other options.

00:31:33:10 – 00:31:54:13
That’s what I say. Just possibly doesn’t have to be. So look at some of the other things that are out there. And that’s really what this podcast is about, is about what’s stopping you, what’s holding you back. Realize ask those questions. Never, ever let anybody else’s, opinion. So what their beliefs are totally guide you without questioning that and figuring out where you lie in this.

00:31:54:13 – 00:32:13:00
So get information from people who are in the industry right now who are doing things and find out, is this the right thing? Always have that inquisitive mind now and throughout your life because it’ll serve you well. And that’s the best part about it is explore and find what it is before you make that decision that cost you a chunk of money like that.

00:32:13:02 – 00:32:27:18
So because that chunk of money is money, you’re going to whether they give it to you free now or not. So, if they give it to you for free, I guarantee you’re paying for it. You just haven’t realized that yet. You haven’t gotten to that point to realize where that money is actually coming from. do what you want to do.

00:32:27:19 – 00:32:43:28
So as far as this goes, but give everything an option. Think about what’s going to be the best thing for you. Ask lots of questions so and explore every opportunity that’s out there before you make that lifelong decision. So stay tuned to some next. So the next podcast we’ve got I already said we’re going to be talking about, money in the industry.

00:32:43:28 – 00:32:59:21
You know, how much money can you make in this industry, and what are some of the different types of jobs or different types of trades inside of the construction industry, because you just don’t know what might actually be something that appeals to you because you just don’t know what’s out there. If you got value from this, share these hacks to other builders or future builders.

00:32:59:25 – 00:33:31:25
Make sure to like this episode and take 10s to give her a viewer rating. With more reviews and higher ratings, we can help out more current and future builders of America, and we want to know what other topics you might want to hear more about or construction professionals. We should invite on as guests. You can let us know these in the comments here. Or on social media wherever you heard about the Builder Hacks podcast from, keep Building Our Future Building America.