439: Codie Sanchez Wants to Make You Financially Free

New York Times bestselling author Codie Sanchez https://codiesanchez.com/ has a background working in finance but gave up Wall Street for Main Street. She is a blue-collar entrepreneur and investor known for buying and growing "boring" cash-flow businesses like laundromats and car washes. She founded Contrarian Thinking https://contrarianthinking.co/ to help others achieve financial freedom through unconventional investing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey, it's the way I heard it. And you know me. I mean, if you don't, I'm Mike Rowe. And if this is the first episode you've listened to, boy, what a treat you're in for, Chuck. I don't want to overstate it, but people have... Can you imagine? Do you actually think there's somebody in the audience right now who is discovering this podcast right here, right now, for the first time?

• 0:20Speaker 01

  100%. You know how I know that?

• 0:22Mike Rowe?

  How?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Because people write in and say, wow, I just heard about your podcast. I love Mike Rowe. I didn't realize he had a podcast.

• 0:29Mike Rowe?

  What the heck are we doing wrong, man? How, I mean, how is this possible? This thing's been on the air for nine years.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  It's a little crazy.

• 0:34Mike Rowe?

  Eight, nine years we've been doing it.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:36Mike Rowe?

  Well, like you often say, you know, no such thing as a old joke if you're hearing it for the first time.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:42Mike Rowe?

  And there are a few laughs in this podcast. My guest is Codie Sanchez. Did you know who she was before I brought her up?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  No, I did not.

• 0:51Mike Rowe?

  So what happened was, I appeared on a podcast not long ago called Young and Profiting.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 0:58Mike Rowe?

  With a woman called Hala?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Hala.

• 1:00Mike Rowe?

  Ta-ta.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yep. Ta-ta.

• 1:03Mike Rowe?

  And she was great.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05Mike Rowe?

  And in fact, that's out there right now. She just collaborated with me on Instagram, Chuck. I accept her collaboration and we chatted and she told me about her friend Codie Sanchez, who I simply must know.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:16Mike Rowe?

  Cody is a 38-year-old woman who made a bunch of money on Wall Street and then decided that she kind of had made enough money and she wanted to own businesses. But the reason I love this girl is that all the businesses she was attracted to were like, I call them dirty jobs businesses.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:34Mike Rowe?

  You know?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Laundromats.

• 1:35Mike Rowe?

  Car washes.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 1:37Mike Rowe?

  You know, unglamorous businesses. And she built this portfolio. And there are so many parallels between this woman and me and her organization and MicroWorks and her larger goals and mine. I'm on her website right now. And you can go there. It's codiesanchez.com. And it says, clear as mud. My, well, no, clear as day. Mud is not clear.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, mud is not clear.

• 2:02Mike Rowe?

  My mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership.

• 2:08Mike Rowe?

  And you know, a lot of people are out there talking about how to get rich and so forth and very, very, very few talk about it through the lens of these dirty jobs, opportunities and a true entrepreneurial spirit. I think she's on to something.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  She totally is. You know, I refer to her as the queen of the unglamorous businesses and she knows how to make money. She figured that out on Wall Street. She likes this common sense approach in buying businesses. She started with, I think the first one was a laundromat, right? And then she added more and more and then all sorts of other things.

• 2:44Mike Rowe?

  It's not just a common sense approach, it's a contrarian approach as well. This too, is something that I completely understand and we find ourselves in violent agreement early on triangulating the various adventures and misadventures in our own careers. And I just think it's going to be a really useful conversation to anyone who has ever thought about hanging out their own shingle. I don't really care what the industry is, but this has just been on my mind a lot because, you know, we're giving away a bunch of money this month in work ethic scholarships and I often say to the applicants who enter this world of home services, don't simply look at your skill as a thing that's going to keep you employed for the rest of your life.

• 3:27Mike Rowe?

  Look at it as a gateway into a world where you might wind up employing people and you might wind up hanging out your own shingle. It happens all the time.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  And she brought it up in this conversation, that exact thing for people who are in the trades.

• 3:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah. Codie Sanchez is great. She's got an amazing story. She's, I mean, her success is, it's, I don't even know if I should point that out. It's just kind of embarrassing to talk about money and all these things. You go to her website and read all about it, but she's doing some great work and I just think she's coming at this from a very real, super honest place. I like her a lot, I bet you will too. What are we calling this thing again?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  This is called...

• 4:07Mike Rowe?

  Codie Sanchez Wants to Make You Financially Free.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 4:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. She's not the only one in the world who wants to do this, but I don't know anybody else who's coming at it the way she is. I think you're gonna like her and you'll meet her right after this.

• 4:28Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast, and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason:

• 5:09Mike Rowe?

  to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them. It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you.

• 5:53Mike Rowe?

  Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter.

• 6:13Mike Rowe?

  I'm not going to officially introduce you because I'll do that in the preamble.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 6:17Mike Rowe?

  But your commitment, or your predilection, maybe, to the contrarian life.

• 6:27Mike Rowe?

  Rhymed so much with me when I think about, I used to call it the reverse commute. My career started to make sense to me when the primary metric was look around and see where everybody's going. It doesn't matter where they're going, just don't go there. Just go someplace else. You made a bunch of money as an investor. I think it actually says on your website, you're a mogul. Is that possible?

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Oh God, isn't that gross? I hope not.

• 6:53Mike Rowe?

  I saw the M word there.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  It's like what they have on LinkedIn, the words self-proclaimed visionary. I die. I really hope that we don't. Somebody's fired, probably me.

• 7:02Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, man, the language matters and the way we see ourselves matters and the way we define ourselves matters and all of that stuff. But I, I guess maybe we should just start with this notion that, um, is the reverse commute in the investing world for the entrepreneur, is it still for sale? Is it still attractive?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  I think there's some good news today, actually, and that is that most of us, I think, were sold a bag of goods. You're, you're located in San Francisco, so I think you know this more than anybody.

• 7:32Mike Rowe?

  Adjacent now.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:33Mike Rowe?

  I actually got out of Sodom and now I'm, I'm Sodom adjacent.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Well, you know, there's a beautiful part about San Francisco, which I love, which is one of the only places in the world where a 17-year-old can sit down with an actual mogul, not me, and be taken really serious. They can listen to their ideas and go, whoa, you see the world totally differently. Let me give you money to build that world. That's cool. But on the negative side, I actually don't think we're that happy behind screens, and the data seems to prove this, behind screens, making either investments or investments in our career of creating data and apps. Like, I don't think that's a world that makes us happy. And so we were sold this bag of goods that we had to create these Fortune 100 companies. We gotta get them backed by Silicon Valley. If we are blue collar, if we have dirty hands and calluses, we actually are lower valued,

• 8:19Speaker 02

  both in net worth and pay and maybe even in sophistication and, and, you know, human value. And I think that's actually proven to be pretty untrue lately. And so the good part, I think, about going left when everybody's going right is the left they were telling us to do is real hard, which is competing with the smartest minds in the world with tech. I don't think you need to do that. In fact, if you look at who the richest people are in the world. They're private equity guys. And those private equity guys, they don't build apps. They buy plumbing companies and they buy roofing companies that are run by blue collar dudes.

• 8:52Mike Rowe?

  This is very much a gold rush kind of analogy, right? I mean, the whole world is running to the goldfields because there's gold and then there are hills. But it was Levi Strauss and it was the, you know, it was the shovel makers.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:05Mike Rowe?

  Who crushed.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  And for a long time, too. You know, what's interesting is, we did a bunch of research and I got curious about this idea of, what does ownership mean in this country and does it matter? Does it matter to be an owner of anything? And if you go back to the 1800s, when we started this country, 88% of us owned a business, owned something. And then you go to the Industrial Revolution, at which point ownership drops from high 80s to 40% ownership because we've had machines take over a lot of what human hands did. And then you go to today and we're at about somewhere between 6 to 10% of Americans own a business. So we have like slowly become a nation of renters, not in the home sense, but in the business sense.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  And you know we're actually doing poorly because even Canada's beaten us. We got higher entrepreneurship in Canada than we do in the US, about 7.8%. And so, you might go like, who cares? I've been an owner before, it's awful, you know, employees and payroll and whatever, which is all true, except if you look at, I think money really is just a mechanism for freedom. It's kind of a way to tell somebody like, I'm not going to do that because I don't have to and I don't want to and I want to go do this other thing. And so, the problem with not having ownership is 60% of all millionaires have it. And if you want to have a lot of money, meaning more than 10 million, 80% of people have ownership.

• 10:29Mike Rowe?

  When did a lot of money become more than 10 million? When did that happen?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Well, probably when Twitter and Instagram started showing you Lamborghinis and everything all day.

• 10:38Mike Rowe?

  But is that a Northern California phenomenon? I mean, is there a kind of relativism? Your example in San Francisco, when you're, you know, you surround yourself with that cohort.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:48Mike Rowe?

  It's virtually impossible not to measure yourself against the Joneses, whoever they may be.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:54Mike Rowe?

  It's a different class of Jones up in the zip codes you're talking about.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  I don't think before we could really see it. I mean, you think about it before, you used to compare yourself to people who were in your circle. Now, your circle of comparison is quite large.

• 11:06Mike Rowe?

  It's virtual.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so, all of a sudden, our memetic desire kicks in as humans, because we're just little self-replicating apes on so many levels. And we see, man, Mike's got a new car, and Mike's got this, and I fall prey to it all the time. I'm like, oh, man, they did this with this podcast? I should have, you know? Ego kicks in. And so, I think that's when this started to go a little sideways. But, you know, for most people today, I think the good news is, we should stress test this. I feel both incredibly scared about what's happening in the future with tech and excited on some aspects. The interesting part, I think, is that it's scary to think how fast tech might move for us. But we're starting to see that, you know,

• 11:50Speaker 02

  you go to a coffee shop, you go to Starbucks. Have you been to one lately?

• 11:55Mike Rowe?

  Full disclosure, I've been to three in the last week, but only to use the restroom on each occasion.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  I like this. Okay, so if you go to a Starbucks lately, you've probably seen them, unless you're in like an epicenter. For a period, they got rid of chairs, right? Like, they were supposed to be the third home, and then all of a sudden, the chairs are gone. They spell your name wrong, it's dirty, they're kind of mad you're in there, you know? The bartender really doesn't want to talk to you, or barista, or whatever you call them. And so, these big conglomerates got so big, to your point, in the very beginning, that all of a sudden...

• 12:24Mike Rowe?

  You mean the part where Chuck wasn't rolling?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Oh, right, that was the part where Chuck wasn't rolling.

• 12:28Mike Rowe?

  Right, where we made the big salient points that we could circle back to and land the plane in a way that makes people go, wow, these guys are really listening to each other.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  You can do better. You got it.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  That is probably true. We can do better. But the point being that these companies got so big that they become easier to compete with, in a way. When you go to a local coffee shop, you get to know the owner, it's pretty clean, they got chairs, high bar, and I think in the future, we're going to be able to compete way more locally, because so much of our life is going to be online with tech. And so, we'll see if I'm right, but I think if you're young and hungry... And if you're old and hungry, it's actually not going to matter.

• 13:04Mike Rowe?

  Okay, well, let's riff on that then. Like, from the standpoint of an entrepreneur, if I think about myself 22 years ago, Dirty Jobs was not my wish fulfillment. I wasn't walking around going, "God, if only I could find a way to pay an honest tribute to the men and women who are doing civilized jobs that make life possible for the rest of us," right? But nobody was doing it. That was it for me. It was like, get over there and try this thing. Had versions of, like, had I entered that world 10 years later, when like 38 or 39 shows had evolved from Dirty Jobs and the entire cable landscape looked like a swamp or a junkyard or an ice road or a, right?

• 13:47Mike Rowe?

  I'd have been like, "No, I think maybe we ought to do something different." So, for an entrepreneur, as you, like yourself, who has a soft spot for, I'll just say, Dirty Jobs. I mean, you cut your teeth in the, what, the laundromat business?

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:03Mike Rowe?

  Right? You were focused on the most unglamorous jobs. So, when does that focus lose its inherent value based on circumstantial changes?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Like, if the herd is already going there?

• 14:17Mike Rowe?

  That's it. Where's the herd going?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  I think the question also is, like, do you think that you created this movement? And so, if you hadn't done it, would somebody else have done it? Or did your unique curiosity actually spring this?

• 14:29Mike Rowe?

  Well, my unique arrogance would require me to say, "Oh, yeah, it was me. I came up with this." But the real wheel is much larger and it spins a lot slower. And for me, anyway, one of the big lessons is that there are no new ideas. Very, very few, really. But a lot of old ideas feel new when they come back around at just the right time. You know, when I look at, uh... Charles Kuralt and George Plimpton and Studs Terkel and Paul Harvey. These guys told stories in a, in a way that I admire, but almost nobody's doing it today.

• 15:08Mike Rowe?

  And so I, I got a toehold, but who knows where that toehold would have been or will be 10 years from now. Nobody's got a crystal ball.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I tend to be an optimist. I think pessimists sound smart and optimists make money. And so, you know, it's very easy to get on the internet and bemoan things and you sound very intelligent while you do it. It's actually sort of hard to get people to believe in themselves. It's seen as low browed brow, you know, rose colored glasses, sort of, they must be trying to pitch you something. In my opinion, if you're obsessively curious about something, even if the entire world is moving towards it, your obsessive curiosity is going to uncover some weird aspect of that area that no matter what is happening in the world, you can find a unique lens. And I think we can see that right now on the internet because lord knows you can go viral and you can find your crew obsessed about anything. You know, there are so many weirdos on this planet that I think the real

• 16:01Speaker 02

  unlock is your, I thought, I saw this tweet the other day and I can't remember who to attribute it to, but it wasn't my words.

• 16:07Mike Rowe?

  It was me.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  It was like, but it was basically, it was like insanity is a mote in a lot of ways.

• 16:13Mike Rowe?

  A mote.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think curiosity is a mote and obsession is a mote. And it's like, you don't have to be the smartest. You just have to go, I didn't say, hey, the whole world's going left. The world, I want to go right.

• 16:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  I basically said, whole world's going there. I find this kind of uninteresting. This really interests me and let's see what shakes out. And I'll probably be able to find something because nobody else will spend more time there.

• 16:36Mike Rowe?

  It's back to the relativism I was talking about before, you know, you're out with your best girlfriends and you're having a nice camping trip and the bear comes upon you and starts chasing all of you. Well, you'll never outrun the bear, but maybe you can outrun your friends, in which case you live. Now, talk about pessimism versus optimism. How do you measure yourself?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. Well, my dad was actually a bear hunter and that was always his line. He's a little, sorry dad, but he's got a little gut. He's not a fast dude. And so when he would go out bear hunting in Alaska, we'd always give him crap beforehand and say, you gotta like get in shape a little bit. And his line was always, he was a guide and his line was always that he chose his clients very carefully because all he needed to do was out run the lion, not the bear. But he has a lot of great lines that I think remind me of this, for instance, you know, this idea of. If they're not interesting sober, don't drink until they get interesting. And so I think about that with life, too. Like, if I'm not just naturally curious about this thing, if you're not just naturally curious about something, don't do it, because somebody else will be naturally curious, and then they're gonna win. They're gonna beat you.

• 17:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, because curiosity always wins, actually.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Dude, it always wins. It's the secret hat. If I had to choose between high IQ, pedigree, background, Eastern high school, I would actually choose, every single day of the week, somebody who was curious, hungry, and obsessed, and maybe a little weird.

• 17:56Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Because I think most of work to me, actually, I saw this from Elon Musk the other day. They're like, you know what Elon does? He goes to his company, whatever company it is, every single week with one move, which is, I'm gonna come there and I'm going to figure out the hardest problem that exists that week in this business, and I'm gonna try to solve it. I'm gonna do that for every single company, 52 weeks a year, continuously. I'm not gonna like mess around at the margins, I'm gonna go for the hardest problem. And the only way you get to the hardest problem is by asking a ton of questions, and by being pretty relentless on the answers to those questions. I don't think you have to have the answers, you just have to be willing to ask the really hard questions. Which is why you were great in Dirty Jobs and what you do podcasting. You ask weird, interesting, and asymmetric questions. It's also the key to investing well.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  It's like, the worst investors I've ever met are the ones that seem the smartest. Because they wanna tell you all the things that they know, and they don't wanna find the truth. The best investors are the ones that look kinda dumb. They're like, I don't understand that, explain it to me like I'm five.

• 18:55Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  And that question is such an unlock in life, because it's like, I don't think I'm dumb by not understanding this. I think you're gonna prove how smart to me you are by explaining it really simply.

• 19:05Mike Rowe?

  Let me see if I can prove how smart I am to you right now with the question that belies everything you just said. I probably should have asked it at the very top, but I do appreciate an asymmetrical stream of consciousness. But I also want the viewer to understand how you did this. Or...

• 19:22Mike Rowe?

  That's a tricky way to frame it, isn't it? Like, isn't the world filled with people right now who are just sitting by waiting to tell you how they did it, as opposed to just explain what happened to them?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Ooh, that's a good way to think about it, actually.

• 19:36Mike Rowe?

  Somewhere in between, you know, because you're a very intentional person and you've done awfully well, but can you just tell me the quick CV? I hate to ask you, but I want people to understand the laundromats and the contrarian way of thinking and how you somehow wound up on Wall Street only to kind of maybe leave it.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I started out in finance because I thought it was the thing that you did. Like, if you were smart and you were gonna make money and be accomplished, which was important to me, my parents didn't come from a lot of money, blue collar background. My mom was a special education teacher for 30 years. And I thought, you get a good job, you climb up the corporate ladder, you wear a suit, and that's how you show your parents that you appreciate all the shit that they did for you. So anyway, so I did that for a long time, climbed up a bunch of finance companies. But what I realized pretty quickly is like, do you ever like, get in a job and look down the hallway at like, the end of the boss, you know, the boss has his office at the end of the hall? And you look at their life, and you look at their salary, and you look at their family, and you just think like, you couldn't pay me enough money to become that guy.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  Like, I don't care what it is, I don't care how big the plane, I don't want that life. And so at some point, I kind of woke up a little bit, and I was like, oh, I don't want to become, you know, divorced three times, not like my kids, and feel like I haven't actually touched something that I've built. I just like, zeros and ones online, buy, sell, buy, sell. And so, at that point, I was too big of a wuss, because I was making a lot of money.

• 21:03Mike Rowe?

  Who were you working for?

• 21:04Speaker 02

  Uh, so that would have been when I was working for State Street.

• 21:08Mike Rowe?

  Oh, boy.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, big, huge asset manager.

• 21:10Mike Rowe?

  So there's State Street, there's Vanguard, and there's...

• 21:13Speaker 02

  BlackRock. Yeah, three of them own eighty percent of the S and P five hundred. Isn't that wild?

• 21:17Mike Rowe?

  People have sat right where you're sitting who have written books that really look at that exact statistic and prognosticate something fairly grim.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they're right. And people counterargument to that, right? And say, well, that's just passive investments. And so, hey, they're exchange traded funds. They're not actively buying these companies. But Bill McNabb let a little slip go. He was the CEO of Sate Street when I was there and said, well, actually, we're very active in our governance, which is a fancy way of saying control. And so they're active in their control of these companies, which they have. So

• 21:53Mike Rowe?

  And they're holding pensions, which means and there's ESG and of course, there's DEI. And now all kinds of, yeah, activist agendas are being foisted upon people who really would dismiss it out of hand. They just don't understand that so much of their future is invested in the very funds that McNabb is controlling.

• 22:19Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five week, highly immersive, pre apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately. I'm talking about AI proof, six

• 23:03Mike Rowe?

  figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities

• 23:48Mike Rowe?

  for yourself at meta.com slash Americas Workforce Academy. That's meta.com slash Americas Workforce Academy.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's brilliant by the asset managers, but you know, and maybe you've had other people say this too, but I was at a lot of the big bad boys, right? Goldman Sachs, State Street. I was also at Vanguard.

• 24:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, how am I, I'm sorry, but God, I mean, Jack Bogle's books. Did you ever read Enough?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And I met, I met Bogle and

• 24:18Mike Rowe?

  Did you really?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, he used to sit at the cafeteria every single day at the same table and

• 24:23Mike Rowe?

  He was a hero to me.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:24Mike Rowe?

  I don't know that Vanguard is, well, yeah, I do. They're not the same company. They can't be.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  No, they're not. They're not from a couple of different ways too, by the way. Vanguard is, I mean, sorry, hopefully we never get sponsored by Vanguard.

• 24:35Mike Rowe?

  Well, not now.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Because they're not gonna like this.

• 24:37Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  But I think it's a place where meritocracy and dreams go to die. It's like socialism, but in a finance company.

• 24:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, I might have a shot Chuck on this podcast, but there's no way they're, they're sponsoring hers.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  No, no chance.

• 24:51Mike Rowe?

  What's your current podcast called again?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, The Big Deal Podcast.

• 24:54Mike Rowe?

  The Big Deal, sponsored by anyone but Vanguard.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Probably gonna get sued, but they, you know, I remember just being there and it's a great place to go if you just want to coast and not work that hard for a really long time. And that's cool for some people. That just wasn't me. I was kind of a psychopath. And so I went to Goldman where psychopaths go.

• 25:16Mike Rowe?

  To live.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But I only lasted, you know, two years there. That's a whole different story. But, you know, I worked at all those big firms and I saw firsthand, man, incentives matter a lot.

• 25:28Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  And the incentives in those companies are just so big and backwards, in my opinion. I actually think Goldman's, I think Goldman's the most honest.

• 25:36Mike Rowe?

  Was Lloyd still calling the shots when you were there?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, met Lloyd too. I was a little piano, I was nobody but. Yeah, Lloyd, I actually claimed a fan with Lloyd is that he comes down, we were in something called GSAM at the time, selling these private equity investments. And he comes to our office. I think I only got invited because I was double checkbox. I was like a chick and a Latina. So like, let her in, you know? So we're around this table. I don't remember what we're talking about, but it's in, what had been like 2009, 2010. So they're picketing outside. My grandma's calling, wondering how I could work at the, what did they call it? The succubus squid?

• 26:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Rolling stone?

• 26:09Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  That was nice.

• 26:11Mike Rowe?

  That's a good one. Nice alliteration.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so we're around this table talking about something. And I said, well, you know what we're doing over here? I start explaining it. And Lloyd goes, what do you do again here? And he actually didn't even know almost what our entire division did because it was so tiny compared to. Yeah, compared to Goldman's main business. So, you know, but I think that they, we don't need to stand up for Goldman, but I think that they got a raw rub. They actually had a really clean balance sheet. I think the government pressured them to take cash and they didn't need it.

• 26:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. As opposed to Alan Mulally and Ford, who said, you know what? You keep your money. I'm going to keep my salary.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:48Mike Rowe?

  You guys keep your money. And if this company can't succeed on its own merit, we don't deserve to be in business. I fell in love with that guy a little bit.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:58Mike Rowe?

  And I was working for him at the time.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  What?

• 27:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, we hadn't met. Well, I was making commercials for the Ford Motor Company. And it was one of those moments, I'll never forget it. My partner, Mary and I were watching the news. When he said that, right there, I can still see the three of them there, like these CEOs being humbled. Their legs just took out from under them. You will take a dollar a year in pay and in return, we'll bail your company out.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:28Mike Rowe?

  And they come to Alan at the end and he's like, no, I'm going to keep my money. And you tell the taxpayers to hang on to theirs.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 27:35Mike Rowe?

  That, I mean.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Chills.

• 27:36Mike Rowe?

  Honestly, I just gave myself goosebumps because two years later, some bean counter came in and figured the value of that comment was worth over a billion dollars in earned PR.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 27:54Mike Rowe?

  Over a billion. So I know this point is somewhere lurking under everything we're talking about, but in the end, whether it's Goldman, State, Vanguard, BlackRock, Ford, Chevy.

• 28:06Mike Rowe?

  Somebody at some point is going to grab you by the lapels and shake you until the truth of who you are comes out.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  It's such a good point. And you know, one positive of having these giant institutions today that I never thought I would say about like a BlackRock is the ability for the US to use them internationally. So I'll be curious how that shakes out. I feel like for the most part, people like BlackRock and Blackstone have been used against us in a lot of ways. To me, it's like criminal that you can have BlackRock go out and we give them all of our money, right, through ETFs and pensions and all the things that we invest in. So you give them your money, they take your money, they sit it on their balance sheet. That means that they have, one, a huge pool of your capital to go out and buy your single family homes. So let's buy up neighborhoods all over the place. But it's not just that.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Because they have all this capital here, they get decreased interest rates. And so even if they're going to pay the same price for the house as you were, which they're not because they have way more money than you, they get a lower interest rate. So they could actually pay the same price as you, or more, and make more on the deal. And then it's worse than that because they have what's called securities lending. So they can take all the assets they have and double them. And we can't. And so I think there's some real unfairness of what the institutions have done to average Americans that we got to push back on.

• 29:25Mike Rowe?

  We just don't know it. I mean, we can't see it. There's so many layers. I'm going to get back to you in a second with the laundromat stuff because I need to understand how you went from this to that. But you mentioned private equity. And I saw something the other day, you sent it to me, Chuck, totally freaked me out.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  What was that?

• 29:40Mike Rowe?

  Private equity has lent, apparently, an awful lot of money to an awful lot of businesses with something that's like a back-channel adjustable rate, right? It's very similar to what happened in 08 with the banks, except this is funeral homes and nursing homes and businesses everywhere. I just read Joann Fabrics is basically going out of business. Now, they've only got 100 stores or so and 97 of them are profitable. How can you go out of business with all that profitability? It must be the rates are going up and those loans are coming due?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, they do something called asset stripping, which is, you know, they did it to Toys R Us famously. Toys R Us was profitable. Most of its stores were profitable.

• 30:30Mike Rowe?

  Toys were us.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. The stores were profitable and what they basically do, and I'm not familiar with Joanne, so I can't talk to that exact one. But in the case of Toys R Us, they buy the company, then they strip out the assets, AKA the real estate. And like a little triangle, basically, the assets sit on the right side, the company sits on the left. But they basically start making the companies pay rent for those assets that they have. And they lever up all of their assets in order for them to take as much profit out of the business as possible. But then they have called, what's called a debt to leverage ratio, which basically just means I owe, I owe way more money than this company is valued at today.

• 31:07Mike Rowe?

  Are these like CLOs?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Some of them could be.

• 31:09Mike Rowe?

  Like the collateralized loan obligation? So all of these esoteric instruments are being cobbled together into the same unholy bullion base that I remember from 15 years ago, and they're finding their way into pension funds.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:24Mike Rowe?

  The thing that scared me about this is that there's no way the American people are going to stand by and watch another giant bailout of banks. I don't think that can happen. But these aren't banks. These are pension funds. We're talking about grandma, our parents. You know, those would be the people to lose everything. I just really wonder if, I don't know.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, think about this. So, you know, when we started talking about the fact that we don't own things in America anymore, that we are not business owners by and large, then the next question should really be, where do our businesses go? Like what happened to them? So who owns them now? And one is public companies, the big three, like we talked about. Some of them are big institutions, strategics, like Starbucks that owns all the coffee shops. But the sneaky one... Is private equity firms.

• 32:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  In 2000, they owned about 4% of all US businesses. By 2020, that was 20%. So almost one out of five businesses in the US, depending on how you measure the statistic, are owned by private equity.

• 32:29Mike Rowe?

  So people are owning fewer and fewer and fewer businesses. PE is owning more and more and more businesses.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 32:35Mike Rowe?

  That can't be a coincidence.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  And it's happening at the same time as, you see this a lot right now. You're seeing companies go public on the stock market a lot later in their stage. Well, that means that they need money still to fund these companies. So where's that coming from? It's coming from the private markets, AKA these private equity companies. So essentially, there's a couple of reasons that's not great. One is, most people can't invest in private equity unless you're rich, AKA an accredited investor. You know, there are government classifications. And then that means that most of the money that is made by companies historically that used to go public, when you and I could invest in it, "Oh, Google's public now? Okay, now that they're public, I can invest in it. I could have that big rise, right? And I could make money along with everybody else."

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Well, if now Google goes public 10 years later, then who takes that delta? Who takes the money that would have been made? Well, a lot of that's private equity now. And so, again, I don't think these guys are like, they're not like criminal lizards as far as I'm aware. They're normal humans.

• 33:34Mike Rowe?

  Succubus squids.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But there is some incentives that I think we gotta get right. And these are the things, when you're a small business and you get a chance to sell the private equity, because you've been doing this for 20 years and you're fucking tired.

• 33:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Like, you do it. And so I get it.

• 33:49Mike Rowe?

  Well, a lot of people listening do understand this, more or less. But I think a lot of people also, their eyes start to glaze over because there is, over top of it, like a patina of unreality.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:05Mike Rowe?

  You know, you just hear all these terms and all of these things. And for the average person, you know, it's why, back to Dirty Jobs, I loved it when it started because it was kind of a leader in this area called reality TV, back when reality actually meant something real. So. Tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but it feels to some extent like your time at Goldman and your time on Wall Street, you're just surrounded by these intangibles, these esoteric ideas, these instruments of investments and all of these acronyms which make the average person want to just throw themselves off a roof. How'd you wind up buying a laundromat?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think, you know, one of the things, finance people and finance in general, they want you to be confused. They don't want you to understand basis points and expense ratio and, you know, ROI and all of this. Why? Because then you have to pay them a percentage of your money for them to do the investing for you. And so there's a reason that you like, your brain goes, and it shuts off when people start talking about finance and money. There's a real reason. It's a barrier to entry. And so, once I got behind the curtain, and again, I'm not that smart, I used to be a journalist, and so all I was good at was asking a lot of questions. So I asked a lot of questions, and once I figured out, I realized, wait a second, what do these guys do? At like a base level, what do fancy Wall Street people do? They take somebody else's idea, an entrepreneur's idea, and they buy it with other people's

• 35:31Speaker 02

  money, AKA yours and mine and pensions or a bank, that's it. So there's a profitable business that somebody else created, they didn't, they use somebody else's money, not theirs, to buy it. I'm like, wait a second, why couldn't I do that, but like a lot smaller? You know, that seems like, I could understand that. And then you go to like, the easiest, simplest grandma could understand a business possible, which to me was a laundromat. I'm like, dirty clothes, clean clothes, quarters, not very many employees, I call them gateway drug businesses, because it's your like, it's your little ease in to this game of business.

• 36:02Mike Rowe?

  A taste.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 36:04Mike Rowe?

  First taste is free.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I am a business drug dealer, yes. And so, I bought my first little laundromat with this idea. I'm like, okay, how could I spend not that much money for me at that time, it was 100K, and I'm gonna buy this business?

• 36:18Mike Rowe?

  How old were you?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I was probably in the early twenties. So, you know.

• 36:23Mike Rowe?

  So you're weird. I mean, you understand. I mean, I'm just thinking of all the women I know in their early twenties who scraped together a hundred K to buy a laundromat.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, none. Well, and I was embarrassed about it at the time because that didn't seem cool. It was cool working on Wall Street and it was cool doing these quote unquote, big deals. And, and then I'm like, oh, I know what a dead rat smells like, you know, now. And, and I remember very well, the first moment walking into that laundromat and the, there is a real, there is a smell to an old moldy laundromat that I will never forget. You could put me there and I, blindfold me and I would know.

• 36:58Mike Rowe?

  Ironically, there's a similar ode to a car wash. Right? And you would think it'd be like all, like detergent and suds and soap. It's not. There's something else in there, something of the grease.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so too. And, well, we won't digress, but you and I could probably compare smells with the things we've done in business.

• 37:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, we're, I got time.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  But so I, I bought it because I did have that moment where I hated my job and I hated my boss and I hated myself a little bit and I wanted to get out. But I had no entrepreneurial chops, like no idea for what to do next.

• 37:32Mike Rowe?

  This can't be glazed over. You're still in your early twenties at this point.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:36Mike Rowe?

  See, this is the thing that people can relate to, that life of quiet desperation moment. When you wake up and you are just, you're not pleased with who you are, where you're going or what you're doing. And those three things combined can get heavy.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:54Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, I think it's hard for a lot of people just to shake all that off and, right?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and we lie to ourselves. Like you lie to yourself that like, when I achieve this next thing, or this next thing, or this next thing, then I'll be okay. And I had the kind of beautiful fortune of achieving a few things that I thought were my peak early. Like I was pretty successful in finance, kind of early. And I was like, oh, I'm still miserable and I hate this. And so when that happened is when I was like, what's the exit plan? Like I gotta get out of here. And this was, so I would have been mid twenties. Because then I went through what we, my, my midlife crisis. I got divorced. I was married at the time. I got divorced and I started buying up these little businesses.

• 38:33Mike Rowe?

  Kids at this point?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  No kids.

• 38:35Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  And, you know, and wish him well, good guy, just like two different life plans. And so I bought this first business and I thought it was horrifying and I didn't tell my parents and I didn't tell anybody because I was pretty sure I was gonna fail. And then it kinda worked and it started making some money. And then I was like, well, we could just keep doing that. So we bought a few more of them.

• 38:55Mike Rowe?

  This is the laundromat?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  The laundromat.

• 38:57Mike Rowe?

  What was it called?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Uh, man, that's a good question. I think it was called Sees, but not like my C, like S-E-A-S.

• 39:04Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Like that.

• 39:05Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I need to, you know, when you go back and you think too, before there was social, like, I wish I had more pictures of it and I wish I could show the journey. You probably have them because you're on TV.

• 39:18Mike Rowe?

  What, the picture? Oh, oh, I'm the worst at this, but you're right. If I wanna be reminded of something I did 20 years ago, or even 30, I can find it on YouTube.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 39:30Mike Rowe?

  It's beyond wild.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Because that wasn't normal for everybody else. Like, we didn't, you know, I had an iPhone, but...

• 39:36Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not normal for anybody. There's a very unique feeling and I only share it because I think other people will experience it as a result of different things, but I can tell you, when you come home late at night and you've had a couple of pops before you go to bed, and for some reason you're on YouTube and you find video of yourself doing something that you have no recollection of doing. Now, in my case, it was selling stuff in the middle of the night on QVC.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:02Mike Rowe?

  In like 1990. And when you see the undeniable proof that you have done it, that's you. Those words are coming out of your mouth, but you have no idea what that guy who is you is about to do next. It's very unsettling.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Oh, it is. Well, and, you know, I kinda hold by this idea that if three years ago you doesn't make you cringe a little, you're probably not doing it right. Like, you gotta, you gotta keep leveling up the game.

• 40:27Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  So that's how I talk myself to sleep each night. But, um, you know, I do remember, um, thinking back then, like, I hope nobody finds out that I own this thing, you know?

• 40:37Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  And then we bought a few more and I partnered with a dude who was the handy person because I was basically a glorified financier at the time and he had done real estate before. So he kind of knew the gist. So this is what I talk to people about today. It's like, you don't always have to know the thing. Sometimes the answer is a who, not a how, you know?

• 40:57Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Sometimes the answer is not a startup, it's a business you buy. And so if you're not as smart as I am, you know, or not smart like me, you don't have a brilliant idea, you don't have a ton of cash, you don't have massive skills, like, okay, then we could borrow somebody else's.

• 41:16Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meat packers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising. Given

• 41:57Mike Rowe?

  a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat from American ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on Trust Pilot, 25,000, including my own. This month, when you visit GoodRanchers.com/Row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's GoodRanchers.com/Row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right here in these United States. And that's

• 42:42Mike Rowe?

  guaranteed. Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at GoodRanchers.com/Row.

• 43:02Mike Rowe?

  Did you quit your job before you bought the laundromat?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 43:06Mike Rowe?

  So you hedged.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Neither did I tell my boss at first. I do remember.

• 43:10Mike Rowe?

  You didn't tell anybody?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I just kept it super quiet. But I kept my job, I mean, for like years and years and years and years, even after I had bought a ton. You had to pry my salary out of my cold, dead hands at the end because I was so freaked out about, could this thing survive?

• 43:29Mike Rowe?

  We are so different, but we are the same people.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:32Mike Rowe?

  I mean.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  You jumped.

• 43:34Mike Rowe?

  Oh, no, I hedged.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:37Mike Rowe?

  First of all, I thought about QVC for a long time, like you thought about the laundromat. I didn't tell anybody about it. It was a thing I did early in my career. It was just a rung on the ladder. It wasn't until later that I realized how important a rung it was. And to the point where I, where I'm happy to talk about it now. You're doing the same thing with your unglamorous businesses. And for me, I was hosting Evening Magazine when I sold the idea for Dirty Jobs, but I still wasn't convinced it was gonna work. I stayed at Evening for another year.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:09Mike Rowe?

  So, yeah, I love risk. And there's so many books out there written by people who assumed a big, giant chunk of it. But in the end, man, that's not really me.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  I actually hate risk. I don't like it at all, which my parents don't agree with me on this, but deep down, I don't like it. I believe in the monkey bar strategy, which is like, I'm not gonna jump to the next one until I got my hand on one.

• 44:32Mike Rowe?

  It's basic.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  And I think that's okay for humans to do that. I actually think these days, everybody online tells you like, go all in, burn the bridges, sleep in the garage.

• 44:42Mike Rowe?

  Burn all the ships.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, why? Like, it could take you back if you need it. That seems inefficient. And so I don't think you should feel bad at all for wherever you are, using the resources that you have, and tiptoeing a little bit. Now, my problem is if you don't tiptoe. You got like, you gotta make some forward movement. And I do think that at some point, the universe tries to tell you a thing or two. And then if you don't listen, it, you know, kicks you right in the gut.

• 45:06Mike Rowe?

  At some point.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:07Mike Rowe?

  And that point typically is the middle of the lake.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:11Mike Rowe?

  You know, I very nearly called my business that, to tell you the truth.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  That's a good line.

• 45:15Mike Rowe?

  Lab rat became the working title. But for a while there, it was middle of the lake. Because what do you do if you're not sure you can make it across? Well, if you're gonna turn back, don't wait till you get to the middle.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Yep. Very true, though.

• 45:30Mike Rowe?

  Because it will paralyze you.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:31Mike Rowe?

  Right? There's always that point.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:35Mike Rowe?

  I don't care if it's a bad marriage, a bad job, a bad date. You know, there might be a moment in the middle of the dinner on that date where you're like, you know something? We're this close to getting to the middle and I know I don't want to get to the other side. I'm gonna go powder my nose and never come back.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you something embarrassing, but, you know, I really wanted the marriage to work back in the day. I think marriage is so important. I'm married now and it's like, it's my favorite thing in the world. Like, this is so fun.

• 46:02Mike Rowe?

  That's that Chris Kaima?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:03Mike Rowe?

  He seems okay.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like him.

• 46:05Mike Rowe?

  You know, for a Navy guy.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's amazing and we have the best time and I don't think I could do as much as I do without a really strong foundation, which is what he is. But back in the day, I wanted to work so hard. I worked for so long, going through all these therapy and whatever. But eventually, I had to put a date on my calendar. And I was like, if we haven't figured out by this date, then that's my either, you know, you keep going forever or you get off the bridge. And so I actually, now we have a line at my company's, it's called calendaring, which is like when you have those big hairy decisions that you don't want to make, that you know you need to. Put a date on the calendar and then you keep your most important promise, the one to yourself. And I try to do that now.

• 46:44Mike Rowe?

  A promise made is a debt unpaid.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good line. Sounds like that's from the Bible.

• 46:49Mike Rowe?

  No, it's Robert Service, the cremation of Sam McGee.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 46:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  What is going on up there? You've got like an encyclopedia up there, don't you?

• 46:57Mike Rowe?

  I don't know, I don't have any original thoughts, sadly, but I do glom onto a lot of things I heard.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 47:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, you already had three interesting quotes, all of which you attributed to your dad.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:08Mike Rowe?

  Which is also to your credit. But there you are, buying laundromats, not losing sight of the shore from what you left. You're not yet to the middle of the lake. When do you let go?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Well, I actually had to get pushed out of the boat, so I didn't let go. Um, I got pushed out of the boat two times. I do think if you're an entrepreneur, you're actually just pretty unemployable, which is to the point that I got.

• 47:32Mike Rowe?

  Management challenge.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Is that what you call it?

• 47:35Mike Rowe?

  No, that's what I've been called. Mike, you're a nice enough guy, but here at our particular system, you've been deemed a management challenge, and we were thinking, it would be awesome if you just waited in the car for the rest of your life.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's me. I call myself unemployable. Now, we have like a little sticker, basically, that I like it. I wear it with pride. But, you know, back then, I was like, you know, when you're young and you just think you know everything? And so I give my bosses some credit, because I was really like, you guys are messing this up. I know you have a billion-dollar business, but let me tell you what I know. Now, I do think I was right in some of it. My guess was, we were gonna do better on the internet with investing and getting investors and finding deals than we were, you know, going to steak dinners in mahogany boardroom Eiffel Towers. And they didn't agree with me. And it was okay. The CEO at the time was amazing, but he did the best thing ever for me, which is, I often

• 48:28Speaker 02

  think, when you get fired, my favorite line is, "I'm sorry and congratulations," because it's a great fucking gift, actually, if you take it. And so, he didn't fire me, but he basically said, "Cody, I'm tired of you pushing me on this. We're going left. If you want to keep rowing right, get your own boat. You can't do it on mine." And I was like, "That's fair." And so, I left the company. But I was such a wuss that I went and got other partners. I didn't think I could do it by myself. And I wish, if you could do one thing differently, I think it's like, almost every time you can, bet on yourself more often, then you feel comfortable. And so, I didn't do it that second time, and so it had to happen again. So, I got pushed out like halfway through the lake, and then again, you know, like two-quarters through the lake. And finally, that last one, I said, "All right, I get it, universe.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Like, I need to do something by myself and see if I could stand on my own two feet." And that's when I fully took all the money that I had been making, and I invested in businesses all by myself. I bought them out entirely. And then eventually, I started yapping about it on the internet.

• 49:26Mike Rowe?

  So, wait, you had a nest egg?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:29Mike Rowe?

  And how, what percentage of that nest egg did you invest in these unglamorous businesses?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Well, I called mine, I like to call my neck nest egg your you fund. And I think it is just there for that moment where your temperature gauge gets so high that you're like, I literally cannot tolerate another moment of ridiculousness. And at which that point you pull the trigger. And so that, I had invested it kind of throughout. So I had, so I might have had five or six businesses on the side at that time. And, and I had replaced my salary with these, this business income. But I still was like, you know, when you run a business, you could still have a month where your expenses are so high, you wipe yourself out. And so even though I was making more, I was like, you know, my math isn't always math incorrect.

• 50:11Mike Rowe?

  Are they all laundromats at this point?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  No, there's some car wash in there.

• 50:14Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Uh, there's a cross border trade company. It's kind of a weird thing, but I ran a business in Latin America for a while. So there was some diversification and it wasn't that thoughtful. It was kind of like, it's kind of like I collected them, like whatever was around me and it kind of made sense. And I got a guy here and a guy there. And then I finally started putting it into hyper gear. And when I left that last company, I doubled down on laundromats, I doubled down on car washes, and then I started talking about it on the internet.

• 50:46Mike Rowe?

  And was that your own podcast or were you making the rounds talking about, like, I mean, it's a great story, you know, it's the, you left a sure thing.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah, well, I didn't have a podcast, our podcast is brand new. It's only like eight months old. And so I didn't have that, it was just a newsletter. I think there were two types of people, people who think by talking and people who think by writing. And I'm a think by writing. I really like to get my ideas on paper. So I started writing newsletter in 2020, when everybody was kind of going crazy, I thought.

• 51:19Mike Rowe?

  When you had time.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. Yeah, before that I was running around checking on the businesses, buying more of them. And so in 2020, I started my little newsletter called Contrarian Thinking. And the idea was, why can't we question anything anymore? Why is it not okay for us to talk about stuff?

• 51:35Mike Rowe?

  Well, because you'll be a denier if you do.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was big. You know, my husband was still in the military at the time. And so there was a lot of that going on. And I just wholeheartedly disagreed with a lot I saw going on in the world. I mean, before I was investing in these, these businesses, I ran a business in Latin America. And so I have been. I mean, we had a business in Argentina that when Christina Fernandez nationalized all the companies there, that was the president, she took my whole business and what we did overnight became illegal there.

• 52:04Mike Rowe?

  What were you doing?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  We were selling third-party investments in money market funds. So it was basically just, she wanted to keep all the money in Argentinian currency and she didn't want to have offshore funds. So she made offshore funds illegal.

• 52:18Mike Rowe?

  See, that doesn't sound like a laundromat to me.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  No, it was finance.

• 52:22Mike Rowe?

  It might be laundering, but not a laundromat.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  That's what she tried to make it. If you invested outside of Argentina, you were not a patriot. So anyway, so I had seen governments do overreach before, like live, and felt what that looked like and gotten to know my friends who lost everything. And Argentina is a sad country in many ways, or was back then. And so when I saw that in 2020, I was like, that, let's talk about some stuff online. And that's when we created Contrarian Thinking as a newsletter. And at first I started thinking about, how do we just talk to people about asking the right questions? That's what we do and invest in. And then I realized, everybody thinks that their question asking is good. Nobody thinks they're bad at this.

• 53:03Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  So I said, well, what's the Trojan horse to get people to think differently? And I think the Trojan horse to get people to think differently is to give them something they really want, which is money. So we actually started talking about, how do we make money? How is money key to financial freedom? Because I think when you have skin in the game and you have something to lose, then you're a little bit more thoughtful on the actions you take. You don't burn down the house you own, right?

• 53:26Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  You build it. And so that was my idea on why we started talking publicly, because I ideologically think the world's a little bit better if all of us have a little bit more money and a little bit more ownership and that maybe we could talk about that.

• 53:39Mike Rowe?

  When did you feel like you did it? I mean, so like you're writing a newsletter, you've got multiple businesses, I don't even know how many, and people start paying attention to your newsletter. You start making the rounds. And now I've seen pictures of you in really large events and lots of very enthusiastic people with that lean and hungry look applauding with gleams in their eyes as they, as they sit there waiting for the knowledge to wash over them so they can have the playbook on how to... Out of what? Become an owner? Is that basically what you're all about?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  I want them to become an owner. I think what they want is control. They want control over their lives. They feel like other people have made decisions for them. They feel like they can't figure out how to make money. They feel like housing's more expensive than ever. At my job, I got fired from it and it's not keeping up with inflation. And I have no control. I am like sort of at everybody else's mercy. And the way I think to push back on that is to become an owner. So we call it Owner Nation. And the idea is, how do we get people to own something? I mean, if you think about it in AI. If AI makes humans less relevant in a lot of ways, they take our jobs away from us. What is a tangible asset that is hard to take away from you? Well, it starts becoming brick and mortar businesses.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  It starts becoming real estate. It's like, I think we're in an asset ownership race and we don't even realize it.

• 55:03Mike Rowe?

  An asset ownership race. What are the assets in question?

• 55:07Speaker 02

  We need to own things. We need to own businesses. We need to own real estate. We need to own infrastructure. Because in the future, we might not get paid for our labor the same way. And I think about it like, let's say some of your dirty jobs. The plumber. You have Rowworks, which I love. We need more of that. We need more trade school graduates. What's then the next step? Okay, you can't probably be the guy holding the drill or holding the hammer forever. So what happens as you go through time? You need to learn leadership and finance in order to become an owner. Why can't more plumbers be the ones that buy their businesses instead of private equity guys?

• 55:46Speaker 02

  I bet the plumber who understands the business and is interested to grow could grow it better than me from Goldman. And so that is where I want to get people. I want to get them, you get them trades and skills that they need and society needs to build. And then I hope they overlay that on, okay, now that I know I can build something with my hands, can I build a business around it too?

• 56:11Mike Rowe?

  We're in violent agreement. For me, I'm a slave to a kind of chronology. And I talked to Dave Ramsey about this. I've talked to a lot of people about, you know, financial literacy and where that ought to live in the hierarchy of entrepreneurial needs. So with MicroWorks, we do start with, look, if you have a work ethic that we're persuaded is genuine, and if you're willing to learn a skill that's in demand, then I believe that's the first collective box you have to check. But it's odd how often the analysis stops right there. Because the next question is now, even before you say, can you think like an entrepreneur? Are you interested in that?

• 56:56Mike Rowe?

  I ask, are you willing to travel? Because that is adjacent to entrepreneurship, right? And there is a thing going on now in our country that's shocking. People have become so sedentary and so resistant. You know, this is the country, this is manifest destiny. You know, the whole thing was based on a willingness to go to where the opportunity is, where the work. And so if you've got a work ethic and a skill that's in demand, and you're willing to go to where the work is, then you're probably real close to being an entrepreneur. You just might not know it yet. That's why I wanted to talk to you, frankly. Because what's the, how do you know when you're at that point in the lake crossing? The entrepreneurial lake. When do you know?

• 57:41Mike Rowe?

  Because, look, end of rant, but a lot of people, the more things you own, the more things own you. Keep your life simple. Do you really want all the headaches that come from ownership? And oh, by the way, eight to nine out of 10 small businesses fail. So all those things, I believe, are still true. So what's the case?

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Well, I think that, I think you're right. The problem is...

• 58:06Mike Rowe?

  Why take the risk? The very risk that I know you're adverse to.

• 58:15Mike Rowe?

  The service I'm about to recommend to you is absolutely free, and it can easily save the average user over $1,000 a year. It's called Chapter, and it's the best way to make sure the Medicare plan you're on is the one you should be on, because every year Medicare plans change, and so do you. And just because your plan might have been the best choice when you were 65 doesn't mean it's the best choice today. At Chapter, independent advisors compare Medicare plans nationwide. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions, and your budget to help you find coverage that fits your needs. And they're not paid more to recommend one plan over another. You don't need to sort through all the options yourself. You can talk to somebody who understands them,

• 58:57Mike Rowe?

  ask your questions, and get help comparing the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you. If there's a better option, they'll tell you that too, and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free, and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give Chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you, and with potential savings of $1,100 a year, it's worth a free review. 804-CAP-TER. Call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  A couple of things. One, it is miserable. It'll take longer than you think. It'll be harder than you think. You're going to wish that you had never done this game of ownership before, until the very end, at which point it'll be worth it. And you won't be able to go back, and you won't really want to. And the way you know this is look at the people who have taken the risk over time, who have built the business, who have jumped out in the middle of the lake and kept swimming. How many of them go back to a job? That's what I always chuckle about on the internet. These guys are like, "Don't tell people that anybody can own a business. It's really hard out here." I'm like, "Great, quit. Quit and let me employ you." You won't. Why? Because it sucks, but it's awesome at the same time. It's terrible, and it's worth it.

• 1:00:18Mike Rowe?

  You can't jump out of the boat too soon. Otherwise, the minute it gets tough, you'll just swim back because you can. Jump out in the middle, and what's the point in turning back? You might as well keep going. You have a quote from your dad on your website.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Mike Rowe?

  And I think it's something like, "You don't know you're in the game until you come home one evening and sit there with your head in your hands despairing about all you've done."

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, isn't that nice?

• 1:00:51Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's like, dude, I mean, I don't know if that's reverse psychology or what. I love it and I understand it. I understand it because it's like back to curiosity. Why is curiosity so important? Because you can't have it without humility. Why is humility so important? Because the minute you lose that, the minute you're going to become complacent, you're going to make a stupid mistake. Whether you're hunting for bear or trying to buy a laundromat, I think.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm in agreement. I mean, I remember I called my dad one night when I had a business that I thought was going to go under. And it was one that was a little bit more public. People would have known I was associated with it. I was really embarrassed. I had let some really stupid things happen and let some people run the business that I shouldn't have. And it was nobody's fault but mine. And I called him and it was like the middle of the night. And I don't even know if, I don't think I told anybody else about it. And I told him about this and he kind of chuckled because he's a long time entrepreneur. And he said that line to me. He said, "You're not really in the game until you've sat head in the hands in the dark on the couch with no idea what to do next." And I remember that line often because that means you're just in the game.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  And I think expectation is half of happiness. And if you know that at some point you're going to have that difficulty, you just go, "Okay, I know when I go to the gym, it's going to hurt." Like, it's going to hurt before I get fit. And I think that's the same thing with entrepreneurship. And if it was easy, for the record, it's not that everybody would do it. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth it. I don't think you can spell rich without risk. Like, you have to take risk if you want to get financial freedom. I don't know of any other way. Maybe one day you will, but I actually, I don't know of any other way.

• 1:02:31Mike Rowe?

  I'm sorry, I just noticed Chuck is producing here. He's put your website up on our monitor.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Look at this.

• 1:02:35Mike Rowe?

  Your mission is to create 1 million financially free humans through business ownership.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Yep, that's the plan.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  We keep a little tracker, too. That's why I like Dave Ramsey. He, I was just at his office the other day. Yeah, and you know what I love? Man, that man lives his mission. Has he? I'm sure he told you. He has a $600 million piece of real estate there.

• 1:02:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  Four buildings.

• 1:02:59Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  Not a dollar in debt to build it. And then I was like, come on, show me the credit cards. Like, you're not running this thing really on debit cards? No, no, he is. You know, and then I talked to his team about, well, you know, what do you guys do if, like, this business needs some cash? And that one, they said, no, no. Independent, we run at the speed of cash that we make.

• 1:03:19Mike Rowe?

  This is so interesting to me. And again, not to get too sidetracked, but it's like debt. I have this thing called a sweat pledge. Everybody who applies for a work ethic scholarship has to sign one. That's it on the wall right there. It's that blue thing.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've seen this.

• 1:03:35Mike Rowe?

  Somewhere on there, it says, um, you know, I'd rather live in a tent and eat beans than, than, than own something I, I simply can't afford. You know? It's the only four-letter word, growing up in my household, that was really off limits.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:03:52Mike Rowe?

  Right? But you talk to Robert Kiyosaki, you talk to a Grant Cardone. There's so many different people out there who'd be like, well, wait, wait a second. If you're trying to grow your business and you're, like, they're very debt friendly. And so I guess my question here is, you know, I don't know how many people are listening, and I don't know what they need to hear. And I wonder if you worry from time to time. And I've asked Dave the same question. Aren't there people who would do very well to assume a certain type of debt under certain circumstances? And aren't some of those people likely listening right now? When you talk about the fact that you would never do that? And do you worry sometimes?

• 1:04:35Mike Rowe?

  The advice business is tricky and consequential, you know?

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's a good point, what you make, which is, I try to tell often what has worked for me. And then I say, you gotta do you. The only thing I know for sure is that it worked in my case and some stuff didn't. So I think it is important. This advice business like you talk about is a funny game. On one hand, I think it's kind of criminal. There are all these people that have had massive success and made all this money. They don't share how. I kind of think we should. I think right about the time when you no longer want to talk about money, when you don't want to tell people how you got there because it feels kind of gross and icky, is probably when you should because young Cody would like to know. Like, I want to know how to do it. Don't tell me to manifest and, you know, glitter rainbow my way to this. Like, I don't, like, tell me for, don't tell me

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  you got lucky and you just worked really hard. Give me the path. And so I share a lot because I'm like, man, young Cody would be like, all right, let me sift through some of this, but trust that I can handle whatever truth you have. And so that's where we default. We default on the side of, like, we'll overshare. This is exactly how I did it. It worked back then. I don't know if it'll work today for you, but here you go, if you want to try.

• 1:05:46Mike Rowe?

  It's just so confounding to know that there's so many different roadmaps to get you to the same basic place.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Mike Rowe?

  I go back to Jack Bogle. I go back to Burton, what's his name, Malkiel?

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, huh, random walk down.

• 1:06:01Mike Rowe?

  A random walk down Wall Street, right? Even Henry Hazlitt, right? Economics in One Lesson, you know, all like, it's like, those are guides, right? But there are a lot of peas and carrots in these things, right? There's a lot of, like, be patient. There's a lot of, oh, look, if you want to invest, you know, The Intelligent Investor, another great book.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Ben Shapiro and Graham.

• 1:06:29Mike Rowe?

  Ben, I mean, right, so it's, this isn't mysterious. Watch your fees.

• 1:06:36Mike Rowe?

  Invest for the long term. When you see the cost of a company get cheap that you've invested in, celebrate the sale and get more. Don't sell, for God's sakes. That just makes you a trader. All of these things, I believe, to be true. And there you are, in this PE-adjacent world, working for big investment banks, whose entire edifices have been built upon fees and things and so forth. So it's like, it's confusing out there.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  Here's my problem. I just, I kind of go back to just, like, explain it to me with napkin math. So I do like what Buffett said. Buffett said, I think it was Bezos that asked him. He's like, hey, why do you tell everybody your strategy and what you're doing? Buffett said, because nobody wants to get rich slow. And I always love that line. And so we have it in the office, which is like, get rich slow. This idea of like, you know, 15 years is okay to play the game. The problem is, I think a lot of people, Buffett hates debt. Like, Google Warren Buffett debt and see all the quotes he has about him. Here's the problem. Buffett's got a shit-ton of debt. So sometimes I think we got to watch what people do, not just what they say,

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  because it sounds good and, you know, is a better thing for a PR cycle. I think there's some really good debt to put on. The problem is, my barometer is, if you can't tell the difference and explain it to somebody smarter and richer than you on why this debt is better than that debt, you probably shouldn't do it. And so I think the problem lies with people do personal guarantees on things that they don't have to create a life that they don't really need, to go back to the quote from Fight Club. And so that's my line, is like, in most games in life, finance and money isn't that, it doesn't take you being that smart, really. It does take you doing some independent learning, because they don't teach it to us in school properly. And then the best business school is being a business man.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  And I think, and this is where I differ from Dave, although I love the man and he's got probably a bigger bank account than I do by far, so maybe you should listen to him instead.

• 1:08:40Mike Rowe?

  He's done okay.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I disagree, like, I don't think you can non-Starbucks your way to enough money to feel secure in the world today. I think buy the coffee, but go earn more money. And so, he is amazing at getting people out of debt, which is super, super important.

• 1:08:56Mike Rowe?

  But these people probably aren't the entrepreneurial types that you're talking to. He's swinging with the fatter part of the bat, I think. He's talking to regular people.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Mike Rowe?

  You know what I mean? And that's why, again, it's like, to me, the real devil in all of this is, is the cookie cutter advice.

• 1:09:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, it's a good point. You gotta take, I mean, my mom always says, "We do the best with what we got when we at it." And so, I think that's true. You do what you can with what you have. But I push back on this idea that more people can't be entrepreneurial. Like, for instance, let's play a game. An earmuffs, your crew, in case they get crazy ideas here.

• 1:09:37Mike Rowe?

  My crew?

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Mike Rowe?

  You mean these two?

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Mike Rowe?

  Somebody wake up the crew.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  So, so let's say that they want to work for you forever, because they like you and they love their jobs and they want to keep going. They don't want to run their own business.

• 1:09:49Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Okay. Now, what could they do to get some skin in the game? Well, even if they're employees who work for you, they could say, "Hey, Mike, uh, this month, we got two ad slots that are available on, uh, the podcast, they're unfilled. If I go out and I fill those ad slots for us, even though that's not my job, can I take a cut of that?" And you'd go?

• 1:10:11Mike Rowe?

  Damn, Skippy.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Of course. But how often do you get asked that?

• 1:10:15Mike Rowe?

  Chuck? You want to go with 0.0 or 0.1?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Uh, 0.1, I think.

• 1:10:22Mike Rowe?

  No, you've actually done that.

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:10:24Mike Rowe?

  You've done, I mean, everybody here knows that we're super lean and super weird.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  And that you'll give them upside.

• 1:10:31Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  So, I think that's what I want entrepreneurial people to think. I want, we call it owner mindset. You don't have to own the building to get part of it. And I think I learned this in, because in PE, how, here's how this works. You want to know how those guys get so rich and they stay together forever? It's because they don't actually make their money through salary, right? They make their money through distributions to owners and through something called carry. We can leave that alone for now.

• 1:10:57Mike Rowe?

  Carried interest?

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, carry is how you get money on a fund, for instance. And so that carry percentage is how most of them get around some of the tax law and make their money. But in this instance, why I say they don't make their money from salary is because it's really important. It means over time, as Chuck costs you way more money. Let's say Chuck gets more senior.

• 1:11:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 02

  Chuck, Chuck, you know, is more valuable. He requires more money every single year, let's say.

• 1:11:29Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  And so.

• 1:11:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, let's say that.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  So at some point, you might say, man, I could hire like three Chucks for this price.

• 1:11:35Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, Chuck's gonna kill me by the end of this podcast. Um, what would be an interesting way to change that? Well, it would be to say, well, I'm gonna cut him in to every deal he does and executes for us. That's what private equity does. And so they're incentive aligned to stay together forever because there's not this like big chunk of overhead on top of them, AKA salary, which is what an owner looks at. The moral of the story is I think in more businesses than you could ever imagine, you have the ability to negotiate upside and to get skin in the game. Either equity in the company, part of a deal, a bigger sales cut. So even the people who are following Dave Ramsey and currently massively in debt, I just want them to stop telling themselves why it won't work for them to make more money, why their boss will say no, why it's not possible.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  And instead say, how could it work if I was gonna negotiate some upside? And the only formula that you need to know, I think, to negotiate upside is, how does the business make money? Can you affect the outcome of the business? Can you help the business make more money? And what is that worth to the business, AKA profit?

• 1:12:38Mike Rowe?

  Can you help the business make more money outside of your job description?

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Currently.

• 1:12:43Mike Rowe?

  Right, the thing you signed on for.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Mike Rowe?

  That's the siloing that I think is, that requires a contrarian mindset. Because we're, we're just so enamored of systems. This is, look, I, this is what my business card says. It says right here, this is what I do.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  I know, I hate.

• 1:12:59Mike Rowe?

  So why would I do anything other than what it says? I would need a new card. And then I don't have any more room in my wallet. Right? It's just like, but I mean, it's not a ding on anybody, but it's the fault in our stars. It's just how we think.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:13:13Mike Rowe?

  Unless we're taught to think different.

• 1:13:14Speaker 02

  Exactly. And as long as you can incentive align yourself and you can make it so like, the business owner wins and you win. So the business owner makes more money and you make more money. You'll get it more often than you won't. And so those are the type, that's like the financial advice I wish we had. Which is like, there's no downside to you negotiating if you're giving first and only taking after you give.

• 1:13:37Mike Rowe?

  I get it. I'm not a very good businessman, but I, but I love my business and the business is doing well. And since you've invoked his name, you know, Chuck is uniquely qualified. I've known him forty-five years. You know? Sad but true. Yes. I mean, we're, we're high, we're asshole buddies from high school. Right? I mean, Taylor, look behind you. Look at this poster that says, work smart and hard. All right? That poster was based on an old opposite poster at the bottom there that was hanging in my guidance counselor's office. Taylor was on a set one day. I think they're doing Stillwood. Were we actually filming? What were you even doing there?

• 1:14:16Speaker 03

  Behind the scenes.

• 1:14:17Mike Rowe?

  He's filming, like, the most important camera in my life is a behind the scenes camera. And we were shooting something for Caterpillar. And he's filming and part of what I wanted to do that day was recreate this dumb poster that was in my guidance counselor's office. But I needed an aspirational looking model to stand next to me. So I said, hey, man, do you want to put your camera down and just pose as this guy next to me? So I'm holding a high school diploma that I can't afford. And even though I'm, you know, certified, I, I don't have a job. I got a big pile of debt. And there's Taylor looking aspirational. That's probably twelve years ago. Ten, twelve years.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  That's quite a jawline, too.

• 1:14:56Mike Rowe?

  It is a jawline. Yeah. Yeah. And he hasn't changed. Dorian Gray. I mean, that's annoying. Come on over and stick your head in, stick your face in. Yeah, come on over here and let her see. Yeah. Because that's what happened. I mean, these guys both, I mean, Chuck made his, and I want to ask you about freelancing next. And I want to be respectful. You got another fifteen minutes?

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Wait, also, we have to show, I don't know if you can find it, Chuck, or if this would be annoying, otherwise I can find it on my phone, but we did a version of this that I didn't realize was based off of you, but it was Main Street over Wall Street, and we had on one side, we had this like, kind of beat up Wall Street looking guy, a little overweight, disheveled, and on the right hand side, we had this hot plumber, like jacked,

• 1:15:38Mike Rowe?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Tool belt, tan, I don't even know how you would find it, and the funniest part is when we launched the book, Main Street Millionaire, we put it on billboards all over Wall Street, and then we put it in front on LED trucks in front of BlackRock and Blackstone's headquarters in New York.

• 1:15:56Mike Rowe?

  Oh wow, I love it.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  It was hysterical, and basically the moral of the story is like, this is what we used to think was cool, and smart, and led to riches, and now, I mean, there's this, there's this guy online, we should shout him out, his name's Max4Cracks, and he's an Instagram guy, and he has this whole series about, uh, blue collar-

• 1:16:14Mike Rowe?

  Is his last name for cracks, or is it Max4Cracks?

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, Max, and then the number four, Cracks, I think, and he has this whole series on blue collar cosplaying, and how young people are cosplaying blue collar.

• 1:16:27Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  And I think we have this 180 happening that really wasn't even going on for Dirty Jobs, I think.

• 1:16:34Mike Rowe?

  Oh no.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  I think this is new.

• 1:16:35Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about turning around a tanker, right? You're talking about myths and misperceptions and stigmas and stereotypes that surround certain types of work.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Mike Rowe?

  And those things take years to shed, but they do shift, and they do change, and it really is exactly what we were talking about before. There was a time when a blue collar worker with a certain set of skills had the admiration of everybody in the neighborhood, and the respect, right? How did that change? I've got theories on that, and how do you bring it back? And is the workforce ever really and truly balanced? Is Wall Street and Main Street, are they ever perfectly positioned? I would say no way.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Mike Rowe?

  No way. It's a constant push me, pull ya, to quote Dr. Dolittle.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Mike Rowe?

  But my point in saying all those things was there is something to say in the Warren Buffett category for delayed gratification. He's my buddy for 45 years. That counts more than the fact that he wasn't recording on the first two minutes of the best shit we did today, okay? I'll forgive that because I got the other thing. This guy has been with me on Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Gotta Do It and half a dozen other shows because when I asked him if he would put on some clothes that didn't even quite fit and do something that had nothing to do with his job description or his business card, he said, sure.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Mike Rowe?

  Those people matter.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  And they went over time.

• 1:18:03Mike Rowe?

  Over time.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  And actually, I think we just wrote an article at Contrarian Thinking about meritocracy being back and it being cool to try again. And I think that's right. I mean, I loved Timothy Chalamet, or however you say his last name's, speech when he said, and I know it's not cool to say, but I tried really hard on this role and it was five years of my life and I'm really proud of this thing that I tried for. And that was not that cool to say before, you know? It was like, oh, you know, it was great and I'm so glad to be here and, you know, save the whales or whatever celebrities do when they win an award. And so I think actually for the first time in a while, it's cool to try again and that meritocracy might be coming back.

• 1:18:48Mike Rowe?

  If you work in boots all day long and your feet sweat, I feel your pain and I'd recommend trying the socks that I wear every day from Camel City Mill. These guys sent me a box as a gift long before they sponsored this podcast and I started wearing them and eventually I reached out to them because I love the product and I wanted more sponsors on the podcast who make things in America. And now here they are again sponsoring another episode. Camel City Mill makes their socks in North Carolina with American wool in an American factory. Their merino wool blends help wicks Sweat away from your skin and there are no sweat vent lets heat and moisture escape. That helps keep your feet dry and comfortable when you're spending long days in work boots.

• 1:19:32Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember, it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots. And they back their socks with a 10-year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com. Use code ROW, get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com, code ROW. Like everything else, it's on the wheel. And virtue becomes vice and vice becomes

• 1:20:17Mike Rowe?

  virtue. And if you're a contrarian, or if you're looking for the reverse commute, you'll take a position, no matter what it is, as long as it's not where the herd's going. And that's what's happened to virtue. That's why that sweat pledge gets me in trouble every year.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  Doesn't really.

• 1:20:35Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God. Well, in 2020, when ESG and CRT and all of the acronyms had conspired and big companies like Lockheed Martin and Corn Ferry had officially stricken words from their employee manual and handbook, words like ambition and drive.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:20:57Mike Rowe?

  And believe it or not, work ethic. These terms all became, I don't know, dog whistles or some sort of coded language for the white patriarchy or some such nonsense, right? Right? So words started to mean different things. And virtue, everything was stood on its head.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:21:17Mike Rowe?

  But it just, to the point, you know, at some point, entrepreneurship is by definition aspirational and great. And then it's not. Somehow it falls out of favor. And that's a sucker's bet because look at, look at what the big firms are doing. Look at, oh, is this the billboard?

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that was it. Yeah, we put these trucks all over the place.

• 1:21:38Mike Rowe?

  No, that's fantastic.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, he looks great, right?

• 1:21:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, man, poor Wall Street guy couldn't even tuck his shirt in.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  I know, they were, they thought that was pretty funny. We had all these Black Rock and Blackstone dudes taking pictures of it and you know, whatever. Again, there's, I don't, I really believe no matter how you make money, as long as it's ethical and moral, there's no bad or good way to do it. If you're out there creating value in the world, because I love Dave's line, Ramsey's line is actually, profit is just a certificate of service. So when you make money, it's just that somebody else feels like you have provided them value. And I like that idea. So no, no shame on Wall Street, but I think they've gotten enough credit. And so now it's like, how do we, how do we bring this back? And, and that I think is really, really important. And, you know, the other thing that we see for

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  the first time in a while, I think, is this realization, sort of across the board, that we like to touch things. I mean, you see it everywhere online. You see the trad wife movement getting big again. You know, you see people want to have their little gentleman's farm or work on the farm and opt out. This, there is this move back to, I want to build with my hands. And I think it's good for society and, and probably a good counterbalance to the fact that we go like this all day long with our phones.

• 1:22:52Mike Rowe?

  Again, you know, the trad wife thing is a great example. That's short for traditional wife, right? I mean, like there's a home ec connection.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Did you see that they're bringing that back?

• 1:23:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, our whole, the whole reason for the space we're sitting in right now is to get shop class back in high school. But home ec is adjacent, right? Natural literacy. Those things were primal, fundamental building blocks. And, you know, it's, it's like a big game at Changa. You start pulling out those lower pieces, which we did, things start to get a little wobbly up there.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there was this great South Park episode. Did you see the one where there's the dad with the stove that's broken? Did you see this one?

• 1:23:35Mike Rowe?

  No, but my God, tell me more. Cause that, I mean, it's only the greatest satire in the history.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 1:23:41Mike Rowe?

  Since Jonathan Swift, maybe.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  I, every time that I really want to understand the world, I go to the great philosophers of our age.

• 1:23:48Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  South Park.

• 1:23:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  As one does.

• 1:23:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Matt Stone, Trey Parker.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're incredible. And so there's this episode where dad's standing kind of angrily in front of the two kids in the kitchen, and he looks at his stove and the front of the stove is broken. And he's like, you know, kids, um, you know, this stove is broken, you guys don't know how to fix it because kids don't understand how to fix anything anymore. And the kids are kind of standing there like, okay. And so he's like, let me show you what I do. So he reaches in to pull out his wrench, no, his cellphone, and he calls the handyman, right?

• 1:24:15Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  And the handyman comes over to the house, and the handyman looks like a handyman does. And then they're missing a part, so he can't fix the stove. So the dad's about to look real dumb in front of the kids, right? Because the kids, hey, this is his dad moment, I can fix things. So he kind of starts mouthing off to the handyman. And the handyman's like, listen, Brad, or whatever his name is, I got so much work, I don't care, I don't need you anymore. And the dad looks foolish, and he opens the, the door to the house and the handyman leaves. And as he leaves, he like shows his gold chain and his Escalade out front from all the work that he's doing a handyman in.

• 1:24:51Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:24:51Speaker 02

  And the idea was so funny to me, because it is this idea of, we used to look at this group of people and think, well, they don't make any money. If I just hand them an extra 50, I can boss them around and fix that stove. Now try calling home services and see if you can get somebody out to fix something.

• 1:25:06Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  And then, secondarily, like, there's a deeper visceral, uh, philosophical nature to this story, which is, we don't know how to fix things anymore. We've given up some personal sovereignty.

• 1:25:18Mike Rowe?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  We don't know how to garden, we don't know how to fix, we are not handy. And that bothers me. And so I think everything that you're doing is incredible, because we got to get back to being able to do things.

• 1:25:30Mike Rowe?

  Well, you said it earlier, you know, if you reduce work...

• 1:25:35Mike Rowe?

  To nothing but a paycheck. If you reduce it purely to its economic transactional component, then there is no argument really for, you know, against UBI. There's no virtue. You just stripped it all out. And, and then now you're getting closer to the matrix. Now we're batteries. We're just plugged in and we're just waiting and somebody or something else is going to get it all done. Look, I think it's really important that you're making a persuasive case for these non glamorous industries. Real quick, what others would you list? If people are listening with an entrepreneurial spirit, who are willing to work and want to be around this, what are you partial to now?

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  We have a list of 130 boring businesses I love to invest in, build and buy. You can go to Contrarian Thinking and grab that. Let's talk about some top fives. I love anything home services. We are never going to not need to live somewhere as long as we have these bodies. So home services are great. I really like thinking about the trades overall. There's a moat around those businesses. So trades businesses to me are interesting. My robots and AI will take over that later.

• 1:26:44Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about HVAC, electric.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Mike Rowe?

  Foundation repair.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  Anything that requires a certification, like what you do at Mike Rowe Works is a great business. Has more of a moat than a home services, which is like window cleaning, painting, roofing, et cetera. I also think there's a real play in professional services, even with where technology is going. So selling things like accounting to small businesses, we're still going to need personalization. I also think there is this independent individual business on a go forward basis. You called it freelancing, I think, earlier. I think in the future, you won't be a freelancer. You can actually use technology around you to create your own one person business. And I think that will be real.

• 1:27:28Mike Rowe?

  I am most interested in that. I really am. I mean, I've freelanced my whole life and the war here in California on the gig economy is real.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  Isn't that bizarre?

• 1:27:42Mike Rowe?

  AB5 is real. The pro act in Congress hopefully will be walked behind the barn and shot in the head soon, but we'll see. But there is such a visceral suspicion now. I mean, it's. There's a cohort in the government that wants everybody to be an employee.

• 1:27:58Speaker 02

  Very much. Well, and why? Because they're at the highest tax rating of any individual.

• 1:28:04Mike Rowe?

  Your income is taxed, right? You're probably, statistically speaking, renting.

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Mike Rowe?

  At this point.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  And you're easier to be controlled because 85% of businesses, small businesses in the US, don't have one employee. So if you're a government, what do you want to do? If you want to control the most people, you centralize them in one location, AKA 25% of the businesses, and then you can mandate whatever you want. Because it's much easier to control a few executives who have control over tens of thousands of employees than it is to go after 100% of Americans who have independent centers of gravity as a business.

• 1:28:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  So top-down control's not good. We've seen this story before. Wherever possible, we should try to have some form of decentralization.

• 1:28:46Mike Rowe?

  Not centralized government, right. I think it's worth riffing for a minute on the difference between an entrepreneur/small business owner and a freelancer.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Mike Rowe?

  Because, as I understand it, or the way I think about it, is freelancers, they don't have a business. They have many, many, many businesses. Their business is going to where the next gig is and doing it. And I was never happier, really. I'm pretty happy now, but when I was truly freelancing, you know, partly because I didn't have any debt and I didn't own anything. And it was just a very much of a sort of a paladin kind of life back then for me, but

• 1:29:23Mike Rowe?

  but I still think that's such a great experience for so many people to have, but they never have it because they just get straight into the employee world. And then it just feels like the longer you're there, the harder it is to split.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, here's what the stats say. The stats on freelancers say they make less money and they have less security freelancing than they do in employment. So I'm of two minds. One, you get to choose. Why do we tell the government that I have to be an employee or an owner? And I can't be a freelancer. That's ridiculous. That should be up to me. And then second to me is, I think if you're gonna freelance, the move there should really be, where can I play long-term games with long-term people? Who cares what my tax structure is? The long-term game could be, you know, yeah, I come and work for you, but I also do this other thing on the side. And that's where I freelance. Or, hey, I like to work with three people. And I have sort of a business that has three clients, but it's really just me freelancing for three people.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  What I think is wrong is the government mandating it. I guess, I'm biased. Here's my bias, which is that I think short-term games and transactional relationships don't make us as happy as long-term games and non-transactional relationships. And I think a lot of the times, the reason we like freelancing is because we hate the people we're doing shit with. Or we don't like them enough to hang out with them for long.

• 1:30:48Mike Rowe?

  Or it doesn't matter because you touch everything like it's hot. And like them or don't like them, you're gonna be on to the next thing before too long.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  That's right. That's how a lot of, like, production crew works, right? And so they're like, nah, you know, yeah, they're the worst, but I'm only here for another three weeks, so we're gonna do it.

• 1:31:02Mike Rowe?

  That's right.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  And I think instead, there probably is a place for you where you could be super highly valued. And you could have some ownership even, some equity in the company maybe eventually. And so, I guess my pushback to those people is like, man, I think you might be worth more than you're giving yourself credit for. And there might be people out there looking just for you. And then you can stay with them forever long you want. But don't play short-term games, because I think that always ends badly.

• 1:31:28Mike Rowe?

  I just constantly come back to my disclaimer, you know? Summer doesn't go straight to winter, right? There's, there's fall and there's spring. And I don't know where you, not you, Codie Sanchez, but who is ever listening, I don't know where you are right now in your evolution of stuff. There are people listening right now who I believe absolutely probably should be employees. There are people who should absolutely get in the middle of the lake and roll the dice, because why not? If you feel called to do it, there are people who should be, so many people should be freelancing who aren't. I just can't tell them apart, you know? But I think where we ought to land the plane here. I mean, since your website made it clear, you know, you're- You're really about ownership.

• 1:32:13Mike Rowe?

  Do you know Ownership Works? Have you heard of this before?

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Uh-uh.

• 1:32:17Mike Rowe?

  KKR of all people.

• 1:32:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:32:19Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I met a guy over there called Pete Stavros. And he, like you, believes very strongly in these home services companies. But he's looking at these entrepreneurs who've owned it for, you know, a generation or two. And there's no financial event for them.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:32:38Mike Rowe?

  They can't get out of it. So they basically encourage some of the rollups that I've heard so many unflattering things about.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:47Mike Rowe?

  Okay? But they do this other thing, which is they'll take an ESOP plan.

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:32:52Mike Rowe?

  And they'll run it all the way down to the front line.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:55Mike Rowe?

  So this company now I work with, Groundworks, who actually sponsors this podcast from time to time. I was at their meeting two years ago in Virginia Beach when they made 5,400 men, most of whom had high school, some more, but, right? They made them owners of the company. And Cody, you stand backstage and you look out and you see those people with their families weeping and feeling like really having the kind of skin in the game you're talking about for the first time. So I guess I'd just like your thoughts on, you know, when you look at unions and when you look at these rollups and when you look at private equity

• 1:33:36Mike Rowe?

  and you look at ownership in general, it just feels like there might be more than one way to skin the cat.

• 1:33:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. At the end of the day, what I want is, I don't care how you do it, but I want you to have somewhere where you say, "I do have skin in the game. Me being here, I'm so valuable to this place in some way, shape, or form that they have decided to give me a part of it even when I am no longer working there anymore." And I think if more of us have some little aspect of that, because we are so valuable, then we will care more because we are incentive-aligned. And I think the world is all about incentives. And so to me, I think you should chase your first couple hundred K that you make relentlessly. They say life gets easier up until then. And I think you should chase this idea that everybody who is willing to do hard sweaty work could eventually be an owner.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  And if you do that, I think that life might be a little bit easier.

• 1:34:29Mike Rowe?

  You're a complicated cat, man.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  (laughing).

• 1:34:32Mike Rowe?

  I mean, really.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  My husband's here, you can tell him that, too.

• 1:34:34Mike Rowe?

  You're a capitalist with some very...

• 1:34:39Mike Rowe?

  Very populist ideas.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Mike Rowe?

  You've obviously assumed a great deal of risk, but you're risk averse by definition. You've made an awful lot of money and now you've got this site and this mission and you're gonna make a million people owners of something or another. How far along are you? Do we know yet?

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we've had people buy about $350 million worth of businesses. Those are about 270 people who have done that over the past two years since we started tracking. We've had about 2,000 people that have gone through our course and said that they have increased their earnings by more than 10%. Now, that's self-reported, so I don't know. Could be good, bad, or otherwise. But we're further along than I thought. You know, every single one of those people that buys a business, those businesses on average have five to seven employees in them. And so how we end every one of our meetings is, don't be the boss that you hated. Because I think that's where most entrepreneurs start, is with a boss you didn't like.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  And so I think our mission is moving, but we got a long way to go. So one day, I hope, I saw Dave the other day had a cruise with like 3,000 people who he helped get debt-free with. And he has this wall, and we're building a wall right now, too, with the face of every single person that we've helped buy a business, and then every single person who says they are their version of financially free. And so I don't think that's $10 million. I think it's whatever that is for you. And so I hope we're able to do it. And one day, you can come down to Austin and you can see the big headquarters and there'll be a bunch of people who change their lives. And that's cool to me.

• 1:36:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, let's make it a date. I will absolutely do that. I want to hit Rogan again sometime this year. I'm working on some things in Texas with MicroWorks that, God help me, I think could actually work. Texas, in so many ways, can lead the charge on all this.

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:36:31Mike Rowe?

  All the stuff we're talking about.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, come down. Can we get you to transplant from California? Better tax code.

• 1:36:36Mike Rowe?

  I mean, look, honestly, can you do anything about the weather?

• 1:36:38Speaker 02

  No, also no ocean in the places we live, so.

• 1:36:42Mike Rowe?

  Like, I'll figure it out, but I love what you're doing, and I really appreciate you coming out here and making the time for this.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  I'll say.

• 1:36:49Mike Rowe?

  Tell me, where should people go to just get an absolute dose of Codie Sanchez right in the pick line?

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Codie Sanchez on all socials. We're really big into Instagram and YouTube right now, so I would go to those two. And then our newsletter, contrarianthinking.co, tons of free newsletters, two every week for you to figure out how to buy a business or just make more money. You get your choice.

• 1:37:12Mike Rowe?

  I love it. All right, I owe you one. If you've still got the podcast cranking when I'm in there and you're hard up for guests, just say, just say so.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  I'd love to have you on.

• 1:37:21Mike Rowe?

  I would love to drag your listeners through the sewer.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:37:24Mike Rowe?

  It would be fun.

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  I do know the smell. I've been down there now.

• 1:37:27Mike Rowe?

  You know, you said that's where we were gonna land the plane with smells. Do you know all smells are particulate?

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  I know, which means that, yes.

• 1:37:36Mike Rowe?

  That's the worst.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  That's not okay, I don't know.

• 1:37:38Mike Rowe?

  You think it through. It's like, oh, like, I'm smelling something unpleasant. No, not really. What's happening is that particle is getting in your blood, and now it's in your brain.

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  It's not okay.

• 1:37:47Mike Rowe?

  Chuck farts, two minutes later. I beg your pardon. He's in your brain.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  I mean, you've been away worse places than I have, but man, I don't know if there's a worse place than one of the businesses that we did a video on, than a highly-used porta-potty on a hot construction site.

• 1:38:06Mike Rowe?

  Oh, sure, yeah.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  Oh, that's like, easy for you?

• 1:38:08Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not easy. It's a little more nuanced. I thought sewers, septic tanks, porta-potties, I mean, how could it get worse? A grease trap.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  That is actually true.

• 1:38:19Mike Rowe?

  A deep grease trap has components of all the cholesterol, all the, and there's just something that's, you can, you still know you're sitting in food or something food-like, and it just makes the, again, it's the particulate, gets on your teeth. But you know what? I mean, Dirty Jobs was built around going to places like that, not just with people who did the work, but who laughed while they were doing it, who were in on the joke. They're only the best people on the planet.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Yes, Shep Boys is the porta potty company, and he's the man. Former NFL player,

• 1:38:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  badass. And when we went to his company, his line is, I would be like, oh my God, because you break the seal to like, get the hose down there to shop it out. And so when I first did that, and he's like, don't vomit in there, because then we have to clean it. So that was a reasonable response. And it hit. I smelled it, and he just leaned in real close to me, and he goes, smells like gold, donor baby.

• 1:39:19Mike Rowe?

  Oh, final thought. If you're not convinced that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are the great satirists of our age, there's footage out there you can find of Trey being interviewed on a pig farm. And as he's answering questions, he's feeding the swine bacon.

• 1:39:43Mike Rowe?

  It's like, Visually, it's really all you need to know.

• 1:39:48Speaker 02

  You know who's not sponsoring your podcast? PETA.

• 1:39:50Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but I'm, I think I got a shot with South Park.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you do, too.

• 1:39:54Mike Rowe?

  Trey.

• 1:39:57Mike Rowe?

  You're awesome. Thanks.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. This is amazing.

• 1:40:42Speaker 03

  500 orders a month was manageable. 5,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation. The only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns, and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one. Automate fulfillment and rate shopping to ship up to 15 times more with up to 90% savings. Go to shipstation.com and use code AUDIO to try ShipStation free for 60 days.

• 1:41:12Speaker 04

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park, when the vehicle is off, or if any door is open. Do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.