Pod Insights The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe 416: Nathan Walters—So You Want to be a Builder About this episode Oklahoma builder Nathan Walters discusses his unlikely journey to owning his own building business, the virtues and pitfalls of college vs. on-the-job training, and what he's doing in Oklahoma to encourage high schoolers to consider the trades.
Transcript 12,106 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Mike Rowe? So you want to be a builder? That's the title of this episode of The Way I Heard It. I'm Mike Rowe, joined by the one and only Chuck Klausmeyer. Good day Chuck.
0:12 Speaker 01 Good day to you, sir. How are you?
0:14 Mike Rowe? I'm pretty good. This guy, this Nathan Walters, who I'm about to introduce the world to, he's the reason, really, that I wanted to do this long-form
0:22 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
0:23 Mike Rowe? version of the podcast. I'd never heard of him. I met him at this event through, actually, one of our sponsors. Diggs invited me to Las Vegas a while ago. Diggs are the guys who use AI to somehow streamline the process between builders and buyers. Anyway, this guy is at the National Home Builders Convention, and I got to talking with him. He lives in Oklahoma. He builds luxurious, custom homes
0:53 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
0:54 Mike Rowe? in Oklahoma. He's got maybe a dozen going on at any given point. And he was so interesting, just talking about the stuff I talk about all the time with MicroWorks
1:05 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:06 Mike Rowe? and the challenges he faces in finding skilled labor. But it's actually more than that. The guy's an entrepreneur who came to the building industry in a pretty unique way.
1:16 Speaker 01 Right.
1:17 Mike Rowe? And it's such a problem, friends, what's going on in our country right now. It's just becoming increasingly alarming, the paucity of skilled labor. And it's impacting the luxury market, it's impacting the commercial market, it's impacting basic residential homes, it's impacting anything that needs to be built. So I've always looked at these guys as magicians, in a way. But it's more than that. And I just thought it might be interesting on the podcast to hear from a guy, he's got a going concern, but he's dealing with a growing problem.
1:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's doing his part to try and help it out. I mean, he does have something that he does every year with kids to try to introduce them to the trades, which I think is a very good thing. Yeah.
2:07 Mike Rowe? Build Your Future, it's called. And honestly, that's kind of the other reason I wanted him on. You know, MicroWorks, we can do what we can do. I don't run into a lot of people who, who are opposed to what we're trying to do. But more and more, I'm looking for people who are trying to do their version of it, wherever they happen to be. And this guy happens to be in Oklahoma.
2:28 Speaker 01 Yep.
2:28 Mike Rowe? He's doing great work. The name of his company is?
2:31 Speaker 01 Masarosa Luxury Homes.
2:34 Mike Rowe? Right. We'll learn about what that means as well. It's kind of a fun story. And he's a super smart guy and he's doing really important work. And I thought it might be insightful to crawl inside his brain for a bit. His name is Nathan Walters and you're gonna meet him right after this.
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4:22 Mike Rowe? It's the first time I've worn the headphones on this podcast ever, so it's a big day for me. It's very exciting.
4:26 Speaker 02 I heard through the grapevine that that was going to be a conversation that nobody wanted to have.
4:30 Mike Rowe? Nobody wants to have that guy. I'll tell you what, man, that was not a pleasant conversation. You had Mary deliver the news.
4:35 Speaker 01 No, she told me. The last thing she said was, "I'm gonna let you tell him." Okay, yeah, no problem.
4:40 Mike Rowe? She was actually laughing when she told me. She literally knows how badly that chaps my ass.
4:43 Speaker 01 He wanted it, yeah.
4:45 Mike Rowe? She enjoyed it.
4:45 Speaker 02 It was everybody. That's what made it funny. Everybody was like, "A game of paper, scissors, rock." For who had to tell Mike that he didn't wear headphones.
4:53 Mike Rowe? You said "paper, scissors, rock" instead of "rock, paper, scissors." What's that all about?
4:57 Speaker 02 I don't know. "Paper, scissors, rock" is, I guess that's how I learned it. It's how I learned it here in Oklahoma, so I say it that way. "Paper, scissors, rock."
5:04 Mike Rowe? Nobody in the history of the world has said "paper, scissors, rock." It's always "rock, paper, scissors."
5:10 Speaker 02 Ah, "paper, scissors, rock," yeah, no? I don't know, maybe we're backwards out here.
5:14 Mike Rowe? Well, I'll tell you what, man, here's the thing about Oklahoma. I feel like there is some kind of weird tractor beam in the middle of that state that has been pulling me there for decades. And somebody has actually cranked it up. Like, it started for me with Dirty Jobs back in 2002. We shot a pilot not far from, I want to say Eufaula, maybe?
5:40 Speaker 02 Okay.
5:41 Mike Rowe? That's a place?
5:42 Speaker 02 That's a place. Lake Eufaula. Yeah, it's a place about two hours outside of the city.
5:46 Mike Rowe? It was Lake Eufaula. It's not far from Shawnee.
5:49 Speaker 02 Not far at all.
5:50 Mike Rowe? So I check into this pit of despair in Shawnee. This was really like my introduction to Dirty Jobs. There was a refrigerator, like a cooler they had in there, like half a fridge. And the door was hanging off. The TV was cracked. One of the windows had a hole in it, like a rock had been thrown through it. And there was an air conditioner in the window that sounded like a chainsaw. It was called the Cinderella Motor Lodge. And I'm like, this is the craziest, what a mess. And all I knew was the next morning I was going to Lake Eufaula to shoot an episode on something called noodling. And I'm like, what is noodling?
6:34 Mike Rowe? And my producer's like, it's just fishing. It's just, it's just.
6:37 Speaker 02 The type of fishing.
6:39 Mike Rowe? It's what people in Oklahoma call fishing. I'm like, alright, you know, but this guy's a known liar. So I'm not sure what to think. So I, I lie down on this thing that I'm only gonna call a mattress because it was in the place where you would expect to find one. And I turn on the broken TV and there's a local PBS station. And I don't know what the title of this show was called, but based on the content in it, it could have been, for the love of God, please don't noodle. All it was were conversations with people who were missing fingers, who had giant scars on their face.
7:21 Mike Rowe? There were conversations with mothers and wives and girlfriends who had lost their loved ones.
7:28 Speaker 02 Yep.
7:29 Mike Rowe? Because they fish with their hands, man. They fish with their hands.
7:33 Speaker 02 They go underwater, put their arm in a hole and hope it's not a beaver in the hole, hope it's a catfish.
7:38 Mike Rowe? I learned all of this the next day with two dudes. Don and Jerry, incredibly were their names. Don Brewer. And my God, man, that was my real introduction to Oklahoma. I've been back many times, but I've never been able to shake that feeling of reaching into a hole underwater, literally praying out loud for a catfish. Please let there be a catfish that bites me so I can pull it out as opposed to a water moccasin or an alligator gar or whatever other demon spawn you guys have down there.
8:11 Speaker 02 Or some kind of beaver, all of it.
8:13 Mike Rowe? Snapping turtles.
8:14 Speaker 01 Could a beaver be hiding in a hole like that?
8:17 Mike Rowe? Oh, yeah.
8:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, oh, yeah.
8:19 Speaker 01 Wow.
8:19 Mike Rowe? So I guess my first question is, have you noodled?
8:23 Speaker 02 I have not noodled. I grew up in a, a town about 20 minutes west of Oklahoma City. It's a suburb. I was definitely way more city than noodling. As you know, Lake Ufala is about two hours outside of the city. So I didn't noodle. I didn't fish a lot. My dad wasn't a fisherman. Fishing became more of a thing as I've gotten older. I've understood it. I liked catching. The fishing portion of it was very miserable for an eight-year-old for me, but now being older, I'm like, oh, I get why they fish. You go out there, you have a couple beers, it's quiet. I'm like, oh, fishing makes sense now. As at eight, I was like, mm, I don't love this.
8:59 Mike Rowe? Yeah, I don't like fishing, but I do like drinking on a boat with my friends.
9:03 Speaker 02 Yes, love that part. Sometimes I'm fishing, sometimes I'm not, but I'm definitely drinking on the boat with my friends.
9:09 Mike Rowe? Well, you know, I mean, it's a funny way to transition into something more topical, but it's kind of like building in the sense that when I met you in Vegas, was that months ago or years ago? I have no sense of time.
9:21 Speaker 02 Months ago, February, so.
9:23 Mike Rowe? Time doesn't mean anything. The lockdowns did something to me. They did something with the business of both compressing and extending time. I'm just not as good at pigeonholing dates as I used to be, but I do still remember vividly conversations. And I ask you if you were having fun as a builder and you were like, oh, building is amazing. I love building, but just because I'm a builder doesn't mean I build anything anymore. I have a business now and now I'm involved in all of these other things. It's not, in other words, the fun of getting a catfish on the end
10:02 Mike Rowe? of your arm or, or a catch on the end of your rod. That great fun moment is not what you experience most of the time. And I guess the same is true in your vocation.
10:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a, that's a hundred percent. I remember saying that because building the home, being a site supervisor and building the home is, that's the funnest part. It's how you end up owning a business, you know, it's how I end up owning a home building businesses. I was site supervising for a builder here in Edmund and I absolutely loved building and I started a home building business thinking, man, this is gonna be amazing. And for a couple of years, I'm doing that, I'm building, I'm doing everything. And then you get 10 years in and you look up and you're running a home building company and you're lucky when you get to go out to the job sites and see them. But that satisfaction of getting to build is not the day to day basis as much as it is,
10:57 Speaker 02 you know, making sure the marketing's working, making sure you're talking to customers and doing those things. There's definitely been a change once you become a 10-year-old business.
11:06 Mike Rowe? Well, every entrepreneur I've ever talked to who has had success, really in virtually any industry, ultimately comes to the conclusion that the thing they thought, the business they thought they were in is actually the customer service business.
11:23 Speaker 02 That's right.
11:24 Mike Rowe? That's all it is. And that sooner or later, we're all salesmen for whatever it is we love or used to love. And that's really what I want to get into because the other thing you said that I remember with remarkable clarity is, um, I was surprised to learn that your dad wasn't a builder and that you don't come from a long line of builders. Because most of the people, like who I've met on dirty jobs, most fishermen come from fishermen. Most farmers come from a long line of farmers, you know, soldiers tend to have parents and grandparents who served. And the same is true of builders, but somehow you like Forrest Gumped your way into this first generation thing. How'd that happen?
12:11 Speaker 02 You're exactly right. I feel like I fell into it. I sometimes ask myself how I got here. You know, I wake up, I'm like, how exactly is this? Cause you're right. My dad was a welder. My dad was a welder that owned an aluminum horse trailer manufacturing plant. So he was still blue collar, very blue collar, but he wanted what's funny, which is where a lot of this stuff is going. He wanted like a lot of blue collar parents wanted. He wanted a different life, right? Hey, you need to go to college. Hey, you need to make good grades. You need to do these things. You don't want to end up over here. Okay. So I go to college because he wanted me to go to college and I get out of college and it is actually 2010. And if we all remember 2010, now it's very close to 2008. And you know what there's not a
12:56 Speaker 02 lot of in May of 2010 is jobs. So great. I went to college and there weren't a lot of jobs. A really good buddy of mine's dad owned a gutter installation company and we had a massive hailstorm come through Oklahoma city in May of 2010, damaged roofs, damaged gutter, and he needed help and I couldn't get a job, a corporate job, if you will. And he said, hey, do you want to hang gutter? I was like, well, I don't know how to hang gutter. And you know, it's the old adage, uh, water runs downhill. Oh, yeah. You know, he's like, trust me, it's easy. As long as the gutter's slope in the right direction, you're going to figure it out. So I hung gutter for four or five months
13:38 Speaker 02 and then ended up getting to know the people who owned the supply yard that were supplying the gutter material. They did siding and windows, uh, started working for them, selling windows and siding after I installed gutter and tried to sell windows to a builder. One day the home builder calls me. I thought I was getting to sell a window job. He's like, hey, come up here. I go to his office. He's like, have you ever thought about building houses? He's like, I don't know anything about building houses. And he said, When can you start? Perfect. That's what we want. When can you start? And so that was October of 2011. I started working for a home builder and I'll tell you this. I start on Monday. It was Friday.
14:22 Speaker 02 It was so exhilarating. I knew I came home and my wife will still tell you this and I said, I'll never do anything else. This is what I will do because I just remember being a site super and being out there. And I remember 10 a.m. getting gas to go to the next job. And thinking about my buddies that are sitting in a cubicle in a corporate office, moving paper around. I'm like, I'm out here getting gas at 10 a.m., going to talk to a framer at the next job site. And then after that, talking to an electrician and watching real things come to life. And the passion really set in one weekend of being like, this is unbelievable that this is what I get to do.
14:59 Mike Rowe? Well, that's why you're on this podcast, man. I meet a lot of people and I do get to travel around a lot. And not every day is spent waiting for something in a hole to bite me, right? I mean, I get, I get a chance to rub elbows with some pretty interesting people. You know, my agenda, I think your industry just has a huge challenge. That's going to impact virtually everyone who shares my addiction to hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing and roofs that don't leak and gutters that work and windows that actually close and all those things. And it was your enthusiasm for the business. It was the fact that there was a light switch moment.
15:40 Mike Rowe? You know, you weren't raised in this thing, but when you saw it, you just decided and you went for it. And it's rare for an entrepreneur to kind of stumble into it that way. And I'm looking at you here. I assume the house behind you is one that your company built.
16:00 Speaker 02 Was, yeah. Yeah, this was our very first parade of homes. That's a home show. And when I started my business, this was the very first home I ever built on my own.
16:09 Mike Rowe? What year was that?
16:11 Speaker 02 2015.
16:12 Mike Rowe? So I got to circle back to your dad as well. You just glossed over something about horse trailers, which I'm sure is going to be interesting. But the satisfaction of knowing that that was an empty lot. And now it's not.
16:25 Speaker 02 That's right.
16:26 Mike Rowe? There's a thing there with a thousand moving parts and the product of 10,000 little decisions that the homeowner had to make and there you are guiding them through this paralyzing miasma, you know, holding their hand and I just, if you can just speak to the thrill of seeing a tangible thing in a place that was previously vacant in ways that people can understand because it's special.
16:52 Speaker 02 That is the thrill, right? You know, you're lining up with everything that made me do this. That's the thrill. You said it. I show up out here. This house is on a, behind me is on a two acre lot, 2.07 acres and it's nothing but trees and wild weeds and grass on it. This was my very first home that oddly enough, my, my sister knew nothing about construction, but she's five years older than me, always extremely creative. And I was like, hey, will you help me pick colors? Cause that's the last thing you want me doing, right? Is picking colors and making stuff go together like in a, in a pretty way. And she was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. I said, no, you can pick pretty stuff.
17:34 Speaker 02 We sat down at a kitchen table, worked on these plans, worked on this design. It's nothing but concepts and built this. It's funny because looking back, it's even crazier. The original owner of this sold this to another owner and it's funny that owner reached out and was like, hey, do you have any information on what was in this house? And what's funny, since that was our first year? No, no, we were out there. No, we didn't do that. We were out there for the love of building and making decisions as we went and my sister had, was picking as we went and no, we didn't store anything, you know? It was about 2017,
18:17 Speaker 02 2018 by going to the international builder show. I won't use the acronym. I'll just call it what it is, the international builder show.
18:26 Mike Rowe? They can't settle on one.
18:27 Speaker 02 They can't going there is when I started learning how to be a business and finding tools such as digs that stored information. But this, the passion you get from me on this is it's, it wasn't business. It was a passion of home building. That's what built this house is it was a passion of building this and in essence, winging it and not winging the build. I knew how to build, but winging the decisions every day, which was amazing.
18:54 Mike Rowe? Well, you're building a plane in mid-flight, right? I mean, you're just everything. It's just endless decisions. I don't know if there's a specific word for it, but I know a lot of builders and I know a lot of people who had a house built. And at some point, I mean, there's just no justice in building a beautiful house and having an unhappy customer in the end. And I know that happens. It's got nothing to do with the work, but so often it's a kind of fatigue. It's like a decision-making fatigue that sets in. And that's when I was talking to the guy that built my house about this the other day.
19:35 Mike Rowe? And he was like, look, man, there are days when you are a counselor. There are days when you're a psychologist, a psychiatrist even. And then there are other days when you're a muddy boots architect. What's the most rewarding day? What do you still love most about your gig? Can't believe it's been 15 years since that headline first appeared in Slate Magazine, the one that said, "The greatest hoodie ever made." That's the headline that put American Giant on the map. And that's the same year their CEO sent me one of these hoodies unsolicited in the mail. I didn't know Byrd Winthrop back then, but he was a fan of Dirty Jobs.
20:19 Mike Rowe? He and his kids watched it and he wanted me to have one of his sweatshirts. So I beat the hell out of it. I mean, I wore it, I don't know, on dozens of different Dirty Jobs. I just saw an old episode last week of me castrating lambs, wearing this hoodie.
20:37 Mike Rowe? No garment in the history of the world, in my opinion, has ever been bespectacled with a more curious array of unholy fluids than my American Giant sweatshirt, and it's still standing. Honestly, at this point, I'm less concerned about replacing it than I am deciding who gets it when I'm gone. But what made American Giant famous, of course, was not just a sweatshirt that refused to die. It was making that sweatshirt right here in America with skilled people doing good work. That's something I'm happy to support, especially when I can support it while wearing something comfortable. If you're looking for a gift that might outlast your relationship with the recipient, consider the hoodie that started
21:16 Mike Rowe? it all. Go to American-Giant.com/mike. You'll save 20% when you drop my name at American-Giant.com/mike.
21:35 Speaker 02 You are right. I'll get to that, but we call it selection fatigue.
21:38 Mike Rowe? There it is.
21:39 Speaker 02 That's what we call it in our office. We call it selection fatigue. You nailed it. It just grinds on people, and we're trying to build a process that is countering that. You know, used to, I would say, the end product and the design is what really thrilled me. Circling back to something that you said earlier, which is so true, is somewhere along the way, Mike, I think probably about a year and a half ago, I woke up and had the realization that you just said, which was, I'm not in the construction business. I'm in the customer service business. And that's a fight coming from being a son of a blue collar welder in a manufacturing plant, which is, the end goal is what is the most important, right? Because it's manufactured in-house.
22:22 Mike Rowe? Sure.
22:22 Speaker 02 This is manufactured. It's just done outside with a customer watching every step of the way. So I'll tell you, the satisfaction that I've been getting is as we have learned that customer service is what is most important, and we have started trying to implement things, and having customers during the process thank us.
22:42 Speaker 02 Tell us that something was easier than they had expected. We had a customer that told me, uh, not just a month ago. Man, we were really worried going to the tile store. Like, we were really feeling like we were gonna be overwhelmed. And, uh, the way you guys ran that process actually really made it very enjoyable for us. Hearing that today is what gives me the thrill of knowing that we're trying to make something that can be very difficult to have, allow people to enjoy it, because they should enjoy it. It's hard to enjoy it.
23:13 Mike Rowe? I mean, I literally just got a queasy feeling when you said going to the tile store. It, I mean, I left Bed Bath & Beyond one day years ago and made a solemn vow, which I've kept, to never go back into that place.
23:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:29 Mike Rowe? It's not for a rational reason. It's the same reason I don't go to the Cheesecake Factory anymore. I got nothing against cheesecake, but when I pick up that menu, it, it feels like War and Peace. It just goes on and on and on. And that's what the tile store is. And that's anybody who's gone through a renovation. Not anybody, some people are good at this. Some people like that giant menu. Some people like walking around the Ikea, looking for the meatballs and suddenly, you know, buying a bureau and who knows? I can't stand it. How much handholding do you do?
24:05 Speaker 02 So, we do a lot. We do an absolute lot of handholding that we've really changed over the years used to. We were Cheesecake Factory. We were like, listen, we are a luxury home builder, which means nothing is off the table. And I was just witnessing, again, that selection fatigue setting in with the customers and just the, I don't wanna make any more decisions. Can you please just get our house done? This is, this process is just taking so long. And we have much more, we're still handholding everything, but we are also curating a lot more. We're getting ahead of it on the design, on the front end, using digs and getting these people's inspiration pictures.
24:47 Speaker 02 And then we're actually sending our designers to the tile store to pre- Select this tile based off of the pictures that the customer has given us. And now, when the customer walks into the tile store, instead of walking into a thirty thousand square foot warehouse, where the world is your oyster, it's like, hey, your master bath pictures you've shown us, this is the tile. So there's really only three options you need to look at. And we pull the three options for them. So we are still handholding all the way through, but it is way more curated and we're just finding the customers enjoying that much more. Even though they think in their head, no, we want endless options. They think that they don't. They don't want it.
25:30 Mike Rowe? So back to Diggs. I mean, full disclosure, I know Ryan, I know the CEO, I've worked with those guys. And it's kind of embarrassing to admit because I always, like, I really like to understand everything I'm involved in, but there's something like magical going on with AI that I think I understand, but I don't really. And it felt like they put a new tool in the toolbox for guys like you. And that does interest me a lot, even if I don't really understand it. Because I think part of what has to happen to get the next generation of kids interested in your world
26:12 Mike Rowe? is they have to see some tech that intrigues them and that feels like it's cutting edge. So, I mean, I don't want to turn this into a commercial, but I do want to understand what that tool has done for you in Oklahoma.
26:27 Speaker 02 So it's been absolutely unbelievable for us. And what's been unbelievable for us too is we are bending it to do something different than what they originally intended. And then now they're seeing, oh, we can still do our original intention and we can add what Nathan is wanting to do to this. And so we use it on what we call pre-construction, which is also design, which is where we're drawing your plans and we're doing your initial design. One of the easiest things it's done out of the gate is it has shortened that process. It shortened that process tremendously because how it used to work is we'd get the big set of plans. We'd have the customer come to the office. We would do the notes on the plans.
27:11 Speaker 02 We would then drive these plans over to the architect, tell him what the changes are. He would make the changes. It would take about two weeks, get us back the plans. Redo another thing with the customer, another meeting with the customer, and this went back and forth for months and months and months with that. Now, we're uploading the plans directly to Diggs. The customers are able to use their iPads sitting on their couch and make notes on them. Attach pictures to them that instantly myself and the architect get. And then we're able to now do things and turn things around in a week and a half to where usually the turnaround was three weeks.
27:51 Speaker 02 And so that has been unbelievable, but then with the AI portion of it. What's crazy is how AI learns you, which is scary and crazy.
28:01 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
28:01 Speaker 02 It learns the things that you're doing. And so now, when we put certain selections into Diggs. We could then use Ask Diggs inside of Diggs and be like, what was the kitchen refrigerator? It pulls it up in one second with the link with all the specs to it. Instantly. So we don't have to go hunt for things and do things anymore. We can literally input our information into Diggs. And then instead of us having to remember where we put this information, all we have to do is use Ask Diggs and then a nanosecond AI. Is giving us the information we want.
28:40 Mike Rowe? It's just so crazy. I'm like, in the end, who benefits the most? The builder or the buyer?
28:47 Speaker 02 So the buyer is benefiting on timeframe, both. The buyer is going to benefit on timeframe. We're going to be able to move through that process quicker. Also, information's at their fingertips, which makes them feel more comfortable. That they know that the builder has the information that they want the builder to have. So I think that puts a buyer at ease, but the builder, this information we're putting in, we can upload. Our trades into it, the ones that know how to use it. They're getting information. So now instead of having two or three employees inside of our office that are doing nothing but gathering information and then trying to put it into the correct place and trying to make sure the trades have the right information.
29:31 Speaker 02 Now, if our plumber wants to see the faucets, he goes into digs, asks digs for the faucet specs, boom, he has them. Just like that.
29:41 Mike Rowe? So, I mean, how do you, as a builder? Because I'm sure you're inundated by companies with a better mousetrap, a new idea, an improvement on some existing tool, or maybe in this case, a brand new tool. When I was at that event, when I met those guys, I guess it was a couple of years ago.
30:02 Mike Rowe? You know, people who don't go to these industry type events really have no idea how massive they are, how boozy they get. Like, the deals are going on all of the time. Everybody is huddled up and they're all talking about the next big thing. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
30:25 Speaker 02 Well, usually we go with a purpose. So our team goes with a purpose. Okay, this is what we're looking for. Okay, so try to block out the rest, right? Hey, this is what we feel we have a need for. Let's go to the show. Let's try to, to do our need. I wasn't looking for digs, which is funny. I had, was not looking for it. And what was hilarious is we're at an event, at a builder event only, but Diggs was a sponsor. And I'm having a full-blown conversation with one of my really good builder friends out of Atlanta, who also is now a Diggs user. And we're having a conversation and Ty from Diggs interrupts our conversation. Hey, let me pitch you this thing real quick.
31:08 Speaker 02 And I remember, as you're saying, all this is happening all the time, so I'm annoyed. I'm like, I'm annoyed. Hold on, man, I'm in the middle of a conversation. I'm not, I don't want to hear anything about what you're about to tell me. He's 30 seconds in. Something clicked that he had said that I wasn't listening to, but over like just went through my brain and I said, hold on, what? He's like, yeah. And so we ended up talking for 20, 30 minutes, ended up over at their suite a couple of days later, the day they launched. The day they launched, we were in their suite. That's how it all started. So oddly enough, I usually go with a purpose. I didn't go for this purpose, got interrupted, was annoyed. Now I love those guys.
31:49 Mike Rowe? Well, yeah, I guess it is ironic. On the other hand, you didn't set out to become a builder, right?
31:55 Speaker 02 No.
31:56 Mike Rowe? Like you're hanging gutters. It's all super interesting and I want to circle back to that for a minute. Your dad, he was a welder, but he was also building horse trailers?
32:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. So aluminum horse trailers are welded. That's how they're put together and he went to Vo-Tec in high school. Him and three buddies were such good welders, the Vo-Tec teacher actually got them a job at nights in the evenings at a local, uh, horse trailer manufacturing plant. So he ended up welding aluminum horse trailers his entire life. And somewhere during that process, he was like, you know, we could do this as a business. Him and his right-hand man, he was the plant manager and then he had his right-hand man and they're like, we could, you know, we could do this. And they, they went out and, and started their own called Elite Trailers and they made the best of the best aluminum horse trailers.
32:50 Speaker 02 Still do, except for my dad retired, uh, his portion of it. He said, he said, I don't need this anymore. And so he was a welder that same thing. I mean, he in essence stumbled into being a business owner too. He really was, was a welder and that's what he loved doing. He actually got bored of owning the business and loved going into the shop and welding. He's like, man, this part of it's terrible. I want to go into the shop and do the fun part.
33:15 Mike Rowe? See, this is the story that really I think the country needs to hear because it's an entrepreneurial story. It's a success story, but it starts with mastering a skill. He starts welding and like this doesn't happen in accounting class, right? Not halfway through your deal and the instructor says, hey, you know what you should do? You should come over here across the street and add up a column of numbers and dive into the tax code for this company. Right? I hear these stories all the time from people who go through our foundation. They, there's just nothing like the trades to put you on a path. Now, I don't know where the path will take you, but you are on a path to something.
33:59 Mike Rowe? And by the way, elite, no pressure, dude, but when you call your company elite, it better be a damn good horse trailer.
34:07 Speaker 02 They were, and what's crazy is that I started hearing that he would have, you know, jackets and stuff. And when I got older, I wanted to support my dad, I'd wear an elite jacket. I remember multiple times being in Stillwater, Oklahoma and going to football games and wearing an elite jacket. And if I heard it once, I heard it a hundred different times of people saying, oh, do you have an elite trailer? No, no, no, I just know someone who works there. They're like, man, that's the best trailer. We hope to own one one day. Or people who own it, that's the best trailer. And he obviously thought they built the best trailer, but man, they did. They stuck to what they did and they did not mess around.
34:49 Speaker 02 I mean, to the finest detail, and this is what I bring into home building is from him is to the finest detail of a lot of horse trailers have different colored tape on the side of them. Okay. Red, green, black, blue. It's what gives it a, so it's not just a big aluminum box running down the road. Well, the majority of horse trailer manufacturers will just silicone
35:11 Mike Rowe? Clear tape.
35:12 Speaker 02 The seams where it meets.
35:14 Mike Rowe? Right.
35:14 Speaker 02 Now, my dad's company, they use the color that the tape was of caulking. So if it was green, it was green. If it was red, it was red. And they used the color, which is minimal, but it's not. It's the little things that build up throughout doing the entire trailer that, that stands out and makes it elite.
35:32 Mike Rowe? As opposed to subpar trailers or C plus horse transport or.
35:39 Speaker 02 That's exactly right.
35:40 Mike Rowe? You know, it's like the business of managing expectations really touches just about every aspect of every business. And I love it when a show lives up to its name. Dirty jobs. Well, the jobs will be dirty. And when they're not, the viewer has every right to go, hey, wait a second, right? If the trailer's not elite, and I bought an elite trailer, it does put the pressure on it. Tell me about your company, how you came up with the name, and so forth.
36:10 Speaker 02 So I loved when I came out. There's something about Italian-style homes that I absolutely love. And so I wanted some kind of Italian something. And we searched provinces and cities and everything that we could kind of search to kind of have an Italian flair to it. And I'm not Italian. I just enjoy Italian architecture. And so I wanted to go that way. And so what we started doing is putting in words that mean something to Oklahoma into Google Translate. And so we put, we put thunderstorms and tornadoes, and we let Google Translate spit it back out Italian.
36:49 Mike Rowe? Noodling.
36:50 Speaker 02 And so red dirt is synonymous in Oklahoma. We have red dirt septic, we have red dirt. Red dirt is a thing because we have red dirt. So we typed in red dirt, and it spit out Maserosa. And I just enjoyed hearing it. It sounded so well. And so that's how we went. We went with Maserosa that direction. But what's funny is my Hispanic traits, because Spanish is so close to Italian. They say it the way it's supposed to be said. They roll the, they roll the R.
37:21 Mike Rowe? Maserosa.
37:22 Speaker 02 Maserosa, yes. To where if you're from Oklahoma, it's called Maserosa, is what, is what, is what, is what a lot of people call it. And that's not the name. And then, then same thing as my dad used Elite. We put in luxury in the name on purpose. And the start was a luxury home, was, hey, we want the home to be luxurious. Again, in the last year and a half of learning from this business, we now We like to tell people is, hey, yes, the home, we want to be luxurious. We also are talking about the process. We want the process to be luxurious and it's not just the things that we're supposed to do. We want to go above and beyond on some items and be thoughtful to our customer base.
38:07 Speaker 02 And so we haven't perfected it yet, but man, at about a year and a half, two years of really, really focusing on, hey, we want the process. It's not just the home. The home is supposed to be luxurious with the amount of money you're spending. Let's focus on something else being luxurious. And we've been working really hard at that.
38:24 Mike Rowe? How busy are you right now? How many homes are under construction?
38:27 Speaker 02 So we got during the prime of COVID, when interest rates dropped, we got up to 20 to 22 of these homes that that were actively under construction. During that time is when we realized we needed to make a shift to customer service because we were building the homes and we were doing the homes well. We were not servicing the customer, just like you said, Mike, of people being like, man, you know, the house is good, but I didn't enjoy the process. And about two years ago, I set a goal, we'll never do more than 10 to 12 active construction jobs. So we have 12 right now and I cap it and we will create a waiting list.
39:08 Speaker 02 If people really want it, but I have made a point as the owner that the customers will be served a certain type of way. And the only way to serve the customer is as at a max of 12, 12 homes to be going under construction at one time.
39:26 Mike 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.
40:08 Mike Rowe? I'm talking about AI proof, six-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
40:51 Mike Rowe? into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. See, that's a lesson, man. That is a lesson. It's got to do with, you know, getting over your skis and biting off more than you can chew. It's why there are so many metaphors for the same thing. My favorite, you know, John Rich, country music guy?
41:19 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
41:20 Mike Rowe? So John told me something a couple of years ago. I was over at his place in Nashville.
41:28 Mike Rowe? It was the middle of the night and I'd just come out with some whiskey named after my granddad and he's got this whiskey named for his grandmother. Well, it's not named for her, but it was inspired by her. She had her pictures on it and everything else. Redneck Riviera. Redneck Riviera was not his grandmother's name. I was gonna say. But we're just sitting around sipping some of the whiskey and playing and singing songs for each other. And I asked him if he had any advice, what had he learned from the whiskey business? And he was like, oh, Mike Rowe. He calls me Mike Rowe. He's just, he's one of those guys. Mike Rowe, you know, I'll tell you, I learned something from the whiskey business. Same thing I learned in the music business. You got to service your distribution.
42:10 Mike Rowe? I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, look, it's not hard making whiskey. It's not difficult selling whiskey. What's, what's tough is servicing the people who buy it from you and who sell it for you. And supporting their efforts and being there. And he just said, just be careful, you know? Don't get more of it out there than you can manage after the fact. And I'd, I'd really never thought of it that way. It's just a bottle of whiskey, you know? It's just a bunch of brick and mortar. It's just a horse trailer. It's just a gutter on the side of the house. But you can screw up any business by leaning into one part of it at the expense of something else.
42:55 Mike Rowe? And then you're out of whack and then you're in trouble.
42:58 Speaker 02 That's right. That's exactly right. And coming from a manufacturing background of my dad, I was so, it was product driven. And the writing on the wall of, yes, the product matters, but how the customer feels matters too, was so foreign to me. It was so foreign and then getting to see how important it is to take care of these customers. He's exactly right. You, if I service these customers, they will take care of us. Building the house is building the house. And after doing this since 2011, I can build the house. That part of it is easy. It is servicing the customer that is, is become so important. But also that's, I love that you, that you're hanging out with John Rich.
43:41 Speaker 02 Cause oddly enough, my wife and I, uh, his, uh, song with Big and Rich, Lost in This Moment, was our wedding song. That's what we danced to.
43:48 Mike Rowe? No kidding.
43:49 Speaker 02 Yep, that's what we danced to.
43:51 Mike Rowe? He and I wrote a song for Christmas a couple of years ago called Santa Claus Got A Dirty Job. And, uh, recorded it and we've been friends ever since. But yeah, man, it's funny. This is one more Oklahoma thing, you know? It's like, go figure. So obviously the thing that I'm most passionate about is what I'm guessing is the biggest problem you face.
44:14 Mike Rowe? Skilled labor.
44:16 Speaker 02 Yep.
44:17 Mike Rowe? How bad is it in Oklahoma? And talk about, what was it? Build My Future? Is that the thing you're involved with out there?
44:23 Speaker 02 Build My Future is what I'm involved in. Yeah, so I, this year, I am the president of our local home builders association. So Central Oklahoma Home Builders Association. And this will be our fourth or fifth year as an association that we have put on Build My Future. And our goal is to get as many kids open to the idea of going into the trades as possible. We're starting with high schoolers. Our goal is to start getting down into middle school and elementary school. Cause you know, they may be too far gone by high school.
44:57 Mike Rowe? Sure.
44:57 Speaker 02 But we're to of really introducing this. And you just really nailed it on something a while back ago. We, the paths that can be taken in the trades. So many kids don't know. They just don't know. And so we put on basically a big show where our vendors and our trades are out at a big facility at our state fairgrounds. So our electrician is there and he's got a board to where kids can make up plugs. Brick layers are there showing them how to lay brick. Concrete companies are there showing them how to unload concrete out of a truck, how to do flat work. HVAC work in our local trades, we asked them to do this.
45:42 Speaker 02 And I was standing next to the electrician's booth and it was just unbelievable because they put up how much you, you make an hour starting and then once you become a journeyman and all of this, right?
45:55 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
45:55 Speaker 02 And it was so informative to these kids, cause these kids are like, hold on, I can make 22 bucks an hour if I like go to Vo-Tech and then come here. And the owner of the electrician company said, no, I'm Vo-Tech. You come work for me for $22 an hour and I teach you how to become an electrician, why you're making $22 an hour. And it goes all the way up to their, their project managers of this electrician company make six figures a year with health insurance and, and all of these things. And these kids, watching these kids walk by, their, their minds were blown.
46:31 Mike Rowe? Blown.
46:32 Speaker 02 Blown that that's what it takes of, oh, I can just come to work and. So we are really, really pushing this as a home builders association and it is really big for us. And the reason why is you're right, it's bad. The skilled trade base and the lack thereof is bad. What you're really having is you're having an extremely skilled trade base that's getting older. My tile setter is in his 60s. He goes through younger people so quickly because they don't want to show up five days a week. They don't want to be as skilled at laying the tiles he does and he has to let them go. And that's
47:13 Speaker 02 really what we're seeing is we're seeing this age gap that you're starting to get real weary of, of wait, my good trades are in their 50s and 60s and this is really hard work. And you're looking at what's coming down the pipe, Mike, and nothing is what it feels like. It feels like nothing's coming down the pipe.
47:33 Mike Rowe? Look, if it were just you, one luxury home builder in the middle of Oklahoma, worried about this thing, you know, you could chalk it up to geography or bad luck or any number of things. It's everywhere, man. I, I've been to every single state. I've talked to hundreds of people who do what you do. And I can't overstate it. I try not to get on my soapbox about it because I'm just a broken record, but I feel like at this point, somebody needs to ring an alarm. Precisely for the reason you said, the math is just not sustainable. Every year, five retire and two replace them. Although I'm told it's less than that now. It's like 1.5 against five. Okay. So, so A, when does it go splat? Like, when does it
48:18 Mike Rowe? impact your business to the point where you just have to cut back further and further and further? And how do we fix it?
48:26 Speaker 02 Where it feels like we're going splat, right? It feels like the demand is out there to do more than 10 or 12 of these units, but the capacity wasn't there. That was the problem. The capacity was not there. It feels like the demand is out there and the capacity just is not out there for skilled labor. And I feel like we're hitting that roadblock and you're right, it's, it's funny. Because I'm a part of a builder 20 group, which is a part of the National Association of Home Builders. And you're with like kind builders, but in different parts of the country. When these larger metros, Atlanta, Columbus, you were seeing this trade shortage well before COVID. Like 2016, 2017, these guys were crying about it, pretty much.
49:10 Speaker 02 I call it crying because we didn't have that problem. We're so close to Texas, which is so close to Mexico, that we had a very good Hispanic trade base that we weren't. I was like, no, we're not having that problem. And then, kind of like you talked about with COVID on time, COVID came through, things heated up. And then all of a sudden, you're looking around and now our part of the country is like everybody else. You're just like, wait, where'd everybody go? Where'd they go? And I think that COVID had so many of them, that timeframe had so many of them. Maybe not go back to work. Well, you know, we're 60, as I'm telling you, they're already older. We're 60, no reason to go back to work. And so it's like it put it on a time warp.
49:54 Speaker 02 Like one day you're just short and it almost feels like even though we've been doing this for five years as an organization, that really the seeds that we're going to sow are years and years away. If we're getting in front of high schoolers now, we're still five, 10 years away from these guys making it through apprenticeship and becoming skilled labor. And that's what's scary as an owner of a home building company.
50:19 Mike Rowe? I bet it is. And as a guy who lives in a home, it's scary for me because, right? It's like food, clothing, shelter, the essentials. The essentials are being directly impacted by what feels like a paucity of work ethic, but also a real lack of enthusiasm for the opportunities. And I'll tell you the one that worries me more. You guys are neck and neck, but it's the energy industry.
50:47 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
50:48 Mike Rowe? Right? And so back to Oklahoma. I've been working with Continental Energy in Oklahoma and OERB now for the last, I don't know, three years or so. And this year, their whole campaign is really just designed to tap Oklahomans on the shoulder and say, hey, we got a lot to be proud of here. Well, I think we're the fourth largest provider of energy in the country. And so much of our healthcare, so much of our educational system is paid for by this industry.
51:16 Speaker 02 That's right.
51:16 Mike Rowe? Uh, well, this year, we're, we're doing that in conjunction with MicroWorks and the trades because, man, everybody's hiring in the energy industry in Oklahoma. And it feels almost as desperate as your industry. So, yeah, I just filmed at Central Tech. I don't know if you're familiar with that. I'm drawing a blank on the name of the town. It's right in the middle of the state. But they're doing so many things right. And it's all focused on jobs in energy, not entirely, but so much of it. And I just wonder if there's a solution like that that's more focused on the building trades specifically.
51:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, and that's basically what we're doing with Build My Future, which is how you and I really connected. Yeah, we connected talking about digs and through digs. But when we were talking after, you were talking about MicroWorks and we were talking about Build My Future. And, and you're right, it's the enthusiasm that's lacking because I could be wrong, but I feel like it really started in the eighties. Maybe it was a little bit of the seventies, but definitely the eighties, the push of you have to go to college. You have to go to college. You have to go to college. And it really started pushing, no, you can't, don't go be a welder. Don't go be an electrician. You need to go to college. And there is nothing wrong with college. I went to college. But I don't believe that everybody needs to go to college. And we're
52:42 Speaker 02 pushing so many kids to go to college. And we're more or less also telling them, no, you have to go to college. And the trades are beneath college, is what it feels like we have been pushing out into schools and things of that nature. And it's just not true. It's not true. The trades can give you an extremely good lifestyle. It allows you to do stuff with your hands. It allows you to look at work that you've completed and there's just a lack of enthusiasm. It feels like of like, no, this is, you're really accomplishing something and you can for 20 years, if you're a framer, drive by houses and say, I helped build that. I framed that house. I was a framer and look at that and
53:26 Speaker 02 I mean, heck, I'll tell you what, I would much rather do that than when you get into some of these businesses, you realize on the white collar side of jobs, you're a glorified emailer. You email, you email and do zoom calls all day. I don't know if there's any enthusiasm, at least for me, for that to where if I can go out to a job site and be a part of creating something. And I just feel like there needs to be a push nationally of, no, the trades are not beneath. It is not for a lesser than. It is something that you can do something with your hands and you can always go by and be like, I helped build that. You was a lot and I was a part of making it that.
54:02 Mike Rowe? I was just about to say it. You're sitting right in front of the most compelling evidence there is. And really, you know, it's the answer I typically give when people say, what did you really learn from 350 dirty jobs? What does that group of workers know that the rest of us have either forgotten or just don't get exposed to? And that's my answer. What you just said, it's the satisfaction of finishing something. And it's the, it's the visual cue that you get every single day in the form of feedback that always lets you know how you're doing. This desk looks pretty much the same at five in the afternoon, at five in the morning. I, I look around, you know, it's always 2am in the studio. You never really know
54:48 Mike Rowe? how things are going until the producer starts waving at you. It's like, wrap it up, man. You've been talking two hours. But with so many dirty jobs and with every skilled trade, I know. You don't really need somebody over your shoulder telling you how you're doing. You know, you know exactly how you're doing all of the time for better or worse. And that's the other thing that the kids don't know. They don't know you can make 150 grand a year welding. And they don't know what it feels like to truly finish a thing and then take some level of pride in that. Final point, too, it's, it's not just that they don't know it.
55:30 Mike Rowe? And I don't want to make this political, but you'll remember a few years ago when that whole, no, you didn't build that. Was in the headlines. I guess it was Obama. Who was kind of responding to the idea that, no, no. You didn't do it. It's always a team effort. It's never just you. And, you know, a lot of people bristled at that. I wonder why?
55:58 Mike Rowe? Were you offended by it? That idea that, no, you didn't build that house behind you. That happened as a result of some sort of amalgam, some sort of something else. Not you.
56:10 Speaker 02 It's a real narrow road to walk bigger. Yeah, I mean, here's the deal is a team of trades that helped me. I didn't shingle the house. But yeah, I mean, the way I feel is I built that. I was at this house seven days a week, calling these guys, making sure they were doing it correctly. Making sure that, that when things were wrong, we were getting it fixed. It didn't just happen. I didn't call the footing contractor on a cell phone from my house. And then the footing got installed miraculously the way I wanted it to.
56:46 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
56:46 Speaker 02 And so, yeah, I do remember that of you didn't build that business and you didn't build that. And yeah, that's a bristling thing when you're on the side of entrepreneurship. And there are so many things that I love about entrepreneurship, but it is like everything else in the world. It's a give and a take. It's a full blown give and a take.
57:04 Mike Rowe? Somewhere in this cluttered mess of an office, I have a, a pipe. That I held on to, it was sent to me by a woman whose welding certification we paid for and uh and it's it's really just like a a T. It's beautifully welded. It's like textbook welded and it came with a couple of pictures of her doing the work and a little note that said, look what I did, you know, right? And I I just loved it. Look what I did. Of course, somebody galvanized the pipe. Of course, somebody shipped it. Of course, of course, of course, of course, we all know that. But to be able to revel
57:48 Mike Rowe? in the satisfaction, whether it's a simple weld or a better way to make a horse trailer or a better way to build a house or any of that, it's so important to elevate it and celebrate it and not just
58:03 Speaker 02 That's right.
58:03 Mike Rowe? to sand all the edges off. Same, same. Everybody's the same. It just it makes me tired to think of life that way.
58:11 Speaker 02 It does. It does. We're different. We're all different. I keep something still. It's out in a pot of ours and I keep it because when I started this, when I was building that house, I was officing out of the home office and we didn't even have an office chair. I sat on this uh wick uh kind of cross wick uh almost like an end table. It was hollow inside. I sat on that for two years at my desk where when I would go and I'd have to do bills and do stuff that I was learning from. And you're exactly right of like her sending you that pipe. Like, I remember where this started and I remember the effort that it took to get to where we are now, which is I don't have to sit on a wick hollow
58:56 Speaker 02 thing, but it didn't just happen miraculously. Now, there were definitely breaks along the way, but there's a lot of sacrifices of of kids, you know, basketball practice that starts at 5:00 PM that you can't get to when you're out here and you're building something.
59:11 Mike Rowe? Speaking of basketball, did you play? As I recall, you you must be like 6'5" or something.
59:16 Speaker 02 6'5" I did. Basketball was my sport of choice. It was. Yep. Played through high school. Signed a letter of intent to play at an NAIA college in Oklahoma. Uh, it was a smaller basketball school, but NAIA, NAIA basketball is very competitive. Showed up for the summer, played against these guys and said, I was not meant to be here. These, these guys, these guys are, you know, in, in high school, you can be good by pure effort. Right? You can be good by pure effort and I gave a lot of effort and you show up to college and there has to be effort and athleticism and skill. And I was looking at this, I was like,
59:58 Speaker 02 oh no, no, no, these guys are different. I learned real quick that I better just get an education rather than, uh, fool around and try to ride the bench.
1:00:07 Mike Rowe? It's funny too, you know, you go through your life, you're six, five, you're typically the tallest guy in the room and then you're not.
1:00:14 Speaker 02 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Not by a long shot. And what's crazy now is that my height, you know, if I wanted to be an NBA player, I'd be a point guard at six, five. It's wild, but yeah, basketball was my, basketball was my sport of choice to play, but, uh, football was my sport of choice to watch. I enjoy watching football. I enjoyed the most playing basketball.
1:00:35 Mike Rowe? But I think we can agree that, uh, fishing is still, uh, quite a thrill when the fish are biting. Uh, but very different when they're not. By the way, uh, your wife is in this business with you too, right?
1:00:49 Speaker 02 She is, she is.
1:00:51 Mike Rowe? That's kind of mandatory if you're a, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, it certainly helps, I would think to have it a family affair, but she's on the real estate side?
1:01:00 Speaker 02 She's on the real estate side, which is perfect for us because, uh, we're both extremely type A, type A personalities. I think if she actually worked here in the office every day, we might have a little bit of a problem, but her being on the real estate side, we don't have to co-mingle every day, but when we do work together, we're great. And she is obviously, uh, much more put together than I am in all facets, looks.
1:01:29 Speaker 02 Verbally, brain wise, and she has helped me a ton because when I get offers or somebody says something, I will then fire back something that comes out of a construction worker's mouth. She will then put that into an email that is much more polite. Still saying what I said, but in a much more polite version, and that has helped me tremendously.
1:01:50 Mike Rowe? Emily, right?
1:01:51 Speaker 02 Emily, that's right.
1:01:53 Mike Rowe? Former, uh, was it Miss Oklahoma?
1:01:55 Speaker 02 She was Miss Oklahoma 2010.
1:01:58 Mike Rowe? Look at you, you're 6'5", former Miss Oklahoma, building 12 houses at any given time. Didn't know what you wanted to do. Your old man built elite trailers, and now here you are. You know, I mean, final point, this whole American dream thing, I don't know if we talked about it in Vegas, but so much of what an American dream is, is owning your own home. And 64, 65% of people today say it's dead. The American dream's dead, or it doesn't apply to them. I worry a lot about that, and I only bring it up because you're not only building it, you're, you're living it, man. You're a, you're just such a great example, I think, of getting into this space
1:02:41 Mike Rowe? in such a unique way. It just gives me hope that, you know, other people can hear, hear your story and say, why not, man? Why not get into this world?
1:02:51 Speaker 02 It's out there. It's out there to be had, and I don't know, because, you know, I feel like every generation busts on the generation below them of not having the same work ethic. And, and so I know that that goes around, but it is a, the dream is out there. The dream even for the generations before us, it wasn't given to you guys. You guys still had to go work for the American dream, and it's, I hate that people feel like the American dream is dead because it's not dead if you want to go take it. Go take it, and that's what I would tell people, and you don't have to know what you want to do. That's the, I'm a, I'm a prime example of that. I never grew up saying that I want to be a home builder. That was never my, that was never once a dream of mine, not once.
1:03:34 Speaker 02 And I did know that I enjoyed Business ownership because my dad was a business owner, but I didn't know what that was going to be. It could have been anything. And you're right. I just, I, I, that, I don't like that. I did not know that 64, 65% of people felt that the American dream was dead. That's a, that's kind of heartbreaking to hear, honestly.
1:03:54 Mike Rowe? Well, somehow or another, it must be connected to the lack of enthusiasm in the trades and somehow that's connected just to stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions and people just, just not knowing. So, look, I love what you're doing out there with the, the build my future thing. I think we share a lot of space on the old Venn diagram with MicroWorks and if history's any indicator, I'm going to be in Oklahoma again sometime in the next couple of months, reaching into some godforsaken hole, praying that nothing in there is going to bite me. But I'd love to do this in person next time.
1:04:31 Speaker 02 I would too. I would love to do it and hopefully we can meet up in Oklahoma when you're here. And I know we've tried once, well, with your team, we tried once and you were in and out and, and I would love to meet up because it is, it's such a, you're right. It's, it is a state with a pull to it. It has a magnetic pull and there's a lot of people that don't know it, but I mean, I was very good friends with a buddy that's from Canada and we have a minor league hockey team and he ended up here and guess what? He lives here. And that's the way it is. You end up in Oklahoma once and you have, you think about it a certain type of way, then you end up here a couple of times and you're like, man, I'm kind of intrigued by this place.
1:05:07 Mike Rowe? Uh, I assume there's a beautiful website filled with your handiwork somewhere. People could go if by chance they decide, you know what? Mike made Oklahoma sound pretty good and those homes are beautiful. Maybe we'll just move there and see if Nathan can't build us a place.
1:05:20 Speaker 02 There is. It's, uh, masarosa.com.
1:05:23 Mike Rowe? Better spelling.
1:05:24 Speaker 02 The M A S S A R O S S A dot com. And my marketing degree came out on the second S of the S, masarosa. The rosas only supposed to have one S, but it looked in balance. So I added a second S so that it was balanced and nobody knows the difference.
1:05:43 Mike Rowe? That's the perfect place to land the plane. Keep doing what you're doing, Nathan Walters. It's beautiful work and your story's terrific. I appreciate you sharing it.
1:05:51 Speaker 02 Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
1:05:54 Mike Rowe? Anytime. See you.
1:05:55 Speaker 02 All right, guys.
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