[jfinnery]

From observing the career trajectories of the tradespeople I've known who likely match or out-earn me, yes, the ideal (and, from what I can tell, not terribly unachievable[1]) path is to be running a crew (or two... or three...) with your name on the truck(s) no later than age 35.

That does mean the job becomes management, sales, and customer relations, but it's management, sales, and customer relations for a trade you know well, which (this is my speculation here) makes it a bit easier to swallow than doing the same thing at office-bound bigco for some product you were only introduced to last week.

[1] I suspect, from also observing the crews themselves, that it's achievable because it's relatively easy for someone with a decent head on their shoulders, who speaks good English, and with the ability to show up almost all the time and to not come off as a flaky meth addict or lazy scam artist when talking to customers, to move up very fast in the trades...

[EDIT] In fact, in the linked story, it appears the locksmith's early-retirement-from-locksmithing plan might be to become a landlord. Also a fairly solid plan, and another that I've seen tradespeople follow—they have an advantage because they can achieve better results with less money on property maintenance, between their own skills, their connections, and having insight into what a good price and good work look like in other trades.