Ken Rusk Transcript

Clint Betts

Welcome to the CEO.com show. I'm with Ken Rusk, who is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker who defied the odds by achieving the Wall Street Journal bestseller status with his book Blue Collar Cash. Very excited to have you here, Ken. You also host a podcast called Comfort, Peace, and Freedom, where you impart wisdom on personal and professional fulfillment, and you have a course on the path to a successful life. I believe all of this can be found because I was on your website earlier today at kenrusk.com. Everyone should check that out. Ken, welcome.

Ken Rusk

Thanks, Clint. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Clint Betts

How did you get started in all of this? Man, your story is fascinating.

Ken Rusk

Well, I guess they accused me of being a blue-collar entrepreneur of sorts, whatever that is, and it was all kind of born out of necessity. I started working on culture 35, 38 years ago because we had to; I mean, we're a bunch of ditch diggers, proud as we can be. There were six of us. Now there's 200 of us. You know, you can't get away with running a culturally inept organization if you're doing that kind of hard, laborious work. So it is funny because I have people who come to me now and say, "Oh, I guess I have to start working on this cultural thing." And I'm like, well, I was doing it before culture was even cool. So yeah, it was kind of born out of necessity. And here we are.

Clint Betts

So give us a sense for Blue Collar Cash and why you think this is so important, particularly now, and I want to know why you think it's important. Maybe even more so because I think I have an argument as to why I think it might be more important in the age of AI.

Ken Rusk

Well, taking the first part of it, I'm a big believer in supply and demand, no matter what it is. And I just couldn't believe that back in the eighties, we started getting rid of shop classes in our high schools and replacing those rooms with computers, which is fine, but why did we have to choose one or the other? Why couldn't we have had both? Because that's literally where millions of kids across the country accidentally discovered how cool it was to be a carpenter or a plumber, an electrician, a welder, someone who did hair or nails, or a baker or whatever. And so you had that kind of black hole of missing people that used to just feed into the system.

And then you have these kids that now instead of going out and building tree forts with a hammer and nails and some plywood, they found they're working building Minecraft on their cell phones, which isn't the same thing as, you know, it's just not the same experience. So if you pair those couple things up with the fact that colleges got really good at shaming parents to this day that if you don't take your kid through college, they'll be a loser and they'll never amount to anything, which is literally never been true, and it's certainly not true now. It's more untrue now than it's ever been, and that's all created this enormous supply and demand problem where, as you know, where supply is low and demand is high, that's where the money goes. That is certainly what you're seeing today, and that's kind of what I'm trying to talk about.

Clint Betts

I think you're dead right about the college thing. We're kind of now; it's pretty not controversial to say, "Hey, you don't need to go to college." But it should have never been controversial. We should have been saying this in the eighties, the nineties, and the 2000s. It is interesting that it's just now that we're waking up to the stack, and again, it's saying that you don't have to go to college. It's not the same thing as saying college is bad or you shouldn't go to college. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. Who knows? But absolutely, you have to go to college. No, that's never been true. I think you're dead right about that.

Ken Rusk

Well, it's funny you say that because I have a lot of friends who are doctors, surgeons, lawyers, accountants, and all that stuff. And hey, if you're going to operate on my shoulder so I can get back out on the golf course, Clint, I want you to know everything there is to know about a knife before you come at me with it. I get that, but notwithstanding those job-specific types of degrees, just to go to play beer pong for four years and come out and go, okay, Now I'm in debt 80,000 to 100,000 grand, and I have no prospects for the degree that I got." That's where I think colleges really kind of snowed us a little bit, and I think we're all just kind of asleep at the switch from parents to guidance counselors to high schools. That was all. I'm so proud of my kid if he has a college degree, and that's crazy.

I actually wrote an open letter to parents on my website and said, "I get it. I have a child. And I remember when she was very small, you birthed your child, you clothed your child, you fed your child, you protected them, you raised them as much as you could. You try to teach them what you can. And now, for some reason, you think the only way that you can walk the earth and say I'm a good parent is if they have a four-year degree on the wall." That's the part where I go sideways with that thinking because I have a lot of friends who are all blue-collar guys; they're all entrepreneurs, and they're all just killing it. And those jobs haven't gone away. I mean, 167 million people are working in our country, and 77 million of those people do something with their hands to this very moment, and that's never gone away. So, trying to shove everybody into school, oversupplied that side, undersupplied our side, and now you're seeing the result of that.

Clint Betts

It is kind of funny to think about paying 100,000 grand to get really good at beer pong. I'm not sure in your book and writing, and of course you talk a lot about the power of a clear vision and goal setting. How do you recommend leaders do this with their teams?

Ken Rusk

Well, I looked at it only from my own experience because I had to find a way to keep people long-term, loyal, interested, engaged, effective, and profitable, right? And driving. So, I figured out a long time ago that companies are linear creatures; Clint has this input from one side. There are people, there are products, there are raw materials, there's something that gets created or built like a product, or a service, or software, whatever. And then there's a price attached to that, and hopefully, that thing is sold, and then once it's sold, it's installed and paid for, and then there's profit.

Well, guess what? I'm standing as the leader at the end of that line every single time. So why wouldn't I want everybody in front of me before me involved in that process to win as much as they can for themselves? So you'll hear me say often, I've said this a hundred times, "I can't get what I want, nor can my company get what it wants or needs until all of you get what you want for yourselves first because I'm a firm believer in the fact that if you have 200 people chasing something very personal for themselves within your four walls, those goals, those timed pathways, they will align with the corporate goals almost every time. And if those are on the same parallel track, that's where the beautiful thing called momentum happens and then get out of the way because your company's going to go a lot further than you can take it yourself, that's for sure."

Clint Betts

Go deeper into this idea of personal visions and how one might create them.

Ken Rusk

So, I think people react way too much in life. They think, well if I go to high school and if I get good grades, and then if I get a scholarship and if I go to college and get a degree, and then if I land this job, well, then I can start figuring how I want to live. I think that's completely backward. I think we all kind of know what we want our life to look like as we start to go out into the world. I think we know what kind of house we'd like to have, what kind of cars we'd like to drive, what kind of sports we'd like to do, our hobbies, what kind of pet we want, a dog or a cat? What color? What would you name it? I think we all know what our vacations would look like. I think we would know what our charity would be if we had an extra 100 bucks in our hands to give away our spirituality. I think we know all those things, and yet we don't trust ourselves to put that out there. We wait for society to tell us what to do or to react to some stimulus or some expectation that somebody has of us.

And I think that's where the difference lies. You can't work in our company unless you're chasing something personal for yourself. And so I just think we all have the ability. There's the whole half of our brain that we don't use. That's the creative, proactive, predictive, and anticipatory side, and we just don't use the visual side because we're just busy reacting all day to everything. So once you realize that you are in control of what your best-lived life and the design of that could be, it's kind of freeing because now you're saying, "So I don't have to listen to my uncle or my dad, or my teacher, or I don't have to listen to society with what they want from me. I can trust myself to know what that is." So yeah, I teach people vision all day, every day, because without it, there is no destination. Without a destination, there's no path; without a path, there's no anticipation. There's just kind of boredom every Friday, chasing the paycheck life, and that's not the way we do it here.

Clint Betts

I think what you just described is probably why your book struck such a nerve and ended up on the bestseller list. What has the response been to your book from those who've read it and the various people that you coach? Give us a sense of the results that have come from this.

Ken Rusk

Well, there were three readers, and I didn't expect one of them. So people buying this book for their son or daughter who's 17 to 30 years old, that was easy. I mean, I figured that would happen, right? Parents or kids taking the course together, showing their child to giving him or her the ability to trust themselves and their decisions. I think that was kind of what I was after. What I didn't expect was people calling me up and saying, "Well, I was a plumber in high school and in college. I went to college because my parents told me I had to. I've been 15 years in this cubicle on the 10th floor of this building, selling medical supplies, and I'm miserable. So, I quit that job and went back to being a plumber. I've never been happier, and I owe that to you." So they don't owe it to me. They don't. All I did was-

Clint Betts

Well, I'm probably making more money as a plumber, too.

Ken Rusk

Well, they are. And you know what else? They get that control thing, too. They control their input, their output, and the quality of the output. They control their day, their time, their schedule, and their financial gain. So that's a really big thing. The third reader, which I didn't expect, was this thing that kind of got book-clubbed by companies. They would buy copies of the book for their staff, and then they would read a chapter a week and sit down and talk about it. The ultimate goal, in my mind, if you're an entrepreneur, is to have as many intrapreneurial people around you who can create divisions and run them themselves; they're their own companies and then help you drive the business. So that was the reader that I didn't expect, but it's been a welcome one, that's for sure.

Clint Betts

How do you instill this idea of lifelong learning? Again, we just said, "Hey, college is not a necessary path. It probably never has been for a lot of jobs, majority of jobs and majority of people, but we've kind of instilled that." But you're not saying, "Don't learn." Right? You're saying instill this idea of lifelong learning and hard work. How do you coach companies and leaders to do that?

Ken Rusk

Well, let's assume that I dumped a 1,000-piece puzzle on your table right now, and I asked you to put it together, and the first thing you would say is, "Okay, well, where's the box cover?" And I would say, "Nope, I'm sorry I'm taking the box cover away." You would have an awfully difficult time building that puzzle other than probably the framework where all the one edges are square, right? And there's a reason for that. I've been told that to build a 1,000-piece puzzle, you have to look at that box cover 100,000 times. If you think about that, it is really something when you talk about building a simple puzzle.

So, the lifelong learning for me is what is your life going to look like? What pieces and parts of the puzzle are there? What does the picture look like that you're starting with, and how do we go after that and get it? Because everybody has their own vision or version of what their comfort, peace, and freedom are or what their best-lived life can be. And some people are going to chase mega yachts, mansions, 15 cars, and that kind of thing. Other people are going to say, "You know what? Put me in a nice house and out in the country, get me a couple of cars, get me a couple acres of land. Let me have my dogs, and let me take my four-wheeler and run it around. I want to raise a family and have a nice, comfortable, quiet life." Everybody has their thing. You just have to give them the space, time, and trust to draw that thing out and then let them go after it. So, for me, lifelong learning is how sophisticated is the puzzle box based on the life you want for yourself. And then, how do you go about getting those small pieces and parts one at a time? Because that's truly the progression of life. That's where the spice comes in when you can anticipate many things happening to you at the same time.

Clint Betts

So how do you coach folks to focus on what truly matters and not compare themselves to others or attach their identity to things that in particular have no particular value to them other than they've been told that should hold value to them?

Ken Rusk

Well, first off, I live by one rule, and that is he or she who dies with the most memories wins. So I think whether it's a car, or a motorcycle, or a jet ski, or whether it's a house, or whether it's a piece of land, or whether it's a relationship or a pet or whatever, you have those things to create memories with you and your family. And so that's what it's always been about. If I swung my camera around, you'd see nothing but memories of things that I've done, places I've gone, and people I've been with, and that, to me, is all of it. So, if I could get into somebody's head and say, "Who do you really see yourself being?" And if you could look back on that and say, "Wow, I live my life like this." You probably beat 99% of the people out there in the general population. So I just talk about let's not worry about the particular things that you acquire, but the friends, family, and the memories you acquire them with. That's what is most important.

Clint Betts

Give me a sense of your take on AI. Everyone's obviously really worried it's going to take everybody's jobs. It seems to be taking white-collar jobs. It seems to only be making blue-collar jobs more valuable, honestly. We'll see if that trend continues, right? But how are you thinking about it?

Ken Rusk

Well, I think it's going to be a really long time before a robot drives a pickup truck in your front yard, pulls out a pine tree, and plants it next to your house. I think that's going to be a while. The other thing about the robots is they're really good with absolutely pristine movements, like precise movements that don't have to change. As soon as you have to think about altering something, changing something, moving something, redesigning, that's where they begin to fall off the efficacy map for me. So I don't think anyone's going to be doing your hair or making your food anytime soon in that respect, especially when it comes to thinking and designing the art form of what you're doing. I think we're a long way away from that. It could surprise me, though. I mean, who knows what these things are capable of? I know that when I ask it a question sometimes, and it gives me an answer, I'm like, wow, that's pretty impressive stuff. But yeah, I don't necessarily think it's going to get into a lot of blue-collar stuff that quickly. If anything, it might enhance what we do already, kind of like the nail gun did to the hammer. It'll enhance what we do, but I'm not so sure it's going to take what we do anytime soon.

Clint Betts

Tell us about your course and how you got started doing it.

Ken Rusk

You have a black background, and I love that because I love the contrast of what I see in you there. It is awesome. A lot of people have backgrounds where they have a bunch of books on the shelf, so sometimes I'll just say, "Hey, off camera, that book, the third one on the left, what's that book and what's it about?" "Oh, I love that book I read." How did that book change your life immediately after you read it? Well, I don't know, but it was a good book. So that kind of scared me because I never wanted my book to just be one of the crowd, one of the many holding up your shelf.

I knew that it took at least three or four times to say something or five times to really imprint it into somebody's mind. So I wanted people to read the book, and then I wanted them to take the course, which is a really simple course. It's eight sessions. They're about 45 minutes a session. You see me, it's all online, but I really teach you how to start thinking differently about your life, how to design your life starting this afternoon, not like next week or like today, and it's a simple thing. I think it's $179. I donate that money to first responders, kids, Goldstar families, and that kind of thing. So it's not a money thing for me. I wanted to make sure that my book actually worked its way into your soul and into your actions, so I kind of hold you accountable by doing it that way.

Clint Betts

What motivated you to donate that money? That's interesting.

Ken Rusk

If you think about people who go to war on our behalf, a lot of times they'll come home and they'll say, "Yesterday I was driving an M1 Abrams tank lobbing bombs at people or targets, and today I'm standing in a grocery store buying peanut butter and jelly, and I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with my life." I could not fathom that happening because we're losing 33 people a day to suicide every day and depression. That doesn't even count the depression, the confusion, the frustration, the anxiety.

So I was thinking to myself, wait a minute. So, if you're going into the armed services, can't you know that you're going to be an electrician before you go into the armed services? Can't you know that you can kind of keep that in your mind as you're going through your service and in your spare time, be reading up on those things, and then when you get out, you automatically know you're going to start your electric company, okay, you're going to start your electrician's business? Isn't that a much clearer, more concise pathway than coming out and going, "Well, now what? I was this person yesterday, and here I am today." So I really wanted to end the confusion, the anxiety, the what if by just positioning people to have this course in this book and know that you are respected, you're not stigmatized, you are absolutely loved, and you're being thanked for what you've done, and we want your mind to be right when it comes back to so you can get down to business and just start living your life.

Clint Betts

What do you want your legacy to be?

Ken Rusk

I think what happens is you hear all these things, the harder you work, the luckier you get, or luck is the labor and under the correct knowledge, and you hear all these things. But I do believe that if you work very, very hard and you are aware, you just keep yourself aware of the opportunities around you, and you live a life of chasing or anticipating things. I think when you start to have that happen, you're very grateful and very blessed. I've gotten almost everything I've ever wanted and worked for it, but I feel very grateful and very blessed, and I also feel like it's incumbent upon me now to help shorten the learning curve of the next entrepreneur that's coming down the line, because I wish people would have told me a couple of things, right? And if I can shorten that learning curve for others, that's really cool. So, my legacy would probably be he had a blast. He lived great, but he also cared a hell of a lot about other people and their successes as well.

Clint Betts

Finally, we end every interview with the same question, and that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?

Ken Rusk

Two people, my father, who was a Marine, and I would call him the imperfect perfectionist because he held me to account on those white walls, and those shiny shoes, and those wire wheels, and waxing the car. He held me accountable for the straight lines on the lawn and all that. And also my first boss who lived a life like Mick Jagger and had no problem telling us all about how to live life in a really, really great way. So those two people combined created a pretty cool but disciplined, but living life big kind of persona in me, and I love them both for it, and I'll never thank them enough.

Clint Betts

That's incredible. Ken, thank you so much for coming on. Really, what an honor to have you. I highly encourage you; like I said, I spent a little bit of time this morning on your website. I highly recommend that people go there, check out the course, and check out the books. It's kenrusk.com. Make sure you check that out. Ken, thank you so much.

Ken Rusk

Thanks, Clint. Appreciate you having me.

Clint Betts

Appreciate it.

Edited for readability.