Business Lessons From A Tradesman-Turned-Trailblazer, With Kenny Chapman

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with Dan Sullivan and very special guest, Kenny Chapman.
 
Dan Sullivan: Kenny's here at my invitation because when he first came into the Program, I was immediately interested in what you do, Kenny, because I'm from blue-collar background. My father was a farmer. He worked at a truck line. So just a little disclosure here. I was born in 1944. So it's 80 years this year that I've been on the planet. And I grew up with everybody who did things with their hands. Most of my schoolmates, their parents were blue-collar. This is northern Ohio in the 1940s. Big growth area at that time. And, you know, we had steel factories, people were really into working with their hands. And then I think it's probably a function of the GI Bill, where everybody who went off to the war, there were 16 million Americans who went off to the war, most of them came back, and they were given massive government benefits after the war. And one of them was that they could get a four-year education very, very low price, and they could get a home loan very, very low price. Still persists today. I was in the military. I got the GI Bill, paid for all my college expenses when I came back.
 
But the emphasis was more and more on corporate organization, what you would call today white-collar work rather than blue-collar work. So when I heard what you did and what your plans were and what your vision was, I was instantly interested because all the trend lines, I'm a political junkie, I'm an economic junkie. And I said, you know, everything's heading in the direction where skilled blue collar is going to be much more crucial and popular, much more needed, much more interested, but much greater future employment, what I would call a guarantee that the blue collar is going to be bigger and bigger and bigger. The other thing is that right now the United States is reassuring their supply trade lines. Okay, so COVID was a big wake-up call that anything that's crucial for day-to-day living, the trade supplies have to be on the continent. They've got to be somewhere, United States, Canada, or Mexico.
 
You're very aware of this because you live in Scottsdale, Arizona. And first of all, it's a place where Americans are migrating to. And it's a case where people are coming from south of the border, they're migrating there too. And people all over the planet. I mean, Arizona is just a very, very prized location right now. But what I found interesting, I've had other people who are in the trades in the Program, but I never met anyone until I met you that had a vision for having a movement. You're almost creating a movement, which is called Blue Collar Success Group. So can you just fill in, first of all, in the past, where you started yourself, and then what gave you the idea of kind of creating a blue trade movement in the United States?
 
Kenny Chapman: You bet. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. And I mirror and agree with what you're saying and what I- My path, much like you, I was in the military, I got the GI Bill, I actually even up to what they call the college fund at the time. So I had even more money to go to college. And when I got out, I still couldn't get myself to go to college, and I couldn't sit there as a student. And so I wasted all that benefit that the military gave me or used it in the right way. And so the military did two things. It gave me that opportunity to see that college wasn't for me. And I believe it made me an entrepreneur because it was the time in grade promotion that drove me crazy. I was a good soldier, and I made the same amount of money as a bad soldier. And I don't understand that philosophy. So I became an entrepreneur. It just didn't manifest until several years down the road when I had an opportunity, for $15,000, I flipped a house and made five grand, and I was able to get a guy to sell me a small drain cleaning business, a one-man shop. For 15,000, I gave him four grand of that fund and he carried back the other 11, and I became a drain cleaner.
 
And I had very low self-esteem and people called me all the names, the turd herder, the poop chaser, all the stuff. And it was such a gift because I watched people that judged me for what I did until Thanksgiving when the family's there and there's sewage on the floor, you know, and so you start seeing really what people value at what times and different things. And so, you know, as we fast forward, I just decided to get good at business. And so we added on plumbing, we added on HVAC, and we became a powerhouse in our local market in Colorado. And I built one of the most successful plumbing/heating/air companies in the state. But I was committed to self-managing at that time. I was an old E-Myth guy back in the day. Many of you have heard of E-Myth, the entrepreneur myth. If you know the trades, it means you're going to be a business guy. That was far from the truth. And the trades taught me that.
 
So it got really good. And then people said, well, I want you to start teaching us how you do that. And so that's kind of how it evolved. But I had the vision. And then not until I came into the Program and really began to see and have you guide my thinking about my thinking about what really could be. And so we've had 10 times growth after 10 times growth. We were on the Inc. 5000 last year, just as we really have leaned into creating this movement. Because as I had low self-esteem, you know, I'm at 53 years old, and I come through that generation. If you don't have paper on the wall, then you don't have value in place. And if you can do something else, you do. Now we're beginning to see a little bit of that shift, and I'm very grateful to be at the forefront and helping lead a different conversation in the marketplace because we need to up-level the esteem of the workers themselves, of the industry. If you go back in the '40s, it was a valued career. It was, oh, I'm a plumber. Wow, that's really cool. I wish I could be a plumber. Kids wanted to be a plumber. You had third-generation, fourth-generation companies. Now we've got company owners of plumbing companies going, "Don't go my path." That's a broken model of thinking to me. They don't do that because they don't like the business they created and what they're doing and we're helping.
 
Dan Sullivan: Can you give me some timelines here? Like when you yourself got out of the military? And you were- Did you volunteer or you were drafted?
 
Kenny Chapman: No, I volunteered. I went in in '89 and so I got the opportunity to serve in the first Gulf War. So I was in Saudi Arabia and Iraq during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I got out in '92.
 
Dan Sullivan: Which branch were you?
 
Kenny Chapman: I was regular Army.
 
Dan Sullivan: Me too.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yep. I was regular Army and I did the three years and decided, like I said, I thought about reenlisting, but I could see my future. Even then, as a young guy, I could see like the E-8's pay grade and go, wait a minute, 35 years to get there. I'm not doing that. And so I had no idea what I'd do. And then April 1, 1994 is when I closed on that drain company, which is April Fool's Day in America. And it was a fool for the first few years as I was trying to figure it out. So I did that, and then in 2001, I became a speaker and a trainer. I started writing books in '09. I wrote my first book in '09. And 2010, we launched The Blue Collar Success Group, and I still had my service business. And then I sold my service business in 2017 when we really decided to double down. A couple of sessions ago in 10x, you were talking about guesses and bets, and I decided to double down on Blue Collar, sold my service business in '17, and then I dropped the Blue Collar Success Laws as my latest book last year, just kind of talking about these things and helping people see through.
 
Dan Sullivan: So just since, you know, let's say the '90s now, where did the vision of becoming basically a coach to the entire blue-trade industry? I mean, blue-trade industry covers hundreds of different specialized skills. So where did that vision come and how far in the future does your vision go with what you're doing right now?
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, I was blessed by two things. One, I was a terrible technician. I didn't grow up in a household where I worked on things with Dad and knew a lot about cars. I can't work with my hands. I work in the blue-collar space. I'm not a licensed plumber. You don't want me touching HVAC. I just I know how to run businesses. So I was blessed by not being good with my hands because I had to find my "Whos." Even before I knew what that meant, I had to find my "Whos." I was blessed by that. The second thing I was blessed by, because I was a good businessman and I was scaling my company, I was in a small market in western Colorado. So 95% of our business came from 85,000 people. So we became dominant. And if you dropped our company in Denver, Colorado, we would have had 150 trucks on the ground. But instead, we were a little $4 million business chunking along and doing our thing. So that made me think bigger as people started asking, how are you doing what you're doing? How can you help us? The entrepreneur gene that you can't shut down says, well, maybe there's something here. And I love helping people. I don't have children and I've been in all kinds of different scenarios. My father was an outlaw biker. My mom is a kind of a fundamentalist Christian. And so I got to be in both sides of that and get along with people. And I always wanted to just help. I was the kid on the playground that people came to and navigate their stuff. And now I just help entrepreneurs navigate their stuff.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, when did you see the possibility that the Blue Collar Group, the success group, was just on the horizon? At what point in growing your business did it occur to you that there's a whole new educational experience here that has to be done? And you mentioned earlier in your comments about the lack of esteem. Can you talk about that a little bit because my set is mindset is everything.
 
Kenny Chapman: Absolutely right. So I knew in my heart, from about '03, I was speaking and training for a best practices group in the space at the time. I was a 1099. And so I was kind of teaching their content and doing their thing. And I knew this huge opportunity.
 
Dan Sullivan: You were basically training your competition.
 
Kenny Chapman: I was at the time, exactly. And so as I evolved and realized that I needed to do this my way, in 2010 is when I really saw, and I was blessed again by the recession, because I was headed down the Tony Robbins... My first book was called The Six Dimensions of C.H.A.N.G.E., and it was a personal development and, you know, help everybody. It's a great book, I'm proud of it, but it was a vanilla personal development book. And '09 happened, and I was traveling with Les Brown, doing big stage speaking event. I was one of his platinum speakers, super grateful for everything Les taught me. So I'm headed down this track, and then all of a sudden nobody's hiring speakers. So much like COVID did, the Great Recession did that for that industry. And so I had people going, "Go into the industry, go into the industry." And I said, I don't want to talk about plumbing, heating, air, blue collars. They said, "Go in and help them level up their esteem like you have." So I started that. So in 2010 was a big one when we launched, but I was still an addict. I was still addicted to drugs and alcohol at the time. I was able to scale businesses and hide my pain and deal with my trauma—not hide my pain, my wife stuck with me, but I'd navigated my stuff until quite honestly, 2019 is when I finally got sober. And so why did we make Inc. 5000 a couple of years later? Yes, COVID helped, but definitely to your point, my mindset shifted. I took care of my stuff. And then everything started working better. And that was the final component to leveling up my self-esteem there. And that's the gift that I gave myself.
 
Shannon Waller: I was just going to say kudos. First of all, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for, as you said, dealing with your stuff, because it's really clear of the leadership and direction that even wounded you were able to provide, and that just expanded and got bigger and has even more of an impact now. You've related two experiences that most people would consider negative, and you've called them both a gift. It takes a very particular mindset to look at things that way and to focus on the transformation and not just the obstacle. So just hearing about how you're talking about it is so clear and evident what your mindset is now. Just awesome progress.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Well, Bill Wilson, who's one of the co-founders of AA, you know, it's a quote, and I've said it enough, that all progress starts by telling the truth. But what was the fundamental truth that shifted you that you had to tell yourself the truth? And I say, when would you like to know the truth? And my sense is all progress follows after you're actually telling what the truth is. Because there's two truths here. There's you personally, but it was also the type of industry, the type of business you were. There were two truths.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes. So, it's moving to or moving from, right? We talk about that in the Program. And so, I was moving from my secrets and my challenges and my trauma while there's this huge opening and opportunity in the industry that exists. And so, until I was able to clear the fog from my lenses and really see it, was I able to to attract the right "Whos"? I'm not a good operator. I'm a good visionary. And, you know, I'm 9 Quick Start, 2 Follow Thru. But I've got the magnet now for clients and team in order to get those "Whos" around us. And I'm very blessed that I've been in the right rooms at the right time for me to look at myself. And the trades is a great place for me because there's a lot of addiction, there's a lot of smoking, there's a lot of infidelity, there's a lot of, you know, different things. And there probably is in every industry. This is just my industry. So it's just what I know, right? And so I see those things. And when we get that out for people, then they start to raise up a little bit. And then all of a sudden, they're doing a better job at work. And then all of a sudden, they're making more money. And then they're taking care of their families. And it goes back to the overall dream of why we're doing what we do.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and the interesting thing about your industry is that money is not the barrier.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: In the trades, you know, there isn't an income barrier, really. Even for someone who's just self-employed in the trades, there really isn't a money thing. So what did you start noticing about that from the standpoint? I mean, look, people talk about making, you know, first of all, just on your own of making 100,000, 250,000, you know, like that. But that's totally possible just being a self-employed in the trades.
 
Kenny Chapman: Absolutely. What really hit me, and it was probably in '09 when we got the opportunity to go through the last recession, because I was still operating then too. I was operating and we launched Blue Collar in 2010, and I kept both companies until 2017 when I sold the service business to a long-term operator, my ops director. So, I sold it to one of my "Whos" and made her a millionaire, which was awesome. That was one of my goals. What I really learned or what I observed was, at that time, people were going, we can't make any money and there's hard things going. And everybody was saying, you know, we can't get good help. We can't get help. We can't get help. That was always the thing. And what triggered me was, there's not a lack of good team members in the space. There's an overabundance of bad owners in the space. And so if you don't operate an effective good model, then you're not going to be able to price your goods correctly, have the efficiencies you need, have the benefits you need in order to pay people top of market and above. And so that really shifted. And I hadn't really tied those together. We should do a Triple Play on this because that was probably the moment that I went, I got to go help owners be better owners because the rest takes care of itself, if you will, when you've got a great program that people can come in as an apprentice and get their education paid for and mentored and then get into the next levels and make more money and become more skilled. It takes a good company in order to help that facilitate. So it takes good leadership to have a good company.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, one of the things that I often say to our entrepreneurs, and of course we're in 70 different industries, you know, so I always tell people who've got a specific profession or occupation, and I pick on lawyers, you know, lawyers will come into the Program, or doctors will come into the Program, where they're professionals where the training is very long. And oftentimes, if you look at medical students, it's a very early decision because their high school training to get into university, they have to go to university. You know, they have to go through postgraduate related to the industry. And I said, you know, there's one question you have to answer right now in the first workshop. And I said, this is a question. Are you a lawyer or are you an entrepreneur with a specialty in law? And I think what you've done, and you can fill this out for me, is that are you a plumber or are you an entrepreneur who has a specialty in plumbing?
 
Kenny Chapman: Absolutely.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because if you're an entrepreneur, you've got enormous amount in common with every other kind of occupation, every other kind of field. So my sense is that you made a shift, and we have a lot of thinking tools in Coach. Was there one thinking tool in particular that really landed for you and really created a shift?
 
Kenny Chapman: I would say probably The Impact Filter has been the biggest go-to for me at each moment and each time when I'm looking to solve. And then I would also say the community. I was at a workshop. I talk about—this is great; as things come back to you as you're talking, you remember—I was at a workshop in Santa Monica. It was right before my dear friend Sean Stevenson passed away, and his wife, Mindie Kniss, was in the Program. We were in a breakout, and I was explaining my challenge, and we were running through an Impact Filter at the time. And she said, "Why do you even still own that business? There's none of you there." And so I had the tool and then I had the community member who knew me very well. And I went home, and within six weeks, that business was sold and closed, a multimillion-dollar process, operation, and everything, because you get clarity. And so as you mentioned, mindset drives everything, and clarity drives direction, right?
 
And so as we get that clarity, and to your point, I was very proud of, we had a trade publication write a column about us and put us on the cover when I operated years ago. And they titled it, you know, they come and interview, like all the press and all the media, no offense to anybody listening, but they're gonna tell their story in order to get the clicks and the views. But they titled the column, "It's About People, Not Plumbing." And I was really proud that they sent somebody in and saw that because I always said that. We are not in the plumbing/heating/air business. We are in the customer service business. We're in the people development business. So for me, my Unique Ability hasn't changed. I'm a people development individual. I just happen to have done it in a couple of different industries now. I did it when I had a plumbing company. I developed people. I have a coaching, training, best practices organization. I just develop people. So that is big.
 
And I believe identity limits us a lot. And I think that, you know, as you explore the trades and you look at different areas, get multi-skilled. Many people go, "I'm just going to go one trade and do this," and you can do that, but you're much more valuable the more that you learn and the more that you see. So, just one of the things I hammer people on is, don't ever say "just a." "I'm just a plumber." No, no, no. We're not going to say that. We're a high-level, skilled, educated individual that has a professional career that happens to be plumbing. And so, as you say that, we never want people pigeonholing their identity. I think one of the only identities that isn't limiting probably is entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur and that encompasses a lot of things, but I think it's important to think outside of that. And that again, that helped me because I wasn't a good technician. I wasn't good with my hands. And so I went, I can't say I'm a technician, so I better go. I'm a business owner. I just happen to own a plumbing/heating company.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's really interesting because, in my case, I never liked school. I didn't like school in grade one. I didn't really like school when I got to the college level. But what I was really interested in was, where do ideas come from? So who was it that came up with this idea? And my top StrengthsFinder is ideation, so it comes natural to me. But, Shannon, when we used to talk, and Shannon is now in her 33rd year of being at Coach, and she created the Team Program. She's created a whole company within our company. And, Shannon, I remember you just found the going to class and listening to other people talk about what they've been taught really, really didn't interest you that much.
 
Shannon Waller: No. Not at all. I sort of made peace with school. I went to university, which is what we call it in Canada, expecting to learn new things and to think new thoughts and to be stimulated and all the things. And it was anything like that. By the time I got a textbook, it was old. Also a 9 Quick Start. I made peace with it when I realized I was going there to learn what other people already knew. I wasn't there to discover anything new. Now, the funny thing is that when I first went to school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. My current role didn't exist. So I took philosophy. Then I dropped out, took a year off, did sales, assembled furniture, actually, my hands-on experience, went back to university, got an education in training and development, ironically. And now I get to hang out with what I consider the world's premier, number-one practical philosopher—you, Dan. So I didn't stray that far, but it's stuff you can put into play tomorrow in 10 minutes, which is really cool. But some people could consider us educational, but "educara" means to pull from within. And that's actually, Dan White, all of the thinking tools do is to help you do that. So this form of education, I love. The other, regular kind, not so much.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, and it's been lumped together for too long, right? And I think that's the thing. When you say education, we've automatically trained our brains to think higher education. Just think about that terminology together. So for anybody listening that's exploring having your kids go into skilled trades or doing different things, find the practical. They're not all created equal, just like colleges. So the challenge with people in the trades is, they learn with their hands. They're very kinesthetic. And most of them did bad in traditional education. And what I say is, we were bad students not because we can't learn; it's because our teachers didn't know how to teach us. And that's part of the system and all those different things. And so I think that as you really open up—and isn't that a strategic byproduct, which I learned from you Dan?—that you didn't like school and yet you run the greatest education platform in the world and yet you've never told me what to think. You've never taught me what to feel, a direction to go. You've always just unlocked it from me. And I think that's why you ended up where you are in the difference. And I agree with you, Shannon. How about that? Your love of philosophy, and now you're fed it all day, every day, whether you like it or not, probably.
 
Shannon Waller: I do love it. Dan and I are on each other's list today for who we appreciate. I'm really excited by your mission, Kenny, and that is to kind of shift the mindset about the trades and about blue collar. And Dan, you brought this up all during the pandemic. We started to really appreciate people who could actually do things, not just talk about things, but actually do things. And I just want to say it's really echoed in the experience that I have. So I have 20- and 23-year-old daughters. One of them is an 8 Implementor. Did not like school, did not thrive in that environment, and is now learning kind of what her path is going to be. Her partner is a mechanic, another 8 Implementor, right? So many of my eldest daughter's friends are also hands-on people. And it's been so fun having conversations with them because they do not feel validated by the school system.
 
As Temple Grandin says in her brilliant book Visual Thinking, it's algebra that messed up so many kids because it's an abstraction of an abstraction. I mean, I was trying to do some algebra with Charlotte the other day, and then I had to make it quantitative. And I had to say, okay, you've got this many of that. You know, how do we do fractions? And then it makes sense to her, right? We confound our kids, and the teachers don't know how to teach them. And I'm excited because what your mission, really, is to shift the mindset for parents, shift the mindset probably also for the kids. And I think a lot of kids who have really struggled in our very academically-oriented school systems, who are not thriving, are going to find new purpose, new excitement, new confidence, new credibility, and hopefully not have some of those esteem issues that you wrestle with and so many people do. And yet also because of the experience, because I happen to love 20-somethings, I don't know why, they're just cool. And I love giving them Kolbes and other profiles to help them know themselves better. But your point about bad operators is true. I mean, I hear some of the business practices and I'm like, oh, Lordy, they do what? You know, and bad habits get passed on.
 
So I'm very excited by the increase in quality standards that you're helping to put in place, because I think that's going to help the future and help our current generation and our future generations. And I think things are rebalancing. You know, from a Kolbe distribution, there's just as many Implementors as there are Fact Finders, Follow Thrus, or Quick Starts, but they've been a little bit squished. And so I think when that evens out, we'll be better as a culture, as a society, and as a functioning group of people working together. So again, I'm just very excited by what you're doing, and I get to see it in my own life and in my kids' friends and things like that. So everything you're saying completely follows that line.
 
Dan Sullivan: Shannon and Bruce just had a six-month experience of people who are good with their hands because they completely had their home in Toronto renovated from top to bottom. Tell Kenny a little bit about what your experiences of these people were who actually knew how to get things done.
 
Shannon Waller: It was so good. It was so good. And it was really fun. And so I did something unusual. It's a design build firm, Urban Blueprint in Toronto, if anyone's interested. So I asked the principals—brother and sister team—if they would be willing to do the Kolbe. And they did it the next day, which was a big check mark in their favor before I wrote them a check, by the way. The sister, Natasha, is a 9 Quick Start, so 4394. And her brother, Luca, is a 7 Fact Finder, 7 Follow Thru, 1 Quick Start, 7 Implementor. He's got a whole system. Bruce could look at the plan, and he knew which trades were going to be in our house in what week in a six-month time frame. Unbelievable. And then of course we had to do the punch list, which is the final walkthrough. I'm like, please tell me that Luca's doing the punch list. 'Cause I didn't want it to be anybody else. I needed that quality control.
 
You know, Victor was the plumber that came in. This was really funny. You're talking about the success of people, Dan, and the trades. So Victor comes in, beautiful haircut, gorgeous, clearly expensive gray puffy vest, you know, laptop. And I'm like, that's a really good looking plumber. And we talked to Mike, how do you like what you're doing? And he says, "I like what I'm doing. But I don't love it. I love the lifestyle." He's making a killing and he lives quite north of us. So there's traffic in Toronto, lots of it. I said, "What do you do?" He said, "Normally I travel off-hours." I said, "Well, what do you do while you're waiting?" He said, "Oh, I go to Starbucks and I send out my invoices." I'm like, OK, so the guy sitting next to me in Starbucks could be a plumber running his business. It just totally destroyed whatever previous stereotypes that I had. And I respect hands-on work. As a 5 Implementor myself, I respect physical quality and I need it and I notice it when it's not there. So, yeah, it was super important to me. My husband's very much about the form. I'm very much about the function, I've learned. Between the two of us, we're always right. But it was awesome just seeing the quality of the trades that this company was able to bring in and attract. And I also knew how to play to their strengths in a good way. And that was really helpful too.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yeah, I think it's important that we capture what you said as far as you're supporting your kids and you respect the trades. And I think that's an important thing for people to take away is that that's where it begins, of even not pushing or pigeonholing. That's it. And then when you have an experience like you did, because we could line up a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand examples that's the opposite of that experience that most people have, and then they generalize the trades and go, "All fill-in-the-blanks are this way." And so we commoditized the space. And now we're going through a little bit of a shift where we're seeing- In Coach, in the Program, we talk about the difference of the Time and Effort Economy and value creation, right? And so we're seeing that now where the companies are becoming value creators up through pricing. We don't just charge by the hour anymore because it goes back to my army days. Why would I charge the same as somebody else who's going to drag their feet and take their time? Time and material pricing is one of the biggest, you know, I won't call it a scam, but it's- So now if I'm fast and efficient, I make less money. It doesn't make sense to my logical value creation brain. And so as we see these things begin to shift, support those around you that are exploring it, and we'll get more of those type of companies of what you just described, Shannon. Thank you. That's a great share.
 
Shannon Waller: And also, I think it's really important. I mean, it was great. Natasha and Luca were very open and got us on time and on budget—something people told us would never happen.
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, seven days early.
 
Shannon Waller: They got us in before Christmas, which was a Christmas miracle, I can tell you. But they have to aspire to that. They have to aspire to be a good business person, not just an operator, and not just inherit it from somebody, their uncle or their dad or whomever, and really respect it themselves. It's interesting. I remember walking around a couple of different places with either Natasha or Luca. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, look at the packaging on this. Look at the direction, you know, that they're giving you on this signage. It's beautifully put together. It makes me want to pay more and to buy from this location." So walking through some of the mindsets and thinking with her—she's very open—and they do have, you know, it's a multi-generational business, so they've been around a while. But they have to have that mindset. If it's just, I'm going to extort from the customer and just lie and do as little as I can and get away with it and use shoddy materials and I just have to make sure I get my check and then I'm out of here. You know, that's true in any industry, but it really matters when it's the stuff you're living with every day. So I think that self-respect is important as well as obviously the respect from other people.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yeah, and when Dan mentioned attorneys, it came to my mind, one of the things I remind people in the trades, he mentioned attorneys. If I'm an attorney and I find out, well, Shannon charges this much and I'm gonna do this job, whether it's ego or my self-worth, I'm gonna say, well, she charges $500 an hour, I'm gonna charge $600 an hour for this project, because attorneys do that. However, in the trades, we go, wait a minute, Dan charges $120 an hour. Well, I can do it cheaper than Dan or faster, and I'll do it for $112. And we have a race to the bottom that we created ourselves in the space based on low self-esteem. If I'm not worth it, then I can't stand in front of a customer who questions everything. Customers complain about price no matter how much it is. So you might as well get customer complaints at a profitable number.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, I won't complain if you don't have to come back. I'll be really happy.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yeah, that's right. Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Kenny, I've always made a distinction between self-esteem and self-confidence. I don't really, really ever focus on self-esteem. What I focus on is increasing skills. So it's the 4 C's: commitment, courage, capability, and confidence. My feeling is that if you can just get people on a track where the results of their skill keeps getting better, and people will pay more for the results of your skill, you reach a point, there's a fork in the road, and you have to say, why don't I just focus on self-confidence and keep self-esteem issues to myself? So, I mean, it's just a thought that occurred to me, and I said, you know, I've been on the planet almost 80 years now, so a couple months, I'll be 80. First of all, I have achieved more since I was 70 than I did before 70. If you take my total output from 70 to 80, it's greater than everything I did before 70.
 
The other realization that I came through was I only have direct access to one human being. And it's a full-time job. Yeah, it's a full-time job. I don't really know what's going on in other people's minds, so I'm not going to give them answers. I'm just going to give them questions that they can relate to. And as I got better and better at asking questions, I attached my … I've never used the word self-esteem because I'm pretty self-assured. You know, it's one of my StrengthFinders. I'm just self-assured whether I've done it before or whether I haven't done it before. I will either use what I've done before and up the game, or I'll learn really quickly in the situation. So when does the crossover happen with your tradespeople who are in Blue Collar Success Group, where's the point is you can only choose one—it's either self-esteem or it's self-confidence? I can have all the self-esteem in the world, and I don't get paid for it. I have all the self-confidence in the world. I'm pretty sure I'll get paid more for it.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, yes, 100%. I would say that the cross happens at the first of the 4 C's. It's where the courage comes from.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, commitment is first.
 
Kenny Chapman: Okay, so the commitment then, so I commit, right, in order to have the courage to get the capability. And so the commitment that it takes to leave your past thinking, to leave the identity that you thought that you were, whether you're entering the trades or stepping into the next level of ownership, or as a technician. We train everything from the owners all the way to the call centers and dispatchers and everything within the business. So whatever the role is, when you finally decide to commit, so to your point, you're self-assured, so you commit easily now because you're not afraid of failure. Why have you been the most productive from 70 to 80? Because you constantly commit. And I'll remind everybody, you change the clock for yourself. And so as you slow the game down, you have time. And so like at Blue Collar, we're only three years into a 25-year plan that I set based on learning from you. When I was 50, I set a 25-year plan and went, okay, cool. I'm three years in. I've got plenty of time. So I'm not racing. I'm not hurried. I'm not worried about missing the boat or any- You just step into the next level of your greatness, whatever that is, whatever you can commit to next, commit to that and have the courage to help you move forward into that next capability. And then as you get that capability, now we can kind of get on an upward spiral because now I get the confidence. Well, if I'm confident, then I might commit more and and then we get an upward spiral and really see the massive change take place.
 
Shannon Waller: Nice.
 
Dan Sullivan: I would say why this is easier in the blue-collar trades than it is in the white-collar trades is that everybody knows whether you've done a good job or not.
 
Kenny Chapman: Isn't that true?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, it is. I mean, I think a lot of the, what I see, higher education, I'm just using it in the name that it's given, you get further and further away from actual reality. What I would say measurable reality, for the most part, unless you're in sales. You either made the sale or you didn't make the sale. You know, that's pretty obvious to everybody. But my sense is that we're entering into a world now, and I'm a great fan of Peter Zeihan and his description of what's going to be happening basically for the next 30 to 50 years. And it seems to me that we're entering a period where working people are going to be the dominant political force in the United States. And you can see it in the current election, probably the last three elections, '16 and '20. But more and more, first of all, I think that the white-collar world is in a state of panic right now. One is because, you talk about 2008, 2009, and I think that there was a compact that had been more or less, it was an informal compact, but it didn't matter how much money you spent on higher education, it would amortize itself.
 
So you can go $200,000 into debt, $250,000 in debt, and it will pay for itself. It's like getting the 30-year mortgage on your house. You know just the increase of value, normal inflation, and everything else, you're going to be able to pay it. And I think it got broken with the big downturn in '08-'09. That's why you got the incredible student debt problem in the United States right now, because the government basically guaranteed that it didn't matter how much the universities charged, we would make the public responsible for the debt. And now they're trying to get out of the huge debt load. They're saying, well, we're going to forgive the loans. But I said, if you had your loan forgiven, and you put in all this time, and you don't really have any sellable skills after your education, because they're not hiring white-collar anymore. White collar, the greatest loss of jobs is really in the white-collar world. So here's the thing, you just put yourself in a $200,000, $250,000, or $50,000 debt, but you're saying, "Do you want whipped cream with that?" "Welcome to Walmart." You know, "One shot or two shots?" And here they are, you have a master's degree, and I think there's a lot of cynicism in the younger people, I'd say the '20s generation, because we were told that this was a guarantee. And there's no guarantee out there. And yet, what you're doing in the Blue Collar Success Group is that, look, if you just follow simple rules, keep getting better year by year, there is a guarantee in what you're doing.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes. Yes, I love Peter's work as well. Peter Zeihan, I follow his books. I read them. And as the shift takes place and as the government incentivizes the direction they want things to go, right, that's why the GI Bill happened. That's why the home loans when they wanted us to all own homes, all that type of thing. And then the college guarantees and all that. Well, now, as this kind of shakes itself out for the rest of this decade, we're going to see some more incentives coming in. The government has to get on board and everybody's worried about AI and different levels, or maybe they're embracing it. Whatever your take is, it's speeding the curve of education for the trades. So we're embracing it because it builds efficiencies and it helps. And so there's a lot of great things that are taking place. And to your point, the fear factor is what we're looking to eliminate. And I think in the human condition overall, and especially if I go to college and what is this happening? And I've grown a lot, my friends. I used to just hammer higher education, like I went the other way and went totally against it. Nobody should go like, hey, do-
 
Dan Sullivan: Mutual contempt.
 
Kenny Chapman: Exactly.
 
Dan Sullivan: It's just certain people you wouldn't drink with.
 
Kenny Chapman: That's right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Certain people you don't hang out with.
 
Kenny Chapman: There you go. And now I think it's just realizing that the younger generation is also driving the understanding of, I don't know that I want this stuffy, corporate, put on the suit every day, or do the thing. Like maybe I want to be out there.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or commute.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yeah, or work for a service business and get dispatched from home. So you don't have a commute. You just hop in your service truck and go to your first call, whatever that is. And so people kind of get frustrated sometimes with our younger generation. I think we need to embrace and listen to them as they tell us what they want and what they need because we can build around that. And the universities and all the real estate they've got tied up and all of the years and years of conditioning. We don't have that in the trades because we've never been looked at, in my generation, it's always been a less than. If you can't do this, then you go do this. And now as we're starting to see it shift, like, well, you could do this or you could do this. Wait a minute. Now we're seeing some people start choosing the trades consciously and from their best. And then to your point, now they're thinking with their buddies and going, you got how much debt? Oh, my gosh, I just bought my first house or I just bought a rental house.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think parents are watching this. You know, I think, let's say it's teenagers because they're still in high school. They're watching it. They're looking at the housing market. They're looking with their friends who might be five or ten years older than them. And, you know, teenagers are looking at things. You know, you have a fellow Coach member very close to you, Scott Donnell who's created GravyStack, which is a game form of teaching economic education. He designed it for kids. I think it's as early as eight years old, they can start learning. And their first target is expenses that their parents, they shouldn't be spending. They've got subscriptions to 10 magazines. They just looked around the household and they get points on the game and they're competing with each other. So that's it. But it wasn't far into the development of this program for children, up to about probably 18 or 19 years old, and he discovered that's not the problem. It's the same thing that you discovered about owners. The problem isn't the workers; the problem is the owners. The problem isn't the children; the problem is the parents. And all of a sudden, he's shifting, and he's having to create a second track, which is for the parents because they're now being educated economically by their children.
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes. And that's what we see, right? So that's why we're in the greatest time ever for everything, I'll say, but especially around this where... We had the generation that I went to X, Y, Z, U University, so I need my kids to go there. Okay, that kid went there, maybe another kid, then it went, okay, then there's a whole 'nother bucket that I had never got to college. We hung our hat on, I'm the first one in my family to ever go to college. Okay, great. So we went through that phase, and we had the people that, like, what I saw in the trades over the last 20 years, or 30 years, I've been in the trades 30 years now this April, and what I saw was, I wasn't able to go to college, so I want my kids to go. And now the kids that they got to go are going, hang on, it didn't play out the way we thought. Dad's got a better income, like whatever. So we're at the perfect time for this to take place, which Peter writes about in the books that you're speaking of. But I think that's important that all that needed to kind of run its course. But we're here, ladies and gentlemen, the time is now.
 
Shannon Waller: That's an awesome place to start to wrap up. One of the things I always like to end with is, how can we take action on some of this? So maybe if you're a parent listening or someone in the trades, or maybe this has shifted your mindset to be like, oh, maybe I shouldn't think that college is the be all and end all. I'm just curious from both of you, what would be your words of action or advice for people?
 
Kenny Chapman: I would say that opening your mind to all of the opportunities available. So when you think about your kids in school, if you're a parent and your kids are in school... One of my buddies is a teacher and I had him on and interviewed him and had him at one of our events of why aren't kids going to school? And he said to me, he said, where are you guys? Where are you at? All the colleges come in the schools and recruit our kids, where are the trades? So that's number one is, your kids are only being exposed to certain things. So your job is to expose them to those other things. I think that, you know, as you look at that and having the... If you're gonna shop for a car, you decide kind of what the outcome you want of your car, and you're gonna go to a few different places. Just don't write it off and skip these things. And for the kids, decide what kind of a life you wanna have, not what type of a title or what type of an ego-based society thing. Just decide what you want your outcome of your life to look like, and then start looking at what the path is. Because the guidance counselor, they're doing the best they can, but they might not have the life education that you want to have in your own experience.
 
Shannon Waller: That's brilliant. Thank you. Dan, what are your thoughts?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I think there's a big shift, and I think it's more than a one-decade shift. I think it's a couple-generation shift, you know, 30, 40, 50 years now. And my sense is that people are just going to look around them, and one of the things they're looking at, who doesn't have debt? It's one of the big things you have to look at. Who seems to be freer, more independent? Which occupation, formal education, which occupations seem to be growing? That's another thing. And I think that the other thing is that if you're in the trades, you're not the one who has the anxious future. Okay, so which people in their training give them the more anxious future? And it's very, very definite to me that it's white collar. There's a great website called Visual Capitalist, and they had a diagram. This is about six months into the AI revolution, you know, when individuals could use AI. And it showed all the occupations. And they're all people who went to college to learn how to have a meeting so they could plan future meetings. That was your skill. How many meetings can you actually show up for in a day, and how many meetings can you plan where nothing's going to get decided? And as a result of no decisions, nothing's going to get done. But you will be highly thought of.
 
And my sense is that you're kind of a crossover artist here, Kenny, and I think you had to work on yourself first. But I think that what you're doing is you're taking your experience and moving it into an actual curriculum with a particular type of person, and that's a person who doesn't choose the college route necessarily, but likes to work. And Mike Rowe on television has been the real key to this. "Dirty Work [Jobs]" is the name of the program. And I think Mike Rowe, combined with you, is really the key to the future. So what we'd like to do is to get the word out. And we're in the top 2% of podcasts in the world. There's about 2.5 million podcasts, and we're in the top 2% with Inside Strategic Coach. And so what I'd like to do, my goal for having you as a guest, is to really get the word out. And we're going to take this and make sure that every one of our clients gets this. So, I just want to ask one more question, you know, to kind of complete this circle here, is what happens when they first enter Blue Collar Success Group, and how do they get traction with this? What's the first thing they have to do?
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, when they join Blue Collar Success Group, they're assigned their onboarding specialist who is a coach, a certified Blue Collar coach that gets them into the training portal to start teaching them the fundamental core tools. Just like Strategic Coach has our core tools that we use within the Program. Blue Collar Success Group has the core path. So it's the first path of a little bit of indoctrination into who we are, what we do, why we do it differently. But the main thing is, we meet them where they are. We're not a franchise. We don't say you have to be all this. We unlock their vision and see what they want to do. And then we help them build that plan and unleash them onto their own coach, get them into all the, we have online and, you know, in-person training, all those things dialed in for our virtual and our live events.
 
Dan Sullivan: And if I look down the road, you're three years into it. What do you see right now as the vision 25 years? So that's 22 years and that's 2046. We'll introduce you again because I'll be 102 and we both will have more experience. And the one thing about Americans that I just noticed, that Americans think national. The big jump is you don't just see the Phoenix area. You see it going national. So what are some of the possibilities you're already seeing of how this can grow and grow as long as Kenny stays simple?
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, exactly. Right. That's right. Simplify to multiply. And I believe that, you know, as of right now, our clients are the United States, Canada, and Australia because the model that we teach doesn't work in Europe. And so we've been onsite in Australia, Canadian clients. But as I see, to your point, in 22 years, when I'm 75, we'll have what started the business, but we'll also have what will be our future business of working with all of those trades, some of which don't even exist yet, that will evolve based on certain needs and things, and we will be the go-to place. If you're going to go to college, go that direction. If you're not going to go to college, then we'll be the top-of-mind conversation and the place to be looked at to go get your education and learn some best practices for this direction of your career.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and just to plug in on the internet, The Blue Collar Success Group.
 
Shannon Waller: How can people find you, Kenny?
 
Kenny Chapman: Yes, thebluecollarsuccessgroup.com. Also, my latest book is bluecollarlaws.com. And we've got a book for you there that's a free plus shipping offer that we're running. So we'd love to get the book in your hands and help you understand whether you're in the trades that we serve or not. It's just going to help you think about your thinking a little bit different. And as well, then go join Strategic Coach.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, good. So I always ask the question, what new thoughts did you get out of the podcast?
 
Kenny Chapman: I had the connection of my path. You taught me the concept of Strategic By-Products, and The Blue Collar Success Group is a Strategic By-Product of me becoming a broke drain cleaner. Like that had to happen for this to happen. And today, having this conversation and sharing value with our listeners reminded me of how many of those that we have, and all of us have. And so, for our listeners that might have just finished a degree, it's okay, it's a Strategic By-Product. You can go and do some different things. Some of the top owners that we see in the space have accounting degrees or have been attorneys in their past lives and then just make some shifts. So I really…
 
Dan Sullivan: It's just happier now, that's all.
 
Kenny Chapman: That's exactly it, because they got to choose. They chose for real.
 
Shannon Waller: It strikes me what you're saying, Kenny, is that nothing is wasted. Right? Everything can be transformed and reused in some way, hopefully, so something that's more in alignment with who you are or what you're interested in. But I love that. That's such a phenomenal attitude to take. It's been a real pleasure.
 
Kenny Chapman: Thank you guys so much for having me on. Such a grateful moment for me. Thank you.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, we really want to promote this because, as you say, it's the perfect moment. We're kind of between one universe and another universe right now. And I think you're creating a great bridge.
 
Shannon Waller: Yep. Love that. Great. Well, thanks, Dan. And thanks, Kenny.
 
Kenny Chapman: Thank you guys.