The fact is that people have never been that impressed by job titles, at least not in my lifetime
No one's ever been like "oh wow you're a software engineer? That's so incredible"
Mostly if they're impressed, it's because it pays well and they assume I'm pretty rich
I'm not. I do really well compared to my peers, yes, but ultimately I'm still living the same kind of middle class lifestyle my parents had while my Dad worked at a tool store and my Mom worked part time at nonprofits
Lawyers' wages are badly depressed, supposedly, yet "I'm a lawyer" instantly confers better social status than "I'm a software developer" or even "I work at Google". Doctor, professor, those are jobs that come with a little or large bump in social status. "I'm a software developer" is like "I'm an accountant"—neutral at best.
But if you talk to a plumber, you'll quickly learn that while it's a respectable job that can earn you a good wage, it's also hard on the body, and often wildly unpleasant. And that's before you get to the fact that you're often your own boss, which means dealing with disgruntled or difficult customers, sometimes while you're also doing the physically uncomfortable and unpleasant task.
Imagine dealing with someone yelling at you for doing something or being too expensive wrong while you're elbow-deep in literal shit.
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.