Joey: Hey, good morning. I'm here with John Jones, president and owner of Custom Plumbing. Good to see you, sir.

John: You too, man. How are you doing?

Joey: Very good. Brought out here on, I think this is Olney Creek, isn't it? This is. This is a beautiful good morning.

John: Yeah.

Joey: Great way to start the day.

John: Yeah, it's awesome. It's beautiful out here.

Joey: I know you're thinking like, "Why did he pull me out here so early in the morning.

John: I thought we were going hunting.

Joey: Yeah. That. Well, I'd have to have my license, and I'm dragging my feet. I got my booklet to start my. It's the hunter safety course, which you know better than me.

John: Oh, yeah.

Joey: I'm kind of going through the process, but I'm supposed to go turkey hunting this., which I think starts next month.

John: Yeah, this next month. Yeah. Turkey hunting will be coming around, and that's going to be for a bow or rifle.

Joey: So the.

John: It's going to be a lot of fun.

Joey: The bow is first, right? The bow guys always get to go and gals for all you female hunters, but the bow hunters always get to go first, right?

John: Yeah. And I believe in turkey season, the season extends longer for bow hunters, unlike deer. Bow hunters are first, and then rifle season comes up, and then it ends.

Joey: So do you do any bow hunting at all?

John: I have, yeah. Yeah. Unsuccessfully.

Joey: I was going to say. What kind of distance are we talking? That's the first thing that comes to mind: you must be close.

John: Pretty darn close. Yeah. 15 yards, maybe 25 yards at best. Depending on your shot, how good of a shot you are, how accurate, how much you practice. Just like anything.

Joey: But there are still designated hunting areas, right? Because we just saw there were, like, what, 15 turkeys behind us a few minutes ago, and we're in.

John: Oh, totally.

Joey: Even though we're here on Olney Creek, we're still. There are houses around here. You don't want people just blasting.

John: Right.

Joey: So where are the areas to hunt around here?

John: Out Swasey is a really good area. Plaster has some good public land that you can hunt. If you have access to private land, that's always the best. It's going to be less pressure from all the hunters. But there's so much property out here. All Shasta County, there's a lot of BLM land. Whether you're going up toward Whiskeytown or even Lake Shasta. You could jump in your boat, throw a fishing pole in there, throw your shotgun in there, and go turkey hunting and head bass fishing.

Joey: Wow.

John: All on the same day.

Joey: Wow.

John: How awesome is that?

Joey: No, I'm looking forward to it. I'm supposed to go turkey hunting here pretty soon. This will be my first time. I'd never got it. I moved here when I was 11 from Alaska, and I remember us hunting a little bit as a kid. You're trailing along, but I haven't done any. I haven't done a hunter safety course or anything. I'm kind of excited a little.

John: It'll be fun.

Joey: I was watching MeatEater, and I don't know if you've seen that show, but you watch a show, and it gets you all fired up. You watch the show where they make robots. Next thing you know, you're buying Lego robot sets. You watch the show where the guy's going out hiking 20 miles to kill an elk, and you're like, "Hey, I can do that."

John: Absolutely.

Joey: Yes. Did you? You were going to go up to Idaho and. But you didn't, or you're about to go?

John: I've been actually going to Idaho for deer hunting and elk hunting and just love it up there. A friend of mine, who's a Purple Heart Marine vet, invited me on a trip one year, and we've been going every. Ever since.

Joey: Is this the same gentleman that runs the nonprofit organization?

John: Yeah, the Veteran Sportsman's Association. It's a nonprofit organization. And what it is is we raised money for veterans and their families so that we can take them out on all-expense paid trips.

Joey: Oh, very nice.

John: For example, we have one coming up, and it is a weekend trip for squirrel hunting, fishing on Blue Lake, and golfing at Likely Place Golf & RV Resort. Another one we'll be doing in May is a busload of veterans coming from the veterans home out of Knighton Road.

Joey: The new one?

John: The new one, yeah, exactly. They're going to bus out a bunch of veterans out there. I believe we've been doing this for three years now, and they bus them all out there. We have party barges, and people bring their bass boats out, and we take all the veterans out for a fishing trip and have a trophy prize giveaway for whoever catches.

Joey: Oh man, that's awesome.

John: The biggest fish and put on a little luncheon and barbecue and.

Joey: If they're in that home, they're most likely going to be. You might have. You're probably not going to have World War II vets, but you're going to have Korean vets and Vietnam because of that.

John: For sure.

Joey: The average age has gotta be 70?

John: 70 and up.

Joey: And up? Yeah.

John: Absolutely.

Joey: That is awesome.

John: It's really cool. They just have a blast.

Joey: Oh, I bet.

John: What they love doing is jumping in the bass boat and doing 70 miles an hour across the lake. That's where they get the most fun.

Joey: That's awesome. How did he start this? He's a veteran, right? And he's a. You said he's a Purple Heart. He did a couple of tours.

John: In Iraq.

Joey: Yeah.

John: I met Matt back in 2005. Great guy. And, he. PTSD is a big challenge for a lot of veterans returning to. Back home. And the goal was is to try to get them reconnected back into the outdoors where you're just free and it's pure, and it's clean, and you can kind of let everything go, and you just get to soak up the wonderful outdoors. And that's the ultimate goal. It is just to get the veterans back into reality and.

Joey: Yeah, absolutely.

John: And just calming life and also their families so that they can bring their families out as well.

Joey: How do people find out? Is there a phone number or a website? How do they get involved? How do veterans find out about it?

John: Facebook's a big one. The VSA, or the Veteran Sportsman's Association, is also at many of the local expos. For example, the Sportsman's Expos coming up, I believe, in April. And so we will have a booth down there and, we'll be actually doing a draw and giving away, a shield nine-millimeter pistol or a fishing trip. Your choice. That drawing's going on now. We'll be selling raffle tickets and.

Joey: Very nice. If they can't make it there, they can get on Facebook and look for VSA, Veteran Sports.

John: Yeah, Association.

Joey: Association.

John: Yep.

Joey: Oh, very good man. That's awesome. I'd love to hear about it.

John: It's a lot of fun.

Joey: Yeah, and we go through phases, our society does, where we really appreciate the men and women that serve the country. And then we kind of go through some phase where there's some media hype where we don't like something. And it seems like we're really coming through a phase right now where people really appreciate their freedom. I don't know what sparks the highs and lows of it, but.

John: Yeah, who knows?

Joey: I've noticed a real push in the last year or so of really being patriotic. I'm a former Marine, and suddenly, there's this wave of, thank you for your service, thank you for your service. And like, "Wow, I haven't heard that in three or four years." And then suddenly, boom, you start hearing it a lot, and you're like, "What. How? How did that catch on?"

John: I like that.

Joey: That's awesome. We're going to have to. Meet Matt and get him on the show at some point because we love to.

John: Absolutely, man, actually. He'd love to do it. He'd love to do it.

Joey: So, back to hunting, you're getting ready for the season. I've seen your trophy, which was a trophy mule deer, on your wall.

John: Yeah, man. I had an incredible experience about two years ago in Idaho. A couple of friends passed by, and I went back there. It was a smaller group that year, and it was just a phenomenal hunting year. The weather was right; there were a lot of animals running around, and I got my trophy buck of a lifetime, and it was on the very last day of the season. We had to pack up and get out of there, so we only had till noon to hunt that day, and Idaho was huge. I mean, the mountains. It's flat, it's flat like this, and flat like this. When you're traversing across these mountains, it's just a long way, grueling, and tough work. And so we put on this hunt that we've spotted this buck the day before. And so, he's coming up from the back side over this ridge, and then I'm going to come up this finger, and we're going to reconvene right on this little draw.

Joey: Have a little meeting. A powwow.

John: Yeah, exactly, to see if we can get an animal.

Joey: Negotiate.

John: So sure enough, we come together and come right up to that draw. I saw the buck first thing in the morning. He came right down in there. I'm like, "Sweet, this is working out per plan," we get over there, we convene, have our meeting. No animal. No buck. Where did he go? Gone, so my buddy, Brandon, gets his stuff. He's hiking back, and I started hiking up closer to the ridge, sat on this little rock cropping, and grabbed a cliff bar. Suddenly I hear this crashing coming out of where I just walked through. And here's this big old monster buck, big old monster buck just running down the mountain, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, look at that," put my rangefinder up, 400 yards, "Boom."

Joey: That's a good shot, man, 400 yards.

John: Yeah, yeah, we finally got him.

Joey: Very nice.

John: After eight shots.

Joey: How much did he weight?

John: He was pushing 300 pounds.

Joey: Yeah.

John: He was a monster, man. And for it to be the last day, it was so cool, man. It was so cool.

Joey: Bring it all together, nice.

John: Yeah. I have been doing this for a long time, and that is the biggest buck I've ever harvested. And there are elk locally around here. There are hunts that you can put in, they're going to be a little more challenging to get drawn for because you have to put into a lottery draw. And so they only release a few limited tags.

Joey: Is it a pure lottery as every 100 people put it in, and they're like, "Hey, we're pulling 15 out"? Or is there some process point system or something like that?

John: Yeah, there is definitely a point system that you can put in for consecutive years and establish so many points, and then that increases your likelihood of getting drawn.

Joey: Okay, got it. So, if you haven't won for five or six years, you technically should have a little bit of an advantage over somebody whose first year?

John: For sure.

Joey: Okay, so.

John: And I mean for elk, it's more like 12 or 14 years.

Joey: Oh, really?

John: It takes a long time.

Joey: Oh, wow.

John: Yeah. It takes a long time, but there are many different zones around here, whether it's Oakland, Whitmore, getting up into the Trinities or the Marble Mountains further north. Even on the coast, there are a lot of hunting spots.

Joey: Really?

John: And elk over on the coast as well.

Joey: So, this is all going to be on public land, right? This is how this works. Or if a friend has a monster ranch?

John: Totally, yeah.

Joey: You're talking hundreds. When you say ranch, this isn't like a four-acre.

John: No. Thousands of acres.

Joey: Yeah, exactly.

John: 10,000 acre ranch or 5,000 acre ranch. Yeah. Absolutely.

Joey: Do you have to pull tags to hunt on private land, too?

John: Yeah, absolutely.

Joey: Still regulated?

John: Yeah.

Joey: Oh, okay.

John: But for dear, I know that there are different draws or opportunities where you can. Some owners will have a property land management tag.

Joey: Got it.

John: Or an owner's tag. And so, I'm sure they may release those to private parties for a fee.

Joey: I saw a thing a few years ago on. This will slightly shift down in Texas about all these animals. African animals that were extinct in Africa. And they had brought them over. Ranchers had brought them over there, and we're talking these monster ranches, 8,000 acre type thing.

John: Yeah.

Joey: And they were flourishing and it was. The whole point was that they had. Through conservation, they brought the animals over here, raising them healthily. And then people were pulling. Like you said, you pay. You get to go on.

John: Absolutely.

Joey: And the show was talking about how they had actually brought these animals back from extinction. And then people complained, "Hey, you're shooting these gorgeous animals," like, "No, by charging people to get to hunt these animals, we actually have raised the money to save the species." On the surface, it seems counter-intuitive, like, "Wait, wait, what? By shooting the animal, you're saving it?" By building a system and economy around it, you can provide the environment for the animal to flourish. And it was a big deal how certain groups had got the hunting of these animals on private ranches stopped. Because they go like, "Hey, this animal is almost extinct." And they're like, "It's almost extinct in its natural habitat. It's actually flourishing in these private ranches." So, I have four kids, and one of them is really into animals. She's 11, and she's been. There are a lot of shows and a lot of reading on bringing the animals back. And it's really cool when she comes in and talks to me about how we're bringing the tiger back, and we're bringing bear.

John: Yeah.

Joey: Because she goes through the phase. The first phase was very sad because all these animals are. "Why would people hunt these animals?" And I'm like, "Let's go a little further with this." Then, the second phase is when she comes back and talks about how, like a capitalist approach, they can bring these animals back through the right approach. So, I want to get back. You talked about the Trinity. Now, I know you are gone. You have a good buddy, Sean Peters, right?

John: Yeah, man, he introduced me to. He took me on my first backpacking trip up to the Trinity Alps. And. What a majestic place! I don't know if you have ever been there, but.

Joey: Oh, yeah.

John: Man, it's an amazing place up there, and there are so many lakes to go and venture and see, several hundred. But one in particular is my favorite spot, and the first time I went there, I just about died because I was out of shape, overweight, and it's a hellacious trail. I mean, it's a long trail up to Grizzly Lake. I remember one trip man, my brother-in-law, caught a five-pound huge brook trout out of this high mountain lake. This lake sits at about 8,000 feet.

Joey: Yeah.

John: And he came back to camp after fishing all day with this monster brook trout. It was just incredible, and I grinning from ear to ear. And but what an awesome spot. Just the trail hiking up and the stars out there. Could you imagine you're out, you're sitting at 8,000 feet camping under the stars, and

Joey: No street lights, too.

John: No lights.

Joey: To pollute the. Yeah.

John: It is incredible.

Joey: You see a lot of shooting stars in a spot like that.

John: Yeah, it's hard to fall asleep. You could sit there all night long and just stare at the stars. Disclaimer: You're not going to go and catch a five-pounder. I guarantee it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, like my buck.

Joey: That was huge, yeah. Five pounds is huge for a break.

John: It was a massive trout.

Joey: That's a monster.

John: Most of them are nice little pan fryers.

Joey: Yeah.

John: Eight to 10 inch, 12 inch. Perfect.

Joey: Do you get up there often still?

John: Try and go at least once a year, but there are so many places I haven't been up there, but it's hard not to go back to the same place because it's so amazing. And now that I've conquered the hike, I can do it each and every time.

Joey: And you're 40 pounds lighter.

John: 40 pounds lighter.

Joey: Now you can have a 40 pound pack.

John: Can fly up that thing. So.

Joey: Yeah. Yeah, I need to get out there more. We love to go over to the coast. I'm enamored with Trinidad and Blue Lake and the Redwoods man if you haven't been to Patrick's Point and hike that.

John: That's beautiful.

Joey: Return of the Jedi, that's where they filmed it, and it's awesome. Take the kids through that. They love that they're.

John: And summertime, it's great. Right?

Joey: Oh man.

John: You beat the heat. Get over there to the coast, and 50 degrees.

Joey: It's 110 degrees here. It's, yeah, it's like.

John: Sixty.

Joey: 64 and it just gorgeous. It's perfect.

John: That's the Pacific Ocean.

Joey: Yeah, it's beautiful. I don't get the last in as much. My wife loves to. You know that it's the middle of July or June or something like that year that the sun stays up the longest. And everybody goes and Treks Lassen.

John: Right.

Joey: I have to do that with her this year.

John: Yeah, get up to the top.

Joey: Yeah. Have you done that one?

John: I personally haven't. No. I'm surprised, man. I'm going to have to make that happen.

Joey: I hear it's not too bad. It's not Grizzly Lake.

John: You know what's great up there, too, towards that area out east is Hat Creek.

Joey: Yeah.

John: World famous right?

Joey: Yeah.

John: For fishing and camping. And we're just surrounded by unbelievable nature mountains and streams and lakes, and in each direction you go north, south, east, west, it's awesome.

Joey: How did you do this in the greatest segue I've ever had? But you're from Sebastopol, right?

John: I am, yes. Seba. Little old Sebastopol, California.

Joey: It's all grapes now, right? But it used to be.

John: For sure, yeah.

Joey: Was it Apple or what was it back in the day?

John: Well, my family on my mom's side they migrated and immigrated over here from Italy in the early 1900s. And so as soon as they hit New York, they split to the west coast, hit San Francisco, and went straight north to Sebastopol. And so my great-great-grandfather ended up purchasing a bunch of property, and it was all, at that time it was all plum orchards.

Joey: Okay.

John: And then once that started phasing out, it all switched to apples. So they ripped all the plums out and planted a bunch of apple trees. And the apple trees have flourished for years. But that market obviously has shifted, and now the wine industry has become big.

Joey: Yeah.

John: Worldwide.

Joey: Yeah.

John: And so they ripped all the apple trees out and planted all vineyards. And so naturally, the properties have been sold off most of them. My family still has a lot of property, but it's all vineyards now. It's incredible.

Joey: Well what brought you to Redding? How'd you get here?

John: I graduated from my plumbing apprenticeship program in 2000 or, excuse me, in 2004. I had vacationed up here a few different times, houseboat trips on Shasta.

Joey: Of course, yeah.

John: Skiing, wakeboards, and that kind of stuff, and just love the area. I'm about the outdoors: hiking, backpacking, fishing, camping. And so it's unlimited up here. And so I just wanted to move up, and housing was much more affordable up here even though it was the peak of the market in 2005 when I moved up.

Joey: Oh yeah, of course.

John: But I thought I got a screaming deal, which I did compare to Sonoma County. I wouldn't change it for the world and wouldn't go back down there to live. And if anything, I'm heading to Idaho.

Joey: If anything, you're heading more north?

John: Heading more north.

Joey: Or Man, I.

John: Out of state and.

Joey: And you gotta remember, your ancestors are from Italy. That's. They're not used to that cold. Even North Italy is still it's still warm.

John: Yeah.

Joey: I grew up in Alaska, and so I have no desire to live in the cold. This is as cold as I want just to be a little yeah. A little frost, but I don't want it.

John: Little chilly.

Joey: I don't. Any time that you dip below freezing, no.

John: That's it. No tolerance.

Joey: In our business group, you talked about how long-term Idaho calls you, and I went through my head, I'm like. No man. When the equator calls me for anything, it goes down. When it's wintertime here. But I'm being a wimp. We had Joe Chimenti on.

John: Yeah.

Joey: And he's the president of Shasta Builders Exchange and the Trade School. And I know you're heavily involved with both those organizations. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

John: Yeah, absolutely man. As I mentioned, I went through a four-year apprenticeship program myself. And so when I moved up here to Redding, I went to work for another guy for a time and then opened up a satellite branch in my focus's company, Custom Plumbing. And so through the years, the last 7, 8, and 9 years, I got involved with the Builders Exchange. And I currently sit on the board there as a board member for Joe. And then we've been slowly building the trade school, and I'm passionate about it. Because I was an apprentice and went through a certified program. I'm passionate about wanting to get other people trained, whether it's youth coming out of high school or people looking to change careers. Just more involvement in the work industry, the trade industry, whether it's electrical, plumbing, or carpentry. There are many opportunities for people to make a good living, work with their hands, enjoy what they do, take pride in what they do, see the finished product at the end, and be super happy about it.

Joey: At the micro and macro level, I think America has, we need more help with the infrastructure. You hear about, at the national level, you hear about a lot of the national projects. They're like, "Hey man, these things were built." This is coming out of the Great Depression post World War 2. These things don't have an unlimited lifespan. And we need to start putting more into infrastructure. But we see that on the micro level, too.

John: Totally.

Joey: I said it on this show several times because I work with a lot of the tradespeople, and so overwhelmingly, I hear them say they're undermanned for the demand. And plus, I've had my own experiences where I'm like, "Hey, I need some help." And they're like, I'll be there in about in three weeks."

John: Three weeks?

Joey: What? You know what?

John: No, it's 120 now.

Joey: You don't just show up. You don't have the bat phone or something.

John: Alright.

Joey: And so that's a clear sign that, supply and demand.

John: Absolutely.

Joey: The demand is much higher than supply.

John: And I think we're all aware that that's going to change. It has changed, and there's been a shortage, and there will continue to be a shortage until that whole mindset change occurs, where people understand that the trades are a viable opportunity to make a great career. Whether that's making a career as a plumber or an estimator or then turning it into being an entrepreneur and starting your own business. It is just an incredible opportunity. We were at a job yesterday, man. Incredible. Just beautiful. We're overlooking the Sacramento River, and the Sundial Bridge is straight down. We're sitting up on top of the bluffs, and the very first thing my guys say to me when we get to the job is they're like, "We get to work here today." I'm like, "Yeah. Is this awesome or what?" It's going to make the day incredible.

Joey: Yeah.

John: You know, so much better. Yeah, we're trenching, we're digging by hand. It's hard work.

Joey: Not a cubicle?

John: But not a cubicle. Look at the view.

Joey: Yeah.

John: Look at where we get to work.

Joey: I was at a sporting event with one of my kids and the other. I'm not the kind of dad who's, "Hey, second is the first loser." I'm not that guy.

Joey: There's a lot of those dads and moms there, trust me, at all the sports my kids are in. But there was something that caught my attention. So these parents were talking about how they were going. Their kids really need to perform well in the sport. And then the outcome was they'd get a college scholarship. And I thought, okay, well, so your child's going to put all their time and effort into this sport so that they can go to college and get an education. Now, let's flip that for a second. Imagine if I come in and say, "Hey, look, you're going to get really good math scores so that you can play baseball in college because they want to bring up the math scores of the baseball players. So, don't worry about actually being good at baseball. What I need you to be good at is math. Now, if that were the case, do you think that kid that's helping there for the. Do you think that kid's going to play baseball? No. That kid's going to ride the pine.

John: Right.

Joey: And so conversely, if you're so good at sports that you got a college scholarship, are you learning anything in college? Or are you there to play sports?

John: Play sports.

Joey: Now what?

John: Yeah.

Joey: I just think that's a fallacy that has been. One of those things that's been.

John: I agree.

Joey: Really pushed, it's like what if. Do you want your kid to get a college education? How about you focus on their education?

John: Totally.

Joey: So when they transition to college, rather than, "No, I want him to go to a really good school." Yeah. But now they're not really a student. They're a baseball player or a swimmer or what? Or a wrestler. I know that there are exceptions to every rule. Okay? But I don't live my life by the exception. So, when I think of many people who have gone and got athletic scholarships to college far and away, I rarely meet someone who can tell you, yeah, I got that degree in mechanical engineering through wrestling.

Joey: Now I know there's exceptions. I know I'm going to get commentary, and people are going to be pissed. But what it is, Hey, I went and got a degree in something, and now I really didn't pay attention.

John: No.

Joey: They just kind of pushed me through the. They knew that I had a big meeting this weekend. And so they kind of just like, "Hey, hey, hey, all you really need is a C, and you know"

John: You'll get through.

Joey: So I just think that's a fallacy. And I think it's part of a. I kind of understand where it comes from. If you go back a generation and a half, that was the. College was the holy grail. It was a golden chalice; if you got that, it was just a ticket. And if everybody gets it, then it's not. It doesn't have value if everybody has it; you can't just go get it. You have to have. There was something to be learned in the pursuit of it. So if you just have a college degree versus if you don't have that piece of paper, but you understand how to get things done, that's what college used to be.

John: Right.

Joey: And when I get online, I see somebody who's working on their second Ph.D. at Harvard complaining about how they can't get a job or how.

Joey: And then trying to blame, boy, it must be some form of society's failure on me. And then you're like, man.

John: That's craziness.

Joey: All that education and no wisdom.

John: Yep.

Joey: You know what I mean?

John: I can totally relate to that because I wanted to go play college football. To play football.

Joey: Yeah.

John: Not to get a master's degree or a bachelor's degree.

Joey: Left tackle. I'm looking at you.

John: Oh. For sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

Joey: What position you went as running back or?

John: Yeah, running back and linebacker. I went to a small school, so there weren't many guys to choose from.

Joey: Yeah. How did? So you get to.

John: Oh man, the first day of college practice, I'd look at these guys that are 6'7" and 300 pounds, and they're faster than I am, and they are left tackles or D linemen.

Joey: Yeah.

John: And so I realized quickly, I'm like, "No way. I'm going into the plum." I'm going into plumbing apprenticeship. I'm going to stay away from football.

Joey: Well, I think you made a good choice.

John: I think so too, man. Yeah. I've been happy with it.

Joey: With a lot of the projects that you do here, I know that we've talked and one of the big things is. And I want to talk to you about was tankless water heaters.

John: Yeah.

Joey: Because I know that's like. So the pros are you save money.

John: Totally, man. There's three major benefits. One of them, you have unlimited hot water for folks that enjoy a lot of hot water or long showers.

Joey: It sounds great in this cold morning.

John: It does. Yeah. No doubt. Unlimited hot water, so you're no longer limited to 40 or 50 gallons or whatever size tank you have. So you can run that baby as long as you want. Another one is definitely energy savings. So, if you think about it, accumulating the total usage in a household in a 24-hour period may add up to four hours in a bigger family.

Joey: That's actually a lot. Yeah.

John: It's a lot. Yeah. In a 24-hour period.

Joey: Yeah. 0:25:43.0

John: So with the tankless water heater, those 20 hours, you're using no energy. It is off. As soon as a tap opens up. Yeah. Now you're burning fuel or using electricity. And so that's what the biggest advantage is as far as energy savings is it's just off 90% of the time.

Joey: Is there any cons to it? Is there any reason why you like to tell someone? You probably don't want to go with this or not.

John: The only downfall is it does cost a little bit more money, but it's a long-term expense.

Joey: To install you mean?

John: To install. Yeah, initially. But it's a long-term investment. It's definitely going to last longer than a standard tank water heater. It's smaller. That's another advantage too. It's a much smaller unit and hangs on the wall. So, if you need to add another weight bench in the gym or speed bag.

Joey: Do I need another weight bench?

John: You need another weight bench.

Joey: I do?

Joey: Wow.

John: So or speed bag you can hang up.

Joey: That you go there you go. Speed bag. Yeah.

John: Speed bag.

Joey: Okay. We'll go with a speed bag.

John: Yeah. Box it up.

Joey: Yeah. Very nice.

John: So definitely space savings also.

Joey: Is the average job that's. You're more of getting called out for people with issues, right? I know you do a lot of new construction and stuff like that.

John: My sewer's backed up.

Joey: Sewer's backed up.

John: My whole house is backed up. Or the kitchen quit draining kitchen sink. We get a lot of those calls. There are a lot of drain cleaning jobs. And then we have the ability once we get it cleared. If it is a mainline that backs the whole house up, we can send a camera down the line and scope out what's going on and just be able to see it is a damaged pipe. Is it collapsed? Is it roots that have intruded? That way, we have the information, and the owner can decide.

Joey: Now you guys 20. I always hear through our friends because we have mutual friends, so I don't know. Are you 24/7? because I know for them you are because they're always bragging about like, "I call them on Sunday at 4:30 in the morning. There's water coming everywhere." You guys are 24/7.

John: You bet man. Yeah, we'll be available 24/7.

Joey: Oh, okay. Wow.

John: A lot of times though, it's funny, what seems to be an emergency for somebody when you ask them a few questions and they kind of calm down or realize the situation it typically turns into, "You know what? I can wait till tomorrow." Or, "It's not absolutely dire straights that you must be here tonight or at 4:30 in the morning."

Joey: But I'm going to test that. I'm going to call you at 4:30 in the morning.

John: Please do.

Joey: Because I get up every morning at 4:30. I'll call you. Just quiz you. Is this an emergency?

John: Absolutely. Yeah.

Joey: I can't get any hot water in my bathroom. So you guys handle commercial, obviously, then, and residential.

John: Definitely.

Joey: The whole nine Yards.

John: Absolutely. Custom homes are a lot of fun, too, man. When you're plumbing somebody's dream home that they've saved their money for or have been working so hard to get to that point, it's a lot of fun to work with those customers and be able to install the plumbing fixtures that that they truly want and they're going to appreciate for 20, 30 years down the road.

Joey: So we were talking about trade school and how the mindset of, hey go to college, go to college you'll get a career. And it kind of shifted away from. All the tradesmen that I know are doing very well. I think growing up, I thought oh well, you don't make as much money. With a college degree, you make two or three times. But all the tradesmen I know are doing very well.

John: Like a stigma that you go work?

Joey: That's not real.

John: I don't believe it's real at all. I think the opportunity is endless, to be honest with you. Whatever industry or career you work in, you can make as little or as much money as you want. And the trades are no different. You can take your career and accelerate that to the moon, make as much money, and have as much success as you want.

Joey: Which is what America was built on. That's.

John: Totally.

Joey: There's a lot of.

John: Small business.

Joey: Yeah, absolutely. That's.

John: Small business, man.

Joey: And when we talk about the middle class, it was built, the entrepreneurs that start the business and trade are an excellent opportunity. See, I think there's a false equivalency that you must be good with money. You can't. Regardless of how much you make, plenty of people are making millions of dollars on Wall Street, spending much more, and then being bankrupt. So this whole idea of how much you make has to be tempered with your ability to manage what you make.

John: Absolutely. I was a plumber. Getting into the trades. I was a plumber, but then I became a business owner. And so now I'm realizing that there are a lot of times when I cannot work in my business, and I need to be working on my business as the business owner. And so I'm not out in the field necessarily wrenching pipes and installing heaters and that kind of stuff. And so that's been a cool experience for me transitioning over the last few years. I'm definitely going into the more business ownership of a plumbing contractor as opposed to just being out there wrenching on the pipes.

Joey: I hear it all the time. That probably plays a big part. You grew up playing sports. And that idea of teamwork, direction, goal setting, etc. A lot of the people that I see are successful in business. So I was bashing sports earlier, but I was really bashing the parents pushing the kid and losing sight of it. Are you pushing them because you want to see them do better in life and get an education? Don't forget to educate them. But the people I see who are successful, a lot of them have a strong background in athletics growing up and understand goal setting and team building. The importance of working together. And wrestlers are some of the most self-disciplined people I've ever met in life.

John: Major discipline, Yeah.

Joey: Cutting weight all the time. Are you kidding me?

John: Oh, dude.

Joey: Back to the trade school and mentoring you. I know that Joe talked about a wide breadth of people that they like to work with. You'd mentioned youth bringing youth up. Are there? Obviously, they're learning the trades, but what about teaching them some of the business acumen or the mentoring process? Because I think you're heavily involved in that, right?

John: Yeah, definitely. And it's on the ground floor right now. One of the apprentices at the plumbing school works with our company, and he came through the Builders Exchange, which is absolutely awesome. He is a great kid, and he wants to learn. I'm happy to have him aboard and be able to teach him. I'm just super excited for him because I know the career he's going to have is going to be outstanding. What's really awesome about the trade school is it's relatively inexpensive, and you get to go to school and work in the field every day, too.

Joey: That's what Joe was saying. So you're, instead of taking on heavy loans, you're actually making money.

John: Yeah. You're not accumulating a bunch of debt. And we're happy at my company to pay for our apprentices to attend school. So they're essentially out-of-pocket zero.

Joey: Fantastic.

John: And they get to go to work every day and make money. And so they're learning in the classroom out of the textbook, and then they're able to take that and apply it into the field, and it just expedites that process of them getting the knowledge and expedites them to be able to get out and work on their own.

Joey: Joe was telling me, I think he said it was like $ 10,000. And I was like, I know $10000 is a lot of money, but when we talk about higher education, no.

John: I tell you, one of the biggest things that just really hit home with me is that these individuals get to figure out if they like it because they're working in it.

Joey: Oh, man.

John: As opposed to going to school for two or three years to get a degree, right?

Joey: Yeah.

John: That you're not even working in yet, and then you get that degree, and you go to work in it, you may not like it. So you spend all that time and money on something you may not like when you get out there. And that's what's great about the trades: you actually get to do it while you're going through the school, and maybe you figure out, it's not for me, right now. But what's cool is it's always in your back pocket. Growing up, I was always told, "Get this apprenticeship out of the way, and if you want to do something after that, then you'll always have it in your back pocket. You can always come back to it." And I thought that was really cool.

Joey: It served you well. Hey John, thanks so much for coming out. I appreciate it. I got you out here early in the morning. Since I didn't have my license, we couldn't go on a hunt.

John: We'll be doing that soon, though. Absolutely.

Joey: Yeah. And I really want to. Before we close your friend Matt, can we discuss it so it's the Veterans?

John: Veterans Sportsman's Association.

Joey: And they're on Facebook.

John: Yeah, definitely on Facebook. We also have a website for the Veteran Sportsman's Association. Just a great organization, a lot of great folks involved in it, and we put on a lot of trips. I'm just looking at sponsoring people and getting them in touch with the outdoors.

Joey: If we don't take care of the people who make sacrifices for us, there won't be anybody there to make sacrifices for us.

John: That's exactly right, man.

Joey: So thank you so much, sir.

John: Thanks. Pleasure.

Joey: Absolutely, I appreciate it.