40. Ken Rusk: Author of Blue-Collar Cash

Hello, BookThinkers family, and welcome to episode number 40 of our personal development podcast, BookThinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live better. In this episode, our co-founder Ryan had the pleasure to fly out and interview author Ken Rusk. Ken spent his younger years digging ditches and working in construction. He never went to college. Instead, he made goals, planned, and worked hard for 30 years. And now Ken is a very successful entrepreneur with multiple businesses and revenue streams. Their conversation today is all about Ken's brand new book, Blue Collar Cash. Catchy title. In this book, Ken shows us that blue-collar trades are a source of pride and that you can and will Find your version of happiness by pursuing a good old-fashioned craft. The economy is in desperate need of skilled tradespeople and those who are willing to work hard and make a lot of money. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with Ken Rusk.

Ken Rusk, welcome to Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. It's a pleasure to have you on our show.

Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure of ours. So for those of you who don't know Ken, Ken is the author of Blue Collar Cash: Love Your Work, Secure Your Future, and Find Happiness for Life. Those in the audience that don't know you, Ken, could you maybe introduce yourself? And I personally love a more long-winded introduction, and I know you have an awesome story starting with your father. So anything you can share with our audience about who you are would be awesome.

Great. Well, you know, my journey started when I was about 15. You know, I was like anybody else. I wanted to get my first used I wanted to go out and make money for gas and for pizza and whatever, take my girlfriend out. So I always had a very strong work ethic watching my father growing up. He worked very, very hard. And it was kind of fortuitous because high school shared a fence with an industrial park. And in order to get to the carryout after school, my buddies and I would go through this fence to get to that area and just hang out. And there was this one particular building there that had all this activity, a lot of energy, a lot of really good positive energy, and things were just happening. And I thought, I wonder what that's all about. So it ended up it was basically a ditch digging company where they repaired leaky basements, foundations, and that kind of thing. So I remember going there and just saying, what do you guys do here? And they said, well, this is what we do and this is how you can earn money, whatever. And I said, well, you know, I'm young, I'm strong, I can make that happen. So I spent the next several years digging ditches in the summertime and then working in the office in the wintertime. I think what was most important about that is I was in control of my, my own input and therefore my own output. That way I could control my own income as well. And it was really cool because I started hitting these little tiny goals with that job, and so much so that when the boss of the company decided we were going to spread out around the country and open franchises, he came to me and said, do you want to do that? Do you want to help us do that? And, uh, I'll never forget, I sat down with my dad and I said, Dad, I can either go to college or I can get this amazing college-like experience opening up businesses around the country on other people's dimes. And it was a real simple decision for him. He was like, yeah, you can go and do that. That's going to be a great time for you to learn.

And how did your career evolve from there?

Well, I spent several years living out of a suitcase, which is— it can be fun if you're young, but after a while I was like, you know, I've had enough of that. We ended up opening a territory here in Northwest Ohio, and since then we've opened another office just south of us here. And we started with 6 employees and now we have almost 200. And here we are, um, some 30 years later, just trying to set a lot of goals and make a lot of things happen.

Awesome. Yeah, well, I love your story. I also love your father's story, and I noticed that he was definitely an inspiration behind What isn't as much to me a blue-collar cash mentality as it is just an open perspective about what it is you want to do with your life and being able to have the confidence to follow that.

Well, absolutely. I mean, if you think of in this day and age, a 12-year-old, you know, getting on a bus and getting on a train and going to downtown Cleveland and driving papers around in cabs. And, you know, back then, if you wanted something printed, you had to hire a company to print it for you. And so he would go and get all these contracts and whatever that were coming out of these printing houses, and he would deliver them around the city of Cleveland. And he did that when he was 12. So I mean, imagine sending your kid this day and age downtown to go do some of those things. I mean, and he always found a way to make money, and it was— he went from one thing to the next and just kept capitalizing on it. And I think that was a good experience for me to learn from.

Yeah, he was the youngest store manager, was it, of Kroger's?

Yeah, he took over an entire portion of a Kroger store, a grocery store, and he just really polished up whatever division he had, whether he was in the lettuce division or the— whatever divisions he was in. And they started taking notice, so they would send their trainees to have him train them. And after a while, he said, can I have my own store? And they said, well, you didn't necessarily go to college. He said, yeah, I know, but I'm training your college graduates. graduates right now. So they finally said, yeah, we can't argue with that. And they gave him his own store. He was the youngest store manager in their history at 21 years of age.

And then for you, I know you're a modest, you know, pretty humble person, but I mean, you were what, 22, were you, when they chartered you to go off and start to create these different territories for the company?

Yeah, in some ways I was doing it when I was 20, but it was a pretty scary thing to go to Chicago and have to try to build out an office environment with, you You know, people that have been doing that, you know, these big union plumbing shops and electric shops, and they knew exactly what they wanted to do. And here I was trying to tell them how to build out an office. It was pretty intimidating, but you get a whole lot of quick and harder knowledge that way.

For sure. So I do want to stay on script, but I love the story and I love all the elements of the story. You shared it very authentically in your book, and I appreciate that. So that was an introduction to Ken, but now let's talk a little bit about Blue Collar Cash. Which is your new book. So on Amazon, you are currently— you have 4.8 stars out of 5, which of all the books I've seen, that's definitely up there. And actually, it would qualify for the Amazon Book Storefronts. I don't know if you've seen those, but they have storefronts now where you have to, I think, be a 4.7 and above. So it's a very select group. So that's awesome. You've got over 100 reviews on your book even though it was just published. I think one thing that would be helpful for our audience is learning like who would be maybe the right person that would want to You know, I've been asked that a lot, and it's a great question.

I think if you are, let's say, a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, or if you're mentoring anybody that's trying to figure out what they want to do with their life, I think this is a good book for you to read first and then share it with them, have them read it. We've gotten some amazing feedback, Ryan, from people who've said, I read this book, I gave it to my son or daughter, and they read it, and then we had these unbelievable conversations that they might not have had otherwise. I also think if you're someone who maybe you took the college route and it really wasn't for you, and, you know, you're in some cubicle on the 15th floor doing something and you're really not happy with that path, and you think, God, there's so much more I could do that I would be more passionate about, this can kind of help you transition from that job back to maybe something that you want to do with your hands, a craft or skill or a trade. And finally, I think if you're a small business owner and you're trying to create really really loyal long-term employees who can think for themselves and who can self-manage and be goal-oriented, this is a really good book for them as well.

So probably for the employees of the business but also the business owners themselves because there's a lot of elements in here that share your entrepreneurial journey and kind of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur when a lot of times you kind of feel like you're by yourself. You know, you need to have tremendous courage, you need to have tremendous faith, you need to constantly be giving back and Once you start to take that path, there aren't really that many peers other than a couple of organizations that support you with that.

Well, yeah, they always said, you know, when you're sitting in that chair, there's nobody behind you. So you're kind of running it with and through the people that you have. And that's, I think, for me, that's one of the things that we talk about most. You know, people have heard this a lot around my company, but, you know, I've always believed that I can't get what I want, nor can my company get what it wants or needs until everybody within an organization gets what they want first. And if you live by that theory, there should be a whole lot of team building and great culture to create people who are entrepreneurial in their thinking, and that drives your company, you know, much farther than you can drive it yourself.

That's very true. All right, so let's touch on the 10 chapters of the book. I unfortunately don't have them memorized, even though I've read the book twice. But I want to touch on each of these chapters so that a reader knows what it is they're getting into as they, uh, hopefully crack the book open. So in the beginning, you give an introduction of kind of who you are and why someone would come to the book, which is what we just talked about. Chapter 1, about the power of your mind. Chapter 2, about your story. Chapter 3, comfort, peace, and freedom, which I know are 3 big elements of your life today that you've kind of manifested over time.

Yes.

Which, uh, resonate with me for sure. And, you know, it is a 3-legged kind of stool, and, um, I think a lot of entrepreneurs really focus on like 1 or 2 of those elements, but, you know, really should be focusing on all 3. Uh, America, the land of the free and home of the skilled. I really loved when you touched on that, and it really brings us back to the stories of our immigrants and things like that, which is really cool. The reality of college in America, before we go into Uh, much further. I'm going to share a few statistics that are kind of eye-opening. The Beautiful Reality of the Blue Collar Life: A Lesson in Time. Setting Your Goals and Following the Right Path. Going at It Alone: Ready for Launch: A Story of Persistence and Resilience. And Remembering What Is Important: Give, Get, and Give Again.

Mm-hmm.

So let's touch on real fast, let's touch on the college statistics and The one that really stuck out to me, first off, I didn't realize that an average degree is actually a secure degree nowadays, but it does make sense to me.

Right.

So if you're to look at a secure degree and you look at the average cost or the average value of debt that people accumulate through student loans, you're looking at about school costing about $39,000 a year equates to about, you know, a little over $200,000 in student loan debt that people are potentially accumulating, or at least they're paying for college. If you decided not— and I'm a proponent of college to a degree.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I went to college, I had a great experience, I learned certain skills that are invaluable. But if you look at just black and white, you're going to school, it's costing you about $220,000. Or if you decide not to go to school for those 6 years and you get into the workforce, And let's say you're earning the, the average, I think you said was around that same number actually. So you're earning a little over $200,000 over the course of that 6 years. There's going to be naysayers who say, well, once you pay taxes, you know, that's down to $140,000. But then you could also say, once you're accumulating those loans, that interest is scaling rapidly, especially if you can't pay it back, which is something I experienced for a short period of my career.

Absolutely.

So that's about a $400,000 difference at the age of 24 years old. That's mind-blowing to me. I mean, what— that's my core kind of takeaway from that. I mean, for me personally, I had to be a 1% earner through luck, hard work, all these different things. I became a 1% earner at the age of like 27, did that for a couple years. Well, and I'm lucky I'm in a sales career. Finally, I was able to get out of debt enough where I could invest my earnings, the little bit that I was able to accumulate, into Book Thinkers to then go and become an entrepreneur. So—

Sure.

From my perspective, I'm now 29 years old. I worked my tail off. I had a lot of success, and now I can do it. But there also could be that mentality of maybe I didn't go to college, I did all the same stuff, and I could have done it at like the age of 23 or 24 years old. And had a bunch of different kind of learnings in the process. So yeah, the college statistics is pretty mind-blowing to me. What's your takeaway on that?

Well, you know, again, I like what you said there. I'm not an anti-college guy either. I'm an anti-college-is-for-everybody guy. I don't think it was meant for everybody. In fact, when I was in high school, I remember the teacher— I think I was in 10th grade in econ class— and the teacher said, raise your hand if you're going to school. And I think only about maybe a third to a half of us raised our hand. And I thought that seemed pretty balanced because We can't as a society, if you have supply and demand, if you're looking at 165 million workers today in the United States, more than half of them do something with their hands. If you think about overproducing college degrees, and this is specifically targeted, my comments are targeted more towards the guy or the gal who just said, I'm going to school because my teacher said I had to, or my parents said you got to go. I don't know why I'm going, I don't know what I'm going to do with it, and I'm going to come out of school with this bland business degree, a whole bunch of debt, and I don't know what I'm going to do with that. So, um, these nonspecific degrees are the ones that I think we have to really be careful about, because to your point, if you're talking about a $400,000 swing, that's a swing in your personal asset base. So, I mean, if you're in your early 20s, that could be your first house, your first car, and a fully funded 401. By the time you're 23, 24 years old. So you really have to take a serious look at, am I going there for a specific reason that I can market once I get out? Because if you're just going there to play beer pong and get one of these degrees and then come out with a bunch of debt, it could take you years to pay that off. So you have to look at the efficiency of all that and the ROI involved as well.

And you can still play beer pong.

You can still play beer pong.

It's not a bad game. The other element that I really liked was that 20— I think it was 27% of people are working in fields in which they got their degree in.

Yeah.

And that is just mind-blowing to me as well.

So if you think about it, they talk about up to 40% go into college not knowing why they're going. That's a big number to take on a bunch of debt. And then if you think about, you know, these statistics that you just mentioned, that's a lot of people that came out of school with a degree that they aren't using, you really have to take a serious look before you go down that path. That is, is that really what I want to do?

I think what's important to maybe touch on before we change gears is, like you said, you are a proponent of college just like I am, and you touched on a little bit. What was it like when you were a child and you were— or I guess in high school— and what was the narrative then versus the narrative today? Because that's a big aspect of it, right? Like what your peers are telling you to do.

Back then, there wasn't any high schools who called themselves college prep high schools, and if there were, they were very specific schools that were private schools that you went to that, you know, maybe your parents shipped you away for the whole school year and you went there because, you know, they wanted you to be a politician or something. I don't know. But nowadays, these schools are almost priding themselves on calling themselves prep college prep schools They're almost measuring themselves by how much scholarship money is thrown at their students. And I just think they really have to be careful with that. Because if supply and demand works, it's a beautiful power in our economy, supply and demand. If you oversupply college degrees and you undersupply blue-collar workers, where's the money going to go? It has to go on the demand side, which is what we're seeing now. I mean, we're seeing carpenters and plumbers and Electricians and welders and machinists make as much as lawyers and early family doctors. So, I mean, it's insane what's happening out there. And again, we just have to be really careful to have a balanced economy that way.

Yeah, I think one of the takeaways that I really enjoyed and I think would be a reason for someone to pick it up in itself is in like the appendix or in the last chapter, you noted all of the different career titles that you can have within the blue-collar workforce and roughly what that pay would be. That's cool too, because when you go to college, or at least for me, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do or what was out there.

Sure.

So it's good to be able to get that fresh perspective on things. And we'll talk a little bit more later about the current crisis that we're coming against in the workforce. Let's talk about comfort, peace, and freedom.

Okay.

What does that mean to you, and why do you think it's so important?

You know, when I first started writing this book, I was actually writing a letter to my daughter who was suffering from cancer at the time. And she's fine and she came through it well. But I just remembered that, you know, I was busy at work and I was trying to grow my company and other things that I had invested in and whatnot. And I wanted— you know, when something like that happens to you as a parent, it stops you right in your tracks. So you instantly start looking at how am I using my time, okay? And am I wasting time anywhere? Am I not using my time properly? So For me, I started writing a letter to her, to my daughter, about what I thought was important in life in addition to, you know, financial gains and that kind of thing, successes. And these 3 words just kept coming back to me, Ryan: comfort, peace, and freedom. Comfort, peace, and freedom. I couldn't get rid of them. And I started to figure out that— theorize that they were kind of interdependent upon each other, almost like points of a triangle. And one supported the other and supported the other. And if you took one away, the thing would kind of collapse on you. So Comfort, peace, and freedom are concepts that if you can look in the mirror and truly own them and say, wow, my life, the way I envisioned it, the way I've achieved it, I have, you know, I have comfort, comfort with who I am, you know, where I am and where I live and how I live. And because of that, there's a certain amount of peace in my head. You know, I don't stress out about a lot of things. I don't carry burdensome debt and unnecessary things like that. Those 2 things work together to create a peace inside of you that is elusive to most people. And if you can get those 3 concepts down, you beat probably 99% of the people out there at any level. I mean, we're not all going to be mega yachts and McMansions, you know, and 15 cars. It's all about— in fact, some of the people that I know that aspire to do that are miserable. They may be rich, but they're unhappy. And I love finding people that are kind of like in this mid-range of their life and they just have it, they just have it nailed. Okay. And they have that triangle of comfort, peace, and freedom. And it's a great thing to see people have.

Yeah, I could not agree more.

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So we have about, uh, 15, 20 minutes left, and I want to touch on a couple of the exercises. One thing I love about good books are they're able to give you different exercises that you can then go and apply in your life. So it's not like you're just learning, learning, learning to hopefully retain, but now you're actually implementing, which helps with retention.

Sure.

I want to talk about the crayon exercise.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, you know, it's funny because about 30 years ago I sat down with a gentleman who was 19 at the time. He still works here at our company 30 years later— 33 years, actually. And he came to me with these challenges. He had this challenge with debt, and he had this challenge with medical bills, and he had this challenge with growing his family and getting married and buying a house and doing all those things. And he didn't know how to attack it all. So we literally just sat down with a piece of paper and we started drawing things out. How can you get here? How can you get rid of that? How can you obtain that? How can you long-term this one? How can you really long-term that one? And the more we built this vision, we created like a mosaic or a painting or a puzzle, if you will. And we just separated it into little pieces and we just went after it one piece at a time. So that became kind of a thing that we've been doing around here for the last couple of decades. And what's fun about it is you get someone in who really doesn't know what they want the rest of their life to look like. So you sit them down, you give them a piece of paper and Good old-fashioned box of 64 Crayola crayons, and they actually start drawing what they want their life to look like. I mean, in real detail, right? I'm talking about, are you a house person? Are you a condo person, an apartment person? Are you a minivan or a pickup truck or an electric car or a bus rider? Are you a dog or a cat person? And if so, what kind and what would you name it? What are your hobbies? What are your give-back-to-community goals? What do all those things look like? What sports do you do? What things you want to learn. And they just create this whole puzzle for what they want their life to look like. And it's a fun exercise because once you know what you want your life to look like— and they're all different, by the way— it's kind of like, Ken, get out of my way now, let me go do that. And therefore, there's so much power in that collective, if you will, that the people drive themselves and the company drives itself to heights that you would never have imagined.

I like how you touched on in the book there's people who create these kind of visual representations of what they want their life to look like with goals. And then there's— so there's a lot of people who don't do that. Then there's people who do do that. And then there's people who do that but then also touch on it routinely and have it out in the open. And those are the ones who ultimately produce those lives that they've always wanted to manifest.

Yeah.

And I'm a big believer in manifestation, whether it's conscious or subconscious. I think people are always manifesting their destiny. I wish everyone could see your office here because there's manifestation everywhere.

There is. Yeah, there really is. You know, I— it's funny because I believe, Ryan, in living a life of anticipation. I think you should be constantly anticipating things, whether it's this weekend, 6 months down the road, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years of retirement, whatever. And, um, so I'm constantly anticipating things that I want to do, and once I've done them, I kind of give myself little, like, memories of them. I surround myself with those things so that When I'm in my office, I can look around and smile at some of the things that I've done because it just reinforces that what you see, what you want, you attract yourself to. Then you go out and you get it.

Even goal setting. You touched a lot on goal setting, uh, in your book as well. So one more exercise for the community, the skyscraper exercise, because that's a— it's a little bit of manifestation as well.

It is. And you know, this is something that everybody can do. And the greatest part about the entrepreneurial spirit is people think, oh, if you're an entrepreneur You're like some special person. We all have the qualities of entrepreneurship within us. We just have to wake them up. We just have to get them out from our closet. You know, they're hidden behind the shoes you haven't worn in 10 years. Okay. So when you think about those types of, those types of traits, resilience, persistence, you know, all the things that we talk about in the book, if you can visualize something and you start to build something by just saying, I've never built, in this case, a skyscraper. I've never built a skyscraper before, but if I did, I probably would have to hire, let's say, an architect.

Okay, good.

I've never built a skyscraper before, but if I did, I'd probably need to hire an architect and then a builder. And I've never built a skyscraper before. And you keep going through this exercise. I have to find a supplier of materials. I'd have to find a site. I'd have to get some permits. And the more you walk yourself through doing it, At some point, you actually have done it in your mind, and then you can go out and build a skyscraper. I mean, I hate to say this, but you can literally do that. Um, and, and you can use any instance in life, whether it's a goal to learn a language, or it's, you know, you want to buy a new car, or you want to volunteer somewhere. Just put yourself in position to thinking you have already done it and how you got there. You can do anything.

It's kind of my entire career has actually been, uh, you know, you have a lot of great people around you, but in order to create success that's extraordinary, it's almost like you just have to map it out yourself and then create a plan. And I like how you touch on goals a lot in your book, even like, you know, goals that you have this week.

Sure.

Because in that creates a fire behind you, you know, fuel to be able to go accomplish that, and energy. That's really cool. Um, and you get to celebrate. You get to celebrate these little wins as well.

Absolutely.

All right, so for the people who— I mean, I know this book isn't, isn't particularly for blue-collar workers at all. I think it's for like people who are like me, you know, like, like a lot of people in our community who aren't really sure what you want to do with your, uh, career path. But when I was in high school, I thought to my— I actually was a part of 5 generations of construction in my family, family-owned business. And this wasn't the case in my family, but I always thought, like, if I go down the blue-collar path, I may tweak my back, or I may—

Yeah.

Like, I don't know if when I'm, you know, 50 years old if I necessarily want to be dealing with back ailments. And so, yeah, I only bring that up because it's clear in the book that the salaries for blue-collar workers are strong. There's a lot of benefits to blue-collar work.

Sure.

I think the downside may be what I'm describing. So what's your take on that?

Well, you know, it's funny that you ask that because if you look at current health trends, you heard recently that they're now saying that sitting is the new cancer, which means, you know, moving your body is something that everybody should do. And, you know, obviously we have a lot of challenges with health in our country from people that just aren't getting enough movement. Okay, you find me a guy who's been out working outside in the sun with fresh air, and he's moving, he's exercising all day long through him, through his day. You find me a gal who is willing to go out and maybe be a landscaper and have her own landscaping business, and she's done really well for herself. I'll find some people who are really, really healthy, really, really young-looking 65-year-olds. So I would aspire to say, if you can, move as much as possible.

Yeah, totally. And I, I always say to our community, and I do it every day, I get 30 minutes in the sun because of the vitamins that it provides you naturally.

Vitamin D for sure.

The vitamins, the tan, you got a tan going. You know, there's a lot of good elements to this blue-collar lifestyle.

Absolutely.

We got a couple more minutes. Let's talk a little bit about Blue Collar Crisis. What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the industry and You know, you talked a lot about supply and demand, which the little knowledge I have of economics, I do remember supply and demand and how important that is. Yeah, because leverage is important in your life. The more leverage you can gain and the more you can make yourself valuable, the more you can earn.

Well, real quickly, you know, I don't think this was anybody's insidious effort to make this happen, but we have this giant imbalance right now. And, you know, back in my day, we had shop class in high school, and those classes were kind of replaced by computers. Well, obviously we need to learn computers, right? But I didn't ever think it was a binary choice, one versus the other, you know, one replacing the other. So we've created a whole generation of kids who didn't get the chance to just accidentally discover carpentry or plumbing or mechanics or cooking or whatever that might be. Now you pair that with technology where instead of kids going out in their backyard and building a tree fort with hammers and nails and wood, they're building it on a little computer screen in their lap. They're just not getting that type of experience. So what happens is, if you combine that— those 2 forces with this drive towards college, you have this perfect storm of creating a black hole of opportunity on the opposite side of that. And so to me, this is going to continue Until we remove the stigma of working in a blue-collar field, it's just going to continue with the supply side being ever-shrinking on the side of people willing to do things with their hands. And we may be over-promoting the college side. So I see long-term benefit and long-term opportunity on the blue-collar side for anyone who wants to take that path.

Yeah, for sure. And in the book, you did a great job of representing a number of those roles and kind of what the supply and demand is today, right? I know, for example, my grandfather, he went from one area of the industry to the next, and eventually woodworking, because it was so specialized. Sure. You know, he was able to see a greater return through that level of specialization. And stonemasons, you know, you mentioned a lot of jobs that you have the opportunity to earn a lot more because you've developed this unique skill set that people aren't necessarily learning today. And an older workforce, right?

Well, yeah. I mean, you— for every 5 electricians that are retiring, only 1 is coming online. So you can see what that's going to do real quickly to that industry. Same thing happens with carpentry and plumbing and, and like you said, stonemasons, which is an art form in itself. I had a gentleman that worked in my house who was a stonemason. I had to wait 6 months for him to get to my house, and he charged a really good fee. And when he got there, you know, he was driving his brand new pickup truck and he's out there in his jeans and boots and his t-shirt, and he's got Led Zeppelin cranked and he's got his coffee, and him and his buddies are just having a blast building these Amazing works of art, you know, fences and outdoor kitchens and patios. And this guy has nobody to leave his business to. He's making a really great salary. I mean, really great. And he has no one to leave it to and he wants to retire. So you can see if somebody was entrepreneurial in their thinking, they would say, you know what, I'm going to work for that guy for a couple years and take that company over. And bam, you know, there's the $400,000 swing right there.

Yeah, totally. And I like the representation of, uh, what that working experience is like too.

Oh yeah.

You know, I remember, and it is pretty nice. I think one cool thing in this book that everyone will enjoy is when you talk about immigration. And if you put yourself in the shoes actually of an immigrant, it's like these people who are your ancestors, they were coming over, you know, from another continent. They had saved up just enough money to be able to take the boat and to survive for some period of time in this new foreign land. So if you think about the whole experience, they're saving up money, they're saying goodbye to their families, they're taking a boat— I think you said like 1 month maybe— yeah, across the ocean with a bunch of strangers.

Sure.

They're getting to the other side, they don't know what that land necessarily looks like or what there is for opportunity, right? And they're basically banking on themselves to be able to create an income for themselves and be able to like also shelter, you know, all the essentials that are required for life by themselves with a bunch of strangers and without their family. So I don't know if there's anything you might want to touch on there, but I really appreciate that perspective in the book. And I think that's one that we all kind of need to draw ourselves back to because those are the people who made such a large impact on future generations of families.

Well, just quickly to say this, think of the bravery in that. I mean, you know, you talk about these characteristics in the book that make up an entrepreneur. Right now, okay, think of if your parents put you on a plane and flew you over to Europe and said, here's $500, have a nice life, go do what you can. And you're landing there, you might not even know the language, and you get off the plane and now you have to walk. Where's my next meal going to be? Where's my job going to be? Where's my— where am I going to sleep tonight? I mean, think of the absolute bravery in that. And, you know, they might have been escaping back then some maybe tough regimes and some brutal governments and whatever, but Think of the bravery it took for them to just pack it all in and come to this country and say, I'm just going to give it a shot, see what happens. It's a character trait that, you know, we may be missing a little bit nowadays based on their experiences.

So what do you think, Connor? You think it's a pretty, uh, brave thing to do?

It's—

I mean, I don't have a personal experience, but solid. I think it is.

Yeah, totally. We only have a few more minutes. I want to make sure— I think everyone needs to actually— I say this all the time, You need to read the book to be able to actually take in all these different elements to the degree that one should experience them. Um, I know your book is available on all main channels in both audio, physical, and electronic, uh, reading format. I also saw though that you're doing something with Make-A-Wish, which I've personally donated to Make-A-Wish for, you know, my entire career, my 7 years. And I've certainly never had an article written by the CEO of Make-A-Wish specific for me. But maybe just, if you don't mind, just talking a little bit about what you do with Make-A-Wish.

Yeah, so for the last 20-some years, we sponsored wishes. And I think, you know, for us here particularly, we like to donate money to people who we can see what the effect of it's gonna be locally. And that's not to say that national charities or worldwide charities aren't good either. It's just our philosophy is, We want to see how the money is helping someone directly. And so we get very involved in the wishes of these kids, and we give a wish away every single year, have been doing it for 20 years, and it's my goal to continue that. So we've made a long-term commitment to continue to support Make-A-Wish over the next several years. But what I wanted to do specifically with this book was all of my author proceeds I'm giving away towards funding wishes for kids. yet this year. So I'm really hoping that in the next 30 to 60 days, we can get enough book sales to create multiple wishes. I mean, we do one every year. I'd like to do 5 before Christmas, if that's even possible, or even into the early spring. So for me, I'm hoping that people realize that the book is a win-win. You know, they can get some good information for themselves. Maybe they can give it away as a gift to someone who they think needs some help. But knowing all the while that however you made that choice, that you're going to be helping some child that is suffering and would really love to have a wish this time of year. So hopefully we can make that happen in a big way.

Basically, if someone's to buy the book for themselves or for a gift for someone in their family or everyone in their family, that is a donation to Make-A-Wish.

It is.

So instead of a $20 book purchase, you're actually donating to Make-A-Wish and you're receiving this book.

Yeah.

That's really cool. And if you go on Ken's website—

kenrusk.com, and you can go to kenrusk.com/makewish to learn A little bit more about that.

So on Ken's website, you know, there's a lot of videos about people that have been impacted, and I would advise everyone go and check that out as well. Last thing, I saw a bunch of presents in the lobby.

Yeah.

What are you doing with those?

Well, every year we do a drive where we support other local charities, whether it's a Mom's House charity, which is a place that, um, if someone in high school has a child and they want to continue their schooling, they can have their child stay there during the day. And they have to be involved in the charity or involved in the house. They have to help maintain the house. They have to get good grades in order to keep that program up. So again, they're fighting and they're fighting to make their life, you know, normal in a situation that they find themselves in. So we donate a lot of presents to all the little kids who are there at the house during the day. We think it's an awesome charity. And we also support other places, you know, abuse shelters and that kind of thing where people can go and, you know, you know, spend a few days while they're getting their life together. So we challenge the entire office, and we have our production staff versus the office staff, and we're going to see who wins this year to come up with the most toys. But usually we fill the whole foyer up with stuff, and it's just an amazing experience.

And you said they go down there, right?

Yeah, we literally have to— we take these presents and we wrap them up, and we take them down to the actual places, these charity houses, and we just have a blast because you get to experience You know, you know what your life is like, but you get to experience what, what some challenged lives might look like. And it changes you as a person to get involved in this. And I think to me, there's no better thing than, you know, to whom much is given, much is expected, they say. And we like to live that here.

So. Well, Ken, I appreciate everything that you do.

Thank you.

Now all you guys know where you can find Blue Collar Cash. And if you don't know, you can reach out to Ken Rusk Official, I think, on Instagram. Or Book Thinkers, and we can help you help others. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives and By reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.