By the time I was 17 years old I had learned the Electrical trade from my father

 The first time I worked with my father I was pretty young doing electrical work. maybe 6 to 10  because he was trading work for my dental work with a friend from church. So, because it was my mouth he wanted me to help pay for my dental work with my own work. I wanted to be with my father but I might have preferred to be doing something else. At first I brought things he wanted from his work truck (an electrical utility vehicle truck) as I learned what all the parts and tools were by age 10 or so then he found out around the time I was 12 that I was still small enough at 5 foot 2 inches at first at age 12 to crawl under some houses where he could not because he was 6 foot 3 inches tall. I eventually became by age 21 6 foot 5 inches tall but just after I turned 12 I was only 5 foot 2 but within a year I was 5 foot 10 by age 13 and 6 foot 2 inches tall by age 15.

So, as I grew older and stronger I became much more useful to him as a worker because I knew a lot from being around him building things. So, mostly I was trained as a real electrician from age 12 summers and sometimes weekends to age 17 years old. By age 17 I could completely rewire or wire a house from scratch with just a set of plans and tools and parts which was pretty good for age 17.

So, learning this trade with my father basically moved me forward to be able to build an entire house by my early 20s if I wanted to. And starting at age 20 my father had me help him build his retirement home completely from the ground up with a cement slab near Yucca Valley, Califronia on 2 1/2 acres he bought in 1968 when I was 20. He retired there after we built this house completely on weekends from 1968 to 1980. But, you could actually live in it (a section of it likely by about the mid 1970s). He brought his old Spartan 28 foot Aluminum Trailer that he had bought when I was a baby there too on the land so we had somewhere to live on weekends building this new house and garage and tool shed. I helped build all these things with him on weekends starting in 1968 when he bought the property when I was 20 years old.

I also stored a Mini-bike I had bought when I was around 12 with a 2 1/2 horsepower engine and a centrifugal clutch that could do about 30 miles per hour also there and eventually we bought a 1960 600 cc Thumper (single cylindar) Matchless Hillclimber with a large rear sprocket for climbing up steep hills in the dirt. It had a straight pipe that blew blue flame at night but had a headlight so you could see to ride at night across dirt roads across the desert there especially summers when it is nice to ride at night after a hot day. It was always beautiful because you could see the whole milky way riding across the desert then at night.

Then I went to college first at Glendale College which is a community college where my best friend learned to be a jet engine mechanic so he could join the air force and work on jet planes so he wouldn't get drafted and die in the Viet Nam War then. I first went to college there in 1966.

However, eventually at age 21 I worked as an electrician for almost a year then while I was changing majors in college from Computer Data Processing and Computer engineering to studying more about psychology and Philosophy and trying to become a psychologist to help other people and myself.

However, often in my 20s because I loved living in Mt. Shasta I would take jobs being a carpenter or electrician or Landscaper so I could more easily make a living in Mt. Shasta in the 1970s. I also planted trees under a private contract to the forest service and the California Department of Forestry. And I also harvested various tree seeds and pine cones which was very lucrative one year because of a bumper crop of seeds in everything under private contract. 

Working doing that by the hour isn't worth the danger of the climbing of the trees but it was worth it under private contract because we were paid by the bushel of seeds which worked out quite well for us then.

So, in San Diego and Los Angeles and San Francisco Area I tended to own businesses but in Mt. Shasta I tended to work for other people more doing various construction gigs and building homes.

Learning all this starting at age 6 or 8 years old allowed me to do well in whatever I did regarding the construction of houses and buildings and remodels as an adult if I wanted to do that.

However, what I liked the best was owning my own businesses which I did a lot more after I was 30 years old.