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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
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I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
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Transcription
REBECCA FLEETWOOD HESSION | BUSINESS IS HUMAN | KEN RUSK
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:00]:
I'm not coming down. I never locked it on the ground. I'm not coming down. I want to go higher than that.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to the Business Is Human podcast, where we discuss strategies to increase our VRI value, relevance, and impact. We're here to blend meaningful work with profitable success. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, here to steward what we call the age of humanity, to transform the way we work so we can transform the way that we live. As always, my friendly request. If you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episodes, and then leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it, too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. Let's get into it, shall we? One of my favorite things about podcasting is getting to have conversations with people that I otherwise never would have met, especially those that throughout the conversation, I have huge takeaways and notes for me that I can do something with the information that I've gleaned from my guest. And today, I have Ken Rusk on the show, and he is the author of Blue Collar Cash, subtitled, Love Your Work, Secure Your Future, Find Happiness For Life.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:25]:
And as a podcaster, I get pitched guests several a week from various companies that do that, and I do get a handful of guests that way, which I'm grateful for. And this particular pitch that came over email, I literally just barely read it and said yes, because I just knew that Ken was going to hit those buttons for me about uniqueness and the trades industry and shared views about college not being for everyone. And I just was excited to talk to him. And so, as you listen to today's episode, I hope you are inspired to buy Ken's book, check out his course. He's writing another book right now, and we're going to have him back on the show. We've already determined once that launches, the one takeaway which happens fairly at the end of the episode, is to see your life as a path to success that you are building. You're building that path to success, and you'll hear Ken talk about one that is built with comfort, peace, and freedom in mind. All right, y'all, here's Ken Rusk.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:48]:
He's my new friend. All right, Ken Rusk, welcome to the show.
Ken Rusk [00:02:51]:
Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:54]:
Well, I was telling you earlier, I get pitched podcast guest on on a regular basis, and I read about two lines of your bio and immediately responded with yes, and here's why. For our listeners who know that I get Kind of worked up about certain topics. There are so many connection points to the things that I'm passionate about and I believe our listeners are passionate about, from be your unique self to not everybody's meant for college, and 15 other bullet points that I could. I could share. But the book you have out now is called Blue Collar Cash. Love your work, secure your future, find happiness for life, which has become a Wall Street Journal bestseller, which is not an easy thing to accomplish. I know as a. As a writer, you were a ditch digger back in the day.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:45]:
So how did you end up being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author? Give us a little bit of your history, Ken.
Ken Rusk [00:03:51]:
Well, first off, never intended to be a writer, so it just kind of happened. And I think that's the coolest part of the story. But, no, you know what? I've been involved in hiring and training ditch diggers for the last 38 years. And I probably interviewed 20, 2500 people maybe. And they all had lots of various things in common until lately when things started to change a bit. Where I found people were a little less clear about their future. They were a little less committed to what they wanted to do. They were a little less confident that they could build their own future.
Ken Rusk [00:04:21]:
You know, between politics and the news, I think some of their confidence was destroyed in the fact that, wow, I can control my own future. So I was actually writing a letter to my daughter, who unfortunately was suffering from cancer at the time. She was 12 years old, and she's fine now, but it was a pretty scary five years for her mother and I and for her, obviously. And, you know, when you're in waiting rooms and oncology rooms and you're in doctor's offices and ultrasound rooms, you have a lot of time to think while you're going through that process. And so I thought, well, you know, what. What could I teach her that she should be chasing in life? Like, what. What should. If I could say this is the anticipation that you should look for, what would it be? And the words comfort, peace, and freedom just kept showing up everywhere.
Ken Rusk [00:05:06]:
I couldn't get rid of them, Rebecca. It was like seeing a yellow Volkswagen, and then now you see yellow Volkswagens everywhere.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:12]:
So I like to think that's the Lord's work. So, yeah, I like it.
Ken Rusk [00:05:15]:
I'm convinced it was the Lord's work because I was suffering, going through her suffering, believe me. So the combination of coaching all these young people in my own company, I mean, I started with six people, and I have 250 employees now. I Think the combination of that coaching and helping Nicole, my daughter, it kind of culminated into this storytelling thing. And pretty soon I was sharing stories about friends of mine who were blue collar entrepreneurs who went through the most horrible circumstances and came out the other side successful people. And she had, she lost half of her sight in this process. So she was going through some pretty horrible circumstances. And so I just tried to work with her. And through that work came these writings which ended up being 80,000 words.
Ken Rusk [00:06:02]:
And then I googled an editor in New York and found a ghostwriter to help me clean it up. And they got me an agent and they got me an editor and they got me a publisher and then boom, it went crazy. So, yeah, again, praise to the Lord for pushing me in that direction. Very grateful and very blessed to have done that well.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:21]:
And it was a needed thing that needed to go out into the world. When we get those things dropped in our spirit, it's always because he needs to use it for something that we don't even know about yet. And so you being able to courageously follow that nudge is a beautiful thing. And as you have told these stories about these people in your life, what's the. If you were to summarize the thread of those, what are those things that you were teaching your daughter that you now have taught so many in your course and with your book, summarize those for us.
Ken Rusk [00:06:58]:
I mean, I've been very successful. I've owned and sold several companies. And I'm just, again, I'm very grateful and very blessed that that's happened. I give back a lot. And I think sometimes, I think sometimes the man upstairs says, the more you give, the more I'm going to give you. And not that you do it for that reason, but it just kind of happens that way. But people have said, oh, well, you're lucky, you're one of those entrepreneur guys. And I always would say, okay, here's a piece of paper to crayon.
Ken Rusk [00:07:24]:
I want you to draw entrepreneur for me, okay? Because you can't. It's. It's just a concept. You can't draw entrepreneur as a word. So I started thinking about all the things that I thought that not only did I have, but characteristics that my, that my friends had who became successful people. And it's things like persistence and resilience and faith and courage and initiative and generosity and vision. All those types of characteristics. I believe that they're in every one of us.
Ken Rusk [00:07:52]:
The difference is we just need a reason for them to come out. And sometimes those Characteristics are like sitting behind the shoes you haven't worn in your closet for years. And you just gotta go in there and have a reason. You have to have a cleaning. You have to have a reason for them things to come out. And those reasons, by and large, are what you want your life to look like. What your. What your perfect version or vision of comfort, peace and freedom is to you.
Ken Rusk [00:08:18]:
Or your nirvana, some people like to call it. Absent that you're just going to kind of flow through life and hopefully life happens to you rather than you happening to life. And that's the thing that drives me crazy, is vision. Like Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Steven Jobs or anyone you want to mention, Carly, Fiorina, whoever. Vision is simply a gift we're all given and it's free. You own it already. It's already in your brain. If you just take the time to use it, then you will realize things that half the population, probably 90% of the population never gets to realize because they keep living these reactive lives.
Ken Rusk [00:08:59]:
They react. It's cold outside. Put my coat on, there's germs out there. I better stay healthy. There's a red light. I better stop. You're reacting to all these stimuli when you should be proacting and making your own path. And that's kind of how I went with this.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:09:15]:
Oh, now I'm really fired up because I'm writing a book now too, and I know you are. We'll get to that in a minute. But I'm attempting to reimagine success, what that looks like from a business perspective. And the things that I'm playing with are how do you combine our nervous system, our brain, and the way that we make decisions, business and the Bible. And to me, if you can connect those things, you create a bit of a roadmap. And the first thing that I'm running up against is that we need a healing from believing that the world is outside in and come into the belief that it's inside out, which is exactly what you just described. That we've grown up in a society where we're being validated by either grades or title or amount of money we've made or something outside of self instead of coming at it from an inside first perspective. What do I want? What's the vision that I have for my life and how am I going to create that for myself? And I stumbled upon your Instagram where you did an interview with Tucker Carlson when he was still with Fox, and you shared some of those questions that you use to help inspire people to think about.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:34]:
Are you creating the life that you want? Was that what that little clip was about?
Ken Rusk [00:10:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. So it's funny because I still talk to him to this day about these types of subjects, and it's insane how much of a machine this world has become to where we feel like we just take a seat on the machine and whatever happens to us, happens. Okay, well, here, let me challenge you. I don't know what your favorite color is, but you do. I don't know what your favorite car is, but you do. I don't know what your favorite pet is, a dog or a cat, what color. What would you name it? But you do.
Ken Rusk [00:11:07]:
I don't know what your favorite vacation might look like, but I know for sure you do what your favorite house might look like. A farmhouse in the country, apartment in the city, a house in the suburbs. But you know that. So if you know all these unique, beautiful things about your best live life, why are you giving yourself to all the societal norms and pressures and directions to where you say, okay, well, I'm supposed to do it because they tell me I'm supposed to do it. Baloney. There has never been anyone more interested in your future than you will be. Yeah, I mean, there's so many people that say that. But at the end of the day, just like a robin that you get booted out of the nest and you better start flapping, okay, or else you're going to hit the ground.
Ken Rusk [00:11:50]:
And all I'm saying is we need to give people more power to respect their own decision making, more power to say, well, I want to control my day, my time, my input, my financial gain. I want to control my effort, the quality of that effort. I want to control the response I get to that effort from others. If I can control all those things, then I can build the life I want for myself. I don't have to wait for somebody else to tell me how to do that.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:16]:
It is fascinating to me. I did a survey on LinkedIn when I wrote my last book, and I asked people to describe a thriving life. And I gave them a little bit more context than that, but not much. And the main response I got back was, this is hard. I haven't thought about it. I should think about this. You're frustrating me. You've made me think, and then couple that with the thousands of people that I have, executives that I've coached.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:45]:
These are vice presidents, CEOs, founders. And when I asked them, hey, what are your unique gifts and talents? What makes you you that you want to go use those in the world. And they have a really hard time describing that and knowing what that is. We've almost been trained from a societal perspective to be controlled. And that's a whole different episode for another day that I'm sure you and I could go down a rabbit hole instead of creating. And God created us to be creators and we struggle with that. And so I love that you're putting that out there to say that's where the comfort, peace and freedom is.
Ken Rusk [00:13:24]:
Yeah. You know, it's interesting because when I wrote the book, I talked about the different types of lives. And I will tell you that when you're building, you know, the vision board and my vision boards are way different than most. Because if you're not. If you're not down to every nickel, going to every place to get that thing or whatever on your vision board, then it's just a hope, a wish or a dream. And that's la la land. It'll never happen. So if you want to manifest something to come into your life, you need to plan very clearly for it.
Ken Rusk [00:13:51]:
But I just think people spend time in this if then kind of world, and you're taught it from early on. You're 15 and you're hearing, well, if you go to college and if you get good grades and if you get a scholarship and then if you get a degree and then if you get a job, well, then you can start living your life. And I think to myself, that is completely backwards. No other, in no other situation do we do that. Imagine getting up in the morning and getting dressed, not knowing what type of event you're going to attend that afternoon. You don't know whether you're going to the ball or you're going to the museum, or you're going to dig ditches or you're going to ride a horse or maybe go swimming. You always have a destination for everything you do. And yet we don't do it in life.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:40]:
Oh, that's a great analogy.
Ken Rusk [00:14:42]:
I mean, how are we so good at planning vacations? Down to the sand and the towel and the umbrella and the breeze and the palm trees and the ocean spray and the music and the smell of Coppertone number eight tanning solution. But yet we can't plan the rest of our life in that clear vision type of anticipatory way. It's crazy to me. If you want to teach people how to be independent, teach them how to begin with the end in mind, meaning what that nirvana looks like, and then get out of their way and let them go. Do it right.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:16]:
Yeah, I use the exact metaphor about. You probably plan your vacations more than you plan in your life. Multiple times in writing and in coaching conversations. And I've gone as far now as to say, don't plan where you want to go. Ask yourself how you want your vacation to feel. And then using that as the same metaphor for your life, how do you want your life to feel? Because we make decisions on emotion that we just validated on facts. So if we're going to honor our nervous system, you better honor the feelings that you, you want to have. We get paid twice a month and you go to work every day.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:50]:
How do you want that to feel? What do you want that to be like?
Ken Rusk [00:15:53]:
I think that's important because when, when I do do these sessions on vacations, it's only to get people to understand that it's not the things that you inquire in life, it's the memories you make with them. So what's the feeling of you sitting with your baby girl on the beach as the water rushes up and hits her in the feet for the very first time? You know what I mean? What is it like when you and your wife are walking down, you know, the beach at sunset with some type of fruity drink in your hand and it's quiet, just have that moment to. I mean, those are the types of things. You know, I collect cars, right? And those are things. I mean, it's not like I can walk around with these things in my hand showing people what I have. It's the fact that I go racing with my brothers and run around the track, or I put the top down and go to take my daughter to get ice cream or whatever it might be, it's the things that you do with those things that are really important. And I think that's. To your point, that's what you were getting at.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:47]:
I love this Blue Collar Cash title because as I said to you when we first met, all of my family are blue collar farmers and I was the first one to go to college. So I became a little bit of the black sheep for doing that. And I don't even know why I went to college. I look back on it now and it didn't serve me all that well. And I have all kinds of opinions about college today that we also, we don't have time for. But if I'm. If you're talking to a client of mine who is a vice president, CEO, founder of a company, and he or she has a young 1415 year old and they're starting to have the conversations about what's going to happen after high school, what's the case that you would make for the trade conversation or helping them see that college isn't for everyone to honor. Maybe some of the things they're seeing in their child that might be lending itself better to trades.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:17:48]:
What advice would you give them?
Ken Rusk [00:17:50]:
Well, if you took away surgeons, investment bankers, whatever, you're going to find that the most successful people that are in his neighborhood are some type of business owner or blue collar entrepreneur. It's just a fact. 167 million people work in the country today, considered full unemployment. 77 million of those people do something with their hands. To this day, by the time you put your feet on the floor in the morning and go to your office, your church or your school, you will have walked across or ridden across 10,000 blue collar jobs that are still viable today. Things that we need. And if you truly want to be successful, you will use the law of supply and demand in your favor. And where supply is low and demand is high, that's where the money goes.
Ken Rusk [00:18:36]:
That's why your neighbor, the electrician, okay, is probably as, as successful or more successful than the other people in the neighborhood or the guy that owns the plumbing shop or the, the welding machine shop or whatever it might be. So I look at it this way. If I decide to do something that other people aren't doing, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I mean, disc digging was number 99 out of a list of 100 things that I wanted to do, but it was needed. Right? So you can go to Lowe's or Home Depot, go to the commercial desk and say, hey, you sell pieces and parts to all the contractors in town every single day, right? Yeah. What's missing in this town? What don't we have? And people go, well, I know a bunch of painters that are retiring, so yeah, there's not going to be very many painters, painters here in the next couple of years. Well, boom, there's your opportunity to go sub for one of those guys. Either buy his company or start your own in three years and then just kill it.
Ken Rusk [00:19:35]:
Because as an owner of this company, I could take the ditch diggers that I have and I am one. So I say that with all the love in the world. Yeah, I could interchange my ditch seers with painters, or take them out and put welders in there, or take them out and put electricians in there, or take them out and put carpenters in there and still run the company. Okay. It's all the same. So don't get so caught up in what you do for a living. Get more caught up in what you do with what you do for a living, because that's the. That's where the real magic lies.
Ken Rusk [00:20:06]:
I've had an amazing life in a world of concrete and jackhammers and tar and. And some ugliness. But I've had a lot of people come with me along that journey who are leading amazing lives, too. And we've had a great time doing it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:20]:
And working together with your hands and physical is actually good for our brain. It's good for us to be outside. It's good for us to be doing something that somebody is. You can actually see the help that you're providing to someone else. It's tangible. You go home feeling good about it. My grandfather owned. He ran a farm, but he owned a plumbing company.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:42]:
And I did the books for him and things growing up. And I seriously considered eight years ago, when I left the Franklin Covey organization, instead of starting a coaching and keynote business, starting a plumbing business because of the shortage of trades. And just recently, and because my grandfather was a plumber, I opened my book with a story of the thing that he would do is take me along when I was, you know, 6, 7, 8 years old, because he had taught me what tools were and what they were called. And he would crawl under the house, diagnose what he needed, and then send me scurrying out to the truck to get the tools that he needed because it was easier for me to crawl in and out of that little hole than it was him. Like, I loved that time with my grandfather. And so I seriously considered. I know a little bit about plumbing and the tools and things. And I went to Menards Lowe's, Home Depot.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:33]:
You could interchange any of them. And I needed a little part to fix my pipes that go into my water softener in my garage. And I'm like, can do this? So I go in there, and they didn't have the one I needed. And I go to the desk, and there's this young guy there. And I ask him, he goes, I don't know, but Bob will. And here comes Bob around the corner. Bob's probably 79, 85, I don't know.
Ken Rusk [00:21:59]:
Right, right.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:22:00]:
And he shuffled lungs. And he reminds me of my grandfather, God rest his soul. And he looks at it and he asks me a couple questions and says, nah, we don't have it, but here's what you need to do. And tells me how to handle it, right? And I looked at the younger guy that had said, bob will know. And I said, promise me that you're going to follow Bob around and learn every single thing that he's teaching all of us, because the world needs what Bob has in his head. Yeah, Bob's not going to be here forever. And the guy said, I know what you mean. He goes, I'm just here part time until I.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:22:35]:
Blah, blah, blah. It was this filler job for him. And I'm looking at this young guy going, you need to be the Bob for the future.
Ken Rusk [00:22:43]:
Right? Well, you know, it's. It's interesting because, Rebecca, we need to figure out how we got here. So I just need to tell you about this perfect storm that we're experiencing, because it started back in the early 80s when I was in high school. You could walk down the hallway and see a guy over here changing a transmission on a Mustang. You could look to the left and see one girl doing another girl's hair. You could look over here and see some gal spinning a table on a lathe to make a table, a dining room table. You can see someone wiring an outlet, or you could see someone welding. And that was like.
Ken Rusk [00:23:16]:
That was cool, because that's where you accidentally discovered how cool the trades were. Millions of people, millions of kids discovered that because not all their parents did that. So, you know, they took those rooms out and they filled those rooms with computers. And I'm like, okay, we need to learn computers. I get it. But why one or the other? Why couldn't we have had both? You know, why did it have to be that type of binary choice? When I was a kid, like you were, I followed my grandfather around, I followed my father around. We planted trees, we raked mulch, we did all that kind of stuff. We built tree forts.
Ken Rusk [00:23:47]:
Well, now people are using these things. I'm pointing to my cell phone to build Minecraft on there. And that's not the same experience as getting outside and doing these things. So that's strike two. Strike three is guidance counselors. You can't call them that anymore. You have to call them counselors, and that's okay. Teachers, colleges, they're really good at telling parents, if you don't send your kid to us, he or she will never amount to anything.
Ken Rusk [00:24:14]:
They're really good at shaming parents into thinking you're not done parenting until they have a college degree on the wall. And so that force is one to be reckoned with. But I will tell you the answer to that. Is, do you want. And I wrote an open letter to parents about this very thing. I understand you. You birthed your kid, you swallowed them, you protected them, you. You got them to sleep, you fed them, you sheltered them, you did all that you could do, educate them as much as you could.
Ken Rusk [00:24:42]:
And now you think the only way you can say I'm successful as a parent is if they have a college degree on the wall. That's never been true. It's. It's not true today. Do you want a happy, independent, problem solving, financially respectful kid or do you want an overly educated one? I don't think they're mutually exclusive. So, I mean, it's. To me, we got to get to the parents and say, stop the madness, because 150 grand in debt and no job prospect is no way to launch your kid. So.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:10]:
And if the options are what you've described previously, to have comfort, peace, and freedom in something that you are good at, that you enjoy doing, and you see how it helps other people, my goodness, it just seems like a better choice. So, love that. So wildly successful book. You created a course to help sometimes these teenagers, young 20s, and you said even adults had looked at this and said, oh my gosh, maybe I should have chosen more of that road in my career. And now you are looking at kind of the bigger picture of things. And your next book. Tell us about, what's the follow up to this, the book you're writing now?
Ken Rusk [00:25:53]:
Well, yeah, I did, I did build a course on the first book because I believe sometimes you read a book, you put it on the shelf, and it becomes what they call shelf help, not self help. Okay, I heard that the other day. I thought that was cute. So I. So yeah, the course is there. It's on my website and it's there to ensure that you take what I'm teaching you and put it to work, not just hope that it happens to you someday. And that's a, that's a great thing. I hope people look at that.
Ken Rusk [00:26:17]:
But if you think about that, the first book, Blue Collar Cash, being something that a 17 to a 35 year old would read as they're launching into their life, you know, the other side of the coin has to happen. You have to find a place that you want to work that has great culture, and you have to find a boss who is supportive of you. And, you know, if your boss says something like this, hey, I can't get what I want, nor can my company get what it wants or needs until all of you get what you want. First, that's the kind of person you want to work for, right? Because they're, they're interested in you winning. Because if many of you win, he or she's going to win in the end, guaranteed. So yeah, it's, it's called Cool Boss: How to Be One, Find One, or Change the One You Have. And I'm writing it to three different people because if you're struggling to build cool culture in your company, this is a plug and play way to do it. I even give you simple things I send you with links and how to, how to act this afternoon to change the culture within your company.
Ken Rusk [00:27:20]:
I give you playlists and I give you shopping lists and I give you charitable events to go to, take your people with. And it's just a fun, easy guide to do that. If you're looking to find a boss, well, you would go interview around until you saw the culture that I'm portraying in this book. And if you want to change the one you have, well, you can go to him or her and say, hey, I've got some great ideas on how to improve everything around here, including loyalty and people retaining their work and staying. So yeah, it's a user friendly guide for all three of those.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:27:51]:
Oh, I love that. And if somebody is taking this to heart and saying, okay, so if there's a trades job that I'm really interested in, there's no timeline that you're stuck to to go create a company, to go invite others into that and start your own business. If you want to be a plumber and then run a plumbing company, you don't have to wait for 4, 6, 8, 10 years of classes and degrees to then be anointed. Okay, now you miraculously can run a company. No, you could take the things that you're teaching and say, I'm going to, I'm going to learn the business, I'm going to learn the trade and then I'm going to hire others and invite others to be in this trade with me.
Ken Rusk [00:28:38]:
Like, this might be the most important thing we talk about this whole, this whole conversation, which I've loved and I've loved you and having these conversations has been so fun. There is a other crisis other than the blue collar crisis. There's another crisis that's happening in the United States today that people aren't really paying attention to, but they should because you can make a ton of money by being involved in this and that is that there are so many owners of businesses that are 55, 60, 65 years of age. And I know a half a dozen of them myself who are making 2, 3, $400,000 a year with their cool little companies. Whether they're stonemasons or they're plumbers, or they're electricians or their carpenters. And they have nobody to leave these companies to. Nobody wants to buy them, nobody wants to work there. And I think to myself, man, if I was a 21 year old kid, doesn't matter who you are, all I have to do is go apprentice for this guy for like 3 or 4 years and then I can buy his company and hit the ground, not running but flying down the street, okay? So I think to myself there's so much opportunity for someone and these guys and these gals are like, I just wish I could find that one little dub I could hold in my hand and just train him or her and how to take this beautiful company over.
Ken Rusk [00:29:58]:
The one guy was working in my house, he built these beautiful stone fences with wrought iron and these gas lamps and he built my outdoor kitchen. It's beautiful. And this guy makes 350 grand a year. He's got known to leave his company to. And I think how crazy is that? You get a couple of guys that are like hey man, I think I'm going to go jam with this guy for a while and then just kind of take his world over. He's got a customer list, he's got people waiting for work, he's got repeat business. You just have to slide in the chair and make this happen. So I hope you take advantage of that because every city has this, it's real.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:30:34]:
Again we've just met, but that actually is another thing I considered eight years ago when I started my business is maybe I wanted to help those people find somebody to run their business. So it keeps coming out. Maybe God's tapping me on the shoulder that that actually is a thing for my future. My ex husband is in that situation with the business that he built. Neither one of our children are interested in running that type of business because we have parented them to know what their unique gifts and talents are. So our sons in music, our daughter's in school to be a nail tech. And so the pond consulting business isn't their heart. But he's in that same situation and he's got a couple of people now that he's kind of looking to see are they going to be somebody that could take this thing over because it's a real thing.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:31:22]:
We grew up in a time when you know, my grandfather wanted his sons to take over the business. And it was just, it was assumed that that's what was going to happen. And because of what you talked about, about college and various things, that's not happening. And so that's a real problem.
Ken Rusk [00:31:38]:
And I'll tell you this, I did a lot of research for the book and there was one, there was one bit of research that I was actually shocked about in college. Right now, today, 40% of kids go into college without having any idea why they're going. That is unbelievable to me. 25% of those kids, once they decide, then change that decision and pick a different major. Fully wasteful and time consuming. But the worst one is this. Of all degrees earned, only 33% ever get used, ever. So you're sitting there saying to yourself, if that was a business, it would go out of business.
Ken Rusk [00:32:17]:
I mean, it's wholly inefficient. I mean, if you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, something job specific, that you know, when you get out of college, you're going to have that job, that's one thing. But if you're just going to like for your business degree and you're going to, you're going to major in how to play beer pong, there's a whole lot of other ways to live your life. Especially when you think four years times 50 grand is 200,000 on the negative side of your asset base. Yeah, hope you didn't borrow that money. But if you jump into your own career, 50,000 a year times four is 200 on the positive. That's a $400,000 swing. By the time you're 23.
Ken Rusk [00:32:52]:
That's a house of fully funded 401k. That's a lot of things. You at least need to think about that before you just follow the herd and take what they say for granted.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:33:02]:
The majority of them borrowed that money. You said, I hope you didn't borrow that money. You and I both know the majority borrow that money. And parents following what they've been shamed into, believing that that's the path helped them do it, sat for hours filling out all the forms. I was blessed enough that when my daughter said she wanted to try college and I rolled my eyes and knew that it was because she wanted to go party with her friends. And we had to just let that thing run its course for a couple of years, which was fine. I had the opportunity to talk to somebody in the student loan industry because then I'm, I have access to a lot of business people and he Was no longer working for this company. And somebody introduced me to him and I said, what's the deal with this student loan thing? And he said, don't do it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:33:49]:
And I, I mean, didn't even entertain telling me anything different. And he'd worked in the industry. He said I had to get out because it, it, it just felt icky.
Ken Rusk [00:33:59]:
Yeah.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:33:59]:
To be in it.
Ken Rusk [00:34:00]:
Yeah.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:34:01]:
So it's, it is a racket for sure.
Ken Rusk [00:34:04]:
Yeah. One of the reasons that I wrote the book was I was getting my car fixed and they had to take the dashboard out. It was a nightmare. But I'm going to this rental car place and here comes this kid from behind the, the counter and he's got a three piece suit on and each piece is from a different suit. But that's okay. He was working it, he was trying to get it done. And I appreciated that. But we were talking, I had to wait for my car for quite a while.
Ken Rusk [00:34:26]:
So we were talking and he said, yeah, you know, I think I got sold down the river because I wanted to be a carpenter. And my parents said I had to go to school. And so now I'm 82,000 in debt and I'm sitting here making 28. 5 at this car rental place. When do I get to live? That was his question to me. When do I get to live? This kid was absolutely misled 1000%. And I said, you know what you need to do?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:34:55]:
Sick to my stomach.
Ken Rusk [00:34:56]:
I need, you need to quit your job right now and go become a carpenter. I don't care how long it takes you. I don't care how much you have to suffer. Go do that right now. And he did. And so we have to realize how reckless we are as parents listening to reckless advice when it comes to this thing. Because if he's meant to build great things, let him build great things.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:35:21]:
That just seriously just chokes me up because he gets up every day going to that job he hates knowing he's in debt and he's just miserable. And the drain spiral of being miserable each day is not creating a life.
Ken Rusk [00:35:38]:
Well, take, take his 28. 5 after taxes. He has to live, he has to eat, he has to have an apartment or something. How much could he possibly be paying on that student loan? How much interest is going to eat him alive for the next? I mean, I felt so bad for him that it was like it was another, just another shot in my arm to go keep writing. Because I was writing it in many ways in honor of my daughter, in honor of Lou Collar. But in honor of that story as well. So if I can change one person who says, you know what, mom, I heard what Ken said. I'm going to go be an electrician.
Ken Rusk [00:36:12]:
And I've had many people tell me that. And that's my, again, God, speaking through me, that that was my gift is to say, or my reward is to say thank you for allowing me to just stop one kid from going through that. Because the suffering of that mentally is just going to be horrible.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:36:28]:
Yeah, no, it absolutely is. I interview my clients when we start working together as, as their coach and, you know, ask them what was the decision in what they were going to do after college, how did that play out? And the majority, majority of them say it was assumed they would go to college whether they wanted to or not. And they really didn't know what they wanted to do, but they just looked at like the five careers they knew about and kind of randomly picked one. And so I know for a fact that there are a ton of professionals out working in a job somewhere, whether it's the rental car place or some, you know, processing insurance claims somewhere or doing something that they hate. And they, you know, they're anywhere from, you know, 30 to 55. What's the answer for them? There's this like, I'm just writing this thing out. How would you advise those folks mid career, even late in career, to salvage the rest of their life into something that seems more fitting?
Ken Rusk [00:37:31]:
Well, two things. Number one, I had a, I had a 45 year old who wrote me and said I was a plumber's helper through college. I really didn't want to go, but I had to. Parents said I had to go, whatever. All my friends were going. So now I'm on the 15th floor in this cubicle selling medical supplies and I can't stand it. I've got debt. He said, I read your book, I quit my job and I went back to becoming a plumber.
Ken Rusk [00:37:55]:
And he said, I've never been so happy, I've never been so free, so stressless. He goes, did I have to take a year and suck it up? Yeah, but I'm right back where I was. I'm making great money, making more money than I was before. And so those are the types of things. Now, for those who can't make that jump, here's another little thing that's happened in the world of technology today that we didn't have before. And this has happened multiple times. So you're at this job that you don't like, but you really Want to build furniture. So what do you do? You go and you build furniture on the weekends or after, after work.
Ken Rusk [00:38:28]:
And now you open up this website, and this website becomes your side gig. And your side gig, you start selling furniture, and then you go on the weekends and maybe take some of your furniture to the county fairs. And now you're selling more furniture. And guess what? The job that you hate starts to sunset. The job that you love starts to sunrise. And it takes a few years, but you can cross that threshold. And now guess what? You're building lacquer tables out of slabs of wood that people are paying you $10,000 for. And I've seen this with my own two eyes.
Ken Rusk [00:39:01]:
So the side gig is a lot easier today than it was 30 years ago, because you've got the websites and the Instagrams and you got all that exposure. You can run your business from a cell phone now, where you couldn't do that back in the day. You know, ordering and payables and all that stuff you can do right there. So you can do all these things in a way that you can again, sunset one and sunrise the other. And I encourage anyone to go do that because you've only got one shot at this thing. So you might as well make it the best you can.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:39:30]:
I love that. And you know what? AI can't make tables. AI can't fix my toilet. AI can't do any of those things that everybody is now freaked out about. And I think that is just the biggest.
Ken Rusk [00:39:43]:
Isn't it ironic that they thought robots would take over the world when in fact it's the people who are thinking that are getting taken over versus the people that are working. Right.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:39:51]:
Yeah. And as I said earlier, nervous system business, Bible teachings, I'm. I'm looking for that intersection. And when I think about what keeps people stuck is in our nervous system. We have this thing called homeostasis, where our brains believe same equals safe. And that's actually just a very primitive part of our brain that just didn't want us to get eaten by a tiger coming out of the cave. But if we can break out of that cycle, the same equals safe is more about making sure that our temperature stays the same and our blood pressure stays the same and it's governing, you know, the basic biology, but we apply it to everything. And that anything that I want to change feels wrong or unsafe.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:40:39]:
And it is in fact that I'm going to go create something different that is going to get us in the place that we need to be versus staying Stuck in the same.
Ken Rusk [00:40:49]:
You know, I interviewed Jerick Robbins, who's the son of Tony Robbins. Tony wrote a little blurb for my book, which is really cool. But Jarek had an interesting thing, because him and his dad are visionaries, and they talked about the power of vision. And I always thought vision was something like, it's something that everybody has, but it was. It wasn't real scientific. Right? Well, he. He told me about the science of vision, and one of the things that he said was, if you focus on something that you want to come into your life, call it a vision board or whatever, you have these little neurons that fire back and forth, trying to create bridges between the two thoughts. And the more you focus on one of these things, the more these neurons fire faster and faster and faster to the point where they build a one thought stream of a bridge, if you will.
Ken Rusk [00:41:32]:
And what happens then is your body and your brain actually thinks it already owns that thing. So then it kicks your awareness, it kicks your involuntary movements, it kicks everything into this subconscious pursuit of that thing until it comes into your life. If that's true, why aren't we teaching that to every kid in the world? Because the power of that is unmatched by anything you could learn. It's unmatched by any experience you could have. The power of willing something into your life and knowing that there's a scientific mechanism behind that. That is just the most potent thing I've ever seen. And I've been using this my whole life, not even knowing I was doing it. So I look back and go, well, that makes sense.
Ken Rusk [00:42:18]:
Well, that makes sense. All the things in my office right now, all the pictures and memories that I have, were all things that I really wanted to manifest into my life. Wow, that's pretty cool. Why aren't we teaching kids to do that?
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:42:28]:
Well, I have a lot of theories about why that is, but probably a different title for the podcast if we go into that. But I do think there was a pretty evil agenda to control how things played out. And so now people are waking up to the idea that, oh, my gosh, maybe there are other options. And if I take your thought about the science of vision and think about how many of us were planted with ideas that I believe was the Holy Spirit who said, here's what you're uniquely good at, down to your fingerprints, you're different on purpose, for a purpose. We're listening to those nudges that we get, and then using the science of vision the way God intended us to use our nervous system, and our brains to do, then we live in a world where we're, we're helping one another in a really intentional, diligent, purposeful way that is going to bring comfort, peace and freedom in ways that we don't have to strive and feel like is controlled or I don't know.
Ken Rusk [00:43:25]:
Well, the other thing is it just like anticipating a vacation, you get to anticipate everything in your life because you've seen it first. You know, if I take a puzzle, if I take a thousand piece puzzle and dump it on your table and walk away with the box, you're in a world of hurt, okay? Because you might get the edges done because they're flat, but you don't know what you're building. So if we're going to start with a puzzle box as our end game, why aren't we teaching life to be the puzzle box where we look at that thing and go, okay, I just need to fill in all those pieces and that's the cool life that I'm going to have, right? That's my nirvana.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:44:05]:
This is so beautiful because we've just met and my regular clients and listeners know that I use the puzzle metaphor to teach. Almost everything that I do and I use the compare and contrast that I use is if you take a handful of marbles, each of them is perfect, beautiful, round, shiny. Like to look at each one of them individually, it's like, am I striving for perfection? But if you take that handful of marbles and put it on a table in front of you, they all roll away. There's, there's nothing unifying about trying to be perfect. But if you take a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and I always say, each with our jaggedy ass edges and the dust from the bottom of the box, nothing about it looks very beautiful. But if you put it on the table and you look for the beautiful side and you figure out how the pieces go together, the characteristics of a puzzle is it's far more beautiful when it's built. Every piece matters. And without that, that puzzle picked the front of the box, you can't build the life that you want.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:45:06]:
It's not strong and beautiful. And every piece matters because we're just responding instead of proactively building something that we visioned out for ourselves.
Ken Rusk [00:45:15]:
Well, you know that one of the final things that, that I'll share with you today is something that's just so amazing to me. So the university or Virginia Tech did a study and I use this in my book. They put a hundred people In a room. And they said, okay, raise your hand if you have crystal clear goals, okay? Only 20 people did. So the 80 people, they dismissed them. And then they said, okay, of the 20 we have left, how many of you have those goals written down somewhere? They raised their hand. Only four. Did they move the 16 away? They said, of the four, how many of you have them in a way that you see them every single day? Like either drawn out in colorful form or Pinterest or whatever, crayon, drawing, vision board, whatever.
Ken Rusk [00:45:57]:
How many? One. Okay. They followed that one person over the hundred. And that one person earned nine times more money than the rest of them in their lifetime. This is the thing that drives me so crazy, Rebecca. That one guy wasn't special. He has the same gift that you have, that I have, that everybody has. You just have to sit down, think about it.
Ken Rusk [00:46:18]:
How do I want to live? Draw it out in some way and then look at it, okay? And you will get that into your life. It's the fastest, simplest way to becoming a non parasitic consumer of this country. It's the quickest way to become an independent, happy, free thinker. And again, I don't know why we don't teach it, but perhaps you and I are doing that right now.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:46:43]:
Write your vision and make it plain is the way I heard it. And if I go to the Bible to connect to that too, about goals is. Bible is very diligent. I mean, there are specs and details about how things were built and sizes. And you said earlier, like your vision board isn't just, oh, I hope that happens. It's very diligent in how it's meant to connect and come to fruition.
Ken Rusk [00:47:09]:
So, yeah, yeah, we've replaced the word. We've replaced the word goal, which I think is the most overused word in the English language because it has so many meanings. We've replaced that word with path. Okay, I love that. What's your path to get to that thing? What's your path to get to that? Because then people go, oh, wait a minute. So there's like a mechanism here. Yeah, there's a very clear mechanism. Otherwise your goal just remains in your homeland and dreamland and wish land.
Ken Rusk [00:47:35]:
It'll never come to pass. So your listeners would do well to replace the word goal with the word path because it makes a whole different. A whole different set of steps in your mind as to how to go get those things.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:47:49]:
Amen. Agreed. And I bet if I asked people what their goals were at the business, that they work for someone else they could tell us what the goals were for that business, but not for the life that they want for themselves, so.
Ken Rusk [00:48:04]:
Exactly.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:48:05]:
So your book is in progress. So you'll come back next year when it launches. Probably first of the year for us.
Ken Rusk [00:48:15]:
Absolutely. I'm looking. I mean, I'm hoping it happens sometime in March, April, May. But I'd love to come back and talk to you because you're an amazing person. I've had a blast, and I really appreciate what you're doing out there. So God bless you and all the things that you do for your people. I think that's wonderful.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:48:30]:
Thank you so much. So this is for all of our listeners. Go buy the book. Blue Collar Cash. Love your work, secure your future. Find happiness for life. And I say that no matter what stage of life you're in, because there is a niece or a nephew or a grandchild or someone that is probably going to need you to reference that book or buy that book for them. Maybe that's a great Christmas gift idea right now.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:48:56]:
And then you. You have the course available that you can go and take whether you are thinking about career or whether you want to start thinking about what that whole cool boss idea might be, that that would be a great first step until that book comes out next year for us.
Ken Rusk [00:49:11]:
Well, it's interesting because the course is $179. I kept it as low as I could. Some courses are 3,000. No, that's not what this is about. I donate that money to charity anyway, and you get a free book with it, so. But I do guarantee that when you take the course, it's only eight sessions. Each one's 45 minutes long. I guarantee that if you take the course, you will for sure look at your life very differently.
Ken Rusk [00:49:34]:
I mean, very, very differently. Or I guarantee it. You know, just know that if you help yourself, you're helping somebody else in that process.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:49:41]:
And I always give this shout out to listeners. If you read somebody's book that's been on the show or take their course and have an experience that you want to talk about, let me know and I'll have you on the show and we could even have a conversation with you about how that went. I. I love it when we can see how the. The rest of the story goes. So thank you for being here. I. I consider us now friends.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:50:02]:
We're going to stay connected and see what we can do to change the world, you and I.
Ken Rusk [00:50:06]:
You got it. Let's make it happen.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:50:08]:
All right. Take care.
Ken Rusk [00:50:10]:
Thank you. Bye. Bye. I'm not coming down. I never locked it on the ground.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:50:17]:
Thanks for listening to this episode. I would love it if you would go to Apple Podcast and leave a rating and a review. And then you can go to rebeccafleetwoodhesion.com and join the Badass Women's Council. And if you really want to take a deeper dive, join the movement of a thousand thriving women. There's amazing Thrive tools there for you today. Love you. Mean it.
Ken Rusk [00:50:38]:
I'm not coming down.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:50:42]:
Hey y'all, Fun fact. If you like the music for the podcast, that is actually my son Cameron Hession, and I would love it if you would go to Spotify and itunes and follow him and download some of his other music. My personal favorite is TV Land.
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