These are the Highest Paying Jobs That No One’s Talking About

The average marketing major makes somewhere between 60 to 80 thousand dollars a year. The average skilled trades worker after they graduate can make upware of 75 to $100,000 a year. Does every kid have to go to university? Student debt in the US is at all time high. Record levels. You had gone to college, you paid all this money, you had these fancy jobs. And then like, the thing is, I want to go be a window cleaner. Like, moms don't love that.

The tide is turning in this country and people are starting to realize sitting in the office all day isn't for me.

For a lot of people, it doesn't make them happy being behind a screen. Why? Feel like we're working harder and we're getting no further in this country? What the fuck's going on? Hey, it's Cody Sanchez and welcome back to the Big Deal podcast for those who don't just want to be rich, but free and do what it actually takes to get there. I love this podcast because I love talking to friends about how they made their millions and helping business owners solve their problems. It's fulfilling. I love sharing all the secrets. But when I can't meet in person, there's only one tool I use. It's called Riverside. Riverside ensures I can talk to someone anywhere in the world. Recorded in 4k so the quality of the video matches the quality of the humans you're listening to. Riverside records separate audio and video tracks so we can easily cut out those awkward interruptions that are my least favorite part of interviews they have in platform editing software based off a 99% accurate AI transcription. And if that's not simple enough, they take AI one step further for their show notes. It summarizes your entire content into an SEO optimized description and chapters, all automatic. Saves me a ton of money. So you can use Riverside for podcast interviews, panel discussions, presentations, webinars, more. And best of all, it's simple. Try Riverside for yourself with link in the description. Use code Cody for an exclusive discount. I get a deal, you get a deal. The contrarian idea this week is that blue collar workers might actually be happier than white collar workers. And what if they're actually starting to make more money? There's this quote from Mike Rowe that I loved. That said people in trade work are balanced. People who do unthinkable work and they have this amazing sort of symmetry to their life because of it. And Mike Rowe should know because he ran dirty jobs for, I don't know, probably a decade. And the research actually goes to show that 86% of blue collar workers are satisfied with their jobs. So they're not only happier, I think a lot of them are probably more skilled in their fields than white collar workers today. Let's look at the data and we found some really interesting things when it comes to are you happier if you're working with your hands versus not? So are you happier being traditionally blue collar versus white collar? And the statistics are actually fascinating. Like for instance, 86% of blue collar workers are satisfied with their jobs in this survey. You can see it linked below. In fact, a bunch more people are applying for trade schools instead of vocational schools. More than 16% increase in vocation focused community colleges since 2018. And you know, there was this quote from this guy Alex Cohen that I just loved. We can throw it up on the screen here. Basically that said the average blue collar trade workers 10x more skilled than the average Fang product manager. Now I mean skilled is in the eye of the beholder. But this hit home for me because student debt in the US is at all time high, record levels. We are having universities funded by our parents, tax dollars, our tax dollars, while we spend our lives paying them off. Because it is the only type of debt that is non recourse. Meaning that if you go bankrupt, guess what, your student loan debt follows you. Yet we have told an entire generation or 2 or 3 of kids that the only way for them to progress in society is for them to go to traditional universities that cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to get the good white collar job that your parents didn't have. Because they actually spent their time trying to make your life better. And so they worked hard so you have an easier life. Right? That's what my parents always told me. And yet we're getting out of these four year institutions and we're in a 9 to 5 that is really like an 8 to 7. Commuting longer distances than ever. The average commute has increased by 30% in the US since 2020. And increasingly not making more money with wages stagnating as well for most white collar workers. So I started to dive into what the fuck's going on and why does it feel like we're working harder and we're getting no further in this country. And I think one of the reasons is this. We were told white collar jobs were good and yet were we just a cog in a machine? And so we went to the data and we found out a couple of different things that are fascinating. One, that 86% of blue collar workers are happy with their job. They're happier on average than white collar workers who 50% on average say that they do not like their jobs. We're finding in fact that these trade and vocational schools have a stigma with the younger generations. That 74% perceive that vocational schools over a traditional four year university are a good idea and that 79% of people said their parents wanted them to go to College while only 5% say they wanted them to go to vocational school. So our parents are telling us go rack debt. The government's saying your tax dollars are going to go towards universities, but you don't really get any benefit of that. The univers get to increase their prices by double digits every year. And oh, by the way, you're going to have to pay it off for, I don't know, five or ten years on average. And like be happy about it because now you're educated and you're going to have all this opportunity. The contrarian idea this week is that you'd be better off going to a vocational school. That's the idea that in fact it seems like they're happier. And look at the average wage between a marketing grad at an average institution and a skilled trades worker from a vocational school. The average marketing major makes somewhere between 60 to 80 thousand dollars a year. The average skilled trades worker after they graduate can make upware of 75 to $100,000 a year. So if you're happier and you make more money and you get a little bit more vitamin D and less LED blue screen, I think there might be something here. And I realized this week because I went to a coal mine with a couple friends of mine where I went, let's see, 650ft down, four miles underground. There's only two entrances into the coal mine. And going in I had all these ideas, you guys, you know, like God, these poor guys. This looks like such hard work, you know, are they safe? Am I going to be safe down there? Can't believe we're still doing this. Can't machines do it? Then the weirdest thing happened. First of all, one of the miners when I was down there, when I asked him, I said, hey, you know, why do you do this? And he said, well, I've been doing it more than 30 years. And I said, okay, you know, what made you want to do it? He said, well, my dad did it. And I said, all right, that makes sense. You followed in your father's footsteps. And he goes, yeah, but it's more than that. Let me tell you why? Now, right before this, this giant machine had plowed through a wall. It's called cross punching. So imagine the ceiling's only five and a half feet tall. You have to walk. It's called a coal miner's walk. You walk hunched over to the side with your head down and to the left and your hands behind your back to support your hips. And so I'm hunched over, walking four miles in, underneath the ground, 650ft below the surface, thinking that this place was a little dark and scary. And then this huge machine claws through a wall across from me and punches through collecting coal, sort of sparking a little bit, and this wild noise, and the ground shaking, and then it pulls back and it grabs the coal back into it. And when I talked to the coal miner right after we had seen this, he said, you know why I do this? Do you know why I work in the coal mines? He goes, go stand over there. So I walk over five feet where the machine had just been. And he said, that ground that you're standing on right now, no man has ever stood there before. You know who else can say that? Astronauts. He goes, some people go to the sky. Some people go underground. Two different types of explorers. And I thought about that as I was watching these guys. You know, you get a little dirt on your face. You've got these big, huge machines. They're pretty big guys with lots of muscles now. They're quiet. You know, I went over to a group of them and I was joking with them and said, you know, you guys want a picture? They kind of. Kind of smiled and looked at me and looked away, because they didn't. And when I talked to one of the lead foremen, let's call him, I said, you know, they're kind of quiet guys. They don't say a ton. And he said, well, have you met a lot of farmers? We don't say many words. We just do many tasks. And the coal mine was sort of filled with these short, crisp sentences, the likes of which those of us who podcast and talk all day for a living on Zoom and have turned into knowledge workers, where the words that come out of our mouth equate to the amount of money we make. We don't understand this world. We don't understand a world in which somebody would point and tell you that I do this job because no man has ever walked there before and really say nothing else besides that. And, you know, as I was talking to another group of them about what's happening down below, they said, where else besides the military. Can you find a group of hardened men doing hard things together where one decision impacts every other human. And thus you have to operate as a team and as a unit as opposed to an individual. How many of you feel more connected than ever? Like you've got a tribe, an incredible community of people. Like you're never alone. Like you're not isolated, like you wish you could be on your phone more? I think the answer is not. Very many of us feel like that these guys had this community built in. You know, I remember a, a quote, the fastest way to long friendships are hard times. The fastest way to short friendships are meaningless times. It's probably why your high school friends, your college friends kind of come and go. It was short, sweet, beautiful moments. Not. Iron sharpens iron. I thought about that a lot with these coal miners. And as I went deeper, a few other things came to mind. These guys do this job for 30, 40, 50 or years or more. They don't retire. And I asked one of them why, and he said, you'd have to pull my cold, dead body out of here. And, and he said, because in a world where we're all stuck to our phones, you can't get service down here. So you're down there for 10 hour shifts, 12 hour shifts, sometimes no service whatsoever. Like, can you guys imagine a more different life? And yet I was talking to another guy who they call Strawberry, and his, his statement was fascinating. He's like, if you watch news stories about us, it's about how dangerous it is, about how bad it is. I bet if you tell your friends you went down to a coal mine, they're going to say, well, was it toxic? You know, well, did they have problems with coal dust? They won't realize that one third of the world is driven by energy derived from coal. So you turn off coal mining and you take away one third of the world's energy. Think about that for a second. And in a part of, of Appalachia where the average income is below poverty level, coal miners make six figures a year. An incredible job that's hard and dirty. But just because it's hard and dirty, does that mean it's bad? When did clean fingernails equate to happy lives? And I think the point of the matter is here that they might not. I want you to speak to Brandon, who is the founder of a company that I am now one of the biggest investors in. I just bought a company called Resi Brands that I co own now with the founders. And it's a franchise company for people doing trade labor. And I want you to hear from Brandon something that I've realized and become really passionate about, that the dirty work is often the important work.

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Rince takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you said.

You hear about Dave.

Or even tea time tea time tea time you mmm.

So update on Dave.

It's up to you. We'll take the laundry rinse. It's time to be great.

Bring the band in. Let's go. Brandon, I'm so excited to have you here today.

Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

I think we were sold a lie that being vitamin D deprived keyboard monkeys was the way to go. That we wanted to sit and excel behind a screen in a cubicle working for somebody else all day, when in reality there might be more joy found outside. I wasn't sure though. Then I started meeting people like you. So really quickly tell them where you came from and what you're doing right now.

Yeah, absolutely. My career started, went to University of Arkansas, graduated there in 2017, and went straight in the corporate world. Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. There's no windows at the headquarters. They're working on it. They're building a new campus, but that's soon. From there. I knew I wanted to be there, but I knew it wasn't for long term. So I came back to Austin, jumped into the financial world. Kind of like you, kind of in an analyst role. And I was in an office by myself all day. And it was tough. And I knew that wasn't it for me either. Jumped. I mean, this is like classic Millennial, right? Jumped then to the live music business. That was in December of 2019 and got laid off six months later because Covid, Covid, live music doesn't work. That's when Pinks was started in June of 2020. You're absolutely right. Like the cool jobs coming out of college are the commercial real estate jobs, being a lawyer, being a doctor, doing whatever. And there's nothing wrong with those jobs. It just wasn't for me. So within two months of starting Pinks and Carter and I buzzing around town in an 04 Chevy Tahoe, just cleaning windows.

Yeah. Explain to him what pinks is because you're wearing. Like, if you guys could see him on YouTube, he's looking fly right now. He's got on. What I actually said to Carter, I was like, yeah, this is a great hipster uniform. He's like, excuse me. This is timeless.

This is timeless.

This is timeless. And it is. It's like what I would describe as sort of a classic, you know, maybe 1950s inspired, 1960s inspired tradesmen uniform that's beautifully designed for a window cleaning service that you two started.

That's exactly right. And that was the whole purpose of Pinks is we wanted to flip the script on blue collar. So, yeah, you're exactly right. Pinx is a world window cleaning company. We do exterior cleaning, pressure washing, gutter cleaning, soft washing, all of that. And basically started just Carter and I buzzing around town doing it, all the work ourselves. Within two months of us starting this exterior cleaning company, branding it out because we knew we wanted to flip the script on blue collar and tell a different story, that, hey, this is a great job. It's fun. It's cool. Within two months of us starting it, we told ourselves, if our old jobs, call us back and offer us a job back with even double the salary, we're not going back.

We're 200 pounds of sand.

Yeah.

Wait a second. So what did your moms say when you told them that you were leaving? You know, you had gone to college, you paid all this money, you had these fancy jobs, and then you're like, the thing is, mom, I want to go be a window cleaner. Like, moms don't love that.

No. Well, our moms are amazing. And they were supportive from the very beginning. It was a lot of our mentors that told us, hey, when are you going to get a real job? Hey, like, do you want to. Do you really want to spend your 40 hours cleaning windows and power washing driveways? And we had to fight that. And we were super insecure to start off because we bought that lie that the good job is commercial real estate guy, the finance guy, the lawyer guy, whatever. And we had to get over ourselves, and we had to die to ourself, die to our pride to really believe what we were doing. That without the blue collar services, our cities would be an absolute mess. Absolutely fair. I think we said that at the very beginning, but we didn't actually believe it till three months in.

Yeah. Well, you know what was interesting is I rode around with you guys and cleaned some windows. I think I did a pretty good job actually.

You were amazing.

And, and you know what I, what I noticed, and we felt it here even before, is we'll do, you know, I don't know, seven or eight hours of work in the office here, even podcasting, which people think is fun. And it is.

Yeah.

And then we will get out to film YouTube videos in the street.

Right.

It's in Austin. It's 102 degrees outside. We're sweating makeup, running off my face. It's my favorite time of the day. Yeah. Because there is just nothing like being around other humans, actually moving your body and doing things. And I think we've forgotten that in this country. And you know, I think the interesting part is you could say, well, maybe Brandon and Carter are just weirdos and.

These, I mean, we're super weird.

You are kind of weird. But you know, two young, good looking dudes, full capacity, intelligent, deciding to go on the trades. They must be weird. But then you've sort of amassed an army of people just like you talk a little bit about, like the guy I met yesterday, the former Marine who's now my best bud. Like these are. You've brought other young men on who are skilled and they're thrilled to be part of cleaning windows, which people might not even believe.

Yeah. The tide is turning in this country and people are starting to realize maybe like sitting in the office all day isn't for me. I mean, I just think about how we're created as human beings. Like, we're designed to connect. We're not designed to just sit in a room by ourselves or work from home and just be in our room all day by ourselves, like behind a 11 inch screen. That's why we created pinks. That's why we're franchising the business, because we want to get people out of that. But as far as like our laborers go, whether it's our franchisees or guys in the field, the personality is guys that said, hey, like they're young dudes. College isn't for me. I want to do something different. Maybe they worked in a coffee shop or in a restaurant, but they're tired of showing up to the same place, interacting with the same kitchen staff every single day while at pinx and with a lot of A lot of other service companies, you have a lot of freedom. You get to get in the car, you're not with your boss. You get to buzz around town, help customers. You kind of own the relationship. And you get to make people happy by giving stellar service all over the city or all over. All over the town. It's yours. And then you get tipped, and then you get to go wherever you want for lunch, and it's a great situation.

Yeah. You guys do a lot of stuff that I think is cool that usually tech companies did, which is like, you give guys some cash for lunch, they get to go wherever they want in town. But talk about why you do it from a couple different perspectives.

For sure. I mean, from a monetary perspective, we say 15 a day per guy. And it's so good for culture because normally a service member or service company guy, they pack their lunch, or one guy goes to McDonald's. One guy packs lunch. And they're not eating together, just in the car.

Yeah, it's hot. They're not engaging.

Or one guy's inside.

Yeah.

Eating at McDonald's. One guy's in the. In the truck eating a sandwich you brought.

Yeah.

We want the guys to commune together because again, it's like a core belief we design. We're supposed to be together. We're better together than apart. Also, just what it does for our workers when we pay for their lunch, it shows that we care, and it's just one less decision that they have to make for the day. Yeah. We try to just limit the decisions that they have on their plate, and it's just great for retention. I mean, it's good for so many reasons. I think we spent $40,000 on lunches last year, but it's worth every damn penny because our guys stay. They like what they do. They feel a freedom. And one of the best parts is, is when guys come into a restaurant wearing the pink skid up. It's marketing.

Yeah.

We get a lot of clients just from guys buzzing around town eating lunches at places wearing the uniform.

One of our sayings is, you want to get paid like a pro, dress like a pro.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things that has been lost in trades and services is we've lost the pro mentality. And so I think this idea of dressing a certain way, if you want to be taken a certain way, is really critical. The human brain gauges people in less than a millisecond. And so in less than one second, you have a chance to have your very first impression. And if Your first impression is I've got on this kind of like smart, cool uniform and I take care of myself personally and I've got this cool car behind me. Well then you're probably going to attract a different level of person.

Every interview we do, we're wearing this.

Yeah.

And it sets a tone for our employees. But also when our employees put on the uniform, it does something for them mentally.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, I'm like, I'm showing up, it's time to work. Like I got the uniform on, it's time to get to it.

I wonder how much of that is also like similar to the military actually, you know, because my husband obviously in the military for a long time and I used to joke with him and call it an outfit and he was like, just kind of got to him and he was like, this is a uniform. And he kind of explained to me what a uniform meant. He's like, when I am wearing this, I am a representative of the armed forces. And it means something to be able to wear this uniform. Like we screen for it and there's a reputation associated with it. And I think often in the era post 2020 of COVID where we all wore pajamas for most of our year, we've lost that. Right. Like you forget what it means to put on something that changes you into a different character for a moment.

Absolutely. And it just, it builds so much trust. Trust within yourself. Trust that, hey, my team members wearing the same thing as me and then trust in the community.

Yeah.

People know the Pink's uniform and when our guys show up, they know they're going to get a friendly person that's on time, that is reliable and that is background checked.

Let's talk about your worst day as a Pinks employee. Like, like I think sometimes we can cherry pick things. Like there is a lot of hard, very hard things about the trades and doing things with your work and manual labor. Like give the tough side of it too. The cons.

Oh my gosh. One. I mean, so many tough days. Whether just like the physical labor of it where you're up at 7 or 6 on a job site, on a construction site, but you're getting held up because you didn't go through the safety protocol with the superintendent. So now you have to sit there for two hours and just wait and go through this stupid training. That is a terrible day. Also when it's 110 outside and you know you have five hours of work left and you're chafing and it sucks and it's Hot and the customer is picky. That's no fun. I would say one of our hardest days, but then that turned good was when it was at the very beginning. We were at one of Carter's friend's house. We drove all the way to Houston to clean a house because, you know, early on you'll take any job.

Yeah.

And so we drove to Houston and we were cleaning one of Carter's friends from high school's houses, and he was in the commercial real estate world, and he was working from home because it was in the heat of COVID And both of us, as we're cleaning basically a peer's house, felt super insecure. He's. This guy is in his home office, beautiful house in the Heights, and he's like cranking away on calls and emails, and we are like, excuse me, can I clean the window behind your desk? And all that. So we get back in the car and both of us express this insecurity we felt. And it was a low. We're like, man, he's crushing it doing these commercial real estate deals. And we are cleaning his house while he's working. So we drove home, and as we're driving, we're just like, thinking, like, talking to each other, praying. And we're just like, man, how cool is it that we got to add value to someone's house? How many of our friends can say that they got to add value to their buddy's house and, like, do him, like a favor, like, do a service for him that was efficient, affordable, and that he needed and wanted. And so from that moment, like that low day, we kind of flipped it in our brains and said, actually, like, we're all in on this thing. Like, we can do this. We're proud of what we do. We're proud to help a friend. What's wrong with being a janitor? There's nothing wrong with it. And that's what. That's when it, like the bad day and a bad mental state flip for us is like, we've been talking about this whole time. We been sold this lie that if you're in lawn maintenance, if you're a window cleaner, if you're a painter, if you're whatever, you're a second tier citizen. And it was that day that we believed, like, actually, this is amazing. This is useful, and we get to help people all over the city.

I was listening to a story the other day about Japan, and there are some cities in rural Japan that are shutting down because they don't have communal services. Even just like, A butcher shop.

Right.

I'm missing like one butcher shop. And because of that they can't get the core services they need. And so people are leaving cities entirely, which the real estate that they have spent up their lives livelihood to afford is now worth nothing because there's no community around them. In this world where we're just starting to realize that a little bit of ownership, that a job that doesn't turn you into a robot, that having a community and a team and doing work that matters is actually the path to happiness so important. Yes. Is rare. But I think your generation. Do you think your generation gets it more than mine? You're like one generation below me. Are you seeing other people your age start to understand this?

We're seeing a lot of our friends start service companies.

Yeah.

Because they realize when I can make just as good, if not better money than if I was working in an office. And two, I have so much more freedom over my life. And I feel like people nowadays, they're so tied to purpose, like purpose being tied to their work. If you have a purpose driven lifestyle, you're going to be way happier. We don't clean windows just to clean windows because we're so passionate about cleaning windows, but we are passionate about helping our city, maintaining our city and making customers really happy and excited. That's what drives us every day. It's not just cleaning for the sake of cleaning, but it's cleaning for the sake of the customer. Cleaning for the sake of the betterment of our city and the prosperity of our city.

Do you remember what your worst day was when you were employed before you did pinks?

Oh, man. I try to say no bad days, but that's just not true. I think it was when I was working in the financial firm and I was like an analyst and kind of just putting spreadsheets together. But I remember like most Sundays, I look at the Sunday scaries. Yeah, I bet a lot of people listening feel that. And you're just like, gosh, I don't. Like, I feel like there's more for me. So like there's not one specific day, but there was that feeling that I had every Sunday, every Monday. Like I was a weekend warrior. I was just waiting for the weekend because then I was off. And I knew like deep in my heart that what I was doing was not it. Operating at what I felt was like 50% capacity of my brain and not feeling a lot of purpose and then just being locked in the office every day. Like it was hard days. I would call my mom and she'd be like, hey, how's work? You know, how's work, Brandon? And I would just kind of lie to her. I'd say, oh, mom, it's. It's great. It's fine. It's fine. But mommies, they got that, those spidey senses. She knew that I was struggling, and she knew when to press. She knew when not to press. But she knew I was in a tough place because I just wasn't fulfilled with work for the purpose. Like, from a purpose perspective, but also from a. I am not firing on all cylinders in my brain. I'm only using half of what I feel like I have up there. And those days were not fun, you guys.

As far as I understand it, you had a chance to sell the business entirely. Like, you could have pretty much kind of sold, moved on, and you had some different options on the table. But instead of selling overall, you said, actually, we just want to bring more people into the fold.

Right.

We want, you know, we're good at cleaning windows. That's what we like to do. And we're good at branding, and we like leadership.

Yeah.

And, you know, maybe we don't know how to build a national business. And so you partnered with the company that I invested in. Right. Resident. A lot of people, if they would have gotten a chance to maybe have some sort of bigger exit, they might have taken it. And people listening to you might be thinking, well, you know, maybe he's just going to clean windows for a minute and then he's going to leave and he's going to go become a venture capitalist.

Right.

But you actually had a little bit of a window where something like that could have happened.

Sure.

Why continue to own the franchise locally? To actually go out into the field like, I've seen you guys, you know, get dirty like you do. Why keep doing that as opposed to cash out in some way, shape or form?

1. We love our team, like, here, locally, like, Pink's Austin is our baby. And we love our team. They do such a good job. And it's like, it's a fun mentorship opportunity business. We are in the people business, and we love people, whether it's our customers or our employees. So we want to stay tight to that. That's like, from a purpose perspective. It also prints cash, which also doesn't suck. We want to keep owning Pink Sauce because it's. It just spits us cash every single month, and that's a great part of the income. The reason we wanted to partner with Resi Brands is because we Feel like we are flipping the script on blue collar, trying to make it cool, trying to add purpose to it, trying to just brand it out. Like we said, like, flip the script on blue collar. Resi Brands is doing that in franchising. I feel like five years ago, franchising, it was kind of for like the weirdo. Oh, you want to. You wanted this franchise or like McDonald's.

Crumble Cookie or something terrible for society. Right? Like, yeah.

What Resi is doing with the support for the franchisee, the connect center, the marketing team, all that, it's so good for the franchisee.

Yeah. You guys are the ones that introduced me to them. And I remember texting you, I was like, what do we think about these guys? Like, let's have download. And you told us. But I think the other part is like owner, operators. When I first met you guys, I was like, oh, they're in it, they get it. And Steven's the same way. He's like, I did this for 11 years before I started franchise.

That's why we love Stephen.

Yeah, he. He's in the game. And the other thing that's fascinating, Brandon, is like, how many of the people in your group and his are faith.

Based a good amount. We're not like, so like outward and like, pushy about it.

Of course. Yeah.

But if people ask about it, like, we're not going to shy away. It's like, yeah, like, we love Jesus and like God gives us purpose and we're all in. And those principles of being honest, doing the right thing, like being faithful with a little so that we can be faithful with a lot, whatever resources we get, being a wise steward of them, like, that just makes sense. That's good business practice. It happens to be in the Bible too. It's. It works really well.

Were you dating? It's now your fiance?

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Kelsey, congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you.

She's adorable. Were you dating her before you started Pinks?

No, we started dating.

So you met her after you were a window cleaner?

After.

Was that hard? Was it like, did that, did that hurt your social capital at all?

Basically, before I started Pinks, I feel like in the dating world I was like, less confident because I didn't have my career figured out. But it just turned out I was insecure. But when we started Pinks, we got over ourselves. I got over myself and just died in my pride. I think I gained confidence and I was like, yeah, I'm a window cleaner. What's wrong with it? And it helped me in the dating world. I Mean, now I'm engaged. So it worked, I guess.

Well, I think a lot of times, you know, for, for men, good, bad or the other ways you're judged, often on job and earnings, at least historically, how it's been. So the status games would happen on the male side. But then, you know, I just had another friend of mine in here, Andrew Wilkinson, who you met. And he's always like, God, your husband's such a manly man. And I'm back here, you know, a nerdy analyst. I think there is something really neat about the merging of the two. That you can have head, but you can also have, you know, some dirty, dirty fingers.

Yeah, absolutely. And like, that's what I love about pinks or just the service business in general.

Yeah.

Is if I want to go clean windows every day, I can do that. But also if I want to work on strategy and figure out a growth strategy to get pinks up into the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest, I can do that. Or coach franchisees. Just jump on a call and talk to a guy in Palm Beach, Florida.

Yes.

This morning. Is coaching him up on how to quote a building and how to overcome some customer objection. I love talking about the like not being fully used because I feel like that's so much of our generation is people that are just working in an office and they have like, they're probably working from home three days a week and they are not being fully used. Like they're working for really three hours a day, but they have to stretch out their work to make it an eight hour day to make it look like to their boss that they're working. They gotta appear online on Slack so they're constantly moving their mouse and all that.

Well, is that, is that true? Is that something that you guys had where they were like tracking your. What's your work?

Probably not officially they had that, but I think as an employee of like a big corporation. Yeah. And there's like a tiered management system.

Yeah.

It feels like that. Whether that's a reality or not, I don't know. But I always felt like, oh, I gotta be online or else I'm gonna get a slap on the wrist or that's probably true.

I think a lot of bosses probably go, what are you guys doing? And you know, get micromanaging about it. I know, I've been there before too. And I think for a lot of jobs post the industrial revolution where we became knowledge workers instead of, we just flipped how we measure work. And so now instead of measuring output, we didn't take the time to figure out how to measure output for knowledge workers. So we just said time. Yeah, we said no matter what, no matter the output, your time has to be dedicated for this allotment.

Right.

This generation and mine are probably the first two generations that have fully felt this idea of knowledge work.

Yeah.

And to be candid, I don't think it makes us happy. And I'm not sure that the tracking is working.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. Yeah, but you follow naval?

Yeah, for sure.

Okay. So he was on a podcast. I forgot when it was, but something I love that he talked about in this, like, knowledge base. Well, now all the knowledge that there is out there is on the Internet or you can just chat GPT. What's the best way to do this? Or like, so the knowledge is there, but in like the coming years, what he says is like the value commodity amongst employees or workers or business owners. It's judgment. We all have access to the same information, but what are the decisions we make based on the information? So judgment and wisdom and discernment, that's what we want to be as Pinks is we all have. It's easy. It's easy to get the information. What are we going to do with it and how is that going to influence our future, the business's future, our franchisees future, our employees future, all of that.

I love it. If people want to hear more from me, where do they go?

Pink's Windows. You can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn. We're still figuring out the Twitter thing. Maybe you can help with that.

Absolutely, I will help with that. Also, phone number on your forehead.

Yes, it is there. If you need a window cleaning quote, all are here.

Actually, you know, we joke about this as, you know, clothes as business cards, which I think is really underdone in the trades. You know, it's like handyman service. Well, that's not a great name because you're never going to remember it.

Right.

And I think the way that people have done this historically in the trades is they go cutesy or like a goofy saying. Like, you know, if it's cold outside, we've got your dad joke. Right. It's your dad joke. But you guys said, no, we're going to have a premium brand.

Absolutely.

And we're going to treat this just like we would Apple if we were an Apple computer. But we happen to clean Windows.

That's right. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because there's a lot of new brands popping up. There's a lot of big cleaning companies. If you have a decision to make your brand on clip art or Microsoft Paint or whatever it is, or you have the opportunity to, you know, hire an agency or, or do it yourself or whatever, I want it to be good. Like, if we're going to build it, let's build it right. And no one else in the service business is doing it. That's why we branded it out. And honestly, like, all credit to Carter. Carter is like the creative.

Carter's a little bit of like a mad marketing genius, isn't he?

Yes.

Like, it's like Instagram videos are incredible. I can't believe this about a window cleaning video. But candidly, like Pinks, what is the Instagram handle?

Pink's Windows.

Pinks Windows. It's hysterical. Like you guys have that one with the Brady Bunch. We can actually show it right here.

Yes.

And first of all, you're going to get a bunch of female clients because it's like a bunch of young good looking dudes going to be wanting you to be sweating.

That takes so long to film. It's like it took way too long.

It was incredible. Like you all pop up in them. And then the other thing I thought was brilliant that you guys did from a marketing standpoint was the free neighborhood clean or the comp clean of the week comp plan.

Yes. Basically the comp clean is. It's just a way to bless our community but also have some fun and film it and bring like whenever we do a comp clean, we don't like to go to a big popping restaurant. We want to go to the small mom and pop that everyone in the neighborhood knows or drives by every day, but that may not know like what it is they serve at the restaurant or whatever. So we like to make fun, engaging content. It's. It's become a thing where like we've cleaned Mount Joy's tour bus.

Yeah.

Acl.

Amazing.

We've done some stuff at Stubbs Barbecue, the venue.

Yeah.

For another band. And so it's kind of become this thing. But we still love the mom and pop.

Well, yeah, the other Comp clean, just so you guys know, you guys do free cleans for neighborhood restaurants and then you film them in a really cool.

Little way and edit it. It's like, it's so silly.

It's great.

Yeah.

You were also in a movie.

Yes, yes, we were. We were in Hitman Glenn Powell wearing her shirt, which is like, what the heck? It happened two years ago. A costume designer that Carter knew reach out to him and said, hey there. Here's a concept of Hitman. We need a service company, you know, for a few minutes of the movie, can we use pinks? And of course, our answer was, hell yeah. Thanks. Like, of course. And so we got a picture of Glen Powell like two years ago wearing our shirt. And so we've just been sitting on it and sitting on it. And then it was released this past week.

Good things will take time. Did you get to go on set or.

No, no, we. I mean, we were. We shipped him a shirt and that was our involvement.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

All right, well, here's to more movies, man. I appreciate you.

Appreciate you. And like, that's the whole goal of Pinks is we say we try to flip the script on blue collar. When you think of window cleaning or when whoever in New York City or LA or Chicago, whoever thinks of window cleaning, we want you to think of one company, and that's pinks. That's us. Because we're doing something different. We're bringing purpose and trying to flip the script.

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Let's talk tiktokers and content for the deal of the week this week. This, I thought was super interesting. So there's this girl that I follow and she actually just got written up about in the Wall Street Journal. Um, she's electrician in Cornwall, New York, and she just shows like the day to day of what she does. And like, first off, she must be raking in so much money because not only is she an electrician, you've been talking about how much money you can make doing this, but she's also making. And the Wall Street Journal said this, like $200,000 in like brand deals and things like that. So dual income has a 9 to 5. Like she seems like she's killing it.

The hashtag blue collar do 500,000 posts in the first four months of this year and is up 64% since 2023. It seems like, like blue collar is cool basically on TikTok and that people probably stems from. I mean, in a world where so many of us only know things like spreadsheets, computering, like cannot fix the oven if our life depends on it. Somebody who's capable with their hands. Let's watch this video really quick from Lex the electrician and see what's up. All right. Well, first of all, what you're, what you're seeing here is like woman. She's cute. She's cute. She's got like cute but wholesome outfits on. She's serious. She's doing these like big commercial electrician looking jobs, like hauling huge cables. Got a little dance in there because it's the tik tok. Looks like she could electrocute herself at any time. Doing it with nails on too. Because that's what your generation is into. Like nails that look like you can't do anything with that she's doing it with. And she's serious. Like this is a serious professional out there doing her thing. And what I think is amazing about this is basically we're shedding some light on a work on work that without which you and I could not be doing this podcast right now. Somebody build these lines. Somebody ran a bunch of cables and because of that we can do this. How can you not only do trade work but skip college? So she's making, let's say she's probably making six figures in her electrician job.

She actually didn't even skip college. She went to pre med for two years, got her associate's degree and was like, I actually, I'm not a people person. And then after her associate's degree stopped and became electrician.

Fascinating.

And I wonder if like she, I think she had family members that were electricians. And I think one good thing it like that's happening because TikTok and other social media platforms are kind of like amplifying blue collar work. Is it showing people alternate job opportunities? Because my parents were great and they said if you want to go to vocational school, they were really, really into it. Where my mom lives, there's a pretty good, a pretty good program for people who want to become plumbers and Electricians and things like that. But I feel like not that many people are given the opportunity or have parents or have anybody else that's telling them, like, hey, these jobs are out there and they exist and they make good money.

You know, Chris always, my husband always says, like, his favorite time was, he says, was doing hood rat shit with his friends, which means when he was in the military, like kicking down doors and shooting guns and, you know, working out a lot. And I think for a lot of people, it doesn't make them happy being behind a screen. And so if we can now, you can't be what you can't see. If we can now see a bunch of people who are living lives where they make money with their hands. I think you're. In my generation, I used to think, well, like, I guess you could be a physical trainer that was like allowed if you wanted to do something with your body. You could be an athlete, you know, you could be in the military. Yeah, but at least my generation, we didn't think about the trades. My father's generation definitely different. So I love this Lex the electrician, you look like a stud. And maybe you guys on social tag me the best trade and vocational people that you see on the Internet. I want to continue to highlight people like you because I think you guys are doing the work to close out the episode today. There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius that says, you can't be a good man if you are incapable of violence. And what did that mean? Well, Jordan Peterson actually said something similar, which is, a harmless man is not necessarily a good man. That a man who can commit violence but chooses not to is truly a good man. And I think about that a lot with these trade workers and with those people who have decided to take the hardened path that in fact maybe it's being able to commit violence, it's being able to do the hard, but choosing the other that leads to happiness and a better society for us. So this week I hope I made you think a little bit with this episode. And if you're a parent out there, maybe ponder this a little bit. Does every kid have to go to university? Do we have to pay into institutions continuously that put us in roles that increasingly don't make us happy and don't necessarily make us more money? Is that a good idea? I would love to hear from you guys in the comments. It's something that I think about a lot because I am a Monday morning quarterback with kids, because I don't have any of them. But I wonder if one day, when I have them, what will my decision be? Will I be okay if my kid wants to go clean windows? If they want to go work in a coal mine? If they want to do the hard and dangerous thing? Or do I only feel pride in them if they have a title of CEO or a title of doctor behind them and do some big mental gymnastics in order to have a career? I don't know the answer to that, but I know that it's a question worth asking. Thank you for being here today. I think you are a big deal. You are a big deal to me and that is why we do this podcast. So if you haven't already, please give us a little review. I think it's time for the word to get out that just because you're a tech worker doesn't mean you're better than a trade worker. So if you agree with me, now's the time to share the pod and give us a review. You know that I got it. No need to look all in the bag. Stunning like this. Because I work so hard, I'm the best. I only speak.