At just 33 years old, Arkeem Sturgis speaks with the wisdom of someone who has lived multiple lifetimes. Midway through a recent interview, while changing his one-year-old daughter’s diaper, he interrupted this reporter’s question to offer a gentle reminder: “Breathe,” he said. “Slow down. You’re gonna get everything that you need to get done. You’re not in a rush.”
That natural instinct—to calm others, share knowledge, and lift people up alongside him—has become Sturgis’ defining trait. As a father of six and founder of a Jacksonville, Florida-based handyman and HVAC business, he’s spent the past five years rebuilding his life from homelessness to hitting his first $100,000 annual revenue mark. He credits this turnaround to faith, mentorship, and the belief that success in the trades can still provide the freedom millennials and Gen Z Americans are seeking elsewhere. He’s also had to overcome what he sees as unnecessary cultural barriers to success for people like him.
“We as a country have done a poor job equipping our children for life,” he said. “We used to have [wood]shop in schools.” In his view, he faced significant struggles to reach his current career stage due to a lack of hands-on training in public education.
“We expect children at the age of 18 to graduate high school and make a permanent decision in our lives by going to college,” he said. “An 18-year-old does not have the mental capacity to make a permanent decision for the rest of their lives.”
Sturgis’ challenges weren’t just emotional. In 2020, like many Americans during the pandemic, he was laid off from his job as a TMJ fabricator at Zimmer Biomet, and his financial situation spiraled downward. He became homeless, moving his wife and five children between hotels, Airbnbs, and friends’ homes.
“It was a really, really, really rough year … keeping my family together and smiling through that entire process was a lot,” Sturgis said.
He’d never considered working in the trades before, but he’s always been skilled with his hands. He found [blank]—a program offering special opportunities for veterans’ children (his father served in the Navy)—and enrolled in its carpentry course, later moving on to HVAC training. What started small led to mentorship and eventually his own business, where he’s now his own boss and on track to earn $100,000 in revenue this year.
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Sturgis began at HBI with small tasks: assembling furniture and fixing leaky faucets, while also working 10-hour night shifts at a warehouse. “At one point I was working 10 hours overnight, getting off at seven in the morning, clocking into my business at eight o’clock, and working another eight to 10 hours,” he said. “Then going to sleep and doing it again.”
Within months, he was getting steady work through , a trade skills and job-matching program, using his HBI-learned skills to expand beyond basic handyman repairs.
The real turning point came in 2024, when he returned to complete HBI’s HVAC course and met his instructor, Steven “Papa Steve” Everitt. “He literally bought me a truck,” Sturgis recalled. “The truck was $800 … and he cared more about me succeeding than he cared about the money he paid for that truck.”
The mentorship, he said, was life-changing. “He helped me change everything from the way I looked—I cut my hair, I started dressing better. He pulled something out of me that I didn’t see in myself.”
That year, Sturgis won HBI’s Chairman’s Award and an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas. His business is now on track for its first $100,000 year—a milestone that once felt unimaginable.
Sturgis tells he’s frustrated by how the system fails to prepare people for economic realities and doesn’t highlight opportunities for workers like him.
“Everybody’s not going to be a historian, everybody’s not going to be a doctor, everybody’s not going to be a lawyer,” he said. Working in the trades shouldn’t carry a stigma, he added, because it’s full of high-IQ people—they just use a different part of their brain than those in white-collar jobs. “Some people want to work with their hands,” he noted.
Sturgis believes the U.S. could address the trade worker shortage with more vocational funding and targeted incentives. He also wants to see more grants and forgivable loans for small-business owners in the trades—funding that could help them grow, train apprentices, and fill the hundreds of thousands of annual open positions.
“That’s how we fill the gap,” he said. “By giving people the tools to build something of their own.”
But many young people, he argues, are trapped in the belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success: taking on massive debt for credentials that [blank]. Others chase “get-rich-quick” schemes—softer ones like sports betting or trendy startups, and darker ones involving the black market.
“Our generation is 100% focused on wealth building,” Sturgis said. “Our generation likes nice things.” He argues these comforts are still achievable through a career in the trades.
The trades—HVAC, plumbing, electrical work—rank “at the bottom of the totem pole” in Gen Z’s view of wealth-building, Sturgis said. Yet the U.S. faces [blank] made worse by [blank] and surging demand from the AI boom.
“Robots can’t build houses,” Sturgis said, echoing comments from top Fortune 500 leaders. For example, [blank] CEO Jensen Huang has [blank] that we’ll soon need hundreds of thousands of electricians to support the explosive data center boom, while [blank] his son worked as a mechanic last summer and openly questions whether college is necessary.
Sturgis thinks if schools could help Gen Z see the trades as a path to independence—not a fallback for “old men”—more would pursue them. Explaining to young people that they can earn nearly six figures in just a few years of trade work “piques their interest,” he said.
“And they’re like, ‘Wait a minute. So you mean to tell me, I can get my hands dirty and I can make that much money?’ Yes, you can,” Sturgis said.
“It’s been a lot of trial and error, a lot of long days, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears,” he said. “But if you can manage to push past your feelings and the valleys, it gets easier. You look back down the mountain and realize how far you’ve come.”
A version of this story was published on on October 12, 2025.
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