The blue-collar industry is filled with opportunities, but people don’t want to get past the blue-collar work stigma. You don’t need a college education to be successful in life. As long as you know and love what you are doing, you’ll achieve success. Join Tersh Blissett and his guest, Ken Rusk, in this conversation about his new book, Blue-Collar Cash. Ken is the President of Rusk Industries, a waterproofing service company. Learn how Ken helps people find success in their path and discover how you don’t need to have a college education to do what you love!
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How To Get Some Of That Blue-Collar Cash With Ken Rusk
This episode is an exciting one. We have an author. He wrote the book called Blue Collar Cash. His name is Ken Rusk. I’m excited to learn a little bit about him and share a little bit about his book. It’s super exciting when somebody writes a book about the blue-collar industry. It’s near and dear to my heart. As most of you know, as readers, I have shared several times that anybody who has written anything about the blue-collar worker gets a little bit more priority on the show than anybody else. I’m super excited to bring Ken on.
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Welcome to the show, Ken. How are you?
I’m fantastic. It’s good to be here with you. Thanks for having me.
Give us a little bit of background about you and what experience you had in order for you to get into writing this book, Blue Collar Cash.
It’s funny because I grew up in the Midwest. I lived in a bunch of small towns in Ohio. I was fortunate enough to have four brothers. For us, our past time was being out in the yard, running through the woods, playing in the creek, and doing all the things that kids were supposed to do back then. There were no video games, cell phones, or iPads. I grew up working. I spent a lot of time on the business end of a long handle digging shovel. We had a good time. When we were younger, it was work, whether it was landscaping, digging ditches, or whatever it was. For us, it was all about trying to find a way to get some gas money and maybe get some money for our first car.
Tell me a little bit about the book itself.
It’s funny because I’ve been kicking around this business now. I’ve worked at the same job since I was fifteen years old. We started with about 3 employees and now I have 200. Through necessity, I almost became like a life coach. You start out looking for people to help you do what you do. Eventually, it works its way into you’re trying to build and create people, help them with their first job, and start walking their path of life. For me, I started almost coaching and not even knowing it. The more I did it, the more successful we became. People told me, “There’s a book in this.” Many years later, I’m writing a book about it.
I liked that because, as a blue-collar worker, a lot of times, we lose the significance of the fact that you still coach people. A lot of coaching and mentor books, I feel like they’re focused more on the white-collar aspect of things. As you said, you’re still being a coach. You have all these stories that you’re bringing in here because you’re coaching these people. I liked that aspect of it. Is that basically the premise of the book itself?
I’ve probably hired a couple of thousand people over the last years. When you’re working with people, it’s funny how you can set them along the path and give them the wisdom of what you went through when you grew up as a blue-collar guy. There are no letters after my name. I never went to college. I don’t have a PhD. I don’t have any training in any of that stuff. It just came out of necessity.
The fun part was once I got going with it, helping people with their first credit card, savings account, 401(k), purchase of a car, or even getting into an apartment, you set these people on a path where they feel like they can do it themselves. They need you there to guide them a little bit. I picked up a bunch of cool stories from over the years of friends and people that work in our company.
What my goal was to get people to realize there is a hell of a lot of awesome opportunities out there in the blue-collar world. You just have to get past the stigma of what’s going on these days and say to yourself, “Maybe I should take a look at one of those jobs rather than take the typical path where you got to go to college, get good grades, and find a job.” For me, it’s all about teaching people how to think first, how to see what’s possible, and then picking a job that can support something like that.
I liked that because whenever I was in high school, I remember all of my teachers, counselors, and everybody, all I ever heard was, “You got to go to college to be successful. If you don’t go to college, you’re not going to be successful.” You’ve proven with your book that there are so many successful people out there that have no degree or have not been to college. Those people are not glamorized. I like that your stories are bringing those people to light.
With our business and the hiring process that we have, one of the things is when we hire someone, our interview question is, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” It throws people for a loop because they’re like, “I’m trying to get this job right now.” I was like, “Pass this job. I don’t want you thinking about this job. What happens after this job?”
We’re an HVAC company. A lot of times, they’ll say sheepishly, “I want to own my own air conditioning company.” I’m like, “That’s great. While we’re working together, I can show you the ropes of owning an HVAC company.” Nine times out of ten, whenever I do that, I divulge that portion of it. They’re like, “That’s a little bit more than I would like to bite off here.”
[bctt tweet=”There is so much opportunity in the blue-collar world. People just have to get past the stigma of it.” via=”no”]
They start focusing on a different path or one guy is still focusing on being an owner. I’ve got him trying to get his license and all that stuff. People are going to come and go. If you get your heart hurt every time somebody leaves to better themselves, you’re being a selfish person. Being that person that wants to help guide those people along their career path, that helps out a lot.
I have one person that he wanted to run a radio station, and that was his goal. We worked along that path. He got a job offer for doing that and he had to move away. He was nervous about coming to me and saying, “I had this job offer. I don’t want to take it because I don’t want to leave you all, but it’s what I’ve been working for.” I said, “Mark, if you don’t take that job, I’m going to fire you.” It’s one of those things. Now, Mark is a super fanboy of our company. Even though he moved away, he still has great connections in our area and he is constantly recommending our business.
It’s because of that story and having people come through your organization. You’re coaching them along and watching their paths. I’m super excited about him because now he is running three radio stations. It was like, “You did a great job and it’s your goal.” I checked up on him. I was like, “Is it all you thought it would be?” He was like, “It’s everything. It’s amazing.”
It’s funny you say that because one of my questions, when we’re interviewing somebody is, why are you here? They look at you like, “I’m here to get a job.” I’m like, “A job for what?” They’re like, “I got some bills I need to pay.” I’m like, “Tell me about the bills. What’s behind that?” What we do is when we feel like they’re ready, which is soon into hiring them, we get out a big piece of paper and some crayons. We tell them, “Draw your life. Draw what you think your perfect life would be.”
It starts slow, but it’s like, “Are you a house or an apartment person? Do you want to live in the country or the city? Do you want to live in a condo or a suburb? Are you a dog or a cat person? If so, what kind? What would you name it? What kind of transportation do you like? Are you a pickup truck, motorcycle, or electric car guy? Who are you? Tell us who you are. Let’s draw that on a piece of paper and then let’s make a path to getting each one of those things for you while you’re here. Let’s march towards your perfectly envisioned life.” It’s powerful stuff because they look back at you like, “Who are you?” Nobody knows it.
Do you ever use that as a coaching tool also? Somebody who is slacking off a little bit and you’re like, “Is what you did now going to get you to your goal? Is that going to get you to your house or motorcycle goal?”
Yes, because one of the things that we have is this black glass board. This board is probably 6 feet long and 8 feet high. On this board, they have to write down their goal with a beginning date and an ending date. They have to put precisely what they’re doing like, “I’m going to save $2,500 to fix my car. I’m going to save $50 a week for 50 weeks and then I’m going to get my car tuned up.” That is on the wall for all to see.
Once you commit to a goal like that, everyone is going to know how you are progressing. I even go so far as they have them go to payroll and automatically deduct that money into an account that they can’t get at. We all know the path that they’re walking and when they’re going to begin and end. There’s a huge celebration. As soon as that’s done, another goal goes up on the board, “Now, what’s next?”
There’s a huge public accountability because I feel like anything else, whether it’s working out or losing weight or whatever, if you don’t have somebody there walking the path with you, it’s tough. We do a lot of that. That’s what builds strength in these kids because, once they hit their 1st or 2nd goal, they’re like, “Ken, get out of my way. Now, I got this.”
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of our population that have never set goals. They never had a checking account to save money or a savings account. Whenever you, as an employer, come to them and say, “We’re going to set goals,” they’re like, “You’re going to start watching my dollars and production every day.” I’m like, “No. We’re going to set life goals for you and you’re going to achieve life goals. I’m going to hold you accountable to it or Bob is going to be your accountability partner. Every Friday, we’re going to meet. You two are going to discuss for 30 minutes how you’re getting to your goal.”
They look at you like a deer in a headlight. I live in the country and you know what a deer in a headlight looks like. It was like, “What are you talking about? You’re speaking French right now.” That’s awesome. I’m so glad that we’re aligned in such a similar fashion because people overlook the love and care of a blue-collar business owner and you really become a family.
There are people in your organization that may not be that way. It’s not uncommon to grow tight bonds with these people and become lifelong relationships. I’ve had some guys that were only with me for six months, but I still consider them a close friend because of that relationship we built initially even in the interview process and going through it and then having them develop that sense of belief in themselves type mentality.
They believe in the mission. One of the ways that we do that is we’ve created these 401(k) millionaires and we have a Millionaire Club. It’s cool because what most people don’t know and when you hear the math, you come and believe it yourself. If you enter a 401(k) program when you’re 21 years of age and let’s say you put $60 a week away into that 401(k), you can literally save for ten years and stop saving at the age of 31. By the time you retire at 65, you’ll have $1,000,002 in the bank account in your 401(k).
Most people don’t realize that. When we start them on their salary, we tell them, “The first $60, I want you to forget about it. You never saw it. You never had it. It’s not yours. It comes right out of your check. It goes into that account.” Once they do that, they get used to that $60 not being there, just like if they had to spend it on gas, a long commute, a ticket that they cut, or whatever.
Once they get used to that money not there, they find a way to out-earn that. It’s cool because I get to look at these guys and I hand them their statements every quarter and say, “What’s it like to have your entire retirement handled for you? What’s it like to say, ‘I don’t need to worry about that anymore?’” They look at you like, “Who are these people?”
That’s one way for them to say, “I got to find a way to hang out in this place.” I’ve got a lot of people that have been there for 10, 15, 20, or 30 years because they can build their own life the way they want it with the vehicle called our company. I have 2% to do with their success. That’s it. They have the other 98%. It’s getting them in a position to thrive. Once they do, get out of the way.
What exactly is your company? What trade are you all in? What are you all doing?
We do basement waterproofing. We go into old foundations in old houses. We do everything from installing some pump to jacking up the whole house, ripping the basement out, putting a new basement, and setting the house back. It’s crazy. We do everything in between from air handlers to stabilization to making the place nice, safe, healthy, and warm so you can use it. It’s a ditch diggers business. It’s a tough business, but we grind it out good every day.
You’ve mentioned digging ditches. When I was growing up, probably before I was legally allowed to, I worked for my grandfather’s landscaping business. One of the things he always says is, “You’re going to break the handle of that shovel if you keep leaning on it like that.” He was like, “Come take a break from digging that ditch and come pick up these weeds over here. Take a break from doing this and do that.” It’s a joke. Thankfully, he is still alive. He is in his 80s.
Every time I see him, I give him all kinds of grief about it. He will lean up against something and I’ll tell him not to break it. It’s a running joke. I wonder if that created something in my mindset, but at the same time, I have guys that will move mountains for me that never did that as a use either. I wonder if that had something to do with the way that my mentality formed.
I look at it this way. One thing that’s a little concerning is that most kids now are growing up with cell phones, video games, and iPads. They’re not outside doing those things that you and I did, climbing trees, building treehouses, falling off the trees, hurting yourself, all the stuff that you did as kids that built your work ethic, if you will. I’m not necessarily too concerned because the balance side of that is, when people come to work, they literally look at you like, “What’s in it for me to work here?”
I don’t necessarily mind that too much because if I can answer that question or help them answer that question, all you need to do is position them to figure out, “I can build a life here. I can build those things that I’m looking at. I can build those things on my piece of paper that I drew out.” That jumpstarts them past the experience of the shovel, although we still need a lot more of that shovel experience.
You can get people to your point who will surprise you, go to work, jump in and go, “Wow.” They hit their first goal, “What’s my second one?” They hit their second, “What’s my third one?” Now, you’ve got some powerful people there. You mentioned family. I can’t tell you how much we feel like a family because we’re all intimately involved in sharing each other’s goals, dreams, and aspirations. We’re making them happen. The people that buy into that become like family. The people that don’t tend to work their way out quickly.
Do you have a statistic where the number of people that come in and they can’t buy into your thought process, goal setting, and all that stuff? Are you able to weed those people out during the interview process?
We’re able to weed them out during the interview process, but the other thing is, it’s hard work. If they’re going to pull it off the job, they’re going to do it quickly. The people that stay look around and go, “This culture is different.” One of the things that we do and it’s crazy, is we have what we call a Customer Amazement Rep. He has his own little Ford Transit and a little portable grill in the back of it. He takes this grill and shows up to the front yards of these houses that we’re working on. He unannounced rolls in, pulls his grill out, and starts cooking cheeseburgers.
[bctt tweet=”You don’t have to go to college to be successful in life.” via=”no”]
The crew loves it because obviously they’re taken care of, but the homeowners look out the window and go, “There’s a guy out front cooking cheeseburgers in the front yard.” It builds a lot of overall customer care camaraderie and all that. We do a lot of those off-the-wall things to help these people because you got to differentiate yourself from every other employer out there. They’re literally shocked at some of the stuff that we do from a cultural perspective, but it works. Retaining people is a lot better that way.
The guy that you have, the customer amazement rep, the grilling, does he do that every day or every once in a while? How do you determine when he does that?
We have eight crews out there. He does it every day just for a different crew. Once or twice a week, each one will get it. Sometimes if it’s cold, he will do chicken noodle soup by the gallons. Sometimes, he will do egg and muffins in the morning. It’s one of those things where you get involved in the people and get them to understand that you care about them.
You’re not just another number for them or they aren’t just another number for you. Do you find that people need to have a bad experience before they come to experience your culture and value it?
That’s a great question.
We’re 100% Millennials. The people that I see struggled the hardest to buy into our culture are the people who have never been part of a bad culture. The people who are in their early 30s and have worked for crappy people come and are like, “Are you serious right now? Are you going to give me my birthday off and pay me? That’s weird. What’s the catch?”
It’s funny you say that because I have friends who are also in contracting businesses. A lot of times, they’ll go, “Is it hard to find people?” I smile and go, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s hard to find people,” without giving away too much of the secret. It’s important because where did the stigma come from that you can’t work with your hands anymore? You got to have four years of a college degree in order to make your life work. Where the hell did that come from?
I think it was when they decided to get rid of Shop Class back in the ‘80s. You mentioned college. When I was in high school, the Econ teacher said, “Raise your hand if you’re going to college,” and only about a third of the people did. That was back in 1980. The rest of them were going into a business with their parents or they’re going to do factory work, get a job, buy a car, make money, and start their life.
Somewhere along the line in the last decades, that became taboo to think of a non-conventional path to success, like a trade school or apprenticeship, or going out and doing the Outliers book that says 10,000 hours of experience. You have to master something. It’s sad that that stigma has been put on there, but I’m doing whatever I can to take it away.
You’re a very intricate key in that process because I have a friend of mine who wrote another book called Blue Is the New White. It’s Josh Zolin. He has a company out in Arizona. I picked up a couple of copies of his book and gave them to the counselors at our school. After going and sitting down with those counselors, I was amazed at how much they were like, “We need more people like Josh Zolin and people who are writing books that are focused on the blue-collar and show and highlight the blue-collar aspect. There are so many students at our school that are not college-prep material, but they feel like a failure because it’s the old adage.”
It might have been Einstein that said, “If you measure a fish by how well he climbed a tree, you’ll fail every time.” It’s the same concept. These people are smart people. They’re smart kids, but they’re not college material or they have no desire to go to college. They didn’t want to be in high school. I was that person. I did go to college. I got the College Prep and Tech Prep Track, where they would come on together, but it was only because I love Shop Class.
Thankfully, I was in a back country’s high school where we still had Shop Class and Automotive. I went to Shop Class, Automotive, and ROTC. I also went through Physics and Calculus. Intelligently, I could work the books. I knew numbers and Science. It clicked with me naturally, but it wasn’t my passion. My passion was always going towards the automotive. I have a full sleeve of tattoos and it’s nothing but car parts. I’ve always been into cars, even though I have an AC company.
I find that successful making much more than six figures. It’s more than $100,000 a year. There are people who work with their hands. A lot of auto-mechanics that got into our trades are mechanically inclined. Maybe they’re not the best at filling out the paperwork. That’s not everybody’s thing. I like to share with people that I’m a mixture and weird person. I enjoyed Math and I still enjoy the metrics aspect of the business. I also enjoy the hands-on portion.
I like the office side, the field side, and podcasting. I’m a weird, next shiny-object person, but it’s AKA an entrepreneur. You don’t have to go to college to be very successful in life. I’m thankful for your book and you spending the time to write down these stories, this book, and your experience. It sounds like you’ve created an amazing culture within your business.
I believe that that culture will outweigh someone’s desire to have a degree and then go into a different field because I was pushed towards Mechanical Engineering because I was good at Math. My mom wanted me to do Mechanical Engineering, but my mom also has a PhD in Education. She is a career student. A backstory on my mom, she wasn’t “successful.” She was a single mom for many years. She put herself through college. Once she had her college degree, that’s when she was able to provide for us.
In her mind, I needed the same path. I needed to go to college in order to be able to provide for the family. I completely understand her thought process while I don’t believe in it now. In her scenario, it was very much true. It’s a catch-22. You can’t say, “Tear down all the colleges,” but at the same time, there’s definitely a place for people who are not college material. They’re still as valuable, if not more valuable, than people who went into college.
I’ve got a quick story myself. I’m not an anti-college guy. I’m an anti-college-is-for-everybody guy. I’ll give you a quick example. I had a car that I was getting worked on and it was going to be in the shop for a couple of weeks. They told me to go rent a car while I was waiting for the car to be done. I went to this car rental place. There’s this kid standing behind the counter. He is probably 25. He had a suit on that was like three different suits that he found in his closet and put together. He is working hard.
There was a half an hour delay for me to get this car, so I had a chance to sit down and talk with the guy. He said, “I think I got railroaded a little bit.” I said, “Tell me about that.” He said, “My parents said I had to go to college. I went to college. I basically partied and drank for four years. I didn’t have any specific type of degree. It was a bland Business Degree. Here I am, I’m $60,000 in debt and I’m making $28,500 at this rental car company. I came into Ford to move out on my own. I think I should have done what I wanted to do. I love construction. I like lumber and carpentry. I should have jumped into helping someone build houses and I probably would have been a lot further ahead.” The answer is he is right because if his passion was to do that, he should still do that. I said, “I’m going to tell you what to do. If your passion is to go do that, you might want to strap on your tool belt, go out, and start working.”
The problem that I find is the stigma of now that kid is stuck doing everything but his passion because if he goes into that field, it’s rarely the construction workers, but there’s this appearance that, “You couldn’t hack it in the white-collar world. Now, you’re going to move over to the blue-collar world.” I don’t know where I get that information from. It’s not scientific. It’s nothing but Tersh philosophy.
That might be true for him until he rolls up in his brand-new Ford F-250. It’s funny because I’m a car guy myself. The thing about what you said is you’re in the business that you’re in but you can still pursue that car passion. I’m going to assume that you either have or are on the path of getting one of those favorite cars you always dreamed about.
I have twelve of them.
I’m at number eight. Now, we can understand each other a little bit here.
My wife doesn’t give me a hard time about it, but she probably should.
My wife does, but it’s fun. These are things that I visualized and said, “I’m going to compartmentalize these goals and go after them one at a time.” I looked back on that kid and thought, “He might have been part of the reason I wrote this book because I could see the deflation in his face, making less than $30,000 a year where there’s still $60,000 in debt and paying that thing off at 8% over twenty years.” It’s sad until the stigma of, “There’s an opportunity here on this side of things if you learn to think right and begin with the end in mind. What’s your perfectly individual life look like? I’m going to go after that.” You can pick 100 different jobs to get you there.
The thing about it is, when I was in school, I didn’t have a clue what HVAC was. I didn’t know what an HVAC tech did or anything like that. No one ever told me about the HVAC industry. My dad told me to get into trades because my dad is a blue-collar guy all the way. He is a welder. He worked for the union and worked at International Paper my entire life. I came to him after graduating high school, being in college, and all of this. I was like, “Dad, I’m not happy. I’m not excited about this. I’m not excited about life in general.”
This was after me being in the military. He was like, “Go be an electrician and find a trade to get into.” I was like, “What do you mean to get on a trade?” He was like, “Find your trade and get in a trade.” I was like, “What’s a trade, dad?” He was like, “What I do, son, a trade. You’re intelligent. You’re a smart kid. Figure it out. You know this. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.” I was like, “Yes, you do have to tell me this, dad. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I took that advice to heart and found a friend who was in HVAC. It just so happens we were car buddies. He always had a lot nicer car than I did because he had a lot more expendable income than I did. I was like, “Give me a job where you’re at.” He was like, “I’ll get you an interview. I can’t guarantee you a job.” The story wrote itself at that point.
I know it’s funny because I built the house years ago. This is a house that had a lot of stone on it. It’s a French country thing with a lot of stones on the outside. It has a separate garage, which had stone on it. The guys there were putting the stone over there for a long time. It’s funny because this guy would roll up in June in Ohio in a beautiful sunny morning in his beautiful pickup truck. He would get out. He would have his work boots on with his jeans, T-shirt, and a big old cup of coffee. He would turn on Led Zeppelin and get all the guys out there at the dump trucks to say, “Boys, let’s go to work.”
They laughed, listened to music, and talked. They had a great old time. He makes a lot of money doing what he does because there’s not a lot of people willing to do it. The ones that do are retiring. The saddest part, he doesn’t have anybody to give that company to. It’s tragic because here’s a guy who was still and could make a great living, and someone could take that business over. He has got customers, equipment, and everything. If you saw these people work, you would say, “There’s the example of what we need to get rid of the stigma of blue-collar work. Watch these guys work for a day and see how they do it. That’s what we need more of.”
That is a sad story to have somebody to apprentice under him and learn that skill because those are the types of skills that are lost. They’re becoming a lost art. They’re a lost trade, especially stonework like that. You can’t learn that skill playing a video game. It’s funny that I say that because there’s a new software program that is in our industry that trains technicians via virtual reality, like the Oculus goggles. We have that in our company.
The guys can go and test HVAC equipment and everything. It doesn’t kill them if they do something wrong. At the same time, they’re still playing a video game. It’s like, “Here’s our combatant to kids who played video games their entire life. Here’s a video game that teaches you how to do our industry.” When it comes to something like that, that is a true craftsmen-type thing. It’s something to look forward to.
You’re chipping big rocks into little rocks. You’re chipping them into square pieces. You’re trying to get them in like a puzzle. It’s cool to watch them work. It’s a natural art.
It’s so natural to them too. It’s like, “Chip, fits perfect.” I’m like, “How did that happen?”
To see what they do, I call it the stand back, which means at the end of the day, they all grab their pop or whatever. They walk ten feet backward, stand back, and look at what they’ve done. The pride that they have is ridiculous.
I can say I’m a Millennial. Our entire team is Millennials. We all have the stigma where we need instant gratification between where there are dopamine receptors, Facebook, Instagram, and constant stuff. By the end of the day, he had that instant gratification. With our guys, whenever they fix an air conditioning unit, they have that instant gratification. The AC is fixed and it’s like, “I took care of that.” Their gratification is that they solve that problem. I find that when my guys get the most frustrated is when they can’t have that gratification.
They can’t figure out the problem or you get some callbacks. You’ve probably experienced like you had that one pain in the butt leak that won’t go away. You don’t get that gratification the same way. People can’t say that you can’t find a good worker because they all need instant gratification. If you spin it correctly, you can provide that instant gratification to them every day.
Think of it this way. You roll up to a house and you have 7 or 8 beautiful 15-foot white pines in the back of your truck. You get your skid-steer and take them off the truck. You place them in the front yard of the customer’s house, you spend the day digging all those in, and you know those things are going to be there for 50 years. You get to stand back, look at that house, and go, “I got pine tar on my hands. My jeans are dirty. My boots are awesome, but look at what I did.”
The secret, and you know this, this is where all the money is now. There are finish carpenters in Toledo, Ohio making as much as doctors. It’s because it’s a lost art. It’s so funny because every time I walk by a building site and smell that lumber, I’m like, “That’s awesome,” because I remember building my house. I built a couple of office buildings. I love to be involved in the new process of that stuff. The fact of being able to stand back and say, “I did that. By the way, that’s going to create a lucrative life for me,” it’s a message that needs to get out there.
It’s so funny because I even heard the president say, “We’re creating a blue-collar boom.” There were some economists out that were saying, “That’s not right. Manufacturing is still going down or stabilized.” What they don’t realize is manufacturing is only 10 million to 12 million of the 160 million jobs in the United States. Of the 160 million, a full 60 million of them could be considered blue-collar. There’s a lot of alive and well out there that people aren’t even seeing. Therefore, they knocked these ideas down and I’m like, “If you only knew.”
[bctt tweet=”Go after what your individual life looks like. Begin with the end in mind, and you will get there.” via=”no”]
These economists should spend a few weeks out in the field.
Get out there and see it, live it, and be amongst these people that do this. That’s cool. I wish more people would do that because they would honor and respect the work that you do with the two things on the end of your arms.
Ken, I appreciate you coming to the show. I know the readers appreciate it as well and everything that you’re doing for the blue-collar industry. If somebody wants to reach out to you and learn more, what’s the best avenue for that to happen?
The best avenue would be to either go to my Facebook, which is Ken Rusk Official. You’ll see what we’re doing there as far as trying to educate people about the blue-collar industry. You can go to KenRusk.com, which is where the book is. The book is Blue Collar Cash. You can pre-order that in Amazon and some of those other places. I appreciate the conversation that we had. I feel like I know you as a friend already based on our mutual experiences. Congratulations to you and your company.
Thank you. You as well 100%. The success that you’ve had in your team members, both current and past team members that have had success because of you. Kudos to you and everything that you’ve done coaching-wise.
Thanks again. I appreciate it.
Anybody who is reading this episode, feel free to give us both feedback. Reach out to both of us via Facebook. Definitely pick a copy of Ken’s book. It looks amazing. Connect with me. I’m on most social media platforms @TershBlissett. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me on those social media platforms or shoot me an email at Tersh@IceBound.us. Until next time, I hope everybody has a wonderful day. Thank you again for reading. The show is focused on service business owners, managers, and technicians who are considering becoming business owners themselves.
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One of the questions that I most often get from audience members like yourself is more information about how to learn more about running a business, in general, the education side of things, when it comes to the service business world. I’m super excited to be able to share with you the opportunity to go to this awesome event in Las Vegas. If you are ready to take your contracting business to the next level, you got to attend this event. It’s called EGIA Contractor University. It’s their annual event. It’s called EPIC2021.
It’s one of the most highly anticipated educational events of the year for a home service industry. EPIC2021 will take place over October 28th through 29th, 2021 at Paris Las Vegas, if you’ve never been, which I’m one of them, I’m super excited to go there. I hear that it’s amazing. This venue alone is awesome. The event is going to feature celebrity keynote speakers, such as Daymond John of Shark Tank and Jon Taffer of Bar Rescue. I’m sure you’ve seen the show, at least the previews of it. You know who these guys are, and then also Captain Sully Sullenberger. He is an airline pilot from the Miracle on the Hudson, which is a cool movie. If you haven’t seen that, check it out.
There will be breakout sessions that are delivered by legendary industry experts, access to best-in-class product and service providers, dynamic networking opportunities, and an unforgettable evening party. You can even come and hang out with us on MediaRow as we record Service Business Mastery live. If you’ve ever wanted to be on the show or watch, come, hang out and chill with us on MediaRow. You can also get $50 off registration if you use the code Tersh50@EPIC2021Event.com. You definitely do not want to miss this event. I look forward to seeing you there.
Important Links:
- Blue Collar Cash
- Blue Is the New White
- Oculus
- Ken Rusk Official – Facebook
- KenRusk.com
- @TershBlissett – Instagram
- Tersh@IceBound.us
- EPIC2021
- MediaRow
- Tersh50@EPIC2021Event.com
About Ken Rusk
