My dad was working at a wealthy person’s lakehouse (we’re assuming they were wealthy, will become obvious why), and a guy was there laying tile just in ONE room. The tiles were pretty big, and looked nice, and somehow they got to talking. The guy tells my dad that each tile is $100 and he makes $100 for laying each one. Each ONE! These people spent $20,000 on a floor with 100 tiles, and the guy makes $10,000 of that for what is not a particularly strenuous job, and that probably took less than a week. Do 10 jobs like that a year, or honestly even like 6-8 and a young guy would be just fine, money-wise.
Thank you. Between his two decades of experience, skill, and reputation as a worker, and my hopes to be my own boss and do things like flip houses someday, we are hoping to start our own company maybe in 5 years or so. He has some healing to do, and we need to figure out how to get the startup money for an operation like that, but I have hopes that we can find ourselves in a better place in the not too distant future.
One thing I would mention here, just because it is also an area that I have a passion for, is that practical or vocational learning is not the only kind of learning that matters. (I don’t think you were saying that, but I’m saying this more to @tlgains (this next portion is for you!) since he’s young dude. Only like a year younger than myself though, haha.)
Some people question how much that there book learnin’ will do for people, and college definitely isn’t the best option for many people, but I think there are certain things that are good about it. Being knowledgable about history, geography, economics, civics/politics, literature, religion, art, language, etc. is not a bad thing. If much of your time at school is spent learning about the construction field, and that is where you end up devoting your life to after graduating, fine. But being a well read person who can hold intelligent discussions is never not a good skill to have. Simple things like Greek mythology and Biblical references are found in the world and in our day-to-day readings all the time.
If you read anything by, say, Abraham Lincoln or MLK you will find hundreds of references to scripture, Greek philosphers, English literature, American history, etc. Knowing stuff helps you know more stuff, and this can be very helpful as you are becoming an adult and deciding how you view the world.
I shared this quote in another thread a little while back:
EDIT: I mentioned language. I’m not sure what your job will look like exactly, but if you are going to be interacting with construction workers regularly, learn some Spanish dude. Take some classes at school, it’s not that hard of a language to pick up, especially if you can find people to practice with. It’ll make it easier when you inevitably have to work with some Mexicans or Puerto Ricans or something. Happens all the time here.
