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Background
A few years ago, I visited a store to search for a pluming solution. I ran into Mark, who became an instant friend and we've stayed connected since then. Mark had already retired from being a plumber and is one of the few Millennials I ever met who dropped out of high school. One big difference with Mark that I shared with him was that he had much lower self-esteem than the average Millennial (a generation who were raised to think they were special). This actually worked to his advantage as you'll read and he and I both agree that his story shows that high self-esteem has little to do with success. Mark is a great guy, but he's not on social media because he doesn't think his life is that interesting to be on it. I love the self-honesty!
Had To Ask...
While many Millennials piled into college (about 40-45%), you dropped out of high school during your freshman year and became a plumber. When we first met, your story differed significantly from many Millennials. What made you decide to drop out of high school and become a plumber?
I'm the dumber kid of my family. My brothers and sisters are much smarter than I am. My mom made sure that I knew this growing up. She used to tell me all the time that I wasn't going to add up to much because I learned really slow. I would read for five minutes and get bored and I really struggled with memorization. I could repeat something a hundred times and still not remember it. Some of it is that my mom is right and I am kind of slow when it comes to information. Some of it is also I hate learning stuff I don't use. I still don't know why I had to learn how to diagram a sentence. I have never used that and will never use that. I almost feel like school was killing time.
Before my freshman year, my friend's dad was a plumber and ran his own business. I wanted to learn so I asked if he could teach me and I'd be willing to do whatever. He was more than willing to teach me and he even started paying me for helping with his projects. My freshman year of high school continued to bore me so I had to decide between continuing to learn things I didn't want to know or make money that I could use. I saw immediate use for the money I was making, but I still don't know why I had to learn all the nonsense in school. So I dropped out. At the time, my mom used it as proof that I would never make it in life. She even told me that I would eventually realize that I had made the wrong choice. I didn't care because school was so boring and to this day, I don't regret it because I don't see how people who went to finished high school and went to college made a better choice than I did.
We've overvalued education to a point that it's become oversaturated and pointless. Historically, many kids would have been done with education at 12 and started working. Once you dropped out of high school, how were you able to manage working while your mom didn't approve?
I kind of lucked out the first year because my mom enjoyed telling me I was dumb and it stopped there. Since my friend's dad lived in our neighborhood, I worked as much as I could. I managed to make a good amount of money my first year but the real success was the experience I gained. I tried learning everything I could and it paid off big. By the end of my first year, I was able to take on challenging commercial projects - those are where we make good money. He would show me how he worked on a problem and I would jump on it. I kept feeling like the more I could do, the more I could make.
That's when my mom tried getting in the way and stopping me from continuing. Looking back, it's clear to me that she got angry when I started to out-earn her plus some of her friends were making comments about her having a high school dropout. She didn't like that and she tried to force me to go back to school. I was going to return to school and the situation got really bad. At one point, she physically attacked me to where it became noticeable to everyone. At least my mom realized that she crossed a line, but my friend's dad stepped in at that point and I was able to live with him. I planned to move out as soon as I could, but he was great because he told me that it made more sense to live with them until I was ready to be on my own. That allowed me to save a lot of money. To this day, I am grateful to him because he is the biggest reason for my success and he thinks I've alwasy been an amazing worker.
Mentors are key. Plus, you were able to work when Millennials were in high school and then some Millennials went to college. They were delaying pay while you were earning it. How were you able to eventually go into business for yourself?
I worked under my dad's friend for about seven years and would take on as many project as possible. He paid me extremely well, but we had very few plumbers in our area and few wanted to become a plumber, so the abundance of work allowed him to retire early. He wanted more freedom to travel, so his final year, he taught me more about the business, marketing and tax side of things. In thinking about it now, it's funny how I learned all this information about managing money for taxes, inventory and other related expenses, but we never discussed this stuff in school. It's so weird. What do people even do with all the stuff they learn in school? I still don't know. Like, when am I going to diagram a sentence as an adult?
After that, I was one of the few plumbers in the area and the demand was crazy. There was more projects than I had time. I tried hiring others, but what a nightmare! You and I have talked about this, but Millennials have no work ethic. They would get hired, work the first day, then call in sick and I wouldn't hear from them after a week. It was crazy. What's odd is that many of them would end up working a job that paid less, but it was some desk job. I do not understand someone who wants to get paid to sit around.
I struggled with hiring people for a while and finally gave up and am glad I did. I had to be honest with myself about how much work I could do and would do because I know I wasn't going to have help. I set higher prices and started making money good money plus was able to eliminate the projects that couldn't pay as much as I wanted. I retired before I turned 29, but even now I take some projects that I either enjoy or pay a rate that I'm willing to work. The difference is that instead of working 70-80 hour work weeks, I work about 10 hours a week overall.
That's the part about your story that stuns our Millennial friends the most. They can't believe someone can retire at 29 without being a trust fund kid. I like to point out our friends that about a decade ago, I was speaking at a financial event and I asked the bankers in the room how many of them would be proud if their sons became plumbers or electricians. No one in the audience raised their hand. Yet all of them had used running water and electricity that day! Our generation (and iGenZ too), does not have any concept of what we're actually demanding daily versus what we're saying has value. This is the result - a job that's in a shortage even with high wages.
But you still have people who won't do the work even with high wages. I hired people who quit working and would go work for some other easier job making half the wages. It's like they prefer easy work even if the easy work doesn't pay much. I'll never forget this one guy I hired. He picked up what I taught him pretty quickly. But after a month, he didn't want to do the work anymore and he didn't show up or even call and say that he quit. I ran into him later and he told me he worked doing some security job where he'd sit at a desk all day. He made less than half what I was paying him, but he told me that his job was easier even when I asked him if he would want to come back and work. Most people didn't want to do the work and I discovered that I hated managing people.
What made me finally stop is I had a friend who was also struggling to hire people and one guy claimed that he was injured on the job and sued. That scared me because he had to go to court over the situation. Hiring people is a job in and of itself and I just didn't have time to do that plus balance work.
I'm lucky because when everyone needs a plumber and there aren't many plumbers, I could simply say no. In hindsight, that was a big part of how I was able to charge high prices and retire early. Even now, I can select the projects I want because there's still a shortage! Plus, I've worked with many people over the years who really value my work and know that I'll do well. Credibility is a big factor in plumbing.
Working in the right field was a big factor in your financial success. Saving money also sounds like it played a huge role in your financial success. What are some other things that played a role in your success?
When you work a lot, you save a lot because you don't have time to spend. Kind of the opposite of our friends who spent a year traveling and spent six figures doing so. I know they had fun, but now they feel like it set them back. I didn't have options like that because I had to work. I have been blessed with some great friends who pointed me to Dave Ramsey, so I was able to invest following his advice. At some point, you have to grow your wealth and I had enough saved early. Working many hours stops a lot of stupid financial decisions so that probably played the biggest role.
Now that I'm older, I think being single also did some as well. Plumbing is a mostly male profession and as I've met other plumbers, I've seen some nasty divorces. My friend's dad ended up going through one himself. To be honest with you, at one point I wanted to marry but I'm glad I never did. Many of my friends who didn't go to college are either divorced or their wives don't respect them at all. Maybe this bugs me because my mom always thought I was dumb, but I don't enjoy being around people who don't respect me as a person. Even when I've dated girls in the past, they would ask me what I really wanted to do, as if there was something wrong with plumbing. Or I've had girls who asked me if I would go back to school almost like they were saying there's something wrong with not graduating high school.
Women are generally more concerned with other people's perception than men. Add to that what Saint Paul says, "Knowledge puffeth up" so you get a person who thinks highly of themself and cares about other people's perceptions. Given that most Millennial women are highly educated, that's a very common combination.
All of my teachers in high school and junior high were all women and I don't think any of them thought I was very smart. I can remember a few who agreed with my mom in that they thought I was dumb. I don't think I was ever cut out for education because I'm a D or F student at best. I remember one teacher asking me that, "Do you want to be a D student the rest of your life?" But I also don't get what we were even learning most of the time or why I would care. Women seem to enjoy that more too, like all the girls in my class would answer the questions while I was wondering why did anyone care. Trivia bores the heck out of me.
It may be because I work with a lot of men that I don't really value or need to know things I don't need to know, if that makes sense. I can't think of any conversation I've had with other men in my work where random trivia came up. No offense to the men who are educated, but they're the only ones I know who sit around and talk about this stuff. I don't need to know that you can manufacture and ship good easier by the Rhine River than by wherever because I don't work in manufacturing and I don't plan to. It's not important. Men seem to only say what's necessary when I'm working whereas women share lots of details about whatever the situation is.
You highlight a big problem with modern education that's impacting male enrollments in education - too many women. That's part of why education has lost men and I've been warning institutions about this for a while. Men don't see male teachers and assume education isn't for them. Regardless, right now the blue collar world is great for men plus it's in high demand. Like you said, no one wants to do physical work anymore so you have little competition. What advice would you suggest for young men interested in blue collar fields?
Honestly, be willing to do the work. That's rare. There's probably a lot of people willing to show you how to do the work, but it's a waste of time to invest in someone who quits after a week or two. I have a lot of respect for people who hire people, but I would never go back to that. I hated it. I did work recently with a young man, but the big reason was that I didn't need to teach him much, I could just tell him what needed to be done and he would do it. That and he was the son of the business owner. Like I said about my friend's lawsuit, I wouldn't hire people because of all the legal stuff. Lawsuits are no joke.
Be enthusiastic about learning new things related to the job. It's so easy to each people something when they're excited about it. My friend's dad told me early on that I was extremely easy to teach because I wanted to learn. For me, I felt like plumbing was my only path to a good life so I had to learn it. I didn't have options. My brothers and sisters are much smarter than I am and have many options to succeed. I didn't! But now that I think about it, if you want to learn and show enthusiasm, you become easy to teach.
And you're still not on social media, so people can't find you anywhere?
You have to think your life is interesting to be on social media. I honestly don't get that stuff. I'm not a smart guy so anything I have to say or show isn't that interesting. Plus you know this - I'm a flesh-and-blood guy. All of you with your Facebook friends, not for me. People have to be present with me and can't take shortcuts if they want to hang out.
If you ever join, I'll be sure to add your information here.
