Mike Rowe on What 300 Dirty Jobs Taught Him About True Success with Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes 0:00 [upbeat music]

Lewis Howes 0:04 Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest, Mike Rowe in the house. Good to see you, man.

Mike Rowe 0:10 Nice to see you. Thank you for coming by my, uh-

Lewis Howes 0:12 Yeah, your house actually.

Mike Rowe 0:13 It's kind of like my make-believe office here in San Francisco. Most of the, uh ... I'm us- when I'm in town, I'm usually on the other side of that glass-

Lewis Howes 0:21 Right

Mike Rowe 0:21 ... telling stories of the, uh, of the vast Bering Sea.

Lewis Howes 0:24 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 0:25 Or whatever they put in front of me.

Lewis Howes 0:26 I like it. You are, uh, have an incredible career history. Started out as an opera singer, is that correct? Or early on you were-

Mike Rowe 0:35 You know, the, the-

Lewis Howes 0:35 ... in the opera world

Mike Rowe 0:36 ... the trick in your question is started off. And it's funny, you know, the older you get, y- the more you tend to look back.

Lewis Howes 0:44 Mm.

Mike Rowe 0:44 And the more you look back, the more you realize that the place where you started is not really the place where you thought you started. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 0:50 Sure, sure.

Mike Rowe 0:51 Right?

Lewis Howes 0:51 Where did you really start?

Mike Rowe 0:52 I, I honest- I mean, right now, today, at this point in my life, I would say, um, I would say that my career started when I was 17 and was failing out of, uh, shop classes. I very much wanted to follow in my granddad's footsteps.

Lewis Howes 1:10 Failing out of them.

Mike Rowe 1:11 Right. I didn't get e- every ... People who see Dirty Jobs figure I'm like Bob Vila or like-

Lewis Howes 1:17 Right

Mike Rowe 1:17 ... Joe Handy. I'm not. That's a, um, that's a recessive gene.

Lewis Howes 1:22 Sure. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:22 Right? And, and my grandfather, who got it in spades, was sort of, uh, an, an idol of mine-

Lewis Howes 1:28 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:28 ... growing up. So I very much wanted to do what he could do, which essentially was build a house without a blueprint.

Lewis Howes 1:32 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:33 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:33 Ooh, that's impressive.

Mike Rowe 1:34 Well, he, he only went to the seventh grade.

Lewis Howes 1:36 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:36 But he had the, uh, the chip, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:38 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:38 ... that some guys have in the back of their brains that allows them to take a watch apart or a combustion engine-

Lewis Howes 1:44 That's amazing

Mike Rowe 1:44 ... and put it back together. W- he never once read the instructions to anything. He only went to the seventh grade.

Lewis Howes 1:50 He could just see it.

Mike Rowe 1:50 He just saw it. Right.

Lewis Howes 1:51 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:51 I mean, it, it didn't matter if it was a car or a house or, or a watch. It, it was just simply a thing to be, to be taken apart and put back together. And I just always assumed that's what I would do, and I, and I just didn't get the gene.

Lewis Howes 2:06 Mm. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 2:07 And, and yeah, I-

Lewis Howes 2:08 But you appreciated the gene. You appreciated the work-

Mike Rowe 2:11 I-

Lewis Howes 2:11 ... the artistry.

Mike Rowe 2:12 I came to. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think I always had an appreci- I had a fascination for it, and then when I got so frustrated that I couldn't do it-

Lewis Howes 2:20 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 2:20 ... it, it was my pop who said, "You know what? You can be a tradesman if you want. You just need a different toolbox."

Lewis Howes 2:27 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 2:28 So that's when I, I enrolled at a community college after high school, and I started studying things I had no interest in, which turned out to be the precise career I have today. So it was, you know-

Lewis Howes 2:39 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 2:40 It ... And, and, and the opera was a part of that.

Lewis Howes 2:42 Mm.

Mike Rowe 2:42 I had zero interest in singing, performing, or much less dressing up like a pirate or a Viking, you know? But-

Lewis Howes 2:51 But you had interest in girls.

Mike Rowe 2:52 I did.

Lewis Howes 2:53 And that-

Mike Rowe 2:53 And I-

Lewis Howes 2:54 ... attracted the girls, or-

Mike Rowe 2:54 And I do, to be clear.

Lewis Howes 2:55 [laughs] Of course, yes.

Mike Rowe 2:56 It's, it, it-

Lewis Howes 2:57 It hasn't changed

Mike Rowe 2:57 ... it wasn't a passing-

Lewis Howes 2:59 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 2:59 ... experimental phase. I'm-

Lewis Howes 3:01 Sure, sure.

Mike Rowe 3:01 Um, but yeah. Yeah. You know, the, the Baltimore Opera in 1985 or '4-

Lewis Howes 3:09 Mm

Mike Rowe 3:09 ... for me-

Lewis Howes 3:10 Wow. I was born in '83.

Mike Rowe 3:11 Well, good for you, Lewis. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 3:12 [laughs] Not to date you, but yeah.

Mike Rowe 3:14 Good for you. Um, well, I was, I was just out of high school. Actually just, just out of college, and, and I wanted to, uh, you know, I wanted to get in television. I wanted to get in-

Lewis Howes 3:25 Why did you want to be in television?

Mike Rowe 3:27 Well, because it looked, at that point, like something, um, that would actually generate money.

Lewis Howes 3:33 Mm.

Mike Rowe 3:33 And so, you know, I checked the want ads every day, and there's no listings for TV stars or reality stars.

Lewis Howes 3:39 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 3:40 No listing for movie stars.

Lewis Howes 3:41 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 3:41 No listing for po- right? So-

Lewis Howes 3:43 Get famous here.

Mike Rowe 3:44 Right. So how do you do this? You know, you're, you're, you're 24, you're living in Baltimore.

Lewis Howes 3:48 Mm.

Mike Rowe 3:48 And back in those days, the unions, which I'm sure you're familiar with-

Lewis Howes 3:52 Uh-huh

Mike Rowe 3:52 ... they were kind of closed in the sense that, you know, to be in the Screen Actors Guild, you had to have done, uh, Screen Actors Guild work. But you can't do Screen Actors Guild work-

Lewis Howes 4:01 I take it in the [laughs] it's a-

Mike Rowe 4:03 So there was this endless-

Lewis Howes 4:05 Yeah

Mike Rowe 4:05 ... Catch-22 of a tautology, you know. And I, and I, I finally learned that this union called AGMA that governed, um, the opera was a sister union to SAG.

Lewis Howes 4:15 Gotcha.

Mike Rowe 4:15 So if you could get your union card, uh, over here in AGMA, you could just pay your dues over here, and poof, you're a TV star. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 4:22 Sure, sure. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 4:23 So I, I learned an au- I, I, I basically memorized a short aria. I crashed an audition. I got into the opera.

Lewis Howes 4:29 Mm.

Mike Rowe 4:30 And I stayed because the music turned out to be way, way more interesting than I thought.

Lewis Howes 4:34 It's pretty cool.

Mike Rowe 4:35 It's very cool. And it was a world-class orchestra, and they're playing the hell out of Verdi and, and, and Puccini and, and all the greats, you know? Uh, and the girls, I mean, they're just, they're all dressed up like these French courtesans.

Lewis Howes 4:48 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 4:49 And, and, and-

Lewis Howes 4:50 There's something about a girl who can sing well that is so attractive-

Mike Rowe 4:55 It's the artist-

Lewis Howes 4:55 ... in my mind

Mike Rowe 4:55 ... well, it's the artist thing.

Lewis Howes 4:56 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 4:57 You know? It's ... And, and it, it's ... And, and it's a passion thing.

Lewis Howes 5:01 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 5:01 You know, so the, the Baltimore Opera was right next to the Peabody Institute, and so a lot of coeds came out of that, uh-

Lewis Howes 5:08 Right

Mike Rowe 5:09 ... you know, that, uh, curricula. And, um, and, and it was funny 'cause there were 80 people in the, in the rep company, and, uh, 45 women and 35 guys.

Lewis Howes 5:19 Mm.

Mike Rowe 5:19 And, uh, of the 35 guys, you know, 30 had zero interest in 100% of the women. And of the remaining five guys-

Lewis Howes 5:28 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 5:28 ... uh, who were straight, uh, three were married.

Lewis Howes 5:31 Mm.

Mike Rowe 5:32 And the other one, you know, had a mole on his eyelid the size of my thumb.

Lewis Howes 5:35 [laughs] You were set.

Mike Rowe 5:37 With thick black hair around it.

Lewis Howes 5:38 You were set.

Mike Rowe 5:39 So yeah, it, it, it just turned out, it was just a wonderful time to be me in Baltimore, uh, singing at the top of my lungs.

Lewis Howes 5:46 What is it about men that are so driven to do things based on where women are?

Mike Rowe 5:52 I think, I'm not a social anthropologist, uh, uh, nor a, uh, historian, but as far back in time as I'm able to calculate, so it has been

Lewis Howes 6:05 Why is our brain so wired that way, you think? It's like we will do the craziest things-

Mike Rowe 6:10 In my experience-

Lewis Howes 6:10 ... that we don't even love

Mike Rowe 6:11 ... it ain't the brain.

Lewis Howes 6:12 [laughs] That's true. Exactly.

Mike Rowe 6:16 No, look, I, I, I think that, you know, men, men and women take, um, take meaning-

Lewis Howes 6:21 Mm

Mike Rowe 6:22 ... uh, from, from different things.

Lewis Howes 6:24 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 6:24 And obviously this is controversial, uh, but just in a very, very, very general way, there is something in the reptilian part of our brain that wants to, um, that wants to fix things.

Lewis Howes 6:36 Right.

Mike Rowe 6:36 Right? And, and, you know, regarding my grandfather again-

Lewis Howes 6:39 Mm

Mike Rowe 6:39 ... that manifested in a very hands-on, very obvious way. But I think there are other less obvious ways.

Lewis Howes 6:45 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 6:46 You know, we want to-

Lewis Howes 6:47 Sure

Mike Rowe 6:47 ... we want to save you, you know?

Lewis Howes 6:49 Right.

Mike Rowe 6:49 We, we, we want to have an impact, and we want to improve-

Lewis Howes 6:53 Sure

Mike Rowe 6:53 ... whatever situation we're in. So we make a bigger fire, you know, come back with a bigger carcass.

Lewis Howes 6:58 Right.

Mike Rowe 6:59 You know, feed the girl.

Lewis Howes 7:00 Build a bigger house.

Mike Rowe 7:00 Train the kid. Bigger house.

Lewis Howes 7:02 Right. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 7:02 Bigger... And, and that's just, y- that, that thumb has been in the small of our back-

Lewis Howes 7:07 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 7:08 ... since we had tails.

Lewis Howes 7:10 That's true.

Mike Rowe 7:10 And it's pushed us forward ever since.

Lewis Howes 7:12 It's crazy.

Mike Rowe 7:13 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 7:13 Man. So do you still sing today?

Mike Rowe 7:16 In the shower, weddings, and funerals.

Lewis Howes 7:18 Can you sing a little something, or no?

Mike Rowe 7:20 I would-

Lewis Howes 7:20 Can you do-

Mike Rowe 7:21 What, what, what genre would you prefer?

Lewis Howes 7:22 Opera.

Mike Rowe 7:24 Well, I'll tell... The, the aria that attracted my attention initially-

Lewis Howes 7:28 Mm

Mike Rowe 7:28 ... uh, only got me because it was the shortest thing there was.

Lewis Howes 7:31 Right.

Mike Rowe 7:31 And it was a, uh, it was Puccini.

Lewis Howes 7:34 Uh-huh.

Mike Rowe 7:34 It was from, um, it was from La bohème, and it was the coat aria. And, and really the funny thing about it is when I, when I memorized it, you know, the, the Walkman was around.

Lewis Howes 7:46 Sure.

Mike Rowe 7:46 You won't remember the Walkman.

Lewis Howes 7:46 No, I remember the Walkman.

Mike Rowe 7:47 Oh, you don't remember the Walkman.

Lewis Howes 7:48 Early on.

Mike Rowe 7:48 I was born in 1983, Mike.

Lewis Howes 7:50 When I was like-

Mike Rowe 7:50 I don't know about the Walkman

Lewis Howes 7:50 ... when I was like seven or eight. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 7:52 The Walkman-

Lewis Howes 7:53 Late '80s, of course

Mike Rowe 7:54 ... I, I, I got the record from the library, and I put it on a, on a cassette player.

Lewis Howes 7:59 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 8:00 And in the Walkman I listened to these sounds, just walking around Baltimore.

Lewis Howes 8:04 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 8:04 [foreign language] No idea what it meant, but I just listened to it until it got burned in my brain. And the melody. [foreign language]

Lewis Howes 8:15 Mm.

Mike Rowe 8:19 So I'm, like, just walking around, but I, I can't hear myself 'cause I got the headphones on.

Lewis Howes 8:24 [laughs] Just-

Mike Rowe 8:24 I must've-

Lewis Howes 8:25 ... loud. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 8:25 I'm insane.

Lewis Howes 8:26 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 8:26 Right? I'm walking through Baltimore City. I must have sounded like a, a truly insane person.

Lewis Howes 8:33 Mm.

Mike Rowe 8:33 But I got it more or less in my head, and then I went to the audition, and the chorus master was like, "I gotta tell you, that was, that was, that was terrible." And [laughs]

Lewis Howes 8:41 Really?

Mike Rowe 8:42 Well, he didn't say terrible, but he said, "You have no idea what you're singing about, do you?"

Lewis Howes 8:45 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 8:46 And I said, "No, I don't." And he said, um, "Why are you here?" And, uh-

Lewis Howes 8:51 You didn't wanna tell him the real truth, which was the girl. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 8:53 But I did. Well, no, the real truth was the union card.

Lewis Howes 8:56 Uh-huh. Sure, sure.

Mike Rowe 8:57 I said, "Look," I said, I just told... When I said hello, [laughs] I said this to the guy. His name was Bill Yannuzzi. He was, uh, the guy who auditioned me. And I said, "Mr. Yannuzzi, when I told you hello, I told you all I know about opera." And he laughed, and he said, "Well then, why are you here?" And I said, "Because I'm curious, and I would like to know more about opera. And I would also like to get my AGMA card so I can buy my SAG card, and then maybe get hired to do something that makes some money."

Lewis Howes 9:22 Mm. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 9:23 And he literally, he, he gave me the slow clap, and he said, "You have a pleasing voice. You have a low register, which we're looking for."

Lewis Howes 9:31 Right.

Mike Rowe 9:31 "You're young, which is a huge advantage."

Lewis Howes 9:34 We can train you. We can coach you.

Mike Rowe 9:36 On, on the downside [laughs] he said-

Lewis Howes 9:37 You suck. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 9:38 ... "You don't know your ass from a hot rock."

Lewis Howes 9:39 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 9:40 And he was right. And seven years later, to be honest, I didn't get much better.

Lewis Howes 9:45 Mm.

Mike Rowe 9:45 But I had a ball. And, and I did, I... It's, it's amazing what you'll learn by accident when you jump into another language-

Lewis Howes 9:54 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 9:54 ... or when you jump into, uh, art in general.

Lewis Howes 9:59 Yeah. I, uh, started salsa dancing about 10 years ago. I lived above... After I got injured, uh, I was living above a, a jazz club.

Mike Rowe 10:07 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 10:08 That, my brother's a, the top jazz violinist in the world, and he knew this woman who owned this jazz club in Columbus, Ohio.

Mike Rowe 10:14 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:14 And there was a one-bedroom loft that you-

Mike Rowe 10:16 What's your... I'm sorry, what's your brother's name?

Lewis Howes 10:17 His name's Christian Howes. He's the top... He played with Les Paul for 10 years.

Mike Rowe 10:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:22 And-

Mike Rowe 10:22 So who's the other guy that gets all the press now with the violin? Bell. Joshua Bell.

Lewis Howes 10:26 Yeah, I'm not sure. Is he a jazz guy or a classical guy?

Mike Rowe 10:28 No, no, he's classical.

Lewis Howes 10:28 Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 10:29 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:30 So he's a, he's a jazz guy, but, um, uh, understated, uh, industry. Not many people listen to jazz anymore, but he's-

Mike Rowe 10:36 Or, or jazz violin.

Lewis Howes 10:37 Yeah, jazz violin is very unique, yes. So he said, you know, "Here, 250 bucks a month, she'll let you crash up there." And so I was living up here for 250 bucks a month looking over downtown Columbus, the Columbus Music Hall. And once a week, Wednesday nights, they would have... put a dance floor down-

Mike Rowe 10:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 10:54 ... downstairs, and bring the salsa band. And I would go and watch, 'cause I had all this free time on my hand, one hand, and I would go down and watch, and was just fascinated by all the Latinos who were out dancing. And these guys were so-

Mike Rowe 11:07 Oh, man

Lewis Howes 11:08 ... amazing.

Mike Rowe 11:08 Well, look, that's... I mean, I think, from what I've seen in the world, that's the epitome of masculinity-

Lewis Howes 11:13 Mm

Mike Rowe 11:14 ... is a Latin man dancing, right?

Lewis Howes 11:18 There you go.

Mike Rowe 11:19 Because, because I think, for me anyway, the, the most interesting men, uh, do... Well, they're complicated. They're, they're not the, they're not the caricature-

Lewis Howes 11:30 Mm

Mike Rowe 11:30 ... of, you know, the chiseled jaw-

Lewis Howes 11:32 Manly

Mike Rowe 11:32 ... dude. There's always something else going on.

Lewis Howes 11:35 Mm.

Mike Rowe 11:35 And if there's something artistic or, or something... O- obviously dance is amazing.

Lewis Howes 11:40 Right.

Mike Rowe 11:40 Uh, but yeah, to, for me it was the opera.

Lewis Howes 11:44 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 11:44 You know, the, the first time I got a look at something that I did not, I had never associated. I mean, in spite of the story I just told you, the, the, the fortitude and the constitution that you find in men who are, who have dedicated their life to singing the grand opera, I put it right up there with the best trained athletes in the world.

Lewis Howes 12:07 Mm. Absolutely.

Mike Rowe 12:07 You, you can't get sick There's no sick, and if you do get sick-

Lewis Howes 12:11 You're screwed

Mike Rowe 12:12 ... you, you sing through it.

Lewis Howes 12:13 Mm.

Mike Rowe 12:14 I've seen guys go on stage with fevers who can barely talk they're so hoarse, but when they sing, they just use a different part of their palate, they use a different part of their brain.

Lewis Howes 12:24 They break through.

Mike Rowe 12:25 It's, it's extraordinary. I-

Lewis Howes 12:26 And then they go back and they're like asleep for 24 hours.

Mike Rowe 12:28 Yep.

Lewis Howes 12:28 Like- [laughs]

Mike Rowe 12:29 Yep

Lewis Howes 12:29 ... taking medicine, yeah.

Mike Rowe 12:31 I've also seen guys... There was a... He's still around, and he, we don't know each other, but, but James Morris is, is sort of the, the, the bass baritone version of Pavarotti.

Lewis Howes 12:40 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 12:41 And um, and that guy, I, we only met once briefly, but I knew a lot of people who knew him well. He was a legend. He was a le- the guy smoked Marlboro Reds-

Lewis Howes 12:50 Mm

Mike Rowe 12:50 ... two, three packs a day, drank scotch-

Lewis Howes 12:53 [laughs] How?

Mike Rowe 12:53 ... right out of the bottle, and then walked on stage and sang with such beauty and such... I, it was ex- it's just extraordinary. And, and it, it made no sense-

Lewis Howes 13:05 No sense

Mike Rowe 13:05 ... to my brain at all except there was no denying it. The guy, he, he, he was doing what he was born to do, and all the other stuff, it just, it just didn't matter.

Lewis Howes 13:13 It's like the athletes that just drink the night before the game and party constantly, but they go out and they perform like-

Mike Rowe 13:19 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:19 ... gods.

Mike Rowe 13:20 Yep.

Lewis Howes 13:20 You know?

Mike Rowe 13:20 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:20 It's crazy.

Mike Rowe 13:21 I hate those guys.

Lewis Howes 13:21 I hate it too. [laughs] I never, I've never been drunk in my life-

Mike Rowe 13:25 Uh-huh

Lewis Howes 13:25 ... because I never had the skills or the, the talent that those guys had, and I was like, "I need every advantage as an athlete to-

Mike Rowe 13:32 Yeah

Lewis Howes 13:32 ... perform on the field. Every little thing I can do."

Mike Rowe 13:35 Right.

Lewis Howes 13:35 So I've never been drunk because I committed in college to not, not doing it.

Mike Rowe 13:39 You're not missing much.

Lewis Howes 13:40 Yeah, I never really feel like I am.

Mike Rowe 13:41 It's-

Lewis Howes 13:41 But I'm gonna have a sips here and there, but I've never like-

Mike Rowe 13:43 Right

Lewis Howes 13:43 ... drunk.

Mike Rowe 13:44 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:44 You know, been drunk. Um, what is the biggest lesson you've learned from opera that you've applied to your life, that you didn't know before opera?

Mike Rowe 13:53 Um, well, it's a version of the first lesson that I learned in hindsight that turned out to be important, and that was, um, it was, it was run toward the thing that makes you uncomfortable. And, and I actually learned it in the, in the Boy Scouts of all places.

Lewis Howes 14:10 Mm.

Mike Rowe 14:10 You know? The, [clears throat] the big lesson for, in my view, um, that every successful person eventually learns, uh, a- and you could learn it young, you can learn it old, you could forget it and relearn it.

Lewis Howes 14:23 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 14:24 But it's this, it's the idea of confronting a thing that makes you uncomfortable, and then getting good at it. But then there's a third thing that most people don't do, which is find a way to love it.

Lewis Howes 14:39 Mm.

Mike Rowe 14:40 So that's it. You know, I mean, f- for me, I've, I've always been very, very suspicious of the idea that following your passion will take you to the, to the desired result.

Lewis Howes 14:55 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 14:55 And there are so many books, and I've seen so many interviews on podcasts in particular, right?

Lewis Howes 14:59 Sure.

Mike Rowe 14:59 Everybody's telling about li- "Here's the secret. Here's what you need to know. It starts with you identifying what it is that's going to satisfy that, that's within you, and here's how you're gonna get there." And so all the things, all the steps that typically get laid out as a plan so often become barriers-

Lewis Howes 15:23 Mm

Mike Rowe 15:23 ... to the very thing that you wanna achieve, and it's all starting with, in my view, a very dangerous question, which is what are you passionate about, right? So, uh, you know, the thing I was most passionate about, I just happened to be-

Lewis Howes 15:38 Was workshop essentially, right?

Mike Rowe 15:39 Well, I, I was ill-equipped.

Lewis Howes 15:41 Right.

Mike Rowe 15:41 Just 'cause you're-

Lewis Howes 15:42 No matter how hard you work, you weren't gonna get good at it is what you're saying.

Mike Rowe 15:45 I wasn't gonna get good enough to be successful.

Lewis Howes 15:47 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 15:48 So look, the, the lesson, to answer your question, is just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you won't suck at it.

Lewis Howes 15:54 Right.

Mike Rowe 15:55 And if you-

Lewis Howes 15:56 Just 'cause you're passionate about playing football doesn't mean you're gonna be in the NFL.

Mike Rowe 16:00 Welcome to the podcast, right?

Lewis Howes 16:01 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 16:02 And I actually became passionate about opera two or three years in, but the truth is, I, I didn't have the chops-

Lewis Howes 16:09 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 16:09 ... or the discipline, um, or the drive. I had enough passion to make me think I did for a while. But look, you're in charge of your passion.

Lewis Howes 16:18 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 16:18 And, and whenever people hear me talk about this, I always get a lot of grief because they're saying, "I'm never gonna abandon my passion." And I'm like, "I, I would never suggest you do. I'm just saying don't follow it. Take it with you wherever you go."

Lewis Howes 16:30 Right.

Mike Rowe 16:30 "But don't be so damn picky about what you apply it to." It's kinda like with personal relationships, right? You know?

Lewis Howes 16:36 Mm.

Mike Rowe 16:36 There's, there's this idea that's been, um, championed by maybe a million films and books that says your happiness in a relationship will happen when you find your soulmate. And so what happens is you, you embark on this snipe hunt.

Lewis Howes 16:53 Mm.

Mike Rowe 16:54 You spend most of your life looking for your soulmate.

Lewis Howes 16:56 Right.

Mike Rowe 16:57 And during the period of time between your search and maybe-

Lewis Howes 17:01 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 17:01 ... you find her, maybe you don't, you know, then w- where are you? You're-

Lewis Howes 17:05 You're supposed to be miserable and unhappy the whole time.

Mike Rowe 17:07 Well, you're certainly not going to be as happy as you could be.

Lewis Howes 17:09 Mm.

Mike Rowe 17:10 And that's the thing that gets drilled into your head. So, so there's this narrative that goes on in the world today, uh, and I, I'm generalizing, but in a very, very broad way. If you're happy in your personal relationship, it's because you found your soulmate, and if you're happy in your professional relationship, it's because you found your dream job, and if you're happy in both, it's because you followed your passion. And I think all of that is a big steamy pile of crap.

Lewis Howes 17:38 Mm.

Mike Rowe 17:38 The happiest people I know were very uncertain for a long time, and their decisions, I saw this on Dirty Jobs over and over. People ultimately wound up in their vocation because they looked around to see where everybody else was going, and they went the other way.

Lewis Howes 17:58 Mm.

Mike Rowe 17:58 And then what they were confronted with was, "Okay, there's an opportunity cleaning septic tanks."

Lewis Howes 18:04 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 18:04 "It's not my wish fulfillment, but it needs to be done and nobody's doing it." A year later, you're getting good at it. Two years after that, you got three trucks and five employees.

Lewis Howes 18:15 Mm.

Mike Rowe 18:15 Pretty soon you're passionate about other people's crap. Because now you've made a pile of money and now you have two homes

Lewis Howes 18:22 And no one else wants to do it.

Mike Rowe 18:23 That's right. So you've got job security.

Lewis Howes 18:25 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 18:26 Nothing's gonna be outsourced. And you're kind of ... I used to say about so many of the guys I met on Dirty Jobs that they're all in on the joke.

Lewis Howes 18:34 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 18:35 And, and by that I just meant, you know, when you meet another professional athlete and you start talking about a training routine-

Lewis Howes 18:42 Right, right

Mike Rowe 18:43 ... y- y- you go right to the shorthand.

Lewis Howes 18:45 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 18:45 You, you get it.

Lewis Howes 18:46 Yes.

Mike Rowe 18:46 You get it. When you talk to a soldier or a marine who's been in action, and, and you have too, y- you just get right to the part.

Lewis Howes 18:55 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 18:55 Right? And so people with dirty jobs, they get it.

Lewis Howes 18:59 Right.

Mike Rowe 18:59 Whether you're hanging upside down on the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, spot welding, or whether you're just crawling through the sewers of San Francisco knocking out those rotten bricks and putting in new ones, you get it, right? And so the idea and the big lesson that came from working with so many of those people for so long was that by and large as a group, they were happier than most of my friends.

Lewis Howes 19:24 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 19:24 They were better balanced than most of my friends, and they had just the kind of, um, the kind of peace, I think, that comes from knowing, knowing if ... I call it the, uh, It's a Wonderful Life test, right?

Lewis Howes 19:40 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 19:40 Another movie you probably don't remember.

Lewis Howes 19:41 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 19:41 You were born in 1983.

Lewis Howes 19:43 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 19:43 But, [laughs] but, but if you're, if you're somehow magically pulled out of existence, like right now-

Lewis Howes 19:50 Yeah

Mike Rowe 19:50 ... r- what happens to the world, you know? What happens to the world if poof, I'm gone, you know, and Dirty Jobs never happened? Is the world gonna spin off its axis? No.

Lewis Howes 20:00 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 20:00 Right? You know, what i- you know, if, uh, poof, an accountant is gone. Poof. You know, it's like ... So you, you tend to measure, at least I do anyway, you know, uh, can I, can I do something that's fundamentally going to, to change a thing? Dirty jobbers do.

Lewis Howes 20:15 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 20:16 They ... All the plumbers call in sick for a week, party over.

Lewis Howes 20:20 Right.

Mike Rowe 20:20 All the electricians call out for two days-

Lewis Howes 20:22 Game over

Mike Rowe 20:22 ... riot, right?

Lewis Howes 20:23 [laughs] Right.

Mike Rowe 20:24 So, you know, the, it's odd that the jobs that we all depend on most are the most underappreciated in our society. And so the people who do those jobs, they know that. They're in on it. And by and large it makes them really fun to be around.

Lewis Howes 20:44 Hmm. What was the most surprising, uh, person you met during the Dirty Jobs process that really shifted something in you or inspired you in a different way? 'Cause you've probably seen the same type of stories, the same type of people for 10 years doing the show. But was there one person that you were like, "Wow-

Mike Rowe 21:00 Hmm

Lewis Howes 21:00 ... something actually shifted in me where I wasn't just ..." Not that you were on autopilot, but just like, "Whoa, something different here."

Mike Rowe 21:07 No. Um, there were hundreds.

Lewis Howes 21:10 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 21:10 I mean, we did 300, and of the 300 jobs we did, I can tell you, you know, I, I talk a lot about this when companies ... You know how they are. Every now and then somebody will overpay you to come and stand in front of a bunch of people.

Lewis Howes 21:23 Yeah. [laughs] Absolutely.

Mike Rowe 21:23 And you know, "Let me tell you-

Lewis Howes 21:24 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 21:25 ... let me tell you what the problem is." [laughs]

Lewis Howes 21:27 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 21:27 Right? So people pay me to do that. And, um, and, and, uh, just to keep the conversation lively, I, I try and mix up the answers a bit, but all of my answers come back to what the, what the Greeks called a, um, a peripeteia. And a peripeteia [laughs] is a form of an anagnorisis. And an anagnorisis is the Greek word for a discovery. So Aristotle.

Lewis Howes 21:52 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 21:52 Aristotle said the, the, the definition of a tragedy was the moment when the protagonist comes face to face with his true self, right?

Lewis Howes 22:04 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 22:04 And I love that.

Lewis Howes 22:05 Sure.

Mike Rowe 22:05 So for me, Dirty Jobs was a tragedy because going all the way back ... Hey Freddy, what, what are you growling at?

Lewis Howes 22:12 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 22:12 Come here. This is my dog, by the way. I didn't properly introduce you.

Lewis Howes 22:15 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 22:15 This is Rowdy Tiffany.

Lewis Howes 22:16 Tiff got close. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 22:17 Yeah. Yeah. This is bring your dog to work day.

Lewis Howes 22:19 There you go.

Mike Rowe 22:19 You gonna be a good boy or what? Come on, don't be an asshole. We talked about this.

Lewis Howes 22:23 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 22:23 You're gonna embarrass me in front of everybody.

Lewis Howes 22:24 He's all good.

Mike Rowe 22:25 Here we go.

Lewis Howes 22:25 He's fine.

Mike Rowe 22:26 Um, the, uh, the idea that an anagnorisis or a discovery can drive the narrative forward is classic, but the idea that a peripeteia, which is a discovery that fundamentally changes the direction of the narrative-

Lewis Howes 22:42 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 22:43 ... that's what I love. So like, you know, when, when, when Bruce Willis realizes, uh, in the beginning of The Sixth Sense-

Lewis Howes 22:52 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 22:53 ... You saw The Sixth Sense?

Lewis Howes 22:54 Yes, I did. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 22:55 Okay, great, 'cause that came out after 1983. Um, you know, he has an anagnorisis in the beginning of that, that, uh, that film when he meets little Cole, and Cole is crazy 'cause Cole thinks he sees dead people.

Lewis Howes 23:10 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 23:11 And over the course of the movie, Bruce makes more discoveries about Cole, and eventually toward the end he makes a big discovery. He has a peripeteia when he realizes this kid is not crazy at all, and he really can see dead people.

Lewis Howes 23:22 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 23:22 Why? Because he's dead.

Lewis Howes 23:24 Right.

Mike Rowe 23:25 Right? And so when that happens, the entire narrative changes. So that's a long answer to your question, but for me, I had peripeteias doing Dirty Jobs one after the next.

Lewis Howes 23:37 Really?

Mike Rowe 23:38 Oh my God.

Lewis Howes 23:39 Wow.

Mike Rowe 23:40 So for instance, um, I talked about this years ago at one of those, uh, TED Talks.

Lewis Howes 23:45 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 23:45 Right? But it was ... Like, I've, I've always deferred to the primacy of experts. We're taught, right? The, th- there's an expert opinion on everything.

Lewis Howes 23:59 Yes.

Mike Rowe 24:00 And getting that expert opinion, uh, as a host on the Discovery Channel was always important, 'cause Discovery was dedicated to making sure all the facts that went out were correct.

Lewis Howes 24:11 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 24:12 And because Dirty Jobs was what it was, I was constantly getting angry emails from a whole army of acronyms. From, from, from EPA to OSHA- ... to SPCA. Like they-

Lewis Howes 24:26 Everyone, yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 24:27 Yeah. They, they, they, they would all see something on the screen and they would, and they would freak out.

Lewis Howes 24:32 Mm.

Mike Rowe 24:33 And, uh, so we go to castrate lambs-

Lewis Howes 24:37 Mm

Mike Rowe 24:38 ... in Craig, Colorado. And I call, I call the SPCA and I call the Humane Society and I say, "Look, we're gonna be castrating lambs on the show. I wanna make sure we do it right."

Lewis Howes 24:47 Right.

Mike Rowe 24:47 "Because the last time we, uh-

Lewis Howes 24:49 You don't wanna offend anyone, yeah

Mike Rowe 24:50 ... I don't wanna offend anyone" and they were all upset because a couple months earlier I'd gone to a ranch in, uh, uh, outside of Houston and collected the semen from a bull called Hunsucker Commando and, uh, artificially inseminated a bunch of cows.

Lewis Howes 25:07 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 25:08 And apparently it was great TV, but they were like, "No, no, you're doing it all wrong." So I called and said, "How are we gonna do this right?" And they said, "The right way to do it is you take a rubber band and you put it around the testicles of the sheep."

Lewis Howes 25:18 Ugh.

Mike Rowe 25:19 "And over the course of a couple days, the testicles fall off."

Lewis Howes 25:23 Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 25:24 And I'm like, "All right, well that sounds..." What is it? "It'll be interesting TV."

Lewis Howes 25:27 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 25:27 So we go there to do the job.

Lewis Howes 25:29 Do you have a time lapse for two days [laughs] and you see it?

Mike Rowe 25:31 Well, I, I don't know what we're gonna do.

Lewis Howes 25:33 Right.

Mike Rowe 25:33 Because I never did on Dirty Jobs. We, we, we always showed up, um, you know, there was no pre-production. There was no plan.

Lewis Howes 25:40 Mm. Really?

Mike Rowe 25:40 There was no... Yeah, there was no, there was no second take.

Lewis Howes 25:42 See what happens, yeah.

Mike Rowe 25:43 Right. I mean, it was a very, very honest show. And, and, and the rancher, who's a guy named Albert, um, and he and his wife, Melody [laughs] they, they brought the, the first lamb out and they put him up on the, on the fence post. And, um, Albert reaches in his pocket and pulls out one of those rubber bands, you know, like the Humane Society told me.

Lewis Howes 26:04 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 26:05 Except it's not a rubber band. It's a, it's a switchblade.

Lewis Howes 26:09 Oh, man.

Mike Rowe 26:09 And he pops it open and he leans down-

Lewis Howes 26:11 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 26:12 ... and he, and he grabs the scrotum, and he pulls the scrotum towards him, and he clips off the tip of the scrotum, and then he pushes the scrotum back exposing both testicles-

Lewis Howes 26:21 Uh-huh

Mike Rowe 26:22 ... which look like thumbs on a little lamb. And then he bends down and he bites them off.

Lewis Howes 26:26 Oh my gosh.

Mike Rowe 26:27 And then he spits them in a bucket I'm holding. And I'm like, "What the hell are you doing, dude?"

Lewis Howes 26:32 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 26:32 "Are you... This, what happened? The, my little show just turned into a-

Lewis Howes 26:34 I brought the rubber band. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 26:35 ... Yeah. It's like now it's suddenly a German porno or something.

Lewis Howes 26:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 26:38 Like, what are you doing? So I say, I say, "Cut. Cut. Stop." You know? Uh, which I never say on, on Dirty Jobs.

Lewis Howes 26:45 Wow.

Mike Rowe 26:45 And I, and I said, "Albert, look, I get it. You've watched the show. You wanna be sensational. You wanna do something that's gonna be all great for reality TV. You don't have to do that on this show." The... And he's like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I've been, I've been ranching for four generations." And-

Lewis Howes 27:01 This is how we do it

Mike Rowe 27:01 ... this is how we do it. This is how we've always done it. And I'm like, "I- Okay, look, I don't know what kind of operation you're running here, but you're freaking me out. Can we just please do it the way the Humane Society does?" And he says, "Well, it's not very, uh, it's, it's not very nice." I'm like, "Not very nice? You just bit the balls off a sheep, dude."

Lewis Howes 27:18 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 27:18 "Come on, man. Let's just do it right." So-

Lewis Howes 27:20 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 27:21 So we start filming again and Albert goes to, like, this tackle box and he comes back with these bands and, and his wife puts the little lamb up and Albert puts the band over and they put the lamb down. And now the lamb is just, you know, trembling.

Lewis Howes 27:36 Oh.

Mike Rowe 27:36 And this, this poor creature walks off into the corner of the pen and just kind of sits down.

Lewis Howes 27:42 Oh.

Mike Rowe 27:42 And I'm looking at it and I'm like, "Jesus, help."

Lewis Howes 27:44 The pain.

Mike Rowe 27:45 Like, how long? How long is he gonna be like this? He said, "About two days."

Lewis Howes 27:48 Oh my gosh.

Mike Rowe 27:50 Meanwhile, the one he had just orally violated-

Lewis Howes 27:54 [laughs] It's fine. It's walking around. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 27:56 Walking around.

Lewis Howes 27:57 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 27:57 No blood.

Lewis Howes 27:58 Wow.

Mike Rowe 27:59 Not a care in the world. Back with his mom and they're, like, trotting off over the Rockies to pursue a life of religious lamb fulfillment-

Lewis Howes 28:05 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 28:05 ... or whatever they do. And I'm just like, "You know something?"

Lewis Howes 28:07 Mm.

Mike Rowe 28:08 It was one of those peripeteias where, where, where it actually clicks in your, in your head. And, and the lesson on that day was beware of experts.

Lewis Howes 28:18 Mm.

Mike Rowe 28:19 You know? Just beware of the idea that one size fits all. The... It looks so much kinder, but it's not.

Lewis Howes 28:29 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 28:30 And so, you know, that was the day I started writing down... I mean, I, I always kept a journal, but the, that was where Lessons from the Dirt-

Lewis Howes 28:40 Mm

Mike Rowe 28:40 ... really began to originate. And, and I ha- And, and the, like I said, there, there were hundreds of them.

Lewis Howes 28:45 Every time there was something new.

Mike Rowe 28:46 Constantly.

Lewis Howes 28:47 How would, how would you prepare yourself for the show then? Would you just show up as an open vessel? Would you do a ritual, a routine? What would you do?

Mike Rowe 28:57 You know, I had worked 15 years, uh, impersonating a show host, uh, prior to Dirty Jobs-

Lewis Howes 29:03 Mm

Mike Rowe 29:03 ... as well as a journalist. I had had a lot of different jobs. I was a, an inveterate freelancer committed to impersonating successful people on TV.

Lewis Howes 29:16 Mm-hmm. Right.

Mike Rowe 29:16 As you know, you c-

Lewis Howes 29:17 As an actor. As-

Mike Rowe 29:19 As an actor and as a host.

Lewis Howes 29:21 Yes.

Mike Rowe 29:22 The reason most TV sucks is because... It's the same reason most music sucks, and it's the same reason most commercials don't work. Um, everything is focus grouped, right?

Lewis Howes 29:32 Mm.

Mike Rowe 29:33 And when you focus group a thing, um, you eliminate really bad ideas and really good ideas, and what you're left with is that soft, squishy crap in the middle.

Lewis Howes 29:44 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 29:44 That's just how, that's just how it works.

Lewis Howes 29:46 Right.

Mike Rowe 29:47 And so when, when Dirty Jobs-

Lewis Howes 29:50 No one's taking a risk, is what you're saying.

Mike Rowe 29:52 Well, yeah. Really, yeah, that, that is what I'm saying. Because the... If you, if you green-light, if you're an executive at a network-

Lewis Howes 30:02 Mm

Mike Rowe 30:02 ... and, and you green-light, uh, an idea, um, that is similar to American Idol or The X Factor or America's Got Talent-

Lewis Howes 30:11 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 30:12 ... and it fails, a big, expensive, shiny failure based on those successful ideas, you're not gonna get fired. And you're not gonna get fired because, well, look, who knew? It worked there, there, there, and there.

Lewis Howes 30:26 Right.

Mike Rowe 30:26 You can't blame me for going crazy. Now, Dirty Jobs- I needed somebody to take a risk with me on Dirty Jobs because there was nothing on TV that looked like it-

Lewis Howes 30:35 Right

Mike Rowe 30:35 ... at all. This is before-

Lewis Howes 30:37 There was no Swamp People or whatever, you know, all these-

Mike Rowe 30:39 All that stuff

Lewis Howes 30:40 ... Duck Dynasty shows, you know.

Mike Rowe 30:42 That all came out of Dirty Jobs.

Lewis Howes 30:43 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 30:44 You know, there were 32 shows that came out of Dirty Jobs.

Lewis Howes 30:47 Wow.

Mike Rowe 30:47 And, and in, in 2003 when we, when we shot the first couple hours, there really truly was nothing to look at on TV. So it, it was, it was utterly non-derivative.

Lewis Howes 31:01 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 31:02 And, and I give huge credit to a couple of individuals over at the Discovery Network who, who really pushed that thing up the hill-

Lewis Howes 31:11 Yeah

Mike Rowe 31:11 ... and just said, "Look, that at base what Mike is doing on the show is satisfying curiosity, which is our mandate at Discovery. But he's doing it in a way that is very unusual and very, very transparent and, and we like it."

Lewis Howes 31:28 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 31:29 And a lot of people didn't. Um, and so ultimately to your point, the people who took the risk on the show inspired me to make sure, you know, because the show didn't look like other shows, I didn't want to look like another host.

Lewis Howes 31:45 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 31:46 So to answer your question, I completely, uh, disassociated myself from the host model.

Lewis Howes 31:51 Sure.

Mike Rowe 31:52 So there was no ritual. As a host, it's nothing but ritual. You stay up the night before, you get smart on the topic. You have to.

Lewis Howes 32:00 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 32:00 You've got to Google me. You've got to read up on me. Otherwise-

Lewis Howes 32:03 Yeah

Mike Rowe 32:03 ... you know, how... Right? You, you, you have to do something.

Lewis Howes 32:06 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 32:07 And I had become very facile over the years-

Lewis Howes 32:09 Hmm

Mike Rowe 32:09 ... in, in creating the illusion of competence, but that's all it was. I used to call it the, um, I used to call it the plaque approach. Not the stuff in your veins or on your teeth-

Lewis Howes 32:20 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 32:20 ... but literally a plaque on a statue.

Lewis Howes 32:23 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 32:23 Right? So I used to host all kinds of shows where, you know, we were pulling stuff out of our butt constantly.

Lewis Howes 32:29 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 32:29 And I'd walk up to the statue of Francis Scott Key-

Lewis Howes 32:32 Uh

Mike Rowe 32:32 ... and I would, and I would read the plaque.

Lewis Howes 32:34 Two sentences and-

Mike Rowe 32:35 Or five or whatever.

Lewis Howes 32:36 Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 32:36 But I'd, I'd get it in my, in my short-term memory.

Lewis Howes 32:39 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 32:39 And then I'd turn around to the camera and I'd say, "Francis Scott Key, born in 18..." Right? And so people would be, "Oh, that Mike Rowe."

Lewis Howes 32:44 He knows everything.

Mike Rowe 32:45 Mike doesn't know shit.

Lewis Howes 32:46 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 32:46 He, he knows, he knows how to read a plaque.

Lewis Howes 32:48 Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 32:48 And so all of the-

Lewis Howes 32:50 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 32:51 ... all of the ritualistic stuff from the hair, right? I mean-

Lewis Howes 32:55 Hmm

Mike Rowe 32:55 ... from hair and makeup-

Lewis Howes 32:56 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 32:57 ... craft services, wardrobe, every single thing went out the window.

Lewis Howes 33:01 You didn't have any of that. Put on your cap.

Mike Rowe 33:04 That's it.

Lewis Howes 33:04 Shirt, jeans.

Mike Rowe 33:05 That's it. And I would put on a cap and the first thing I'd say to the, whoever I was, you know, like if at that ranch farm I said, "Do you have a cap? You have a business, right?" "Yeah." I said, "I'd be happy to wear it."

Lewis Howes 33:16 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 33:16 You know, 5 million people are gonna watch the show. So it was, you know... That's the reason I started wearing caps, and also-

Lewis Howes 33:22 Hmm

Mike Rowe 33:22 ... just because why not?

Lewis Howes 33:25 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 33:25 You don't have to worry about what your hair looks like.

Lewis Howes 33:26 Exactly. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 33:26 You wear a cap. Um, but, but really Lewis, what happened was every single convention of traditional hosting went out the window, and what I was left with was the realization that I'm not, I'm not a host or an expert, I'm a guest.

Lewis Howes 33:43 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 33:43 I'm a, um, I'm an avatar for the viewer. And it's, it's funny when you, when you set the table just a little differently how all your subsequent decisions will become informed by that.

Lewis Howes 33:58 Right.

Mike Rowe 33:59 So imagine the same question you just asked me, knowing that I was a guest. It would never occur to you to say, "What, how do you prepare yourself as a guest?"

Lewis Howes 34:07 Hmm, hmm.

Mike Rowe 34:07 Well, you know, bring some wine.

Lewis Howes 34:10 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 34:11 Show up on time.

Lewis Howes 34:12 Right.

Mike Rowe 34:12 Don't use your host razor. Don't flirt with his wife.

Lewis Howes 34:15 Sure.

Mike Rowe 34:16 Just, just be a good guest.

Lewis Howes 34:16 Be a good person. Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 34:18 Hey, don't be an asshole, right? So-

Lewis Howes 34:21 So it's actually a pretty easy process for you then. Just be curious and be nice and-

Mike Rowe 34:24 Be curious-

Lewis Howes 34:25 ... friendly

Mike Rowe 34:25 ... and don't be an asshole.

Lewis Howes 34:26 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 34:26 And, and most importantly, try.

Lewis Howes 34:28 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 34:28 My job ultimately on Dirty Jobs-

Lewis Howes 34:30 You had to taste everything on the plate essentially.

Mike Rowe 34:33 That's right.

Lewis Howes 34:34 You had to be curious enough to try a bite.

Mike Rowe 34:36 You try everything. People always ask me, you know, "Was there a job you were not willing to do?" And, uh-

Lewis Howes 34:42 Did you bite the, the nuts off a lamb?

Mike Rowe 34:44 What... Of course.

Lewis Howes 34:45 Well.

Mike Rowe 34:45 100 times over. That's all we did.

Lewis Howes 34:47 100 times?

Mike Rowe 34:48 Oh, yeah.

Lewis Howes 34:49 Biting nuts off.

Mike Rowe 34:50 Well, there were hundreds of sheep.

Lewis Howes 34:51 Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 34:53 So, so technically you're talking if there were 200 sheep, there would've been 400 testicles if I'm doing the math right.

Lewis Howes 34:58 [laughs] So you had 400 testicles in your mouth.

Mike Rowe 35:02 Well, not at once. I mean, come on. I'm just-

Lewis Howes 35:03 [laughs] See the-

Mike Rowe 35:04 I already got the job.

Lewis Howes 35:05 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 35:06 You know, I already... So, um-

Lewis Howes 35:08 Wow. So was there a job that you were unwilling to do?

Mike Rowe 35:12 The only jobs that I passed on were ones that I knew the network wouldn't allow us to air.

Lewis Howes 35:17 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 35:17 Um, and-

Lewis Howes 35:19 Like?

Mike Rowe 35:20 Well, a body farm technician. So you take a cadaver and you put it in the trunk of an old Pinto.

Lewis Howes 35:28 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 35:29 And you drive the old Pinto into the Atchafalaya Swamp, and two weeks later you haul out the Pinto and you take out the body and you do stuff to it.

Lewis Howes 35:36 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 35:37 And now you know what a body looks like that's been in the trunk of a Pinto in the Atchafalaya Swamp for two weeks. Now that's a job, it's CSI-type stuff, and, um-

Lewis Howes 35:45 Wow

Mike Rowe 35:45 ... while it's an important job and certainly a dirty one, there's very little opportunity for humor in it.

Lewis Howes 35:50 Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 35:50 And it was important to me on the show-

Lewis Howes 35:52 It's too heavy

Mike Rowe 35:52 ... I, I just wanted... Like, my experience growing up, whether it was factories or construction sites or fish boats or whatever, was there's great humor-

Lewis Howes 36:01 Yeah

Mike Rowe 36:01 ... in hard labor, and there's great humor in, in entrepreneurship too, which I know is important to you and I, it's important to me too to say that a lot of people who watch Dirty Jobs looked at it and saw a s- a straight up homage to, uh, blue-collar work. And while it was that, it was also a love letter to entrepreneurship.

Lewis Howes 36:23 Hmm. So a lot of entrepreneurs were built from dirty jobs who did the dirty work and they started it themselves.

Mike Rowe 36:29 I'd say that 40-

Lewis Howes 36:30 Right

Mike Rowe 36:30 ... 40 or 50 of the people- ... that we featured on that show were multimillionaires.

Lewis Howes 36:35 Mm.

Mike Rowe 36:35 You'd never know it.

Lewis Howes 36:36 They owned the farms, they owned the, the businesses-

Mike Rowe 36:38 Yeah

Lewis Howes 36:38 ... they were doing it, yeah.

Mike Rowe 36:39 Yeah. They were just covered, in many cases, with other people's crap.

Lewis Howes 36:42 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 36:43 And so, you know, we, we don't associate success in this country with, with that particular, uh, optic.

Lewis Howes 36:50 Right.

Mike Rowe 36:50 Right? And so there was a lot about Dirty Jobs that was really very, very e- entrepreneurial in nature-

Lewis Howes 36:57 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 36:57 ... uh, that kind of got lost in the, in the visual-ness of-

Lewis Howes 37:00 I mean, like, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? is probably a-

Mike Rowe 37:03 A billion-dollar company

Lewis Howes 37:04 ... right?

Mike Rowe 37:04 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 37:04 Huge. All around junk, so.

Mike Rowe 37:05 Sure.

Lewis Howes 37:06 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 37:06 Absolutely.

Lewis Howes 37:07 Wow.

Mike Rowe 37:08 So, you know, I, for me, y- we can talk about lessons from the dirt for, for hours and hours and hours, but the big one, on a very personal level, was once I, once I got rid of the paradigm of a host or an expert and really committed to being a guest in people's places of work-

Lewis Howes 37:27 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 37:27 ... and an apprentice, that's probably the best... You know, I was a... I, it was, for me, it was Groundhog's Day in a sewer for 300-

Lewis Howes 37:34 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 37:35 You know, for nine seasons.

Lewis Howes 37:36 Sure.

Mike Rowe 37:36 I was an apprentice. Every day was the first day of, of work.

Lewis Howes 37:39 You had to be coachable. You had to be a student of the game.

Mike Rowe 37:42 You had to be a good sport.

Lewis Howes 37:43 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 37:43 You had to try everything. And, and what I realized by the end of season one was the... Actually, it was my, my mother called me, uh, after watching an episode. She said, "Michael, watching you-

Lewis Howes 37:54 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 37:55 ... is almost identical to watching... Watching you and these people on your show is like watching you and your father when you were young, and like watching your father and your grandfather to this day."

Lewis Howes 38:11 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 38:11 Right? Because they, my dad was always worked as my grandfather's apprentice.

Lewis Howes 38:15 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 38:15 And I always wanted to, to help in that same basic way.

Lewis Howes 38:18 Right.

Mike Rowe 38:19 And so, you know, I, I don't know how much psychology was at work, but it's kind of interesting when I look back at that show and realize that going back to when I'm 17 and flunking out of shop-

Lewis Howes 38:34 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 38:34 ... and getting a different toolbox, now I get the toolbox, right?

Lewis Howes 38:38 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 38:38 And now flash forward, now I'm, now I'm 45 at season one of Dirty Jobs, and what am I doing on that show? Well, I'm singing, I'm hosting, I'm writing, I'm producing-

Lewis Howes 38:50 Wow

Mike Rowe 38:50 ... I'm directing. I got a different toolbox, and I used them as best I could. And ultimately, the only project w- that gave me any celebrity at all was the project that turned into an homage to my granddad.

Lewis Howes 39:06 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 39:07 So, you know, hakuna matata, right?

Lewis Howes 39:09 Right, right.

Mike Rowe 39:10 The circle of life and everything else.

Lewis Howes 39:11 Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 39:11 It's, it's, it's, it's always a kick, you know, to catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror-

Lewis Howes 39:16 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 39:17 ... and, and see the men from whence you came.

Lewis Howes 39:20 Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you say that because it sounds like you've learned a lot of skills over the years, and it wasn't until you were 45 where you just started to hit your stride into this profession of bringing it all together to one skill, I guess. And I think there's a lot of people listening who are in their early to late 20s or early 30s that feel like, "I should have the results now. I should know what I'm supposed to be doing now." But this just might be one of the tools you're learning for these two-year span-

Mike Rowe 39:46 Yeah

Lewis Howes 39:46 ... that's gonna be the thing when you're 40 that's gonna take it off.

Mike Rowe 39:49 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 39:50 And I see that over and over for a lot of people I interview. Robert Greene, do you know that author?

Mike Rowe 39:54 What'd he write?

Lewis Howes 39:54 He wrote 48 Laws of Power. Um, he wrote, uh, Mastery, a book called Mastery.

Mike Rowe 40:00 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 40:01 Um, I think the, uh, um, The Art of Seduction.

Mike Rowe 40:03 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 40:04 He's sold millions of copies of his books, and they've taken off. But he said he started as a, um, a journalist originally in his 20s, then he was a screenwriter, then he tried to write fiction books, and then he tried to do TV work. And he said he was good at all of them, but none of them were the thing. But they all added up to, like, these obscure, interesting books that he writes now-

Mike Rowe 40:25 Yeah

Lewis Howes 40:25 ... that have taken off his career.

Mike Rowe 40:27 Right.

Lewis Howes 40:27 But he's like, he needed each of those five-year windows to learn a trade and to be able to apply it to what he's doing now.

Mike Rowe 40:32 Yeah. It's great when a plan comes together. But it sounds like he's saying, uh, there was no guarantee that the plan was-

Lewis Howes 40:42 Mm

Mike Rowe 40:42 ... gonna come together.

Lewis Howes 40:43 Right.

Mike Rowe 40:44 And of course, of course there's not, you know, ever. All, all you can do is, um, what makes the most sense to you.

Lewis Howes 40:53 Mm.

Mike Rowe 40:53 You know, it, it, people wanna feel congruent.

Lewis Howes 40:55 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 40:56 You know? And there's, and there's so many times in our life when we don't. And the, the question I always have is, well, when you don't feel congruent, are you gonna panic or not? And nothing good ever comes from panicking.

Lewis Howes 41:07 Sure.

Mike Rowe 41:08 But lots of good comes from changing-

Lewis Howes 41:10 Mm

Mike Rowe 41:10 ... and mixing things up. Which goes back to, you know, if you have a list of things you're willing to do, that means you also have a list of things you're unwilling to do.

Lewis Howes 41:19 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 41:19 And if one of the things that are actually gonna get you where you wanna go happens to be on your unwilling to-do list, you know-

Lewis Howes 41:27 Hey, you should be willing to do it then.

Mike Rowe 41:29 Yeah, assuming it's legal and-

Lewis Howes 41:30 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 41:30 ... and no one's gonna get hurt.

Lewis Howes 41:32 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 41:32 Um, so I think, you know, what's interesting about Greene, and what's interesting about Covey, and what's interesting about Tony Robbins-

Lewis Howes 41:40 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 41:40 ... and, you know, a lot of really, really smart people have offered a lot of really cogent blueprints, and some of them are different, some of them are similar. For myself, I, I value them only because the thing that I'm enamored of is the reverse commute. And you-

Lewis Howes 42:03 What do you mean by that?

Mike Rowe 42:04 Well, I mean it's the dirty jobs.

Lewis Howes 42:06 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 42:06 You know, everybody's going this way, I'll go this way.

Lewis Howes 42:09 Right.

Mike Rowe 42:09 Now, if everybody reads Tony Robbins' book or Robert Greene's book-

Lewis Howes 42:12 Yeah

Mike Rowe 42:13 ... or Stephen Covey's book, if everybody goes around completely mastering The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People-

Lewis Howes 42:19 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 42:19 ... then everybody's gonna be going this way.

Lewis Howes 42:21 Right.

Mike Rowe 42:22 And, and, and that, to me, is a good thing. Because what I need to be able to do to satisfy my own romantic version of myself, and to act in a way that makes me feel congruent, I need to affirmatively go the other way.

Lewis Howes 42:36 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 42:37 And so I can't affirmatively go the other way until I understand- ... where most people are going.

Lewis Howes 42:42 Sure. Interesting.

Mike Rowe 42:42 So look, this is a form of hubris-

Lewis Howes 42:44 Mm

Mike Rowe 42:44 ... really, and arrogance.

Lewis Howes 42:46 [laughs] Right.

Mike Rowe 42:47 And, and I, I know-

Lewis Howes 42:48 Right

Mike Rowe 42:48 ... you know, look, a lot of people expect, people say this to me all the time, "Why don't you have a German Shepherd? Why don't you have a big Golden Labrador Retriever? Why do you have this 14 pound-"

Lewis Howes 42:59 Scruffy looking

Mike Rowe 43:00 ... nightmare of a, you know, half terrier, half, uh, asshole, you know?

Lewis Howes 43:04 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 43:05 Why? And, and, and the answer is because I know I'm supposed to have the big chocolate Lab.

Lewis Howes 43:11 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 43:12 And so I don't wanna have that.

Lewis Howes 43:14 It's so funny you say that 'cause I, I kind of try to live my life a little bit that way. So I s- I guess I've been following in your footsteps. As a-

Mike Rowe 43:20 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 43:21 ... as the jock football player-

Mike Rowe 43:22 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 43:22 ... I was like, "I'm not gonna drink and go to the parties."

Mike Rowe 43:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 43:25 Because I don't wanna be associated as that guy.

Mike Rowe 43:28 You don't wanna be a stereotype.

Lewis Howes 43:29 I don't wanna be a stereotype. I was like, "I'm gonna learn salsa dancing." I sang in the choir in high school. I did the musical. I was like, "I'm gonna do everything that people think you're not supposed to do."

Mike Rowe 43:37 That's right. Look, to be... And again, it, it's... Th- this is the trick about advice too-

Lewis Howes 43:43 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 43:43 ... because the minute you start to say it like it's wisdom-

Lewis Howes 43:46 Right

Mike Rowe 43:47 ... then the minute you're assuming-

Lewis Howes 43:48 Mm

Mike Rowe 43:48 ... what would work for me will work for you.

Lewis Howes 43:49 Right. Right.

Mike Rowe 43:50 And I truly have no idea.

Lewis Howes 43:51 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 43:51 You know, everybody gets to figure out their own, you know, little mystical azimuth.

Lewis Howes 43:58 Sure, sure. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 43:59 You know, there, there, there, there are, there are a lot of ways to g- to get at it. But I'm still fascinated when I look back. Like QVC was the first job I ever had-

Lewis Howes 44:13 And how old were you?

Mike Rowe 44:13 ... in TV. I was, um... It was right out of the opera, so I was 27.

Lewis Howes 44:18 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 44:18 I was 27 when I, I actually crashed another audition.

Lewis Howes 44:23 Yes.

Mike Rowe 44:23 Got hired at QVC.

Lewis Howes 44:24 I heard this, yeah.

Mike Rowe 44:25 And so-

Lewis Howes 44:25 And I heard, I heard this because you told it in your recent episode of your podcast.

Mike Rowe 44:30 Oh, to Tim? With, to, with Ferriss or on your answer?

Lewis Howes 44:32 Uh, no, on your, on my podcast, yes. Uh, you were talking about selling a pencil-

Mike Rowe 44:37 Yeah

Lewis Howes 44:37 ... in your audition.

Mike Rowe 44:38 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:39 And you made me wanna buy... Your ad was so good, you made me wanna buy the, the pen for whatever the pen thing is. I was like, "I gotta buy this da-"

Mike Rowe 44:45 The Red Mark Pen Company.

Lewis Howes 44:46 The Red Mark Pen Company with the cap and the...

Mike Rowe 44:48 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:48 Exactly. So I'm gonna get your pen now.

Mike Rowe 44:50 Well, well thank you.

Lewis Howes 44:51 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 44:51 'Cause the money goes to the mikeroweWORKS Foundation-

Lewis Howes 44:53 Exactly

Mike Rowe 44:53 ... which is kind of a nice thing.

Lewis Howes 44:54 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 44:55 But I think-

Lewis Howes 44:56 Sorry, go ahead. Yeah

Mike Rowe 44:57 ... well, the point I wanted to make was, uh, I, I didn't talk about QVC. I was fired three times, and from 1993 to 1997, I left in '93, and, and from the rest of the '90s I freelanced in entertainment.

Lewis Howes 45:13 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 45:13 And I really didn't talk about QVC at all because when I look back at it, I really did see it as kind of this, this thing I had to do, right? It was just like, oh my God, what a hot mess that that time was. But the more time went by, the more I realized how important those three years were. Selling stuff I couldn't describe or understand in-

Lewis Howes 45:34 Or care about probably

Mike Rowe 45:34 ... in the middle of the night, right?

Lewis Howes 45:36 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 45:36 I mean, it was just, it was so amazingly valuable.

Lewis Howes 45:40 Mm.

Mike Rowe 45:40 And, and the reason that I was, um, the reason people liked me on QVC and the reason I had such a reputation for being a, uh, um, um, um, an anarchist wasn't because I was crazy. It's just because I was a little different than everybody else around me.

Lewis Howes 46:02 So you're unique.

Mike Rowe 46:04 Yes.

Lewis Howes 46:04 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 46:04 I was unique, right? And so you turn on QVC right now or eight hours from now, and th- the person there is going to be doing the, the same exact thing that the person before them was doing and the person after them is gonna do.

Lewis Howes 46:16 Same tone, same-

Mike Rowe 46:18 Everything

Lewis Howes 46:18 ... body language.

Mike Rowe 46:19 The graphics look the same.

Lewis Howes 46:20 Yes.

Mike Rowe 46:21 Every single thing looks the same. And so I was, to be just a little different made me outrageous.

Lewis Howes 46:28 Yes.

Mike Rowe 46:29 Same thing on Discovery, right? In 19- or 2001, Discovery was still the province of experts and hosts, right? So to come on there w- as a guest instead, that, that, that was, that was radical.

Lewis Howes 46:44 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 46:45 The point is when I, when I, when I looked at QVC and for a while when I looked at Discovery, I used to c- I, I used to curse their, uh-

Lewis Howes 46:54 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 46:56 ... the, the provincialness of it, you know? And I, I used to say, "Ah, they're, they're so rigid, and they have such unforgiving rules," right? But the truth is you need those.

Lewis Howes 47:06 Yes.

Mike Rowe 47:07 Because you can't-

Lewis Howes 47:08 The structure

Mike Rowe 47:08 ... you can't put your foot over the line if you don't know where the line is.

Lewis Howes 47:11 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 47:12 [lip smack] And so the best thing anybody ever did for me in my career was to give me rules-

Lewis Howes 47:19 Yes

Mike Rowe 47:19 ... and tell me, "You must not, you must not break them." And I didn't go out there to, to shatter them by any stretch, but knowing they're there allows you-

Lewis Howes 47:27 Flirt with them a little, right? To step on the line a little bit.

Mike Rowe 47:31 Just a little bit.

Lewis Howes 47:31 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 47:32 It's really, really important. And, and that-

Lewis Howes 47:33 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 47:34 ... you know, to the extent I have any maturity at all. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 47:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 47:38 Um, that's, that's one of the things, one of the, one-

Lewis Howes 47:42 Mm

Mike Rowe 47:42 ... one of the big lessons, you know? When people put you in a box, uh, it, it, it can be very useful. Conversely, what any writer will tell you, the most horrifying sight in the world is the blank page.

Lewis Howes 47:55 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 47:56 You know? When there, when there are no... When you can write anything you want, when you can say anything you want, when you can order anything you want-

Lewis Howes 48:04 There's no starting point. It's just like come up with something.

Mike Rowe 48:07 That's it. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 48:08 It's challenging.

Mike Rowe 48:09 You, you can-

Lewis Howes 48:09 But when there are rules and when there's, uh, parameters, then you can create within the rules, right?

Mike Rowe 48:13 Or, or, or choices too, right?

Lewis Howes 48:15 Yeah, choices. Yeah. Options.

Mike Rowe 48:16 You- That's right. Well, I don't know about you, I love to eat, and there's not a single food, there's-

Lewis Howes 48:21 We do both [laughs]

Mike Rowe 48:21 ... there's not a single food, with the possible exception of the lamb testicles we spoke of-

Lewis Howes 48:26 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 48:27 ... uh, that I, that I don't affirmatively enjoy. When I go into a restaurant-

Lewis Howes 48:31 Wow

Mike Rowe 48:32 ... and somebody hands me a menu that looks like a copy of War and Peace, right, I, I panic a little bit-

Lewis Howes 48:41 Sure

Mike Rowe 48:41 ... 'cause, 'cause there's nothing in there I don't want. But now suddenly you've just handed me homework, and I'm-

Lewis Howes 48:47 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 48:47 ... I'm going through, "Oh my-"

Lewis Howes 48:49 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 48:49 ... "God, really? Three pages of appetizers?"

Lewis Howes 48:51 No.

Mike Rowe 48:51 "Really?"

Lewis Howes 48:52 Just tell me the top three options, and I'll choose from those three.

Mike Rowe 48:54 Uh, and, and to this day, I, I don't look at menus.

Lewis Howes 48:57 Wow.

Mike Rowe 48:58 I say, what's w- what is the chef loving? What's fresh? There's not a thing I don't like.

Lewis Howes 49:06 That's impressive.

Mike Rowe 49:07 And, and I've had... That has so- I mean, and I eat out 300 nights a year.

Lewis Howes 49:12 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 49:13 It has radically changed-

Lewis Howes 49:15 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 49:16 ... my experience in restaurants.

Lewis Howes 49:18 Sure.

Mike Rowe 49:19 Do not look at the menu.

Lewis Howes 49:20 Wow.

Mike Rowe 49:20 "What do you recommend?"

Lewis Howes 49:21 That's good.

Mike Rowe 49:22 I... And I've, I've really, I've, I've never been disappointed.

Lewis Howes 49:25 Mm. I love it. I love it.

Mike Rowe 49:27 So-

Lewis Howes 49:27 What was, um, what's a skill that you think that every human being should focus on the most accumulating and generating? One skill we could all have.

Mike Rowe 49:39 Oh, man. Look, ooh, my, my answer's gonna sound a little hackneyed.

Lewis Howes 49:43 No.

Mike Rowe 49:43 Well, I mean, 'cause look, there's, there, there, there are no new ideas. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 49:47 Right.

Mike Rowe 49:47 You know? It's, it's, it's all been done and said. Uh, but two ears, one mouth. In proportion, if everybody listened twice as much as they spoke-

Lewis Howes 50:04 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 50:04 ... um, I, I just have to think it'd, it'd be a lot less noisy.

Lewis Howes 50:08 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 50:08 And-

Lewis Howes 50:08 Absolutely

Mike Rowe 50:09 ... and if you knew that you only got to say half of what you normally say, you'd probably be a bit more circumspect-

Lewis Howes 50:16 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 50:16 ... about what comes out of your head. So, you know, I- it's just, that's just math.

Lewis Howes 50:22 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 50:22 Two ears, one mouth.

Lewis Howes 50:23 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 50:24 You know?

Lewis Howes 50:24 Simple.

Mike Rowe 50:25 When in doubt, shut up. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 50:28 I like that. I like that. Um, I watched the, uh, I believe it was a keynote speech you gave at SkillsUSA 2013 on YouTube.

Mike Rowe 50:40 Could be.

Lewis Howes 50:40 And there was a poster that you showed the audience, you turned around, that was from your, I believe senior year in high school counselor-

Mike Rowe 50:48 Yeah

Lewis Howes 50:49 ... uh, guidance counselor in his room.

Mike Rowe 50:51 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 50:52 And, uh, the poster said, "Work smart, not hard," correct?

Mike Rowe 50:57 Correct.

Lewis Howes 50:57 With a capital not.

Mike Rowe 50:59 Yep.

Lewis Howes 51:00 And you said this was the, the worst piece of advice or the worst thing or something along those lines, like this is the worst-

Mike Rowe 51:05 Mm-hmm. Yeah

Lewis Howes 51:06 ... sentence you've ever seen or idea.

Mike Rowe 51:09 It's... Yeah, I'll stand by it. I think so.

Lewis Howes 51:11 Why, why? And then what did you do afterwards?

Mike Rowe 51:15 Well-

Lewis Howes 51:16 If you remember.

Mike Rowe 51:17 Oh, I remember vividly.

Lewis Howes 51:18 Mm.

Mike Rowe 51:18 Um, you know, the, the peripeteias we were talking about-

Lewis Howes 51:23 Mm

Mike Rowe 51:23 ... from Dirty Jobs. You know, the, the big, the big granddaddy of all of them was this idea that, um... Well, when the economy crashed in 2009 and the headlines all said, I mean, every single day, you know, 9%, 10%, 11% unemployment.

Lewis Howes 51:42 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 51:43 All we heard about were the number of people who couldn't find work. All I saw on Dirty Jobs was help wanted signs. Everywhere I went-

Lewis Howes 51:52 Really?

Mike Rowe 51:53 ... people were struggling to hire.

Lewis Howes 51:55 Huh.

Mike Rowe 51:55 And it just made me think that, you know-

Lewis Howes 51:58 But people with jobs w- or without jobs weren't willing to go do those jobs if they had degrees or if they had-

Mike Rowe 52:03 I, I wasn't-

Lewis Howes 52:04 ... thought they're beneath them or whatever, right?

Mike Rowe 52:05 I, I wasn't prepared at that point to, to say what the problem was. All I knew for sure was that there were two narratives going on in the country.

Lewis Howes 52:15 Yes.

Mike Rowe 52:15 And one was getting a lot of press, and one wasn't getting any. You had 2.3 million jobs in 2009 that employers couldn't fill, and you had nearly 20 million people who were unemployed.

Lewis Howes 52:27 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 52:28 So what's going on? And I used to talk, I used to ask that question, uh, uh, to every employer I met in all 50 states multiple times, and the answer was always the same thing. "We simply can't, we simply can't find people who are willing to learn a skill that's in demand, hit the, the reset button, retool, retrain, and most importantly, relocate."

Lewis Howes 52:50 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 52:51 I don't know when we became such a sedentary people, right? I mean, we- the United States is the United States because we went west.

Lewis Howes 52:58 Right.

Mike Rowe 52:58 We move. We stopped moving, and a lot of people today, in my opinion, are not only expecting a job after college, they're expecting a job that pays them what they believe is fair, and they're expecting a job that exists, uh, in their zip code.

Lewis Howes 53:15 Hmm. And they're enti- they're, they feel entitled, right?

Mike Rowe 53:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 53:18 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 53:18 Yeah. They, uh... Well, look, again, probably in some cases. I, I think the millennials are an easy target, and I don't wanna pile on.

Lewis Howes 53:27 Yes.

Mike Rowe 53:27 So I-

Lewis Howes 53:28 That's right

Mike Rowe 53:28 ... I don't know if they're all entitled or not.

Lewis Howes 53:29 In general. In general, yes.

Mike Rowe 53:31 I just know that there is an expectation.

Lewis Howes 53:33 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 53:33 And so this is a very long answer to your question. But one day I was talking to a guy named, uh, Dave Morales, who, um, he has a, he had a ranch in Congress. Congress, Arizona, and he was on the verge of going bankrupt, and Dave realized that he had many thousands of giant saguaro cacti on his property. So he got into the landscaping business-

Lewis Howes 53:59 Yeah

Mike Rowe 53:59 ... and started selling his cactus all over the country. And after a gut-wrenching day with Dave transplanting a, a three-ton cactus, we had this conversation, and we were s- we started talking about the worst advice in the world, and we were laughing about it and laughing about it. And, um, I think he was the guy who reminded me of work smart, not hard.

Lewis Howes 54:18 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 54:19 And that reminded me of Mr. Dunbar, my high school guidance counselor. And Mr. Dunbar, in 1979, called me down to his office to talk about my future, and he said, uh, "You know, your, your, your scores are pretty good, and, uh, University of Maryland, uh, James Madison-"

Lewis Howes 54:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 54:38 "... a couple of schools would be great for you." And I said-

Lewis Howes 54:40 You grew up in Baltimore, right? Yeah.

Mike Rowe 54:41 Grew up in Baltimore.

Lewis Howes 54:42 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 54:43 And I said, "Mr. Dunbar, I, A, I don't have any money."

Lewis Howes 54:46 It's expensive

Mike Rowe 54:47 ... B, the only, the only four-letter word in, in my family is debt.

Lewis Howes 54:53 Mm.

Mike Rowe 54:54 There can be none. It's simply not-

Lewis Howes 54:56 Mm

Mike Rowe 54:56 ... it's simply not tolerated.

Lewis Howes 54:58 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 54:58 We'd rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money.

Lewis Howes 55:01 Mm.

Mike Rowe 55:02 And, and finally, I, I don't know what I wanna do. So why do- why take on the debt? Why go to this... I, I, I, I wanna go to a community college, and I wanna take as many inexpensive courses as I can to get a better sense of-

Lewis Howes 55:13 What you want.

Mike Rowe 55:14 Right.

Lewis Howes 55:14 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 55:15 Get a better toolbox, right?

Lewis Howes 55:16 Yep.

Mike Rowe 55:16 He says, "Mike, that's a terrible idea. It's way beneath your potential." And then he pointed to the poster that you were talking about, and it w- on the poster was a picture of a guy in a cap and gown holding his, uh, diploma very proudly. And next to him is a guy who looks like, uh, every mechanic you've ever seen.

Lewis Howes 55:36 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 55:36 Grease monkey holding a wrench, looking down at the ground like s- some sort of vocational consolation prize, right?

Lewis Howes 55:42 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 55:43 And the caption, the caption on this poster said, "Work smart, not hard."

Lewis Howes 55:48 Ugh.

Mike Rowe 55:49 So Mr. Dunbar is basically saying, "The diploma is going to allow you to work smart. The wrench will doom you to a life of hard work." And knowing what I've told you about my grandfather, and knowing, you know, what you know about me at this point, you can imagine I'm like, "You're, you're, you're completely relegating a man like my grandfather, who can build a house without a blueprint-

Lewis Howes 56:13 Yeah

Mike Rowe 56:13 ... into a guy who's gonna be doomed-

Lewis Howes 56:16 Right

Mike Rowe 56:16 ... to a life of, of-

Lewis Howes 56:18 Poor, broke

Mike Rowe 56:18 ... drudgery.

Lewis Howes 56:19 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 56:20 Drudgery.

Lewis Howes 56:20 15-hour workdays. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 56:22 And I just thought, you know, at the time, it, I was offended as much as a 17-year-old kid can be offended. I just was like, "Ah, what a stupid thing to say. I d-

Lewis Howes 56:30 Yeah

Mike Rowe 56:30 ... I don't buy that." Later, I got, I got more offended, and today I use that moment and that poster as an example of, of the worst advice in the world.

Lewis Howes 56:42 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 56:43 Because I think, I think we took it as a, as a people-

Lewis Howes 56:47 And people say it, you know, "Work smarter, not harder."

Mike Rowe 56:49 Google it. You'll see-

Lewis Howes 56:50 Yeah

Mike Rowe 56:51 ... thousands of pages. That expression has become a platitude.

Lewis Howes 56:54 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 56:54 The platitude becomes a bromide. The bromide becomes conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom now becomes this neat, pat, little expression-

Lewis Howes 57:03 Yeah

Mike Rowe 57:03 ... that people say. Look, we just made hard work the, the thing to affirmatively av- avoid in favor of efficiency.

Lewis Howes 57:12 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 57:13 So I... Why in the world would you promote efficiency or effectiveness at the expense of hard work? Both of them are very important.

Lewis Howes 57:23 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 57:23 But so I, I, I began to ask the question, "Well, w- what, what would happen if an entire country took the advice that working smart instead of working hard-

Lewis Howes 57:35 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 57:36 ... um, really is the epitome of wisdom?" And in my opinion, um, we'd be precisely where we are right now. We'd have $1.3 trillion in student loans. We'd have thousands of college graduates who can't find work in their chosen field. We'd have nearly 40 million men right now as we speak who are between the ages of 18 and 54 who are not in the workforce.

Lewis Howes 58:01 40 million?

Mike Rowe 58:02 40 million. I'm not talking about unemployed people. Unemployed, that's a, that's a much smaller number. Those refer to people who are affirmatively looking for jobs but haven't found one. People who are capable of working but have taken themselves out of the workforce, that's a much larger number.

Lewis Howes 58:20 Wow.

Mike Rowe 58:21 And that's a much scarier number. 5.9 million available jobs right now according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the Department of Labor, 70% of which don't require a four-year degree.

Lewis Howes 58:31 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 58:32 So w- w- why are we lending money we don't have to kids who will never be able to pay it back-

Lewis Howes 58:38 Yeah

Mike Rowe 58:38 ... to train 'em for jobs that don't exist anymore? We're doing it in part because we believe that hard work is the enemy and that smart work is the only way forward, and we believe that the key to working smart is to becoming smart, and we believe that the key to becoming smart-

Lewis Howes 58:57 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 58:57 ... is a four-year degree. And we know that the key to a four-year degree is borrowing as much money as necessary s- to allow the universities to charge-

Lewis Howes 59:05 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 59:05 ... whatever they can charge in this very competitive environment, and so it goes. That's why you have millions of available jobs-

Lewis Howes 59:12 Yeah

Mike Rowe 59:12 ... that are important but don't require a four-year degree that are going unfilled.

Lewis Howes 59:16 Do you f- do you think that we can have a fulfilled life without working hard?

Mike Rowe 59:20 No.

Lewis Howes 59:23 But why do so many people try to not do any hard work at all? They just try to get by in the easy way.

Mike Rowe 59:29 Because-

Lewis Howes 59:30 And then they feel like they're, they're, like, suicidal, they're unhappy, they're depressed, and I'm like, "'Cause you don't work hard."

Mike Rowe 59:35 People are rivers. People, people are rivers trying to get to the ocean, and the river is making its way, and there's a mountain. Well, you know, the river's not gonna go over the mountain.

Lewis Howes 59:48 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 59:49 The river's gonna go around the mountain. It's gonna find the lowest possible way, and that, that, that's why rivers look like broken snakes, you know?

Lewis Howes 59:57 Right.

Mike Rowe 59:57 They, they, they go wherever the circumstances they encounter push them, right? Um, most people do the same thing.

Lewis Howes 1:00:08 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:00:08 Now, Lewis and Clark didn't, right? Lewis and Clark went west. They looked around. They saw a mountain. They went over it. They, you know... Certain people aren't rivers. Certain people are something else, and, and those people, to a man and a woman, uh, work hard.

Lewis Howes 1:00:25 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:00:25 You know, it's the... Again, it's, it's, it's very hard to say any of what I'm saying right now and not sound like somebody's grumpy old neighbor on the porch yelling at the kids to get off the lawn.

Lewis Howes 1:00:36 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:00:36 But I'm sorry. I- it's-

Lewis Howes 1:00:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:00:38 The... My granddad used to say, "Shortcuts lead to long delays."

Lewis Howes 1:00:42 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:00:43 Shortcuts lead to long delays. So we're told every single day in a, uh, in about a thousand different ways- Back to our earlier conversation that, that, that happiness is attainable if you do this, this, that, and that. And I mean, turn on any commercial right now for any financial institution. You'd be happier if you could retire a little sooner.

Lewis Howes 1:01:08 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:01:09 If you could take a, a longer vacation.

Lewis Howes 1:01:11 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:01:12 Why work 40 when you can work 30? Why work 50 if you can get by with 40? Everything is geared in a very, very subtle way to suggest that the reason that the proximate cause of your misery-

Lewis Howes 1:01:25 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:01:26 ... is something external.

Lewis Howes 1:01:28 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:01:29 It's your fricking boss. It's your crazy schedule. It's that son of a bitch down here.

Lewis Howes 1:01:36 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:01:36 It's this, it's, it's-

Lewis Howes 1:01:36 It's this victim mentality, yeah

Mike Rowe 1:01:37 ... I, I just think it's, I think it's true, you know? And, and I, and I honestly believe that, look, there are no guarantees for success, but the most interesting people wake up, look around, identify the hard, challenging thing.

Lewis Howes 1:01:52 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:01:53 It's not about eating your peas and sucking it up and getting through it.

Lewis Howes 1:01:56 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:01:57 It's about identifying it and loving it.

Lewis Howes 1:02:01 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:02:01 And saying, "That looks affirmatively..." It's about learning how to salsa.

Lewis Howes 1:02:06 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:02:06 That's what it's about, man.

Lewis Howes 1:02:07 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:02:07 You, you, you know. It's about look, look for the thing that doesn't drip with comfort.

Lewis Howes 1:02:13 It was so uncomfortable learning. [laughs] I was this tall White dude-

Mike Rowe 1:02:17 Right

Lewis Howes 1:02:18 ... with everyone who, you know, didn't speak English, and I was just like, "I wanna learn how to dance and understand your culture." It was terrifying. It took me months just to step on the dance floor.

Mike Rowe 1:02:27 And in hindsight, how has it informed-

Lewis Howes 1:02:29 Best decision of my life.

Mike Rowe 1:02:30 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:02:31 I mean-

Mike Rowe 1:02:31 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:02:31 ... I can go anywhere in the world, doesn't matter if I know the language or not, I can jump into any salsa club. In every major city there's, there's salsa clubs, and I have the confidence to go speak to anyone through the way I dance.

Mike Rowe 1:02:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:44 I don't even have to ask them a question. I can just go up and, and grab their hand and dance with someone and have friends.

Mike Rowe 1:02:50 Good for you. Honestly, I, I, I get now why people are listening to you-

Lewis Howes 1:02:54 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:02:54 ... because fundamentally, in my view, the- you're in on the joke.

Lewis Howes 1:03:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:03:01 I think I am, too.

Lewis Howes 1:03:02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:03:02 But, but, but, but the joke is, you know, you, you get [laughs] you have to do the hard thing. And look-

Lewis Howes 1:03:10 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:03:10 ... the, the, the best thing... Well, one of my favorite, uh, unintended consequences of getting Dirty Jobs on the air and being the Dirty Jobs guy is when I go to places, I get a chance to talk sometimes to, um, recently a, a very powerful group of men. Um, about 2,000 of them.

Lewis Howes 1:03:32 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:03:33 I mean, heads of state from all over the country, and it was a private club, and exclusive, and a lot of reasons that a lot of people get a little nervous, uh, around it. But this group of men, uh, was the most extraordinary, um, assemblage I'd ever seen.

Lewis Howes 1:03:51 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:03:51 And I talked to them very candidly about Dirty Jobs and told some funny stories, and later, I- hundreds of them came up to me. These are people who run Fortune 500 companies.

Lewis Howes 1:04:01 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:04:02 And Lewis, they all said the same thing. They all pulled me aside, and you know what they all wanted to tell me? They wanted to tell me about their first job.

Lewis Howes 1:04:14 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:04:14 They wanted to tell me about-

Lewis Howes 1:04:15 How hard it was

Mike Rowe 1:04:16 ... they wanted to tell me about the time in their life when they looked down and didn't see a net. When they realized sometimes you gotta make little rocks out of big rocks. Sometimes you gotta pick up the hammer. Sometimes you've gotta work hard and not smart. You know, they, they were just so eager to, to talk about that, and not in a, a braggadocio kind of way.

Lewis Howes 1:04:44 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:04:44 But just like, uh, you know, when, when you hear truth, when you hear something that strikes you as truth-

Lewis Howes 1:04:50 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:04:51 ... it, it, it's agitating, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:04:53 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:04:54 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:04:54 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:04:54 Well, like, when you, when you hear something you believe to be true but most people haven't heard, it's agitating, and it, and it, and it makes you wanna grab the country by the lapels and shake it.

Lewis Howes 1:05:03 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:05:04 And, and it's, it's that, it's that sense of, uh, uh, disconnectedness that I think... I think the country's become fundamentally disconnected from the definition of a good job, from the importance of hard work, from the importance of an education, but only in a, in a, in a very broad sense.

Lewis Howes 1:05:23 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:05:24 We've become convinced that a four-year degree is the best path for the most people, and therefore, all the other options are somehow subordinate. We've just become untet- we don't know where our food comes from. We really don't understand where-

Lewis Howes 1:05:36 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:05:36 ... our food comes from.

Lewis Howes 1:05:37 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:05:37 1 1/2% of the country is feeding 300 million people three times a day. We're not impressed by that. How the hell can we be so blasé about the fact that, that, that 30 million people are, are feeding... Sorry, 3 million people are feeding 300 million?

Lewis Howes 1:05:52 Crazy.

Mike Rowe 1:05:53 How can we be so, "Huh." How can we flick the lights... How c- how can we flick on a switch, see the lights come on, and not be like, "Oh my God"?

Lewis Howes 1:06:01 Blown away.

Mike Rowe 1:06:02 Or, right.

Lewis Howes 1:06:02 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:06:03 I hit that button over there, it gets cooler.

Lewis Howes 1:06:05 I get cold water, hot water.

Mike Rowe 1:06:07 Poof, it's a miracle. Go in the bathroom.

Lewis Howes 1:06:09 Flushes.

Mike Rowe 1:06:09 Look down at what you've done.

Lewis Howes 1:06:10 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:06:11 Be horrified. Hit the handle.

Lewis Howes 1:06:12 Gone.

Mike Rowe 1:06:13 Gone.

Lewis Howes 1:06:13 Clean.

Mike Rowe 1:06:14 It was never here.

Lewis Howes 1:06:14 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:06:15 Right? We are so... We are no longer gobsmacked by these fundamental things, and that, that disconnect-

Lewis Howes 1:06:25 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:06:25 ... I'm talking very generally, but that, that disconnect, uh, you know, it was so real in my life when I, I went from a guy, a 16, 17-year-old kid, convinced and utterly connected to all the things I just mentioned. Then I wandered in the wilderness till I was 42 in Hollywood and New York-

Lewis Howes 1:06:43 Hmm. Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:06:43 ... impersonating a host, completely just kind of bullshitting myself and anybody who might-

Lewis Howes 1:06:48 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:06:48 ... be watching. Just creating the illusion of competence.

Lewis Howes 1:06:51 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:06:51 And then all of a sudden, oh- Now I'm in a sewer in San Francisco crawling around trying to get a show off the ground in honor of my grandad.

Lewis Howes 1:06:59 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:06:59 And suddenly, you know, again, a long, sloppy, rambling way of saying that Dirty Jobs reconnected me to a lot of things that I believe are fundamentally important. And I don't know, I don't know what will reconnect you, not, not that you need to be reconnected, but-

Lewis Howes 1:07:16 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:07:16 ... but the many, many, many other millions of people who are not gonna get a chance to work shoulder to shoulder castrating lambs or repairing sewers.

Lewis Howes 1:07:25 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:07:26 But everybody somehow or another, in my view, needs to get reconnected to the important things.

Lewis Howes 1:07:31 And that's why I start and end every day with gratitude.

Mike Rowe 1:07:34 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:07:34 It's something that I feel like to give me perspective every single day. Because I can get caught up in the stresses or the overwhelm or whatever's happening in my business, but I'm like, "Gosh, I'm so grateful that I am healthy." You know?

Mike Rowe 1:07:45 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:45 I have friends without arms and legs.

Mike Rowe 1:07:47 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:07:47 I interview people who are war veterans who lose their limbs, and I'm like, "Gosh, I'm so grateful that I get to shake someone's hand-

Mike Rowe 1:07:54 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:07:54 ... and, and touch my girlfriend's face." And simple things that I think a lot of us take for granted.

Mike Rowe 1:07:59 Look-

Lewis Howes 1:07:59 And I just, it's a daily practice. Otherwise, I'm gonna be nasty with the best of them. You know what I mean?

Mike Rowe 1:08:03 Yeah. Well, listen, I'm, I, I'm a little, uh, Ayn Randian in that, in that regard.

Lewis Howes 1:08:10 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:08:10 I mean, I agree with you. But my, my reasons for being grateful are, are actually selfish. Um, I can't, I can't feel depressed-

Lewis Howes 1:08:22 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:08:23 ... when I'm grate- What do they call it?

Lewis Howes 1:08:25 It's-

Mike Rowe 1:08:25 An attitude of gratitude, right?

Lewis Howes 1:08:26 That's it.

Mike Rowe 1:08:27 If you're grateful-

Lewis Howes 1:08:28 Yes

Mike Rowe 1:08:28 ... how-

Lewis Howes 1:08:29 Can't be angry at the same time.

Mike Rowe 1:08:30 That's right.

Lewis Howes 1:08:30 It's the antidote of anger-

Mike Rowe 1:08:32 That's right

Lewis Howes 1:08:32 ... or fear or frustration.

Mike Rowe 1:08:35 Every bad thing gets co-opted-

Lewis Howes 1:08:37 That's it, man

Mike Rowe 1:08:37 ... by gratitude. Now, it gets a little, it gets a little smiley and squishy for me.

Lewis Howes 1:08:42 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:08:42 We gotta be careful-

Lewis Howes 1:08:43 [laughs] I hear you

Mike Rowe 1:08:43 ... 'cause, you know, anything that rhymes gives me the creeps.

Lewis Howes 1:08:45 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:08:46 So that attitude of gratitude-

Lewis Howes 1:08:47 Yes, I hear you

Mike Rowe 1:08:48 ... "Hey, turn that frown upside down."

Lewis Howes 1:08:49 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:08:50 "Don't, don't be, buck up, little camper." You know? No, no, that, that-

Lewis Howes 1:08:53 Yes

Mike Rowe 1:08:53 ... that pisses people off.

Lewis Howes 1:08:54 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:08:55 But it is nevertheless true.

Lewis Howes 1:08:57 It is.

Mike Rowe 1:08:58 So, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:08:58 Just don't do it in a cheesy way, right?

Mike Rowe 1:08:59 Just don't-

Lewis Howes 1:09:00 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mike Rowe 1:09:01 Execute. Always execution. Everything is always execution.

Lewis Howes 1:09:05 [laughs] I've got, I've got a ton of questions I wanna ask you, but I wanna be respectful of time, so I just, I wanna ask a few more.

Mike Rowe 1:09:10 I-

Lewis Howes 1:09:11 What time do you have to get out of here?

Mike Rowe 1:09:12 I ha- In one hour from now I have to walk behind that glass and I have to sit down and I have to start-

Lewis Howes 1:09:18 Reporting

Mike Rowe 1:09:18 ... telling stories about, uh, Bering, today it's Bering Sea gold.

Lewis Howes 1:09:22 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:09:22 These guys up in the Bering Sea are mining for gold underwater.

Lewis Howes 1:09:26 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:09:27 Big brass ones.

Lewis Howes 1:09:29 Phew.

Mike Rowe 1:09:29 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:09:30 Okay. So you got a little bit of time.

Mike Rowe 1:09:32 I got all the time you want.

Lewis Howes 1:09:32 Okay, cool.

Mike Rowe 1:09:33 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:09:34 Um, my question is, I'm writing this book about masculinity. I talked, I talked to you a little bit before about this. My, my question is, what is your definition of masculinity, and has it changed over the years?

Mike Rowe 1:09:46 It has changed. As a kid, you know, y- you definitely won't remember this, but [laughs] there's... My dad used to go to this barber shop, and they sold, uh, combs-

Lewis Howes 1:09:58 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:09:58 ... in the barber shop, Ajax combs.

Lewis Howes 1:10:01 Okay.

Mike Rowe 1:10:02 And they were just black combs like every guy in the world had.

Lewis Howes 1:10:05 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:10:06 You've seen Mad Men.

Lewis Howes 1:10:07 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:10:07 So Don Draper, right? A guy who looks like Don Draper is-

Lewis Howes 1:10:10 They say I look like, some people say I look like him.

Mike Rowe 1:10:12 You got a little bit, a little bit.

Lewis Howes 1:10:13 Some people.

Mike Rowe 1:10:14 Little bit.

Lewis Howes 1:10:14 Uh, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:10:15 Some people probably don't.

Lewis Howes 1:10:17 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:10:18 [laughs] But, but there was a picture of a guy, sorta like a, like almost a little cardboard cutout, who looked a little bit like Don Draper-

Lewis Howes 1:10:27 Uh-huh

Mike Rowe 1:10:27 ... and a, and, and, and a little bit like Superman.

Lewis Howes 1:10:30 Okay.

Mike Rowe 1:10:30 Dark hair, gelled, parted on the side.

Lewis Howes 1:10:33 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:10:33 Square jaw.

Lewis Howes 1:10:34 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:10:35 Cleft in the chi- The, I mean... And, um, my dad would sit there and get his hair cut, and I would just stare at this guy-

Lewis Howes 1:10:40 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:10:41 ... knowing, you know, he doesn't look like my dad and he doesn't look like me, but that's, that's a man.

Lewis Howes 1:10:47 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:10:47 That's a man. And then not long after that, we were driving up to Delaware, and we went, we were on 95, and we went through the toll plaza. And the guy who took the toll looked just like the guy on the Ajax comb thing.

Lewis Howes 1:11:01 Oh, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:11:01 And I said, "Dad, that, that's, that's a man."

Lewis Howes 1:11:04 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:11:06 And he laughed. I'm probably seven years old at the time.

Lewis Howes 1:11:09 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:11:09 And he goes, "Yeah, he, uh, he's a man. I'm a man. There are men everywhere." He goes, "Yeah." But I said, "That guy. That, that guy was a man."

Lewis Howes 1:11:16 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:11:17 And he, and he said, "So you, you, you like the look of that man?" And I said, "Well, I'm just saying he, he looks like the man in the barber shop, the cardboard cutout." And, and my dad just laughed. And, uh, we didn't have a big apocryphal conversation-

Lewis Howes 1:11:31 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:11:31 ... in the car about it. But I remember just thinking, you know, "Okay, they walk among us, these men."

Lewis Howes 1:11:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:11:39 "And they look like that."

Lewis Howes 1:11:40 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:11:41 And, and-

Lewis Howes 1:11:43 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:11:43 ... wouldn't it be good to be one of those?

Lewis Howes 1:11:46 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:11:47 So my earliest, my earliest feelings about manhood were embodied by a face I never saw really in, in real life-

Lewis Howes 1:11:57 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:11:57 ... except, you know, it started with a cardboard cutout, and then-

Lewis Howes 1:12:01 Except for the toll booth

Mike Rowe 1:12:01 ... somehow mutated into a guy in a toll booth.

Lewis Howes 1:12:03 Sure. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:12:04 And then, you know, all the traditional archetypes and stereotypes growing up, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:12:09 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:12:09 ... watching, watching Bonanza. You know?

Lewis Howes 1:12:11 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:12:11 I thought, uh, you know, I thought Pernell Roberts on Bonanza looked, uh, he looked like that guy, too. He, he, he was a man. Um, and then, uh, and then all that was double downed with my grandfather, who, while he didn't look like those guys, he was just a... He was so str- he was like Abe Lincoln strong.

Lewis Howes 1:12:31 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:12:31 He could take-

Lewis Howes 1:12:32 Old man strength.

Mike Rowe 1:12:33 He, he grabbed-

Lewis Howes 1:12:34 Can't beat it.

Mike Rowe 1:12:35 I saw him grab a, a, a pole that was attached to my mother's clothesline one day, and he, he put his right hand thusly and his left hand here, and then his body just went completely up-

Lewis Howes 1:12:49 Flag

Mike Rowe 1:12:49 ... parallel to the ground.

Lewis Howes 1:12:51 It's called a human flag.

Mike Rowe 1:12:52 He flagged it, man.

Lewis Howes 1:12:53 It's amazing.

Mike Rowe 1:12:53 And he, and he held it- For a long time

Lewis Howes 1:12:56 It's your dad or your grandpa?

Mike Rowe 1:12:57 My, my, my grandfather.

Lewis Howes 1:12:59 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:13:00 My grandpa. Now, again, I'm what, nine, 10 years old.

Lewis Howes 1:13:02 That's impressive for-

Mike Rowe 1:13:03 Right. So, you know, all-

Lewis Howes 1:13:05 I can't even do that for a second maybe. Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:13:08 I, I could do it, but I gotta cheat with my elbow tucked in.

Lewis Howes 1:13:09 Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:13:10 He did like this.

Lewis Howes 1:13:11 That's impressive.

Mike Rowe 1:13:12 It's crazy. It's all-

Lewis Howes 1:13:12 That's all man strength

Mike Rowe 1:13:13 ... all wrist strength. Yeah. Anyway, a, a very sloppy way of saying that these, these images from the '50s and my grandfather's ability to fix anything-

Lewis Howes 1:13:26 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:13:26 ... and crazy strength. Uh, and, and my dad, his, his contribution to it, just aside from having all the, the, the power that fathers have-

Lewis Howes 1:13:35 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:13:36 ... was a, was, was patience. My, my father will wait you out. My father will-

Lewis Howes 1:13:41 Wow

Mike Rowe 1:13:41 ... spend all day. He, he might not know how to fix the plumbing, he might not know the hack, but he'll just, he'll stick with it until it's fixed.

Lewis Howes 1:13:50 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:13:51 So my earliest notions of manhood were this weird mishmash of my, my, my-

Lewis Howes 1:13:56 Super strength

Mike Rowe 1:13:57 ... superhuman strength embodied in my grandad, amazing, uh, facial features-

Lewis Howes 1:14:02 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:14:03 ... invol- you know, that, that I knew were out there, and, and, and my dad's patience. Um, uh, that, that still does inform some of, some of what I think-

Lewis Howes 1:14:14 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:14:14 ... honestly. Um, and we were chatting, you know, earlier about that, uh, oh God, there was a terrible article in The New York Times. I forget who wrote it.

Lewis Howes 1:14:23 Just call it the modern man or what was it?

Mike Rowe 1:14:24 It was called, it was called The Modern Man, and it was just a list. It was a good-natured list of qualities today that define the modern man. And, um, I mean, I... One of them was like, you know, "The modern man today looks after his children's electronic devices and makes certain they're plugged in before the family goes to bed."

Lewis Howes 1:14:47 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:14:47 "The modern man today would never own a gun. He has no reason for it."

Lewis Howes 1:14:51 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:14:52 "The modern man today..." And it goes down the list, and I just thought, "There's not a single one of these things I agree with."

Lewis Howes 1:14:57 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:14:58 So as a good-natured rejoinder, I wrote, "The man's man," you know, "A man's man owns a gun. He owns a gun because he knows it's the best way to protect himself and his family. He also makes sure he can disassemble it and put it back together. He's accomplished with it on the range, and he understands what safety is. A man's man, you know, lets his children learn through cold experience how frustrating it is when their iPhone isn't charged the next morning."

Lewis Howes 1:15:24 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:15:25 "And goes to bed himself the following night confident in the knowledge that they'll be better for it."

Lewis Howes 1:15:29 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:15:30 So anyway, that, that conversation-

Lewis Howes 1:15:33 Huh

Mike Rowe 1:15:33 ... which I really just did-

Lewis Howes 1:15:34 You posted an article about this.

Mike Rowe 1:15:35 I j- I, I posted the exact same thing-

Lewis Howes 1:15:37 With your-

Mike Rowe 1:15:38 ... with my rejoinder

Lewis Howes 1:15:39 Wow, interesting. I'll have to see that. We'll have to link it up.

Mike Rowe 1:15:41 It's somewhere out there in the ether, but 9 million people read it.

Lewis Howes 1:15:44 Wow. What's it called? It's called The Man's Man.

Mike Rowe 1:15:46 It's called Man's Man Versus Modern Man.

Lewis Howes 1:15:48 Oh, I'll have to link this up for sure.

Mike Rowe 1:15:49 You'll f- But look-

Lewis Howes 1:15:50 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:15:50 ... a- again, I, I wasn't trying to make a point. I was sitting home drinking Dos Equis at 9:00-

Lewis Howes 1:15:54 Right. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:15:54 ... on a Saturday-

Lewis Howes 1:15:55 Right

Mike Rowe 1:15:55 ... and I did it to amuse myself.

Lewis Howes 1:15:57 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:15:57 But then like so many other things, I went on Facebook and I posted it, and then the next morning-

Lewis Howes 1:16:02 And it blew up

Mike Rowe 1:16:02 ... right. So now, now I'm on Good Morning America talking about it.

Lewis Howes 1:16:06 An article you wrote.

Mike Rowe 1:16:06 Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:16:07 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:16:07 Happens all the time.

Lewis Howes 1:16:08 And was this your truth then, everything?

Mike Rowe 1:16:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:16:11 Was it more cheeky, or was it w- this is what you believe?

Mike Rowe 1:16:13 Well, look, everything about me is, is a little true and a little cheeky.

Lewis Howes 1:16:17 Cheeky truth, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:16:18 Yeah. I mean, uh, I think in the same way that we can define-

Lewis Howes 1:16:24 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:16:24 ... uh, what a good job means in two- t- 2016, we can define what a real man is.

Lewis Howes 1:16:30 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:16:30 We can define what a real woman is. We can have... We can't really define it. Who the hell are we?

Lewis Howes 1:16:34 Right, right, right.

Mike Rowe 1:16:35 But we can talk about it.

Lewis Howes 1:16:36 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:16:36 And we can challenge existing ideas and-

Lewis Howes 1:16:39 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:16:39 ... paradigms and all that stuff.

Lewis Howes 1:16:40 What do you think it is now then? If you said the definition of a man or masculinity, what is, what's a masculine man today in your mind?

Mike Rowe 1:16:48 Well, I do think, to be fair to the times, um, you know, there, there is a measure of, of femininity in masculinity. Uh, you know, I th- I think anything purely masculine or purely feminine is, is, is purely unpleasant.

Lewis Howes 1:17:02 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:17:03 Um, but, but I, I think like anything else, uh, at some point, I mean, I think we, we, we kinda all did the, the goatee thing. We all kinda did the metrosexual thing.

Lewis Howes 1:17:14 Fruit of the Loom shoe, uh, that-

Mike Rowe 1:17:15 Yep. Right, right? [laughs] We, we all did that.

Lewis Howes 1:17:17 The zingers. I've done everything, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:17:19 Look, I mean, we, we, we laugh about it. There's a site I'm sure you've seen-

Lewis Howes 1:17:23 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:17:23 ... you know, uh, the, The Art of Manliness.

Lewis Howes 1:17:25 Uh-huh, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:17:26 And, you know, when, when, when you look at just, just the, the facial hair-

Lewis Howes 1:17:30 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:17:31 ... over, over the generations, it's-

Lewis Howes 1:17:33 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:17:33 ... it's hysterical.

Lewis Howes 1:17:34 Yeah. I think Brett is the one that owns that. It's a, it's a podcast as well called The Art of Manliness.

Mike Rowe 1:17:39 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:17:39 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:17:39 You know, it's a total, uh, quick tangent, but I had a buddy when, when I was living in New York, going on auditions and doing whatever you could do. He was so excited. He came home and he, and he, and he booked a job. It was for Doers, right? So he said, "It's just a model. It's a print ad." And, um, and I said, "Well, what'd you do to get it?" He said, "I, nothing. I just stand there and smile. They, there, there, there are four of us, and they're g- they're, they're gonna shoot us on the stoop of this brownstone."

Lewis Howes 1:18:05 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:18:05 "And it's gonna be a great ad." And I said, "Oh, uh, well, I'll look for it." So the next day he goes, and there, there are three other dudes, and they all kinda look like him, and they all have a goatee.

Lewis Howes 1:18:13 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:18:13 All right? And they all sit down, and they're all looking like, you know, the director's like, "Ah, make it, you know, butch it up a little. Look tough." You know, so they're all looking at the camera-

Lewis Howes 1:18:21 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:18:22 ... you know, like with all this attitude at the camera, you know, like this. And, um, you know, there's a big Doers thing, and it's a great looking shot, and there's the Doers. But the caption, [laughs] the caption says, "Okay, we get it. We've all done the goatee thing. Now can we just get real?"

Lewis Howes 1:18:41 That's funny.

Mike Rowe 1:18:42 Doers. So [laughs] it sucks to be hired to be a punchline and, and-

Lewis Howes 1:18:48 Wow

Mike Rowe 1:18:48 ... and, and not know it.

Lewis Howes 1:18:49 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:18:49 It's like showing up in a herpes ad.

Lewis Howes 1:18:51 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:18:51 You know, you, you don't know it. And then you're on the subway and you're like, "Ah, crap."

Lewis Howes 1:18:55 Crap. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:18:56 "I didn't need to, I didn't need to see this."

Lewis Howes 1:18:57 Hiding yourself, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:18:58 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:18:59 Um, okay. So to finish what you were saying about masculinity So look at the times you were saying ma- you don't, there's not, you don't want too much masculinity, you don't want too much femininity, just a little bit of both.

Mike Rowe 1:19:08 I think, I think a man in 2016 has the obvious overt, and forgive me, this is sexist, but a man looks and acts like a man in, in many traditional ways. However, the most important component is he knows who he is. And this is a, a wildly overused word, but it really matters: he's authentic. He's authentic to himself.

Lewis Howes 1:19:37 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:19:38 The reason [laughs] the reason Donald Trump is where he is right now, in my opinion, has almost nothing to do with anything that's political or being discussed. It's simply this guy doesn't need this job, and he's never pretended to, and he's, l- love him or hate him, he's been fairly consistent in his entire life.

Lewis Howes 1:20:10 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:20:11 And we're so starved-

Lewis Howes 1:20:12 Right

Mike Rowe 1:20:13 ... we're so starved to see somebody tell us the truth-

Lewis Howes 1:20:17 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:20:17 ... a- a- about something that-

Lewis Howes 1:20:19 At least how they feel about it.

Mike Rowe 1:20:21 E- I, I wonder, e- even if I disagree with you, uh, politically or socially or whatever it is, if you've made a reasonable case that's consistent and congruent with your view of the world, and you happen to be, um, um, a male of the species, then I would call you a man.

Lewis Howes 1:20:42 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:20:42 You know? Men own their opinions. They make a reasonable case for it. They're willing to be corrected. They're willing to be wrong. They're open to the possibility-

Lewis Howes 1:20:53 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:20:53 ... that their head could very well have somehow gotten up their ass. But, um, they don't apologize for that. They say, "This is what I think. This is why I think it." And look, when, when your actions and your words over time line up-

Lewis Howes 1:21:10 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:21:10 ... in a predictable way, I just think that, you know... I mean, I hate just to assign it to a man, but to answer your question, yeah, that's a very, very-

Lewis Howes 1:21:19 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:21:19 ... very important quality. But I also think it's a critical quality of being a woman, too.

Lewis Howes 1:21:22 Mm. Interesting.

Mike Rowe 1:21:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:21:25 And, and just to, since you brought it up, I heard a rumor that you were, like, a while ago, potentially a vice president candidate. Was that... That was in talks on social media anyways. Was that actually something that was happening-

Mike Rowe 1:21:37 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:21:37 ... or were you, did you know about this or...?

Mike Rowe 1:21:39 Yeah, I knew. I got calls.

Lewis Howes 1:21:41 Really?

Mike Rowe 1:21:41 I got calls.

Lewis Howes 1:21:42 You mean you got calls from-

Mike Rowe 1:21:43 I got c-

Lewis Howes 1:21:44 ... Trump, Trump's team or you got calls from just random friends like, "Hey" [laughs] ?

Mike Rowe 1:21:47 No, it wasn't... It, I, I never heard from anybody on Trump's side and I never heard from anybody on the Democratic side. What I heard from were from a lot of, uh, groups that started forming around a, a third party or a tri-party. Um, so yeah, the vice presidential thing got bandied around a little bit, but I, of course, never took it seriously.

Lewis Howes 1:22:07 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:22:07 But, but I was interested in the conversation around a, a tri-party. Interested in the conversation, not in... I'm not your guy.

Lewis Howes 1:22:16 Right, right.

Mike Rowe 1:22:17 I'm not, I'm, I'm not your guy. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:22:18 You'll, you'll listen-

Mike Rowe 1:22:19 Not that yet

Lewis Howes 1:22:19 ... and have a conversation. Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:22:20 Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, look, I'm, I'm, I'm very interested in the space and on a personal level, I've, I've, I'm, I'm vested in the conversation. But on a, on a professional level, I'm not a politician-

Lewis Howes 1:22:32 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:22:32 ... and, and I don't care to, um, personally-

Lewis Howes 1:22:33 If, if Trump was like, "I want you to be my vice president if I win," would you have-

Mike Rowe 1:22:38 Well, I w-

Lewis Howes 1:22:38 ... considered it?

Mike Rowe 1:22:39 ... I wouldn't have said no, but I would've said, "Why?" Why, I mean, I mean, I, um, to cut to the chase, I don't see it happening.

Lewis Howes 1:22:48 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:22:48 I have less experience than you, and you don't have any experience at all.

Lewis Howes 1:22:51 [laughs] Right.

Mike Rowe 1:22:51 I mean, what are we gonna do?

Lewis Howes 1:22:52 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:22:52 We're a couple of guys who hosted a couple reality shows. What are we gonna do? You know? I mean, you've, you've proven-

Lewis Howes 1:22:59 Oh my gosh

Mike Rowe 1:22:59 ... you know, I, I am, I am the-

Lewis Howes 1:23:01 How are we gonna run the country? [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:03 I'm a, I'm an apprentice by trade and, and you're a billionaire. I, I don't s- I mean-

Lewis Howes 1:23:09 Oh my gosh. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:12 I, it would be... It's just... There, there's another movie you've never seen, Dan.

Lewis Howes 1:23:15 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:16 It's called, it's called Bulworth.

Lewis Howes 1:23:19 Okay. I have not.

Mike Rowe 1:23:19 It star- it, it stars Warren Beatty.

Lewis Howes 1:23:21 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:21 And, and, and Warren Beatty is diagnosed... He's a congressman or a senator or something.

Lewis Howes 1:23:26 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:26 And he's diagnosed with some terminal disease and he just decides, well, he hires somebody to assassinate him.

Lewis Howes 1:23:33 Oh.

Mike Rowe 1:23:33 And then while he's waiting to be assassinated, he just starts telling the truth-

Lewis Howes 1:23:38 Oh

Mike Rowe 1:23:38 ... about the country, about immigration, about racism-

Lewis Howes 1:23:42 Oh

Mike Rowe 1:23:42 ... about all these things. And he immediately shoots to the top of the polls.

Lewis Howes 1:23:45 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:23:46 But now, of course, he's got a problem 'cause he's paid somebody to kill him.

Lewis Howes 1:23:49 Uh-huh.

Mike Rowe 1:23:49 And so anyway, we're watching Bulworth right now. We're watching... And I, and, and I don't mean that specifically about-

Lewis Howes 1:23:55 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:23:55 ... about Donald Trump. I just mean we're looking at a country who is so, [laughs] who's so desperate to hear something-

Lewis Howes 1:24:03 Some truth from someone

Mike Rowe 1:24:04 ... congruency.

Lewis Howes 1:24:06 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:24:06 Something just like, my God, we're-

Lewis Howes 1:24:08 It's not this, like, perfect, polished thing that you wanna hear-

Mike Rowe 1:24:11 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:24:11 ... or that they think you wanna hear, but actually what's on their mind.

Mike Rowe 1:24:14 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:24:15 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:24:15 And, and look, I just make that point to say I'm under no illusions of grandeur.

Lewis Howes 1:24:21 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:24:21 Nobody's n- nobody's talking to me about running for the Senate or the Congress or, or something bigger because they think I'm qualified.

Lewis Howes 1:24:28 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:24:28 They're talking to me about it because Dirty Jobs had a, had a component to it that every single, whether it's the gubernatorial or the general, every two years we see it play out. This-

Lewis Howes 1:24:42 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:24:42 ... this, this terrible kabuki on TV where the people who are running for office, what do they do? They go to the factories. They go to the construction sites. They do the photo op. I still remember Hillary in some bar in, in Western Pennsylvania four years ago doing, like, shots of rye with steel workers.

Lewis Howes 1:25:02 Which she would never, ever do. It seems fake.

Mike Rowe 1:25:04 What are you doing?

Lewis Howes 1:25:05 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:25:05 What are you doing? Well- It seems manufactured.

Lewis Howes 1:25:08 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:25:09 It's the, it's that, it's that desperate attempt to connect with real people-

Lewis Howes 1:25:14 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:25:14 ... that- that's such an important part of- of getting elected. What was Dirty Jobs at base? At base it was a TV show, but what really happened? What happened was a giant connection.

Lewis Howes 1:25:26 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:25:26 Week after week after week, a guy named Mike constantly was showing up in towns you couldn't find on a map to meet people you didn't know existed to try his hand at a job that you didn't know about. What could be more common? What could be more humble? What could be more ordinary? And by the end of the day-

Lewis Howes 1:25:45 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:25:45 ... the viewer sees that anonymous person magnified, and they see Mike, uh, in a subordinate role who, you know, was learning and getting schooled.

Lewis Howes 1:25:55 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:25:56 And then what do they do at the end of the day? They do a shot or rye. They have a beer. They laugh, they talk, they hug, they shake, and they go their separate ways. It looked like-

Lewis Howes 1:26:04 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:26:05 ... in some weird way that I was actually running for something, in hindsight. Of course, I wasn't.

Lewis Howes 1:26:10 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:26:10 That just happened to be the DNA of the show.

Lewis Howes 1:26:13 Sure. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:26:14 But in a world where people are desperate to find-

Lewis Howes 1:26:16 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:26:16 ... something that looks and feels authentic-

Lewis Howes 1:26:19 You were the guy

Mike Rowe 1:26:19 ... that looked pretty authentic.

Lewis Howes 1:26:20 Yeah. You were the guy.

Mike Rowe 1:26:21 Crazy.

Lewis Howes 1:26:21 And I think, was it Forbes said you were in the top 10 most trustworthy celebrities three years in a row.

Mike Rowe 1:26:27 Crazy.

Lewis Howes 1:26:27 So maybe that's like, "Hey, we don't trust this guy, but maybe we'll trust Mike." [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:26:30 Maybe we'll trust... Why would a guy in a sewer lie to us?

Lewis Howes 1:26:33 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:26:34 Right? That's- that- that- that trustworthy thing is really fascinating. And, uh, as much as I'd like to take credit for it, because I- I like to see myself as fairly trustworthy, um, the company you keep matters.

Lewis Howes 1:26:48 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:26:49 Discovery, um, at the time anyway, and- and today still to some degree, but at the time they were the number one trusted brand in non-fiction.

Lewis Howes 1:26:58 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:26:59 At that same time, I was the official spokesperson for Ford. Ford trucks-

Lewis Howes 1:27:04 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:27:05 ... Ford automobiles-

Lewis Howes 1:27:06 I remember those commercials. Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:27:07 ... Ford parts and service.

Lewis Howes 1:27:08 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:27:08 This is 2009, right after Alan Mulally just said... Actually, it's 2007, 2008, after he just said, "No, no, I'm not taking the money," you know? Ford, every other American automobile maker took the bailout.

Lewis Howes 1:27:22 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:27:22 Alan Mulally and Ford didn't.

Lewis Howes 1:27:24 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:27:25 So suddenly I'm working for Ford.

Lewis Howes 1:27:27 Ford Tough.

Mike Rowe 1:27:28 Ford Tough.

Lewis Howes 1:27:28 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:27:28 The guy- the, the, the company that said, "Nope. We'll do it on our own."

Lewis Howes 1:27:33 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:27:33 "We don't need your tax money."

Lewis Howes 1:27:35 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:27:36 Discovery, I'm crawling through sewers. I'm in a Ford truck. I'm with two brands that people are just loving at the time. Um, and I'm not taking myself too seriously.

Lewis Howes 1:27:46 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:27:47 So suddenly, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:27:49 The trifecta

Mike Rowe 1:27:49 ... the p-

Lewis Howes 1:27:51 Yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:27:51 ... the- the people who test these things-

Lewis Howes 1:27:52 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:27:52 ... and evaluate these things-

Lewis Howes 1:27:54 Right, right

Mike Rowe 1:27:54 ... look around and say-

Lewis Howes 1:27:55 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:27:55 ... "Oh, studies show he's not an asshole."

Lewis Howes 1:27:57 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:27:57 "So maybe we should-"

Lewis Howes 1:27:59 That's cool

Mike Rowe 1:27:59 ... "get him as president."

Lewis Howes 1:28:00 Wow. Gee. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:28:01 That's great.

Lewis Howes 1:28:02 Right? Nuts. Uh, so you never did talk to Donald. Nothing ever happened with him, but-

Mike Rowe 1:28:06 The only thing that happened with Donald Trump, you know, I raised money for my foundation. You know?

Lewis Howes 1:28:10 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:28:10 And- and a couple weeks ago, like, I'll read these short stories I do on my podcast-

Lewis Howes 1:28:16 Uh-huh

Mike Rowe 1:28:16 ... at my dining room table, and one day I was wearing a robe, and, you know, at the end of each podcast, not all of them, but sometimes I'll auction something off for the foundation. We've raised nearly $4 million-

Lewis Howes 1:28:27 Amazing

Mike Rowe 1:28:28 ... auctioning off crap from my garage. In fact, it's called CRAP, Collectibles Rare And Precious, right?

Lewis Howes 1:28:32 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:28:33 So I said, uh, somebody suggested I auction off my bathrobe. So I said, "Fine. This bathrobe's for sale."

Lewis Howes 1:28:38 'Cause you wear your bathrobe in your Facebook videos. I've seen a couple times. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:28:41 Sometimes, yeah. So somebody paid eight grand for my bathrobe.

Lewis Howes 1:28:44 Amazing.

Mike Rowe 1:28:45 So I write, "Hey, you know what? If- if this is how it's gonna go, um, Donald Trump, why don't you send me a bathrobe, an autograph, and we'll raise enough money, we'll close the skills gap." But I also said, "Hey, Bernie, send me one of those rumpled blazers you wear," or, "Hillary, send me some pant suits or something."

Lewis Howes 1:29:00 Uh-huh.

Mike Rowe 1:29:00 "I'll put anything on." Anyway, nobody did anything but- but Donald.

Lewis Howes 1:29:04 He did.

Mike Rowe 1:29:04 Donald sent me an autographed bathrobe, and I auctioned it off the next week for 17 grand.

Lewis Howes 1:29:09 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:29:09 So, you know, I- my worlds are very, very messy, but I- I do what I can to raise money-

Lewis Howes 1:29:16 That's cool

Mike Rowe 1:29:17 ... for these work ethic scholarships.

Lewis Howes 1:29:19 That's cool.

Mike Rowe 1:29:19 And, uh, that's how I do it.

Lewis Howes 1:29:21 Um, I'm curious about fame, and you've built this audience over time. You've got this huge podcast. You've been on our show for 10 years. You were on many other shows before that. You do voiceover for every show on TV it seems like, and every documentary. You know? [laughs] Your voice is everywhere.

Mike Rowe 1:29:36 If there's a wildebeest trying to get across-

Lewis Howes 1:29:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:29:38 ... the vast reaches of the barren Serengeti, uh, the odds are good I'm telling you about it.

Lewis Howes 1:29:42 Exactly. Uh, how have you managed this audience, this responsibility over time, these people that trust you? You know, all these people that trust you in America and around the world, how have you been able to facilitate your own journey through that and not let it get the best of you or not let it-

Mike Rowe 1:29:59 Um, I-

Lewis Howes 1:29:59 ... if you have too big of an ego or... You know, 'cause I think there's a lot of people listening that wanna build their audience. So what, what thoughts do you have on that?

Mike Rowe 1:30:07 Well, um, early on, I said somewhat publicly and- and now somewhat embarrassingly that I'd sooner push hot needles in my eyes than send out a tweet or face on a book, right?

Lewis Howes 1:30:23 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:30:23 Uh, and I've been called on that obviously-

Lewis Howes 1:30:25 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:30:25 ... many times since. But when I said it, um, I meant it because I just thought it was a terrible way to curry favor.

Lewis Howes 1:30:35 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:30:35 Uh, and- and I just didn't, I just didn't wanna do it. But around that same time when Dirty Jobs was going on the air, Discovery said, "Hey, you know, the whole digital space is important to us, and if we build you a chat room, would you talk to your-

Lewis Howes 1:30:49 Yes

Mike Rowe 1:30:50 ... viewers?" And I said, "Sure." And that turned out to be, um, a major, in hindsight, one of the biggest things that ever happened. Because, you know, I'd go to Oklahoma City and I'd work with, you know, wildcatters during the day-

Lewis Howes 1:31:04 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:31:04 ... and I'd go back to my Motel 6 completely just- just- just beat to hell and dying.

Lewis Howes 1:31:09 Exhausted.

Mike Rowe 1:31:10 ... too tired to even take a shower.

Lewis Howes 1:31:11 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:31:12 But I'd lie down and I'd log on, and fans of the show would ask me questions-

Lewis Howes 1:31:15 Wow

Mike Rowe 1:31:16 ... and I'd answer them. And we started having this very, very, uh, robust conversation in this little chat room. And over time, um, a million threads evolved from this-

Lewis Howes 1:31:29 That's amazing

Mike Rowe 1:31:30 ... over time. But in the beginning, what I started doing was saying, "Who do you know that has a dirty job, and why should I go see them?" And so halfway through season one, Dirty Jobs started to be programmed by the viewer, and that relationship happened in that little chat room.

Lewis Howes 1:31:48 Oh, that's cool. It was like your casting.

Mike Rowe 1:31:49 That's exactly what it was.

Lewis Howes 1:31:50 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:31:50 And, and so what, what that led to-

Lewis Howes 1:31:54 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:31:54 ... was a, you know, a, a call at the end of every episode of Dirty Jobs.

Lewis Howes 1:31:58 Go to the chat room and share your-

Mike Rowe 1:31:59 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:32:00 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:32:00 And so now I'm having actual conversations, but not just about the show. I would talk about anything.

Lewis Howes 1:32:05 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:32:06 I was utterly transparent.

Lewis Howes 1:32:07 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:32:07 I was talking about my most important characters in literature. I was talking about the changing face of the modern-day proletariat, vis-a-vis the digital divide.

Lewis Howes 1:32:16 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:32:16 I was talking d- we're down dirty limericks. Anything, right?

Lewis Howes 1:32:19 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:32:20 And it was always happening usually in the middle of the night from a Motel 6 or a Super 8 or some, some little pit of despair off the frontage road-

Lewis Howes 1:32:26 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:32:26 ... in some godforsaken town. And so I became, uh, very close to the viewers of the show. And one day on, I think the Today Show, um, somebody, I don't remember if it was Matt Lauer or Charlie Gibson, one of those guys, said, "What's it like working for the Discovery Channel?" And without even thinking, I said, "Oh, I, I, I don't work for the Discovery Channel." And they said, "No?" And I said, "No, no. I, I work for the people in the chat room."

Lewis Howes 1:32:53 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:32:54 "I, I work for the people who watch the show."

Lewis Howes 1:32:56 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:32:57 And that wound up mutating into some sort of headline, and it, it caused a little bit of grief with Discovery.

Lewis Howes 1:33:02 Sure, sure. Yeah, I can-

Mike Rowe 1:33:03 But actually not much. Not much-

Lewis Howes 1:33:06 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:33:06 ... because, you know, I said the same thing about, uh, about every show I've ever worked for.

Lewis Howes 1:33:12 You work for the audience that's watching it.

Mike Rowe 1:33:13 You, uh, you, you work for them.

Lewis Howes 1:33:16 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:33:16 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:33:16 Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:33:17 And, and, and the, and the minute you don't, well, it doesn't mean the world's gonna come off the hinges-

Lewis Howes 1:33:23 Right

Mike Rowe 1:33:23 ... but if you-

Lewis Howes 1:33:23 They're gonna stop watching.

Mike Rowe 1:33:24 That's right. There's a... There are a couple things between your paycheck and your performance.

Lewis Howes 1:33:30 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:33:30 And the big one is them, right? And so, so to, to start equating your, your paycheck with something that has nothing to do with your audience, that's a, that's a fundamental mistake-

Lewis Howes 1:33:42 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:33:42 ... that a lot of people, I think, in my line of work make. Um, so... Jesus, Lewis, what was your original question?

Lewis Howes 1:33:49 [laughs] How have you, how have you-

Mike Rowe 1:33:50 I'm, I'm Forrest Gumping my way through this whole thing. I apologize.

Lewis Howes 1:33:52 How have you, uh, managed, um-

Mike Rowe 1:33:55 Oh

Lewis Howes 1:33:55 ... just yourself-

Mike Rowe 1:33:55 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:33:55 ... through building this audience over time, you know, without letting it get the best of you or-

Mike Rowe 1:33:59 By that, by, by, by simply never forgetting that. Every, every good thing that's happened to me from relationships with Ford and HP and Master Lock and, uh, Caterpillar. I mean, there have literally been 14-

Lewis Howes 1:34:16 Hmm

Mike Rowe 1:34:16 ... Fortune 500 companies, to running a foundation, to a TV-

Lewis Howes 1:34:20 Wow

Mike Rowe 1:34:20 ... show that launched 32 other shows. To the shows I'm working on now to the p- every single thing, uh, if I, if I really walk it back, aside from my grandfather and everything else we talked about, goes back to asking a viewer, "What do you think?"

Lewis Howes 1:34:33 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:34:33 "What would you like to see?" You know? And I'm sure you do it here.

Lewis Howes 1:34:36 Absolutely.

Mike Rowe 1:34:37 I mean, right?

Lewis Howes 1:34:37 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:34:37 You're very social with this, but-

Lewis Howes 1:34:39 Yes

Mike Rowe 1:34:39 ... it doesn't do you any good to interview people your audience doesn't care about.

Lewis Howes 1:34:43 Absolutely. I-

Mike Rowe 1:34:43 I mean, I hope they're vaguely interested in me, but-

Lewis Howes 1:34:46 Of course

Mike Rowe 1:34:46 ... but you know what I mean? You, you-

Lewis Howes 1:34:48 Of course. Yeah, yes.

Mike Rowe 1:34:49 So-

Lewis Howes 1:34:49 I'm very protective of my audience. I get pitched all the time for people that wanna come on and be interviewed or wanna promote their book or whatever, and I, you know, I'm like, "This is The School of Greatness. It's not the school of pretty good."

Mike Rowe 1:35:00 It's, it's not the school-

Lewis Howes 1:35:01 Or the school of average, you know?

Mike Rowe 1:35:02 Or the school of your agenda.

Lewis Howes 1:35:03 Yeah, exactly.

Mike Rowe 1:35:04 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:35:04 It's like I have to think like, "Will all these people love this? Or will a majority of them get a lot of great information from this idea-"

Mike Rowe 1:35:11 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:35:11 ... "or this person or whatever?" And-

Mike Rowe 1:35:13 You have to... Look, y- if, if you truly believe you work for them-

Lewis Howes 1:35:18 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:35:18 ... then, then, then you really... It's, it's not about abdicating your, your, your, your pride or being subservient to them.

Lewis Howes 1:35:27 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:35:28 You know, uh, no boss wants a kiss-ass.

Lewis Howes 1:35:31 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:35:31 No good one wants a suck-up. Uh, but, but no boss wants to be disrespected either.

Lewis Howes 1:35:37 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:35:38 And it's so easy in our business to forget that.

Lewis Howes 1:35:40 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:35:40 And so, so, you know, here, look, I'll tell you a story about this dog.

Lewis Howes 1:35:44 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:35:45 This dog comes home from the pound, right? And, and I don't know what the heck to do with him. Um, you know, he's in a-

Lewis Howes 1:35:53 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:35:53 ... he's in an apartment where there are no dogs allowed.

Lewis Howes 1:35:55 Ugh.

Mike Rowe 1:35:56 And I, and, and, and I got the dog, and, and I just, um, I love him. And I didn't know what to do with him so I take some pictures and I, and I put him on Facebook and I say, "I got a new dog. What do you, uh... What should I name him?"

Lewis Howes 1:36:08 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:36:09 And the next morning I get 90, 94,000 suggestions.

Lewis Howes 1:36:13 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:36:14 So, so I take the top six-

Lewis Howes 1:36:17 This is insane

Mike Rowe 1:36:17 ... and I take a pee pad, and I unfold the pee pad and I set up a time-lapse camera.

Lewis Howes 1:36:22 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:36:23 And I wrote the top six names, one in each square, and we called it Puppy Poop Bingo. So the deal was whatever name he, he crapped on-

Lewis Howes 1:36:32 That's his name

Mike Rowe 1:36:32 ... so he crapped on Freddy, so that's Freddy. The moral of the story is not to get a dog and not to set up a camera and let him crap all over a pee pad.

Lewis Howes 1:36:41 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:36:42 It's to ask the people you work for what they think.

Lewis Howes 1:36:44 Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:36:45 And so, you know, for what it's worth, I, I got three, four million fans on Facebook now.

Lewis Howes 1:36:52 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:36:53 And among many, many, many, many, many, many other things, um, hundreds of thousands of them know that story, and they know that I have a dog now whose name is Freddy because of them.

Lewis Howes 1:37:03 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:37:03 And consequently, every Friday, you know, Freddy weighs in with either a photo or his view of the world. He's a s- a smart aleck, but Fridays with Freddy becomes a thing. And, and so- I don't know. It's a, again, it's kind of a squishy way of saying somewhere between the content you're creating and the beast you're trying to feed, uh, is, is an engine.

Lewis Howes 1:37:25 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:37:25 And, and that engine, um, uh, spits out ideas.

Lewis Howes 1:37:29 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:37:30 And, and those ideas are who you really work for.

Lewis Howes 1:37:32 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:37:32 And they come from your listeners.

Lewis Howes 1:37:34 I love that. Great analogy as well with the dog. What do you feel is missing in your life? You've created so much. You've, you know, you've got this wealth. You've got the audience. You're doing the work you love, it seems like.

Mike Rowe 1:37:45 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:37:45 You seem extremely fulfilled in the work you're doing. Is there anything that's missing?

Mike Rowe 1:37:51 Not really. I mean, well, that's a great question, uh, because it's impossible to answer without sounding either glib or-

Lewis Howes 1:38:01 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:38:02 Uh, what do they call it? Uh, supercilious.

Lewis Howes 1:38:04 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:38:05 Right? "I- no, there's nothing missing from my life, Lewis. You see every-"

Lewis Howes 1:38:08 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:38:09 "... every possible thing is just, uh, they're roses."

Lewis Howes 1:38:12 Perfect. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:38:12 Um, I could, I could tell you that there's not a single thing in my life that couldn't benefit from massive action and-

Lewis Howes 1:38:22 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:38:22 ... and, and real improvement. But I can also tell you that I don't have any regrets at all.

Lewis Howes 1:38:29 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:38:29 Um, you know, I, I, I went a different way, you know. I'm a, I'm a serial monogamist, and, um, I don't have kids. And part of the reason I don't have kids, I think, is, uh, is 'cause I'm selfish.

Lewis Howes 1:38:44 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:38:44 You know, my, my parents did, in my view, an amazing job of raising three boys.

Lewis Howes 1:38:49 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:38:50 And of course, I grew up right next to my grandparents, who did an amazing job of raising two girls. And I'm just surrounded by amazing examples of what it takes to be a great parent. And, and honestly, I, I, I don't think I can measure up.

Lewis Howes 1:39:06 It's a lot of work. A lot of sacrifice, a lot of giving up what you want.

Mike Rowe 1:39:09 Yeah. And there are days when, you know, I would never say I regret it, but there are days where it's obvious now. I'm 54 years old, and, you know, you tell yourself, you know, through your 20s and 30s-

Lewis Howes 1:39:20 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:39:20 ... there's nothing but time, and you can always-

Lewis Howes 1:39:22 Right

Mike Rowe 1:39:22 ... always, always, always go another way. Um, and now, no, I don't think so. This is ... Like, you'll, you'll see this when you go to your, to your 25th high school reunion.

Lewis Howes 1:39:32 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:39:33 Right? I don't know if you go to those things, but-

Lewis Howes 1:39:35 I haven't yet.

Mike Rowe 1:39:36 Well-

Lewis Howes 1:39:36 15 was just the other year, so.

Mike Rowe 1:39:37 Right. Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:39:38 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:39:38 Good for you, 'cause you were born in '83.

Lewis Howes 1:39:40 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:39:40 Um, but-

Lewis Howes 1:39:41 We were both born in March, by the way. I was March 16th.

Mike Rowe 1:39:43 March 18th. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:39:44 March 18th, really?

Mike Rowe 1:39:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:39:46 I think it said March 6th on your Wikipedia page-

Mike Rowe 1:39:48 Uh

Lewis Howes 1:39:48 ... I believe.

Mike Rowe 1:39:49 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:39:49 March 18th.

Mike Rowe 1:39:50 I wouldn't use the word believe and Wikipedia-

Lewis Howes 1:39:52 Yeah. Of course

Mike Rowe 1:39:52 ... in the same sentence. But, uh-

Lewis Howes 1:39:53 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:39:53 But at least I got my birthday.

Lewis Howes 1:39:54 We're both Pisces.

Mike Rowe 1:39:55 We're Pisces, so we're all sensitive and whatnot.

Lewis Howes 1:39:57 Very intuitive-

Mike Rowe 1:39:58 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:39:58 ... sensitive, yes.

Mike Rowe 1:39:59 But I'm, I'm getting toward the cusp there.

Lewis Howes 1:40:01 Uh-huh.

Mike Rowe 1:40:01 Getting into, uh, what is it? What, what's the next one?

Lewis Howes 1:40:03 I have no idea.

Mike Rowe 1:40:03 The bull. Aries or something.

Lewis Howes 1:40:05 Yeah. Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:40:06 Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, um, what were we talking about?

Lewis Howes 1:40:09 [laughs] Great question. I was just-

Mike Rowe 1:40:11 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:40:11 I just forgot now.

Mike Rowe 1:40:12 Oh, regrets. I've had a few.

Lewis Howes 1:40:14 Oh, yes.

Mike Rowe 1:40:14 But then again, too many to mention.

Lewis Howes 1:40:15 About kids. Kids, kids.

Mike Rowe 1:40:16 Yeah. No kids. No kids. Um, but you know, it's, it's, everything has a way of coming back around sooner or later. And, you know, we were talking about QVC and how I completely left it off my resume, and now it's one of the things I talk about, uh, more than anything else.

Lewis Howes 1:40:32 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:40:32 The Boy Scouts, right? I went through the scouting program, and it was hugely important in my youth. And, uh, after I got my Eagle, uh, I, 17 or so, I, I didn't think about it for another-

Lewis Howes 1:40:45 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:40:45 ... for another 30 years.

Lewis Howes 1:40:46 Wow.

Mike Rowe 1:40:47 And then when Dirty Jobs started, word got around that I had gone through the program, and somebody asked me if I would, uh, write a letter of congratulations to their ... Actually, no. Somebody asked me if I would write a letter of encouragement to their kid, who was two merit badges away from getting his Eagle Scout.

Lewis Howes 1:41:04 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:41:05 And they asked me to do this publicly, uh, you know, on, on, in the chat room that we were talking about.

Lewis Howes 1:41:10 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:41:10 And, um, you know, there I am again drinking a couple of, uh, Negro Modelos one evening, and I get this letter.

Lewis Howes 1:41:16 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:41:16 And I just decide to respond, you know, publicly. And I said, "Look, no, I'm not gonna say anything to try and encourage your kid."

Lewis Howes 1:41:23 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:41:24 "Um, but I will tell you this, statistically, he ain't gonna make it. And when he falls short, he should take great comfort in the fact that he's with the crowd."

Lewis Howes 1:41:34 Mm. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:41:34 "Only one in 100 is gonna punch through, and the Eagle Award is not designed to be a trophy for someone who needs to be dragged across the finish line. If he is not interested, and you have been unable to inspire him, then it's entirely possible that he's just supposed to be one of the majority."

Lewis Howes 1:41:59 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:42:00 Well, that letter wound up getting posted all over the place.

Lewis Howes 1:42:03 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:42:04 And the Boy Scouts reached back and said, "You know what? That level, no one ever talks publicly about that." And this was before the whole everybody gets a trophy-

Lewis Howes 1:42:15 Yes

Mike Rowe 1:42:16 ... or at least that turn of phrase had come about.

Lewis Howes 1:42:18 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:42:18 But the sentiment, right, the sentiment was alive and well with helicopter moms and soccer moms-

Lewis Howes 1:42:24 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:42:25 ... and, and self-esteem and everything else. And, um, and the Scouts, to their credit, really liked what I wrote. And then I started getting many, many, many requests to congratulate kids who did make their Eagle.

Lewis Howes 1:42:39 That's cool.

Mike Rowe 1:42:39 And so I had a letter that I sent out about that, and that made a big thing. And the point is, I don't have kids, but there are 3 million Boy Scouts now who, you know, they're, like, in my world.

Lewis Howes 1:42:51 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:42:51 And there are a couple, uh, 600,000 Future Farmers of America, right?

Lewis Howes 1:42:56 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:42:57 And, and SkillsUSA. So I'm up to my neck with three of the largest youth programs-

Lewis Howes 1:43:03 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:43:03 ... in the country.

Lewis Howes 1:43:04 You're giving.

Mike Rowe 1:43:05 Well, I mean-

Lewis Howes 1:43:06 A lot.

Mike Rowe 1:43:06 Yeah. I mean, I, I'm trying.

Lewis Howes 1:43:08 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:43:08 Honestly. Um-

Lewis Howes 1:43:09 You're doing your best, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:43:10 And, and really, no, no organization's perfect.

Lewis Howes 1:43:13 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:43:13 But, but I think the country, the country needs organizations like that-

Lewis Howes 1:43:17 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:43:18 ... for so many reasons.

Lewis Howes 1:43:19 Right, right.

Mike Rowe 1:43:19 You know, the, the situation at home for a lot of people is a mess.

Lewis Howes 1:43:22 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:43:23 And, and when you look at, you know, how vocational education has been totally sucked out of high schools- You know, these organizations, uh, filled in that space-

Lewis Howes 1:43:34 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:43:34 ... in a lot of ways.

Lewis Howes 1:43:35 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:43:35 So I'm a fan.

Lewis Howes 1:43:37 What are you most grateful for in your life recently?

Mike Rowe 1:43:41 Um, I gotta tell you, I- this'll really, really sound ham-fisted and a little pandering, but I'm, I'm really flattered by the way... I, I don't know you.

Lewis Howes 1:43:54 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:43:55 You know? Uh, but I like you-

Lewis Howes 1:43:57 Well, thank you

Mike Rowe 1:43:57 ... and I like what you're doing on your podcast, and I like the fact that you reached out.

Lewis Howes 1:44:01 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:44:02 I like the fact that I have a seat at the grown-up table.

Lewis Howes 1:44:04 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:44:05 You know, I'm not interested in politics.

Lewis Howes 1:44:07 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:44:07 But I, I, I, I... it's very, very gratifying to move the needle.

Lewis Howes 1:44:12 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:44:12 And so I have a little foundation. It's modest by most standards, but we've trained 4-, maybe 500 kids and grown-ups.

Lewis Howes 1:44:21 And what's it called?

Mike Rowe 1:44:22 mikeroweWORKS.

Lewis Howes 1:44:23 Yep.

Mike Rowe 1:44:24 So mikeroweWORKS, um, focuses on jobs that exist that people aren't excited about having, and it awards work ethic scholarships to people who are willing to retool, retrain, relocate-

Lewis Howes 1:44:36 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:44:36 ... and learn a skill that's in demand. So I get letters every week from people from living up in, uh, North Dakota or down in the Gulf who are making 140 grand a year welding.

Lewis Howes 1:44:47 Amazing.

Mike Rowe 1:44:47 $200,000 a year working on heavy equipment.

Lewis Howes 1:44:50 Amazing. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:44:50 Right? Who, who didn't-- who barely made it out of high school. Barely. And so, you know, when you hear from kids... I just got a letter from a kid named, uh, Jake was his name. 26 years old, working up in, uh, North Dakota, family lives in Kansas City, just had his second kid, paid for his house in cash.

Lewis Howes 1:45:10 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:45:10 Right? Actually quit his job to freelance on the High Plains because he can work as much as he wants. Is it perfect? No.

Lewis Howes 1:45:18 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:45:18 He's not home every night. He comes home, uh, every three weeks for a week, right? But what he's doing for his family, in my opinion, is somewhere between noble and heroic.

Lewis Howes 1:45:33 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:45:34 I mean, this is a 26-year-old kid with no college, no debt, who's saving money and situating himself and his family for a future. And I, I just think that that's a, um, I, I just think that's a, a... Back to your earlier question, if I were to give a better answer to what a man is-

Lewis Howes 1:45:57 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:45:58 ... it's that. It's that. It's, it's, it's a combination of sacrifice and, and humor and, uh, fearlessness, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:46:12 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:46:12 And, and that quality really can exist in either gender-

Lewis Howes 1:46:16 Sure

Mike Rowe 1:46:17 ... uh, and has no, has no age requirement to it. But that's, that's my better revised answer.

Lewis Howes 1:46:24 Okay.

Mike Rowe 1:46:25 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:46:25 I like that. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:46:26 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:46:27 I like it. And you're grateful for?

Mike Rowe 1:46:30 I'm grateful for the chance to tell you that story.

Lewis Howes 1:46:33 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:46:33 And I'm grateful for the chance to be a cipher or an avatar-

Lewis Howes 1:46:37 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:46:37 ... or a... I'm working on a new show now, only I'm trying to sell it. But it's, it's, the working title is called People You Should Know. And I know it's p- it's probably very similar to the mandate that drives your guest selection.

Lewis Howes 1:46:51 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:46:51 And, you know, look, there are, what, 8, 9 billion people walking around the planet.

Lewis Howes 1:46:55 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:46:56 Studies show that some are better than others. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:46:59 [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:47:01 Some, some are more interesting.

Lewis Howes 1:47:01 Support groups show. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:47:03 Support groups show that the vast majority of these people, you don't wanna be caught in an elevator with. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:47:08 Exactly.

Mike Rowe 1:47:09 But, but, but some of them are remarkable.

Lewis Howes 1:47:12 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:47:13 And, um, and I, I've tried on Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Gotta Do It, uh, and with my own little podcast to, to introduce you to some, and I'm gonna try and do that again with another show. Uh, but, but a kid like Jake-

Lewis Howes 1:47:26 Yeah. Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:47:26 ... you know, he, he would be the guest. The, the kind of guest that I would like to have. Not exclusively, of course, but, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:47:34 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:47:35 But you can't, you just can't look through or past a man like that.

Lewis Howes 1:47:40 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:47:41 Uh, he-

Lewis Howes 1:47:42 Quality man

Mike Rowe 1:47:42 ... it's just too important.

Lewis Howes 1:47:44 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:47:44 You know, but back to my granddad, you know, when he was in his prime, he was seen for what he was. Um, a fixer, a provider, and a, and a great intellect with no formal education. Today, that ex- that, that same man at that same point in his life with that same set of skills would be transparent.

Lewis Howes 1:48:07 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:48:07 He would be invisible to our society. We wouldn't know how to value him, and we wouldn't know how to talk about him, and we wouldn't know, um, we, we don't know where to put him.

Lewis Howes 1:48:19 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:48:19 "So you went to the seventh grade, and now you can build a house. Well, good for you."

Lewis Howes 1:48:23 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:48:24 "Good for you."

Lewis Howes 1:48:25 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:48:25 You know? And what a shame.

Lewis Howes 1:48:27 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:48:27 What a shame that one of the smartest people that, that I ever knew, uh, today would be more or less relegated to the, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:48:37 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:48:37 ... tough break pile.

Lewis Howes 1:48:38 Sure, sure. Yeah. Well, we gotta wrap it up. I got a couple final questions for you. But I've, I feel like I could talk to you for hours and just listen to your story, so I appreciate everything you've been sharing.

Mike Rowe 1:48:48 It's my pleasure.

Lewis Howes 1:48:48 It's been awesome.

Mike Rowe 1:48:49 Thanks.

Lewis Howes 1:48:49 Um, but I wanna make sure I get you out of here in the next five minutes. This is one of the questions that I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths.

Mike Rowe 1:48:57 Oh, God.

Lewis Howes 1:48:58 Three truths. So say this is the last day for you many, many years from now.

Mike Rowe 1:49:01 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:49:02 Right?

Mike Rowe 1:49:02 Great.

Lewis Howes 1:49:02 You've, you've said everything you want, you've done every show you wanna do-

Mike Rowe 1:49:05 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 1:49:05 ... you've written books, you've president, whatever you wanna do, you've done it.

Mike Rowe 1:49:09 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:49:09 But for whatever reason, everything you've created has been erased, and no one has record of what you've said anymore or what you've put out in the world. Shows, it's gone.

Mike Rowe 1:49:17 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:49:18 And everyone's there. It's the last moment for you, and they give you a piece of paper and a pen. They say, "Will you write down your three truths, the three things you know to be true about everything you've done, that you would pass on to us, since we don't have anything else to watch or listen that you, that you've done in the past?" Your three lessons that you would pass on to us.

Mike Rowe 1:49:36 Wow, dude. That's, that's so much more-

Lewis Howes 1:49:39 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:49:40 ... involved than-

Lewis Howes 1:49:41 Sorry, no prep. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:49:41 You're on a desert island with three movies.

Lewis Howes 1:49:43 [laughs] Um, and th- this is what's coming up for you right now, obviously, you know.

Mike Rowe 1:49:48 You're, you're basically saying give me three examples of the best advice.

Lewis Howes 1:49:54 Yeah, three principles that you would pass on to-

Mike Rowe 1:49:57 Okay

Lewis Howes 1:49:57 ... all the Boy Scouts that are, you know, there. Uh, you know, anyone who's-

Mike Rowe 1:50:01 Um

Lewis Howes 1:50:01 ... wants to read them.

Mike Rowe 1:50:02 Sure. Um, find the hard thing and do it. Be wary of all earnestness.

Lewis Howes 1:50:14 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:50:16 That's actually not mine. That's from my favorite fictitious character, Travis McGee, created by John D. MacDonald. Some more books you haven't read, damn it, which you're gonna have to read. Read, read The Deep Blue Goodbye-

Lewis Howes 1:50:26 Okay

Mike Rowe 1:50:26 ... written in 1964. It's pulp fiction.

Lewis Howes 1:50:29 Okay.

Mike Rowe 1:50:29 But it's great pulp fiction.

Lewis Howes 1:50:31 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:50:31 And the main character in one of these books is asked by somebody what it is he's most suspicious of, and he goes down a long list of things, but the last one is, "Be wary of all earnestness." And I really believe that, because earnestness is, is different than sincerity.

Lewis Howes 1:50:47 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:50:47 We all wanna be sincere. We all wanna be real. We wanna be congruent. But the truth is, Lewis, that's very easy to fake.

Lewis Howes 1:50:55 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:50:56 So-

Lewis Howes 1:50:56 Absolutely

Mike Rowe 1:50:56 ... you know, I, I'm paid to appear, right, earnest.

Lewis Howes 1:51:02 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:51:03 And so that's what spokesmen do. That's what hosts do.

Lewis Howes 1:51:06 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:51:06 That's what... Right? So, so look, look beyond, um, the performance and just be wary.

Lewis Howes 1:51:13 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:51:13 You know, when things sound good, it doesn't mean they are.

Lewis Howes 1:51:17 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:51:17 Right?

Lewis Howes 1:51:17 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:51:18 So find the hard thing and do it. Be wary of all earnestness. [laughs] And I- the best advice I ever got, it just occurred to me, ac- actually came from my, from my father years ago, and it's, and it's just one word, and it's duck. And I'm gonna put that on my list, not because it's relevant at the moment-

Lewis Howes 1:51:44 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:51:44 ... to anyone-

Lewis Howes 1:51:45 [clears throat]

Mike Rowe 1:51:46 ... but because it will become relevant to everyone at some point. I was standing in the backyard as a boy, and there was a game of horseshoes going on. And a guy named Kevin Randlett threw the horseshoe, and it got away from him. And I was talking, I was talking to a, [laughs] to a kid named, named Charlie Baker, and my back was to Kevin. And Charlie's sitting right where you are now. And from the distance, I heard a crisp, well-modulated, manly, baritone voice say, "Duck!" Now, what's interesting is I didn't know who the man was talking to.

Lewis Howes 1:52:37 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:52:38 But I recognized his voice as belonging to my dad.

Lewis Howes 1:52:41 Hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:52:42 And while I had [clears throat] no reason to ignore him, I also had no reason to just randomly assume he was talking to me, but I did. And it's not because his advice was excellent. It's because it came from him at just the right time and at just the right moment, and so I ducked. And a second later, that horseshoe hit Charlie Baker square in the face-

Lewis Howes 1:53:05 Wow

Mike Rowe 1:53:05 ... and broke his nose-

Lewis Howes 1:53:06 Oh my gosh

Mike Rowe 1:53:07 ... and knocked out a tooth. It was horrible. So my dad still has a little bit of guilt from that, and I do, too. But the, but the moral of the story is-

Lewis Howes 1:53:13 His nose or your head, right? [laughs] It's like-

Mike Rowe 1:53:15 The back of my head or the front of your face.

Lewis Howes 1:53:17 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:53:18 I mean, and you know, if my dad were here, he would say, "Look, I was saying, as a general rule-

Lewis Howes 1:53:22 Everyone duck

Mike Rowe 1:53:22 ... everybody duck." But, but the thing is, if you don't know-

Lewis Howes 1:53:28 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:53:28 ... the source of the advice, you're not gonna duck.

Lewis Howes 1:53:31 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:53:31 Because you wouldn't assume it's being directed to you.

Lewis Howes 1:53:34 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:53:34 And so somewhere on that piece of paper, I would try and articulate the importance of specificity-

Lewis Howes 1:53:41 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:53:41 ... individuality-

Lewis Howes 1:53:43 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:53:43 ... timing, and luck.

Lewis Howes 1:53:45 Sure.

Mike Rowe 1:53:45 And because it's my last day on Earth, and because my entire body of work, in your example, has been retroactively erased from existence-

Lewis Howes 1:53:53 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:53:54 ... uh, I don't have a lot of time. So right, I'm gonna say find the hard thing and do it, be wary of all earnestness, and duck. And if I had room left on the paper, I would, I would probably write a quick note of thanks.

Lewis Howes 1:54:08 Explaining how-

Mike Rowe 1:54:09 No, I would just say thanks for the pen and the paper. Uh, it's nice knowing that even though this is all I'm going to leave behind-

Lewis Howes 1:54:15 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:54:16 ... that, you know, if I didn't have the pen and the paper, I w- I would have nothing.

Lewis Howes 1:54:20 I have nothing. There you go. [laughs] Um, I have one final question for you. Before I ask, uh, the question, Mike, I wanna acknowledge you for a moment for being an incredibly true, honest human being.

Mike Rowe 1:54:30 Thanks.

Lewis Howes 1:54:31 This is the longest interview I've ever done.

Mike Rowe 1:54:32 Really?

Lewis Howes 1:54:33 I've ever done. I think maybe an hour 30 is usually about as far as-

Mike Rowe 1:54:37 Hot damn

Lewis Howes 1:54:37 ... we'll ever go. We usually go about an hour, hour 15.

Mike Rowe 1:54:39 You think you're gonna use any of this?

Lewis Howes 1:54:40 We'll use it all.

Mike Rowe 1:54:41 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:54:41 Absolutely. Um, maybe there was one other one the same length, but 'cause I don't wanna say ever, but-

Mike Rowe 1:54:46 But it, but it wasn't as interesting as this

Lewis Howes 1:54:47 ... it wasn't as interesting. Exactly.

Mike Rowe 1:54:48 No.

Lewis Howes 1:54:48 And, uh, I wanna acknowledge you for your incredible journey. I think your story is really impressive in the fact that you continue to follow your curiosity and, um, be true to yourself. Everything you've done, you've been true to yourself, or you've said, "Oh, that's not true to me. Let me go do what I wanna do right now. Oh, I went to QVC three times." Like, you continue to follow through, and you're genuine and honest along your journey, and your contribution for your work is so meaningful to so many people that you're a great symbol of inspiration for what's possible-

Mike Rowe 1:55:24 Thanks

Lewis Howes 1:55:24 ... for us. So I wanna acknowledge you for who you are, for our time together. I hope I get to ask you more questions in the future sometime.

Mike Rowe 1:55:30 Anytime, Lewis.

Lewis Howes 1:55:31 And, uh, yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:55:31 Honestly, I've done a lot of these, and, uh, you're, you're awfully good at it.

Lewis Howes 1:55:35 I appreciate it.

Mike Rowe 1:55:35 And, and you're gonna go, well, if you're interested, you'll go as far as you wanna go. But good for you for breaking your wrist-

Lewis Howes 1:55:41 Mm

Mike Rowe 1:55:41 ... at a time. And-

Lewis Howes 1:55:42 It's the greatest blessing

Mike Rowe 1:55:43 ... you know? Uh, well, I mean, you could've become-

Lewis Howes 1:55:45 It was a nightmare, but yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:55:46 Yeah. You just never know.

Lewis Howes 1:55:48 You never know.

Mike Rowe 1:55:49 You know? There's, uh- Oh, what is that? The, uh, the road not taken, right?

Lewis Howes 1:55:53 That's it.

Mike Rowe 1:55:54 You never know until- it's so tempting to look back-

Lewis Howes 1:55:56 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:55:56 ... and say, "Ah, let me tell you what the plan was."

Lewis Howes 1:55:59 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:55:59 But the truth is, you Forrest Gump your way through your own career.

Lewis Howes 1:56:03 That's it, man. That's it.

Mike Rowe 1:56:03 Sometimes you break your wrist. Sometimes you're in a sewer. Sometimes you let somebody name your dog.

Lewis Howes 1:56:08 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:56:09 Sometimes, you know, you don't, you, you never know-

Lewis Howes 1:56:12 [clears throat]

Mike Rowe 1:56:13 ... in the moment-

Lewis Howes 1:56:13 Mm-hmm

Mike Rowe 1:56:14 ... the impact of-

Lewis Howes 1:56:15 Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:56:15 ... the thing-

Lewis Howes 1:56:16 That's it

Mike Rowe 1:56:16 ... until later.

Lewis Howes 1:56:17 That's it. Um, you've got a podcast. It's in the top seven right now in the world on iTunes.

Mike Rowe 1:56:23 Okay.

Lewis Howes 1:56:23 So congratulations.

Mike Rowe 1:56:24 Thanks.

Lewis Howes 1:56:25 Um, it's called The Way I Heard It.

Mike Rowe 1:56:27 The Way I Heard It.

Lewis Howes 1:56:28 The Way I Heard It.

Mike Rowe 1:56:28 Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:56:29 Mike Rowe. Make sure you guys download the podcast, listen to the ads from either... I'm, I'm- I go check out bobblehead.com now-

Mike Rowe 1:56:35 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:56:36 ... because of you. The way you explain it, I wanna buy markers because of how you even promote your ads. It's amazing.

Mike Rowe 1:56:41 Well, every, every sponsor on the show is tied to my foundation.

Lewis Howes 1:56:45 Yes.

Mike Rowe 1:56:45 And so-

Lewis Howes 1:56:46 You give back to that.

Mike Rowe 1:56:46 That's-

Lewis Howes 1:56:46 So that's great. Yeah

Mike Rowe 1:56:47 ... it's, it's simple.

Lewis Howes 1:56:48 Check out your Facebook page. It's just Facebook-

Mike Rowe 1:56:50 Sure

Lewis Howes 1:56:50 ... /Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe 1:56:51 Mike Rowe. Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:56:52 You got great content there. Twitter, it's the same thing. Mike Rowe, right?

Mike Rowe 1:56:56 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:56:56 Is that the-

Mike Rowe 1:56:56 It's out there. They just aggregate it, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:56:58 Sure, sure, sure.

Mike Rowe 1:56:58 I can't do anything, as this interview proves, in 140 characters or less.

Lewis Howes 1:57:02 Right.

Mike Rowe 1:57:02 So the heck with that.

Lewis Howes 1:57:03 Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Exactly.

Mike Rowe 1:57:04 Um, yeah. I need more room, man.

Lewis Howes 1:57:05 There you go. Go to Facebook.

Mike Rowe 1:57:06 Sure.

Lewis Howes 1:57:06 Go everywhere. Follow you. Um, and the final question-

Mike Rowe 1:57:10 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:57:10 ... is what is your definition of greatness?

Mike Rowe 1:57:16 Um, I'm afraid we, uh, we actually already talked about it to a- well, we kinda talked around it. But I think, I think it's that congruency.

Lewis Howes 1:57:31 Mm.

Mike Rowe 1:57:31 I, I, I think it's, I think it's a moment in a life when action, word, and intention all line up. It can be as simple in a, in a dialogue.

Lewis Howes 1:57:49 Mm-hmm.

Mike Rowe 1:57:49 You know? And communication is, is hard. Everybody takes it for granted, it's easy. It's, it, it's really hard.

Lewis Howes 1:57:55 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:57:55 But the, the, the, the way you're nodding your head right now, w- when you're trying to make a point and you make it the way you wanna make it and the person listening goes, "I know what you mean," and you believe they know what you mean-

Lewis Howes 1:58:10 Not just faking it. Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:58:12 That's great. That's great.

Lewis Howes 1:58:14 Yeah.

Mike Rowe 1:58:14 You know? It's, it's such a, it's such a simple, simple thing, but you know, one of those, one of those experts on the human condition said, um, it was probably Carnegie, "All problems are communication problems." All problems are communication problems. So, so to communicate effectively... [dog barks] Yep. On my way. No worries. See? All, all-

Lewis Howes 1:58:38 We're literally at the last second. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:58:39 No, no, I'm, I'm literally right in the middle of explaining how all problems are communication problems, and we had a communication problem.

Lewis Howes 1:58:45 There you go.

Mike Rowe 1:58:46 I don't know. I mean, i- i-

Lewis Howes 1:58:47 Perfect timing

Mike Rowe 1:58:47 ... if you're looking for a way to end the-

Lewis Howes 1:58:49 If you're looking for a sign. [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:58:50 The only better way to end the interview is with, is with Mr. Fred.

Lewis Howes 1:58:53 There you go.

Mike Rowe 1:58:54 But yeah, man.

Lewis Howes 1:58:54 Awesome.

Mike Rowe 1:58:55 Um, thanks for letting him crash.

Lewis Howes 1:58:57 Oh, he was great.

Mike Rowe 1:58:57 Uh, I, I don't have-

Lewis Howes 1:58:58 Even with the growls and all.

Mike Rowe 1:58:58 I know.

Lewis Howes 1:58:59 I loved him.

Mike Rowe 1:58:59 I know.

Lewis Howes 1:58:59 Freddy.

Mike Rowe 1:58:59 He's fierce.

Lewis Howes 1:59:00 You're amazing. Well, Mike, I appreciate you, man. You're a legend. Thank you for everything.

Mike Rowe 1:59:04 Thanks. Anytime.

Lewis Howes 1:59:05 Appreciate it.

Mike Rowe 1:59:06 Fred, any final words? Well, there you go. See?

Lewis Howes 1:59:10 [laughs]

Mike Rowe 1:59:10 Two ears, one mouth.

Lewis Howes 1:59:11 I like that. [laughs] Thanks.

Mike Rowe 1:59:13 With the call back and everything.

Lewis Howes 1:59:14 Thanks. I appreciate it.

Mike Rowe 1:59:15 You bet.

Lewis Howes 1:59:15 Hey, guys. Thanks so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it, and if you enjoyed this video, then make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. You can do that by clicking right here to subscribe, 'cause each week we come out with awesome, epic, and inspiring interviews and messages and videos just for you. So click subscribe right here to get notified of new videos every week. Also, if you enjoyed this specific interview, we've got a lot of great interviews like this that are uplifting and inspiring. So click right here to watch the previous interviews, because the people I've had on are pretty cool and epic as well. So click here to watch previous interviews. Click here to subscribe. I love you guys, and I'll see you very soon.