Why The Trades Are Your Next Millionaire Path

I asked Roger about the opportunity in trades versus the normal route of college and a nine to five.

"I think the people that get in the trades right now, these are your next entrepreneurs. These are your next millionaires."

The average age of tradespeople keeps getting higher and higher. Right now, the average age for plumbers in Texas is about 58 years old.

"That means in the next seven years, half the people should retire."

Unfortunately, for every 10 people that retire in the trades right now, only about four are getting back in. So we're gonna run into a big supply and demand issue.

Roger really thinks that in the next year, maybe two, tradespeople are gonna start getting closer and closer to that $100 an hour on the check.

A lot of people aren't gonna be able to afford that. Can you imagine? Because if you call a plumbing company to hire someone to come fix your garbage disposal, for that company to make money, he's got to charge pretty much 8X what he's paying you.

"So that's $800 an hour for a plumber. Plumbing companies are gonna be charging more for a plumber than doctors and lawyers are charging."

But that's where we're headed. That's why this is an amazing time for anybody who's either going to high school, going to college, not sure what they wanna do. Get into the trades.

"It's a life changer."

Roger was on Dr. Phil a year ago and literally he said there's a million unfilled trades jobs right now. In three years, they're expecting that to be four to five million unfilled trade jobs.

Right now, out of high school, you can start anywhere from $15 to $25 an hour, depending on where you're at. Some places around the country, it's probably $15 to $30 an hour.

"Imagine making $60,000 a year right out of high school."

In Texas, they've got a program. The Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, the TEA and TWC, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Workforce Commission, all got together and created this syllabus.

You go your freshman year of high school and decide, hey, I wanna be a plumber. You take this course for three years. If you graduate, you're eligible to take your tradesman exam.

Tradesman exam is an entry-level plumbing license. "That starts out at about $25 an hour in Texas, so that's $52,000 a year the day you walk out of high school."

Not a bad way to start.

Why AI Won't Touch The Trades For A Long Time

I asked Roger why the trades will be last to be affected by AI when a lot of people thought robots would replace trades first.

"The trades will be the very last."

AI's great for anything done on the computer. AI's great for anything computer-driven, computer-oriented. They're starting to do robotics that can lay brick, that can put on roofs, that can do all kinds of different things.

"Truck drivers. You know what guys, if you're going to school right now to become a truck driver, quit."

Because we've already got autonomous vehicles. They're making autonomous 18-wheelers. They're making autonomous jets. We're not gonna need pilots to fly the planes anymore.

We can make AI do it and it thinks faster and smarter and harder. "The hands-on skilled trades person will be one of the last things that's ever touched by any of this."

So far the robots and AI can't listen to the toilet and tell you what's wrong with it. And maybe they can, but then they've got to shut off the water. They got to take things apart. They got to test it. Is the water leaking? Do they need to go out to the street and turn off the meter?

"There's a lot of things that are just hands-on and I don't think that it's quite there yet."

From Construction Director to Starting His Own Company

I asked Roger what prompted him to start his plumbing business about 10 years ago.

He had joined the union in 1997 and by 2015 he was director of operations for construction for one of the mechanical contractors in Dallas. They had decided they were going to get into residential plumbing, which he thought was great. He's always wanted to open his own residential company.

He was in the executive team meeting one day and this owner who is literally a former nurse taking the company over from her parents sat down. She started talking about what they were gonna do, how they were gonna do it, what the brand was gonna be.

She said, we're going to let everybody know that we have the best trained plumbers and we specialize in customer service. "I'm like, my God, I love that."

She said, tell me, what are we gonna do to train our plumbers? She kind of looked at him like he was stupid and said, Roger, we'll make sure all our plumbers have licenses.

"And I'm like, well, every plumber in Texas has to have a license anyway."

She says, well, I know, we'll just make sure ours do. He's thinking, man, that is lame.

He said, okay, so what are you gonna do to teach them customer service? Again, she looks at him and rolls her eyes.

"She says, we'll make sure our plumbers know how to say please, thank you, yes ma'am and no ma'am. And I'm like, wow."

It was at that moment he realized I'm in the wrong seat, on the wrong bus, going the wrong direction at the wrong time. He knew he was not in a good place.

He got out of there shortly and ended up opening his own business probably within about a month.

It's scary as ever. He didn't plan on it. He literally walked out of their office on a Friday. He called his ex-wife and said, do me a favor, grab the Jeep, come get me. She said, what do you mean? He said, just come pick me up at work. Bring the Jeep because I've got some stuff I need to put in the back of it.

He went home that Friday thinking he'd worked for some of the best mechanical contractors. He can go back to work at any of them. He can walk in as a superintendent, possibly director of operations.

He decided to relax that weekend. Monday morning he got a call. He had thought about opening his own company so he had his insurance in place. He had his license. He had everything done.

He got a phone call early Monday morning from one of his customers. She said, our house got hit by lightning. The fire department came out and shut off the gas. Lightning strike went in the house. We've got a gas leak. We know you're busy, but could you either refer somebody or see if you can come fix it later?

"And I just said, hey, I can come fix it right now."

That's how his company started.

The $47,000 Marketing Mistake That Led To YouTube

Roger didn't know a lot about SEO, didn't know a lot about marketing. He tried the word of mouth thing. Started going to real estate offices, getting in front of people.

Eventually one day he realized he can't get in front of people fast enough.

"You don't have to be the biggest plumber in the world. You got to be the biggest one in your area."

What he was doing was getting out, doing the word of mouth thing. He would agree to come in and teach classes about houses and how they have leaks under them.

They started growing a business based on that. But Roger had been getting ripped off by marketing companies.

"Literally, I've spent $47,000 on marketing that did not work."

He tells people, imagine driving down the road, taking a bag with $47,000 cash in it, just shaking it out the window, and knowing that when you get to your office, your phone is not going to ring.

"That's where I was."

He decided to go to a social media marketing conference at the age of 54, thinking he's gonna learn more about Facebook because at 54, that's what social media is.

Second day there, first day he'd learned about speaking on stages. He's walking down this corridor, headed to a Facebook room and he sees a placard that said, get in front of your customers using video.

He thought, wow, we could do that. We've made videos before. We could do that.

He walks in, sits down on the front row and a guy walks out on stage. One of the first things he says is, "YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world."

Roger shot his notebook. He thought this guy's stupid. He has no idea what he's talking about. "YouTube is just where I store my videos."

He put his hand on the chair next to him and he's raising up and turning around, getting ready to walk out. He noticed the back of the room is full.

Real quick, he thought, wow, maybe he knows something. He looked back up at him in time to hear him say, "And it's owned by Google, the largest search engine in the world."

He's thinking, we send a ton of money to Google that's not working very well. Why aren't we sending any money to YouTube?

In the next 45 minutes, he took like three pages of notes.

He had to leave early that Friday because he had a radio show in Dallas Saturday morning. But he's on the plane, there's nobody next to him. He's got both tray tables down. He's got his laptop, his iPad, his notebook and all these little notebooks.

He's going through everything, trying to come up with a plan. How do we implement this?

After the radio show the next day, he went back to his office, worked till about six o'clock that night. Sunday morning, went to church, took his ex-wife home, went back to the office.

Then Monday morning, when the plumbers came in, after they cleared the office out, he called everybody else together and said, "We're changing the way we do our marketing and we're gonna change it right now. We're gonna start doing YouTube."

They thought he was crazy. They probably still think he's crazy.

"But it's worked."

They literally started out getting on YouTube to learn how to do YouTube. By the end of the year, they had 300 subscribers. They thought they were just crushing it.

By the end of the next year, they had 10,000 subscribers. And it just started to grow.

Once it started growing, they could afford to hire more people. Then they started learning about taking this long form content, cutting it, clipping it, and repurposing it.

"And it's worked out pretty good."

The "Boring" Toilet Video That Made $50K

I asked Roger to break down one of his most viral videos.

One of their most watched videos, he remembers the day they shot it. His stepson shot it, edited it, posted it. They literally shot it that morning. Roger had on his orange shirt, his green gloves.

It's called How to Fix a Running Toilet Guaranteed.

His stepson walked in his office after it was posted and said, look, I gotta tell you, this video sucked.

Roger said, okay, how come?

"He said, look, it wasn't fun. It wasn't exciting. There was nothing crazy in it. He said, you just literally shot a video step by step how to fix the toilet. He said, it was boring. He said, it sucked."

Roger said, okay, do we have anything else in the vault that we could put up? He says, no, no, no, it's already up. He says, we don't have anything else.

Roger said, we'll never shoot another video like that. Let's get ahead that way if I ever do shoot something that you don't think turns out good, we can trash it.

Within a few years, that was his number one video.

"That video's now got like five and a half million views. YouTube itself has paid me over $50,000 just from people watching that video."

Most people need to make evergreen content. In your area, what are people searching every day?

SEO for local businesses, SEO for local plumbing companies, SEO for local landscape companies. You make a video about what SEO is special about that, how you do it.

Pretty soon people are searching you and you're the guy that's found. "They're like, dude, you're the guy I need to call."

Selling His Company Three Times for $45M

I asked Roger why he got out of the plumbing company.

"We got so big on social media, I was needing to travel, needing to speak. We saw the opportunity to build courses. We started getting sponsorships and we realized, I'm making more money on social media than I am in the plumbing company."

It was just smarter for him to say, look, I'm gonna focus on social. They kept running the plumbing company, but they started letting people know it was for sale.

Then basically they sold it three times.

His first real coach was Michael Gerber. He wrote the E-Myth books. When Roger learned so much from him, smart guy, through the E-Myth, he learned when you sell a company that you know you're selling to someone that's going to grow it, try to retain part ownership.

That's what they did. They actually retained a percentage.

They sold the company, but now they own a small percentage of the bigger combined company. When they sold to them, they were a $9 million a year company. Roger was a million dollars a year.

Two years later, they sold to a VC group.

"When I sold the first time, I sold for a million dollars. When we sold to the VC group, sold for $45 million."

The plan is two or three years from now to sell for $100 million. Since they retained part ownership, when they sold, he still had part ownership. What he decided to do is go ahead and let his shares go last December so he could focus on what he's doing now.

Why 106,000 Views in 48 Hours Beats Networking

I asked Roger if someone starting a plumbing or home service company should start in social media right away or do other things like word of mouth first.

Word of mouth is great. In the beginning you have all the time in the world, you don't have any money. That's why social media is great because it puts you out there.

"If you're going out networking you're talking one-to-one."

When you're out talking one to one, or even if you're educating real estate agents, which is great, you're talking one to 50, one to 100, however many people are in the room.

"In the last 48 hours, I've talked to 106,000 people."

106,000 and that's just on YouTube. Views wise, that's not his biggest. He gets a lot of views on TikTok. He gets a lot of views on Facebook and Instagram.

Say it quadruples, say it's 500,000 across all the platforms. That's 500,000 people he's talked to in the last two days times 15.

Because there's about 30 days in a month. "We generate about 10 million views a month across all our social platforms."

You're talking one to one. If you're walking in a room, if you're networking, maybe one to five, maybe you got a group around you.

"I'm talking one to many every single day."

A lot of people say, Roger, I don't want to be you. I don't want to be nationwide. I don't want to be global. I don't want people in the Netherlands to be able to search plumbing and find me.

Yeah, in a way you do because they go to your website. What happens if 10,000 people a day in the United States go to your website?

Your domain authority goes up. That helps you get found against your competition.

Roger remembers one time, one of his website guys sent him a screenshot. He searched Dallas, Texas plumbing. At the time Roger was doing a million dollars a year and the two companies he was right above were doing 80 and 100 million a year.

"It works. This builds your domain authority."

Google's looking for EEAT. Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Roger's Message: You Don't Need Fancy Equipment

I asked Roger for his overall message to the trades industry and people interested in getting into marketing or social media.

People that want to get into it, you need to think about it. Roger made a free webinar called Just Met Roger. Anybody can go listen to this free webinar.

Literally it tells them that YouTube is not really the problem. "It's that voice inside your head that makes you think YouTube won't work for you."

His coach is also Mr. Beast's coach. And Mr. Beast literally has said, if you have a business, you need to have a YouTube channel.

Luckily Roger learned that seven years ago, sitting in a room and realized, wait, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. "I want them searching for me."

They were able to do that. You don't need all that. You don't need a lot of fancy equipment. You don't have to start with a lot of views. You don't have to start with a lot of subscribers.

"But you've got to get started."

Literally they started with their phones. They started with iPads. When he first was going live, it was on a laptop that he's backing up far away from.

"You don't have to be the biggest plumber on YouTube. You can become the biggest plumber in your area and that will help your business more than anything."

How to fix a running toilet in Dallas, Texas. How to do a slab leak in Dallas, Texas. Put your city name in there and it will help you get found locally.

My Main Takeaway

This conversation with Roger completely changed how I think about YouTube and the opportunity in the trades. The biggest insight is the boring toilet video that his stepson said sucked ended up making $50K from YouTube alone and has 5.5 million views. Evergreen content wins.

The conference moment is incredible. Roger was about to walk out of the YouTube session, noticed the back of the room was full, sat back down, and heard "YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world." That one moment led to 650K+ subscribers, $400K sponsorships, selling his company for $45M, and changing his entire life.

And the supply and demand numbers are staggering. Average plumber age is 58. For every 10 retiring, only 4 getting in. We're heading toward $100/hour tradespeople and $800/hour plumbing company rates. The trades are the next millionaire path.

But what resonated most was 106,000 views in 48 hours beats networking. When you're networking, you're talking one to one or one to 50. Roger generates 10 million views a month. That builds domain authority. That's how he ranked above companies doing $80-100M a year when he was doing $1M.

Thanks for reading, and if you found this valuable, make sure to check out the full podcast episode. Roger drops even more YouTube strategies and trades advocacy that I couldn't fit into this recap.

You can find Roger Wakefield on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and all the social platforms. Check out his free webinar at JustMetRoger.com and his course Kickstart Your YouTube.