499: Ted Decker & Ian Cinnamon—Orbiting Home

What do a Home Depot employee and a satellite have in common? More than you might think. In this episode, Mike Rowe talks with two CEOs about the people and technology quietly building the future around us. First, Mike sits down with Ted Decker, CEO of The Home Depot, to talk about workforce development, the company's "inverted pyramid" philosophy—where frontline associates and customers sit at the top and management exists to support them—and why developing people from the ground up is central to the company's success. Decker also explains the story behind Home Depot's Kids Workshop program, which has introduced generations of young people to tools, building, and the satisfaction of making something with their own hands. Then Mike talks with Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree Ian Cinnamon, CEO and co-founder of Apex, a company tackling one of the space industry's biggest challenges: making satellites faster and at much greater scale. Cinnamon explains just how many aspects of everyday life depend on satellites—from communications and navigation to weather and national security—and why getting more capable spacecraft into orbit is becoming increasingly important. From the aisles of Home Depot to the edge of space, this is a conversation about building things, building people, and building what comes next. Shout out to our great sponsors K12.com/Rowe https://bit.ly/TWIHIxK12—Find a K12-powered school near you and see what's possible for your child with K12's Career and College Prep. ZipRecruiter.com/Rowe https://bit.ly/TWIHIxZipRecruiter—The recruiting site that really is the smartest way to hire. Post a job for FREE and find a qualified candidate in 24 hours. GoodRanchers.com/ROWE https://bit.ly/TWIHIxGoodRanchers—Sourcing 100% of their meat from American farms and ranches and delivering straight to your door. Get $50 off anything on their site and get DOUBLE the FREE meat with every order when you start a plan. CamelCityMill.com https://bit.ly/TWIHICamelCityMill—The last work sock you'll ever need. 100% American made with a 10-year warranty. Use code ROWE for 10% off Mike's favorite work sock.

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

• 0:04Mike Rowe?

  Hey guys, I'm Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It, and this episode is called Orbiting Home. Orbiting Home, because I have two guests. And the first guest, Ted Decker, the CEO of The Home Depot. And the other guy is Ian Sineman. You might not know that name, but he's the CEO of a company called Apex that's mass-producing satellites. And both of these men are going to impact your life, if they haven't already. I met them at the Reagan Library. I was there a couple of weeks ago for the Reagan Economic Forum. Regular listeners will recall, I went there to listen to Scott Bessant and then interview him. And I'm so glad I did. His episode was very well-received.

• 0:49Mike Rowe?

  I learned a lot, not just from him, but from lingering and crashing a few of those breakout sessions and listening to some other luminaries hold forth as to what was vital and critical about the future of our economy and our workforce and some other issues that are interesting to me and relevant to my foundation. So, since I had the cameras there, I invited them over for a chat. Chuck wasn't there, so I guess maybe that's the trade-off, right? Two guests, no producer. I'll do my best without him. Ted Decker is up first, the CEO of The Home Depot. Why should you listen to this? Because Ted knows things you don't.

• 1:30Mike Rowe?

  He sees things coming, in fact, before a lot of economic prognosticators anywhere, because he's got a front-row seat to massive amounts of consumer behavior. It's so interesting, the way he looks at the world through the lens of this company, which, by the way, is bigger than many cities. They employ close to half a million associates. So, he's uniquely positioned. He has a great take on the economy, but more importantly, to me anyway, he's doing something to help reinvigorate the skilled trades on a national level. Home Depot does a lot of great stuff in this way, and, incidentally, the episode's not sponsored by them in any way, shape, or form.

• 2:12Mike Rowe?

  In fact, Lowe's is doing a lot of great stuff as well in this space. And I only point it out because we need the government to close the skills gap. We can't do it without them. But the government alone is not enough to make it happen either. We need companies like Home Depot with programs like Path to Pro, which you'll learn about in just a couple of minutes, with a whole bunch of other stuff as well. So, strap in. It's a normal-length episode, but it's two conversations. Ted Dekker is first from Home Depot, and then you're gonna love Ian Sineman, very spicy he is, in an episode called Orbiting Home, right after this.

• 2:58Mike Rowe?

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• 3:42Mike Rowe?

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• 4:34Mike Rowe?

  I really appreciate you doing this.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Great to be with you, Mike.

• 4:38Mike Rowe?

  Great to be with you, Ted. I feel like sometimes my schedule is so bad, no one could possibly understand it. And then I, you know, I meet guys like you, and I can't even imagine on a day-to-day basis... How many employees now at Home Depot?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  About 475,000.

• 4:53Mike Rowe?

  There are so many cities with so fewer people in them. Let's just start with, how do you manage you?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we're all about the stores. I mean, it's not about me. Our whole leadership principle is...

• 5:06Mike Rowe?

  Well, for the next half-hour, it's pretty much about you.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  No, no, no. The great thing about our company is we are truly all about the associates in the store. So, we don't have a headquarters. We have a store support center, and our leadership principle is literally the inverted pyramid. So you think of most organizations, you have a pyramid with, you know, the ground troops, if you will, on the bottom, and work your way up to the executive staff.

• 5:29Mike Rowe?

  Is that what I've seen on, like, the aprons?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  That's on the aprons.

• 5:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  And our founders, you know, Bernie and Arthur and Ken, they literally inverted that pyramid.

• 5:37Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And on top's the customer. Everything's for the customer. We're customer-backed, and then the frontline associates are underneath the customer, then staff, and then at the very, very bottom is the executive staff. And we exist to support the associates so they can take care of the customers.

• 5:55Mike Rowe?

  So, I mean, it's not just lip service. As the guy who's running the entire operation, you see yourself at the very bottom of an upside-down pyramid.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's truly how we operate. When you ask a question like, you know, "How do you think about you?" or "What do you do about you?", I mean, that's not what we think about. We think about the associates, and we think about the customer. Bernie Marcus always said, "If you take care of the associates, the associates will take care of the customer, and everything else will take care of itself." And that's what we focus on. We focus on our associates so they can take care of the customer.

• 6:25Mike Rowe?

  Well, the reason I wanted to talk to you honestly is there's so many big brains here, and there's so many people... Nobody's got a crystal ball, but a lot of smart minds are taking a very long view, and they're trying to make sense of the issues of our time. And it just strikes me that because of the company you run and because of the products that, by and large, you're known for, you probably learn more from the consumer and consumer behavior, I'm guessing, than most economists do in real time. Am I close?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. We see what people are doing every day. You know, why are they coming to this store? They're coming to this store for a reason. They're fixing something, they're improving something, they're dreaming how to improve their lives. I mean, this is truly home and hearth, the American home. And if you're coming to a Home Depot, you're generally coming for a purpose. Sure, some hobbyists are, you know, they're gonna look for the new tool, but generally, people are coming. Something's broken, something needs to be fixed, something needs to be repaired, or I'm improving. I'm improving hearth and home. So, we see customer behavior. I mean, we're blessed. Our founders created one of the great business models of all time.

• 7:38Mike Rowe?

  One of the great brands of all time.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  One of the great brands of all time. When you think of the business model, when we started in retail in 1979, opened the first two stores in Atlanta, the whole model was, we're gonna put selection of product, amazing selection of product, we're gonna put service, and we're gonna put value all under one roof. Now, even today, most retailers, you can get assortment, you get a value, but you're not necessarily gonna get service. Or you're gonna get great product in service, but you're gonna pay for it. The beauty of Home Depot was they put amazing product assortment at everyday, low price, great value, with that service from the orange aprons, we call them "orange apron associates." So they create this incredible business model.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And then they created it in an amazing space, US Housing. I mean, it is one of the biggest markets in the world.

• 8:29Mike Rowe?

  You said this morning on a panel, tell me if I got it right, but the housing sector alone is probably the biggest chunk of our GDP.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  So, housing alone as an asset class is $50 trillion. I think government debt is something like $38 trillion. So, I mean, I don't know, maybe global equities would be bigger? There are very few asset classes that are bigger than US housing. Then as a contribution to GDP, every year, depending on how broadly you define housing, so if you include rents and utility payments, et cetera, associated with that house, it's 15% to 18% of GDP. It's an incredibly important part of the US economy.

• 9:12Mike Rowe?

  And how important is it? I guess maybe the turnover is what I mean to talk about like I know you're concerned about an overall lack of housing in the country and I want to talk about how that goes hand in glove with the current labor shortage.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:27Mike Rowe?

  But the business of selling a house and buying a house, it seems like so much of what you guys do is hand in glove with that because people are going to fix up the thing they sell and then they're going to mess with the thing they buy. It never stops.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  No, and so usually how there's like one hundred and thirty five billion housing units and historically about four and a half percent of that turns every year. You know, it goes up and down, but like clockwork, you're turning about four and a half percent of the housing stock. And just like you said, when someone's going to sell their house, they're going to fix it up, all those nagging things that you've lived with for years, your realtor says, hey, you got to fix that up. And you sell the house and then the new owner buys it. They want to change the paint color. They want to change flooring. They redo a bathroom, maybe redo the kitchen. So it's an incredible multiplier of activity when there's housing turnover. Right now, housing turnover unfortunately is at a forty year low. So that four and a half percent

• 10:21Speaker 01

  average, we're like three, just at three percent right now. So that's a million and a half, two million houses not turning every year. And that suppresses GDP because you're just not getting all that activity.

• 10:34Mike Rowe?

  So as a single issue guy, not that I'm running for anything, but I always try and come back to how is workforce impacting that? How is it impacting anything macroeconomic that you would want to talk about? But most importantly, what is Home Depot doing internally?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Mike Rowe?

  To try and close what feels like an ever widening skills gap?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  So we, we understand that there is a skilled trades gap in the country. I mean, there are different figures out there that right today were short three hundred thousand, maybe as much as four hundred thousand skilled trades. I think of plumbers and electricians and carpenters and HVAC technicians. So we're short and we see that. And obviously in our industry, trades is vital for new home construction, but also repairing an HVAC unit, putting on a new roof. I mean, we distribute roofing material, we distribute, you know, drywall, you need tradesmen to put up the drywall, et cetera. So we're investing at Home Depot. Our foundation is principally committed to veterans' causes. And we can talk about that. We um.

• 11:40Mike Rowe?

  Bernie was very passionate about that.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  We committed seven, well, we first started off with fifty million dollar commitment twelve odd years ago, and then we went to a hundred and we went to two fifty. We're now at seven hundred and fifty million dollar commitment to support veteran causes. And we're six hundred plus million on our way to satisfy that goal.

• 12:01Mike Rowe?

  What do you do like, like in terms of hiring?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Well, most of it is homeless vets. So on any given night, there are thirty five thousand veterans without a roof over their head. And we just think that's, you know, we got to take care of our veterans, people that preserve.

• 12:15Mike Rowe?

  Let's just call it what it is, man. It's a scandal.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  It's not good. We stepped in and we work with loads of agencies. When you think of, you know, Team Rubicon and Tunnel to Towers, we partner with these people to provide housing for catastrophic wounded vets so they can live independently. So that's our principal focus on veteran causes. But then a number of years ago, we said, this trade shortage needs to be addressed as well. So we pledged an incremental fifty million dollars that we were going to complete by twenty twenty eight. We've already blown by the fifty million dollars. And there we're working with third parties like the Home Builder Institute to train folks to get their certificates and licenses for, you know, again, electricians, plumbers, et cetera.

• 13:02Mike Rowe?

  Do you think the licensure and the certification protocols that are currently in place are overwrought? Is it taking us too long to train an electrician or a plumber? And so are you guys doing something internally to fast track it?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  I'm not sure what the curriculum would be from the independent certification boards, but what we're doing internally, we have a whole program that's on our website. It's native to us. We call Path to Pro. And what we do is two things. We work with candidates who want to become pros and we help them get a resume together, you know, take a picture. They publish this on our website. We've had hundred and seventy thousand, I think, pros come through our website. They take preliminary, it's not a full certification, but they can take courses to get just the basics to see what might I be interested in.

• 13:58Mike Rowe?

  Where are the courses?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  That's all on our website. So you can go on to Home Depot, Path to Pro.

• 14:03Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  And you can be a, you know, high school graduate, someone trying to change career, and you can start taking coursework, learning about the trades, put a resume together, get, you know, your profile loaded on HomeDepot.com, Path to Pro. And then our pro customers have access to that and they, you know, read the bios and then direct, you know, reach out to these candidates and hire them. So that's what we're doing internally.

• 14:30Mike Rowe?

  You're building a pipe internally?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, internally.

• 14:32Mike Rowe?

  So is it like a pre apprenticeship thing?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of more a pre apprenticeship thing. And then you asked about the outside certifications. I mean, again, we've blown by fifty million dollars that we've already provided for the training. We do that in a number of ways. Again, we give to outside partners who actually do the work. We're on a number of military bases. So I think we're up to like nine military bases where we work with the Home Builder Institute. And they actually set up active functioning classrooms on the military base. So servicemen are transitioning out of the military. They can go take carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and get certifications. So when they transition out of the military, they can go and have an enabled job.

• 15:18Mike Rowe?

  It's so great, Ted. Have you seen or heard of Workshop for Warriors down in San Diego?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I've not heard of that, but one of our biggest installments is in San Diego.

• 15:28Mike Rowe?

  This was a guy, H, right, Taylor? It was, yeah, he's a Navy guy and he came out and he was a medic and he just was so frustrated with the number of people he saw who were just falling through the cracks. He owns like three, not owns, but has rented out blocks down in San Diego and he's trained thousands of men and women, mostly men, in the welding trade. And his success ratio is extraordinary and he's helping build like, I'd call him maybe a vet friendly on ramp.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:04Mike Rowe?

  Into companies like yours. And so my question, if there is one, I guess, is to say, do you think the feds can close this gap? Personally, I think we need them involved, but it feels to me like it's going to be Home Depot and pardon me, it's going to be Lowe's and it's going to be FedEx and UPS.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  And Milwaukee Tools and DeWalt Tools.

• 16:23Mike Rowe?

  Exactly. And Black and Becker. They, it just feels to me like we're this close

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:29Mike Rowe?

  to some stealthy memo going out to all the C suites that says, look, guys, we need a rising tide.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we all get the short, if it's three hundred, four hundred thousand short today, it's going to be three million short in a few short years. And then it's going to grow even more as the current pros age out and retire. I think one super important thing that the feds are doing is Pell Grants. And the one big beautiful bill, you know, Pell Grants was always for, you know, four year college, two year associate degree college. They've extended Pell Grants to short term trade schools. It has to be administered through the state. So we've got to get the states on board with this federal money that you can get a Pell Grant to, you know, we were chatting the other day about, you know, if it's twenty five hundred dollars, five thousand dollars to go and take a twelve, thirteen week

• 17:22Speaker 01

  course to get certified. Not everyone has that, you know, much money upfront. So you can get a Pell Grant now, starting July first, to pay for your trade school. That's huge. Funding is huge, but yeah, companies have to be involved. Military transition is a huge avenue for these trades folks. We're doing our, you know, thing on our, you know, own digital properties to, to get involved. We're also very active now in high schools as shop is coming back. I mean, it's a thing and these schools don't have the tools. So part of our program, that fifty million plus in giving that we now are doing,

• 18:01Speaker 01

  we will gift the school that's setting up a shop class, all the tools they need to establish that shop class.

• 18:14Mike Rowe?

  What's the most important quality in a great employee? You can make a case, I guess, for work ethic, or attitude, or trustworthiness, or promptness, any number of things, I guess. Personally, I'd go with initiative. Like the Lyft driver who carries your luggage to the door, right? Or the grocery clerk who doesn't just tell you where the thing is, but walks you down the aisle and hands you the product you're looking for. Or the doctor who calls you to explain your test results personally. If you're hiring and you want to encourage that sort of initiative, ZipRecruiter has a pretty clever way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your job.

• 18:58Mike Rowe?

  Not just why they're qualified, but why they're actually interested. It's a great way to allow the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition, and a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free, ziprecruiter.com/row. They're the number one hiring site on G2, in large part because of this new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try them for free, ziprecruiter.com/row. That's ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  ZipRecruiter.com/row.

• 19:46Mike Rowe?

  So how do you quantify success? And what does it look like through the lens of this pathway to pro?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Well, we need, like I said, we've had 170-odd thousand pros, or future pros, engage on the site. So we're looking at engagement levels, and we're looking at people that go on and get full training and curriculum, get their certificates. Another group we're working with is both the Boy Scouts and the Boys and Girls Clubs. So we have programs similar like to the high school classes I told you about, where we are working with the Boy Scouts, where Camp Woodruff, which is one of their biggest camps in Atlanta, greater Atlanta, where they're going to put together kind of a DIY badge program.

• 20:28Mike Rowe?

  It's great.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Will sponsor, and again, provide the tools to the camp. We have so much curriculum and know-how on do-it-yourself so that the Boy Scouts can work through a badge program. Now, there won't be a certified pro when they come out, but again, so much more training.

• 20:44Mike Rowe?

  It's a path to it.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  A path to pro. And then the same thing with the Boys and Girls Clubs, where we're working with them. Boys and Girls Clubs are based in Atlanta. We're working very closely with them to do a similar program, to buy tools and curriculum so they can start training their kids who are interested in this.

• 21:02Mike Rowe?

  How important do you reckon organizations like the Boy Scouts are to the country? I think of Skills USA, I think of 4H.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:09Mike Rowe?

  I think of a lot of...

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts.

• 21:12Mike Rowe?

  It's the connected tissue.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 21:14Mike Rowe?

  Did you ever pass with the Scouts yourself?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Not, I mean, I went up to Wee Blow, so...

• 21:20Mike Rowe?

  That's as far as Taylor got.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Not the Eagle Award, for sure. But my wife was super active. She, both my daughters, did Girl Scouts, and she did each of their troops through 12th grade. So this group of girls, you know, 15-odd of them in each troop, stayed together through high school. I think she told me she did something like 75 different weekend trips with those two troops. So I was there supporting my wife in her pursuit. I was only a Wee Blow.

• 21:52Mike Rowe?

  Well, did I hallucinate this? I thought I saw you on the interwebs at some golden something award that the Boy Scouts had.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:59Mike Rowe?

  Sponsored.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  That was their sort of annual luncheon.

• 22:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  And fundraiser in Atlanta.

• 22:07Mike Rowe?

  They called me for one of those once. The schedules hadn't worked out.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, terrific, yeah.

• 22:11Mike Rowe?

  The Boy Scouts saved my life.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah? So how far did you go?

• 22:14Mike Rowe?

  Oh, well, come on, I went all the way, dude.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah? All right.

• 22:18Mike Rowe?

  I'm what you call a distinguished Eagle Scout.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Distinguished Eagle Scout, what's that?

• 22:23Mike Rowe?

  Well, what happens is, you get your Eagle, and then you go about your life, and then you get super busy, and you kind of forget what you did as a teenager. And then you wind up with this goofy show called Dirty Jobs, and then suddenly people are paying attention to you. And then you start getting letters from parents of kids who are going to get their Eagle Award, asking you to send a congratulatory letter, which is kind of customary, right? What you do to be a distinguished Eagle Scout is you send out 50,000 of those.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 22:52Mike Rowe?

  Which I did. And I just couldn't do it anymore, just 50,000.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 22:58Mike Rowe?

  But, you know, the reason I did it is because I really do believe that our skilled workforce is in the eighth grade right now. And if we don't make a more persuasive case to them for the opportunities that exist, we're going to be chasing our tail. I think Home Depot does that, whether by design or by accident. The mere presence of a giant depot.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:23Mike Rowe?

  Filled with stuff that is waiting to be fashioned into something useful.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:29Mike Rowe?

  It's so American.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Well, think of our Kids Workshop. We started Kids Workshop, I think, 25-odd years ago. Every Saturday of every month, every store in the country has a Kids Workshop. And we have stores that will have up to 1,000 kids every Saturday, and we get a kit that they build every month.

• 23:48Mike Rowe?

  Why don't I know this?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  You've never seen this? Go to a Home Depot.

• 23:51Mike Rowe?

  No, no, why don't I turn on the TV and see footage of kids in your work?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Great idea. We post some of this, obviously not enough.

• 23:59Mike Rowe?

  Who's in charge of your media? Who's in charge of Ted Decker's media over there?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Social media. We do post with FIFA, we're big sponsors of FIFA. For the first Saturday in June, the kit is going to be a goal.

• 24:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  In a FIFA goal, in a little mascot. So everyone out in the country, hundreds of thousands of FIFA goal kits will be the project for the first Saturday in June.

• 24:22Mike Rowe?

  I think it's terrific, and I'm fascinated by what the Fortune 500 are doing, again, individually to try and address this. My hope is that somehow all that can get triangulated and articulated. Because it's a really hopeful message.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Incomes people can make, the independence of lifestyle, and incomes you can make as a skilled trade. I mean, I think we clearly over-index to the only path to, you know, the middle class in the United States was a four-year degree.

• 24:56Mike Rowe?

  Like, the most expensive path is the only... That's the best path for the most people, right? I mean, how can that even be?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  But, I mean, you know, we've talked about data centers, and the amount of wage people can make in HVAC and electrical right now in particular with the data center build-out is absolutely incredible.

• 25:16Mike Rowe?

  People don't believe it. I tell them, and they kind of believe it because they still sort of like me, but until they hear it from the horse's mouth. Like, we really have to show them. That's why I just, I'm convinced of that. The evidence demands a verdict, and the evidence is on our side.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:31Mike Rowe?

  And I think the country is, like, they just really, truly need to see the good work that you guys are doing and so many others.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Well, it's growing. We're making tractions, others are getting involved. Trade interest is growing, and as we said, whether it's a kid workshop, the Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, getting shop back in school. I did shop, I grew up in Northwest Pennsylvania. I love shop, I mean...

• 25:55Mike Rowe?

  Do you like Erie?

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Erie, PA, yeah. Right on the lake, Northwest PA. And, I mean, everyone did shop. And we did home ec, you know, econ, you know, household economics.

• 26:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  You know, all these great things that, you know, maybe learning how to balance a checkbook and understanding what an APR is on a mortgage or a car loan.

• 26:13Mike Rowe?

  Financial literacy?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, financial literacy is important as, you know, Bio 101.

• 26:18Mike Rowe?

  There's a great factory in Erie that makes like 80% of the drains in every bathroom in the country.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Zern.

• 26:25Mike Rowe?

  Zern?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Zern Industries, yeah.

• 26:28Mike Rowe?

  I spent...

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Every valve and drain in virtually every bathroom, yeah.

• 26:32Mike Rowe?

  Right here at the Reagan Library.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I just saw it.

• 26:35Mike Rowe?

  See, that's why I like you. Like, there are not a lot of guys here who would use the can and then look around and go, you know what? That's a Zern drain right there.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Erie, PA, absolutely.

• 26:44Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm encouraged to talk to you. Just a couple more quick questions.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Mike Rowe?

  How much? 10 minutes, perfect.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:49Mike Rowe?

  You mentioned do-it-yourself.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:52Mike Rowe?

  What do you think has happened to the do it yourself mentality in our country? Because I feel like part of, part of what your industry is saying, hey, don't put that fan up yourself. Get an expert. We've got the pros. And the other aspirational message is you can do this. Let's do it.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  And that, and again, that was the whole founding business model. You know, we taught the baby boomer generation, you know, the founders taught the baby boomer generation how to do it yourself. And there's this, this concern, every generation we look at and say, you know, is this going to be a do it for me? Or do it yourself?

• 27:30Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  What's interesting is, you know, remember 10, 15 years ago, everyone was going to rent everything. You know, it was going to be the rental. I think the millennials were going to rent. They weren't going to own a house, a zip car. They weren't going to own cars. There was even tools. They weren't going to, the dress run the runway and you weren't going to own anything. Well, that passed, you know, I mean, I think people were just delayed going into that, forming, you know, a household. You know, going into a home and I think it's the same sort of hysteria that every generation, oh, they're not going to be interested in do it yourself. But we, we find people are very interested. I mean, the millennials, you know, the whole maker, you know, movement, they're

• 28:08Mike Rowe?

  Huge.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  incredibly interested. So I just think we had a delay with the great financial crisis. People were delayed getting that job they wanted, living in the city they wanted to live in, and then forming a household. Once they got off the, you know, the couch in the basement of their parents' house

• 28:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  and got their home and, you know, early days, you don't have a lot of money and you, you do it yourself. You do your lawn, you, you paint and that's what we're trying to do is build confidence. You know, you do that first project, you do a painting, you hang a ceiling fan, you know, you change an electrical outlet. You learn how to, you know, throw the breaker off and work a little bit with, you know, electricity. And you just build that confidence and you go to the store, you know, every Saturday, three, four times every Saturday. When you're working on a project, we have knowledge. That's one of the things we're known for is know-how. Imparting that knowledge to the customer and taking them through the project and, and giving them confidence to do it yourself.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  And in this generation, I mean, Z, I mean, we don't see any indication that Gen Z won't be the same.

• 29:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, this is anecdotal, but in my little world, you know, Gen Z appears to have gotten the memo. They've done the math. They don't like being part of the $1.7 trillion in outstanding student debt. They are, whether it's Tik Tok or Reels, they're seeing people build things with their hands and getting paid for it. It's turning a tanker around. Like, these are perceptions that we're talking about. Which brings me back to the first question I should have followed up more on, but what, what have you learned from the consumer? That surprised you? Their habits that would have maybe preempted some other economic prognostication?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  So the consumer fundamentally has been incredibly resilient. I mean, they've had so much thrown at them, you know, and you just think of inflation and in oil and, and COVID, obviously. There's just been so much student loans, et cetera. But they have literally just powered through that. I mean, personal consumption expenditure is up, GDP is growing. There's great wealth effect from housing. The value of housing has gone up 50% since the end of 2019. Stock market's doing incredibly well. So there's been a lot of wealth generated in the stock market. So people are spending, people are resilient, engagement in home improvement is strong.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I mean, people are in the stores shopping. What we find is the large projects still haven't come back. So people repair something, people do a light touch up. When you get into something like demo and really doing a major project, you know, I'm going to do the master bath. I'm going to do a kitchen. I'm going to finally, you know, remodel that basement that, you know, get the wood paneling off from the seventies. That type of big project, there's, there's enough uncertainty out there. It's fine to spend on a week, long weekend. It's fine to spend on a nice dinner. It's fine to go. I mean, it's unbelievable. People, you know, buy, we were in a store yesterday and, and top selling

• 31:15Speaker 01

  live good was a pre-plotted $199, you know, patio container.

• 31:22Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So you think of that, I mean, I mean, I'd always plant my own containers

• 31:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  every spring, but that was the number one seller in the whole garden department was, yeah, I'll spend $199 to get her two for the other side of the front door because it's done for me. It looks beautiful. I'm never going to make it look like that myself. That's very different than saying, okay, I've got a ton of equity in my house. I think we're up to something like 11 trillion dollars of tappable equity that I'm going to go tap 25, $50,000 and do a major project.

• 31:54Mike Rowe?

  Start swinging a sledgehammer.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  That's still the one thing and we ask our customers, why is that? And it's just this general uncertainty. Yes, there's costs. Yes, there's inflation. Yes, there's some, some skilled trade, you know, labor availability, but that, that's actually diminished. Labor availability isn't that big of a deal right now. The biggest issue is just, do I feel comfortable right now to take on a big project like that? Or hey, we'll wait another year.

• 32:22Mike Rowe?

  Right. All right. Last question. The aliens come, they're here, they're curious, they walk into Home Depot.

• 32:30Mike Rowe?

  Which aisle do you show them?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Oh, power tools for sure.

• 32:33Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Oh, unbelievable.

• 32:35Mike Rowe?

  You want to put power tools in the hands of aliens?

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I just want to show them, hey, we're pretty sophisticated too. I mean, you now can get a cordless power tool with, you know, on a battery

• 32:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  with the same power and runtime to do an entire, you know, pro can do a total day's job on a job site. Don't need the electrical cord, don't need the, you know, the compressor.

• 32:58Mike Rowe?

  That's incredible, really.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  It's really incredible. I mean, we're now seeing, you know, breakers, we're seeing, you know, asphalt, you know, work crews at night, you know, cutting up the concrete to patch. Those now are cordless. You know, those giant concrete saws.

• 33:13Mike Rowe?

  So batteries, man. I mean, batteries, batteries, batteries.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, I could talk for you all day, but I know I can't. I've been to a bunch of presidential libraries. I think this is the best one.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable. Look at the setting.

• 33:27Mike Rowe?

  It's shocking and just the brain power walking around here, present company included, obviously. Thanks for making the time.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Thank you. Nice to see you again.

• 33:35Mike Rowe?

  Ted Decker runs a little mom and pop shop called The Home Depot. They're doing okay. Appreciate it.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike.

• 33:47Mike Rowe?

  All right. That's Ted Decker. Big thanks to him and my apologies to his people who were pacing with increasing agitation. Probably 15 minutes before we wrapped it up. He had to be someplace else important and I think I made him late and I'm sorry for that. But I should appreciate his time. Ian Sineman is up next. He's the co-founder and the CEO of Apex. And this company is going places and his take on the world is super interesting. In short, he's upended the aerospace industry by doing something super simple. He's treating satellites like they're cars and he's building them like the way Henry Ford built cars.

• 34:28Mike Rowe?

  This used to be a super bespoke, painfully slow science project, which is why we don't have nearly as many satellites in space as we could, or arguably as we should. Ian looked at that bottleneck and just said, let's mass produce them instead. He's an MIT grad. He built a brilliant AI weapon detection startup, sold that to Palantir, made a bunch of money. But instead of retiring to the beach, he took on the hardest manufacturing problem in space. And today his company commands a two, two and a half billion dollar valuation. He's scaling up America's industrial footprint to ensure we don't lose the new space race.

• 35:13Mike Rowe?

  Because it is a race and we're in it and the stakes are high. You'll be amazed at what your life would look like without satellites. And you'll be gobsmacked by what it's going to look like if Ian Sineman does what he is in the midst of doing. Here he is, right after this.

• 35:37Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago on the podcast, the stars aligned for one of my favorite sponsors, Good Ranchers. They just happened to be advertising on an episode that featured a renowned heart surgeon named Philip Evadia, who's on a mission to show Americans why meat is an absolutely imperative ingredient to a healthy diet and lifestyle. And the primary reason, he got his own diet under control and wound up losing a hundred pounds. Anyway, this very accomplished heart doctor made a very persuasive case that meat is medicine. And right after he made that case, we went to a commercial for Good Ranchers. As a result, you guys nearly crashed their website and Good Ranchers now has a whole lot of new customers, which is great. So if you're listening, Dr. Evadia, don't be surprised if you get a offer to be their spokesman.

• 36:22Mike Rowe?

  As for me, I'm not a heart doctor, but I can tell you, I've never eaten more meat in my life than I have in the last six years. I lost 40 pounds. I feel great. And today I get all my meat from Good Ranchers. And that's just the fact. Good Ranchers partners with local farmers and ranchers. They deliver a hundred percent American meat straight to your door. This is pasture raised, no antibiotics, no added hormones. It's the kind of quality you can actually feel good about serving to the people around your table. For a limited time, 50 bucks off your first Good Ranchers order. That means you can build your own box, starting as low as $129. Just visit goodranchers.com/mike, get $50 off anything on their site.

• 37:04Mike Rowe?

  You also get double the free meat with every order on top of the $50 you save when you start a plan today. Go to goodranchers.com/mike for American meat delivered, goodranchers.com/mike.

• 37:32Mike Rowe?

  Hi Ian Cinnamon.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 37:34Mike Rowe?

  How are you?

• 37:34Speaker 03

  I'm doing well. It's great to be here. It's beautiful, beautiful day to be here.

• 37:38Mike Rowe?

  It's so ridiculous. I mean, we should just turn around, gawk at it for a second, but that's that's amazing. Is this your first time at the Reagan Library?

• 37:44Speaker 03

  No, so we've been coming to the Reagan National Defense Forum for many years.

• 37:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  And then the Economic Forum, this is the second year, I've been here both. But I grew up in the area, so I grew up coming to this museum and getting to enjoy the view and it's lovely.

• 37:58Mike Rowe?

  You know, I mean, for people who have never been, how would you, like, how do you describe walking through a place like this? Does it hit you primarily as a, like, from a historical perspective or from a cultural perspective? Or, because you were very young when Reagan was in office.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  For me, the highlight was seeing Air Force One in the middle of a building. I mean, that to me is, that's like the thing, the view I never forgot.

• 38:22Mike Rowe?

  That's the perfect answer. I mean, it's the same for me too, because it's bringing in your industry. I mean, it's bringing aerospace indoors and it making arguably the most iconic, famous airplane since Flyer.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 38:39Mike Rowe?

  Right? I mean, and it's right there. You can touch it. You can look at it. It's terrific when history is tactile like that, you know, and accessible.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  I would love one day to come back here and see a satellite, you know, a model of a satellite from that era, sitting here somewhere.

• 38:54Mike Rowe?

  Well, obviously.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  The Reagan Star Wars days, you know, something like that.

• 38:58Mike Rowe?

  Okay, I hate to ask, how old were you when Star Wars was the thing?

• 39:01Speaker 03

  I don't know. I, I'm, how old do you think I am?

• 39:04Mike Rowe?

  I don't, I don't, I'm gonna put you around thirty-four.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  You're pretty good. Thirty-three.

• 39:10Mike Rowe?

  Ah, there you go.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Wow. I'm impressed.

• 39:13Mike Rowe?

  Google. No, no, no.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  You know, AI sometimes got some things right, so not too bad.

• 39:19Mike Rowe?

  Look, this is all kind of last minute, but for me, I'm a single issue guy. It's workforce. I want to talk about blue collar in space. I want to talk about the jobs that exist at Apex. I want to get to all of that. But mostly, I'm super interested in people in their thirties who are taking big bets, big swings, as something that's really consequential and creating jobs and opportunities that are just cool. Because I think, you know, the business of reinvigorating the trades, I think it might be more important now than it's ever been. And I thought you might have a perspective on that that that would be out of this world or up in the air.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  I love it.

• 40:02Mike Rowe?

  Call it what you will.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Sky high, whatever we want to call it. I love it.

• 40:05Mike Rowe?

  First of all, what the heck happened with the Origin rocket yesterday?

• 40:09Speaker 03

  That was unfortunate, but I think the, my takeaway is we need to move away from aerospace and space being something where everything must be perfect and work well. Faster iteration, moving quick, we make mistakes, things go wrong, nobody got hurt, that's the most important thing, everybody is safe. What do we learn? Let's get back on the pad, let's do it again.

• 40:29Mike Rowe?

  I tell you what we learned, man, that amount of fuel makes a big, big explosion.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  I was reading, it is the, fact check me, but I thought it was the largest man-made explosion outside of a weapon.

• 40:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Enormous.

• 40:44Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'll tell you how, I mean, this is how weird our world is today. I became aware of that explosion, not just on the internet, but because somebody had taken Elton John's Rocket Man and put it behind it and ran the whole thing in slow motion. And so, and so like, our news today is coming at us with like.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  We're going to see Jeff Bezos' face watching that clip.

• 41:07Mike Rowe?

  I mean, look, I guess we can sort of kind of laugh because nobody got hurt, but it really, there were satellites on that thing.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Yes. It was not an ideal situation, but again, I really think that moving to the mindset of, hey, if things don't go wrong, we're not pushing the limits and we should be, like, we need to push innovation forward.

• 41:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  So I actually look at it and I'm like, look, it's unfortunate, it sets things back a few months.

• 41:30Mike Rowe?

  But it's a reminder that anything worthwhile comes with that, the only four-letter word worth a damn, other than debt maybe is risk.

• 41:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 41:39Mike Rowe?

  There's risk.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  One hundred percent. And if you don't take the risk, then we're going too slowly. And we're not, we're not moving fast enough.

• 41:46Mike Rowe?

  Make me care about satellites and make me understand why this is your life's work.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Almost every single thing that happens on Earth touches space one way or another. Your day today, I guarantee you, you interacted with probably at least a dozen different satellites.

• 42:01Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  And you don't even know it. How did you get here? GPS in the car telling you where to go.

• 42:06Mike Rowe?

  Yes, I left the hotel, which is twenty-five minutes away, and I wanted to be sure, so yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 03

  Yep, you got directions to get here. Internet connectivity, how do you think that worked? That's probably getting routed through one or two satellites.

• 42:16Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 42:17Speaker 03

  The communications of even once all we have live broadcasters here broadcasting clips in real time, how are those getting out there?

• 42:23Mike Rowe?

  That'd be satellites.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Satellites, that's all satellite connectivity. Understanding even when they built this amazing and they added on and they're putting tents out here and they're creating this great podcasting studio, all of that. How did they plot all this out? Satellite imagery. Satellites touch us in ways that we don't even imagine. And to give you a sense as well, if our satellite infrastructure were to go down.

• 42:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Some people will go, who cares? GPS doesn't work. I know where to go.

• 42:48Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Planes would not be able to take off. Airplanes could no longer take off, right? Our ability to get telemetry off airplanes, connect through satellites, our ability to even know that a airplane is safe to fly, which depends heavily on weather conditions, which are monitored through.

• 43:03Mike Rowe?

  Satellites.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Satellites. Everything, everything touches space.

• 43:06Mike Rowe?

  You're halfway through an operation.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:08Mike Rowe?

  Is the satellite being used somehow by the doctor to put the new kidney in?

• 43:12Speaker 03

  I guarantee you, some of the telemetry that's coming off that medical device is going through a satellite.

• 43:16Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Guaranteed.

• 43:17Mike Rowe?

  All right, so established.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  You can't see it, so people don't recognize it, but it's there.

• 43:22Mike Rowe?

  That's the point. Your handiwork is invisible.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:25Mike Rowe?

  You're out of sight. See, you would have been a great Dirty Jobs feature. Normally, we go underground. Well, look, out of sight, out of mind, was the thing. And is it essential? Is it, is it really moving things forward?

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:37Mike Rowe?

  Obviously, that's the big one. How crowded is it up there?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  People talk a lot about it being really crowded, but you drove here on some freeway. I guarantee you, the number of cars that are between your hotel and where we are right now at the Reagan Library is greater than the number of satellites in all of space.

• 43:53Mike Rowe?

  So what?

• 43:54Speaker 03

  We have a lot of room up there. Now, that being said, if two satellites collide, they create debris, they might hit other satellites, called Kessler syndrome. You do not want that to happen.

• 44:03Mike Rowe?

  Who was Kessler?

• 44:04Speaker 03

  That's a good question. I should know this and I don't.

• 44:06Mike Rowe?

  You really should. It was just your life's work.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  You know, I honestly think somebody should just replace me now. I, what am I doing? I'm letting you down.

• 44:12Mike Rowe?

  You're only thirty-three.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 44:13Mike Rowe?

  You're only thirty-three.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  Maybe you ended up having thirty-four? Oh, no, we'll find out.

• 44:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, are you, how, so these things are programmed to stay on some sort of orbit, I assume?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Programmed by Earth's gravity. So here's what's so interesting about it. You have a rocket, like the Blue Origin one, unfortunately that blew up. That, New Glenn, rockets from other, you know, Falcon Nine, SpaceX, all these different launch providers. They shoot the rocket up, satellites, they're going fast, but relative, so they gently fly off the rocket.

• 44:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  And they are now going, and they're going really fast, think twenty-two thousand kilometers an hour.

• 44:47Mike Rowe?

  Wait, just so I'm visualizing it right, the rocket goes up and the satellites are attached to the outer perimeter of it or the very top of the rocket?

• 44:54Speaker 03

  The very top, inside. So there's a nose cone.

• 44:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  The nose cone will open up and inside that nose cone might be a hundred satellites, might be twenty satellites, depends on how big they are.

• 45:03Mike Rowe?

  How big are they?

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Huge variation. So there are satellites as small as a shoebox, there are satellites as big as a school bus. The satellites we make are kind of right in the middle.

• 45:13Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Think the smallest one is about the size of a refrigerator. And then the largest one is the size of maybe two, like, pretty big dining room tables, like side by side.

• 45:24Mike Rowe?

  Okay, and what's their primary utility?

• 45:27Speaker 03

  So different sizes lend themselves to different types of utility. So small one, really good at taking photos, think of Earth of other satellites, looking out at the stars and the cosmos for astronomy purposes, whatever it may be. We have satellites that are using that smaller form factor going off to NASA, satellites going off to Earth observation companies, satellites going off to companies that like, that are actually taking photos of farmland and using that to map out, hey, this crop needs underwater. You could tell that from space using satellites. That's a small one.

• 46:01Mike Rowe?

  So Ukraine, Iran, all the war stuff, bad guys, convoy, Bullseye, boom, all that.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  That's basically how they work. No, but in all seriousness, you're taking photos, you're seeing where troops are moving and all of that. We have our medium-sized satellite that's really good for things like, think missile tracking. That requires more power, you're looking at the horizon, you're looking for the heat signature of a missile. That's exactly where satellites are being used in Ukraine and Iran, all over the world right now, where we need to be able to prevent that from hitting the US, our allies. No one wants to be hit by a missile. Satellites are the ones that are tracking those and able to prevent that.

• 46:39Mike Rowe?

  So like, there are good guys and there are bad guys. There's conflict, there's whatever. Everybody's got satellites. How do you keep them straight? Who belongs to who and like, how close do they get? And I think you were gonna make the point that once they're deployed, they're in a fixed orbit.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Mostly.

• 46:54Mike Rowe?

  Mostly.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Mostly. But you just asked the question of, well, who's this, who's and what are they doing up there? So most of the satellites, say ninety-nine percent of the ones that are up there, they're in a fixed orbit, they're going around Earth, they slowly get closer and closer to Earth, and then they burn up in the atmosphere, they disintegrate, they go away, they never hit Earth, they just disintegrate, and you launch more. So you have to constantly replenish them. Some satellites.

• 47:17Mike Rowe?

  Wait, do they have a shelf life? Like, do you know how long it's gonna take before they just do their show?

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Not only that, in order to prevent too much orbital debris or bad things from happening, you actually have to guarantee and model out, this will burn up after eight years in orbit, and I'm in, like, it's intentional. So you know it's going away. You don't want it to be up there forever because you want to make more room for others. Some of the satellites, though, are able to maneuver. And that's what we're currently seeing happening with peer adversaries, like countries like China and Russia. There was a report recently that, you know, there's Russian satellites that are currently maneuvering towards a commercial satellite that is being used in Ukraine. And they think those Russian satellites, they're, they have propulsion systems on them, are moving closer and closer

• 48:04Speaker 03

  out of their normal orbit to this commercial satellite. They don't know what they're doing with it, but they think, there's an article about this yesterday, we think that Russia might be trying to disable that satellite because it's being used to help Ukraine.

• 48:16Mike Rowe?

  A brief history of satellites. The first one, was it Sputnik? Was it?

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Sputnik's about seventy, a little over seventy years ago. It's been a long time. Satellites are not new.

• 48:27Mike Rowe?

  Right. Is there one person who's credited with their implementation, invention?

• 48:32Speaker 03

  There's not one that at least we look at and we say, that's the person that did it. We look at it more as the biggest shift in the industry was actually less the satellite itself and more how do you get that satellite up into space?

• 48:44Mike Rowe?

  Example.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  That was the hard part.

• 48:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Because the satellite itself, you could think of it as, you know, you have a piece of electronics. Space is a pretty rough environment to be in, right? You're in a vacuum, there's no oxygen, you have radiation and UV, it's tough.

• 48:58Mike Rowe?

  No one can hear you scream.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Nobody can hear you. Scary enough, but true. Um, but getting up there is really has been the challenge, I would argue, for the last 70 years.

• 49:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 03

  And it still is a challenge. Look, Blue Origin's rocket just blew up. SpaceX Starship, it's been in development for many years. Now Falcon 9 is reliable, but it's hard to get satellites up to space. And really, the big shift in the industry was about 2021. SpaceX started really reliably flying their Falcon 9 rocket. They started to reuse it. And we all looked at each other in the industry and said, you know what? We can actually get to space in a reliable way. And that is something that we have not been able to say for the prior 65 years.

• 49:44Mike Rowe?

  So a couple of months ago, I got a box of socks in the mail. I didn't order them. They just arrived at my office unsolicited from a company called Camel City Mill. Along with a very nice thank you note for supporting American-made products on this podcast. Turns out Camel City Mill is in North Carolina, and they're what you call a one-trick pony. That is to say, all they make are socks. And because the socks they make are the kind that I personally like, they're all merino wool. I started wearing them. And two months later, I called the company to see if they'd like to sponsor this podcast. Not because I need any more sponsors, but because I want to support more brands like this one.

• 50:26Mike Rowe?

  And I'm telling you, I'll be wearing these work socks for the rest of my life. They're that good. They are that comfortable, especially if you spend your days on your feet or in steel-toed boots. They're not the cheapest socks on the internet, but if you think about cost per wear, these things are a steal because every pair is guaranteed to last for 10 years. Seriously, a decade. If you get a hole or a tear in your socks in the first 10 years, Camel City Mill will replace them for free. And believe me, when your feet sweat inside those steel-toed construction boots, the last thing you want are cotton or polyester socks. You want wool in different cuts and different weights.

• 51:09Mike Rowe?

  You want socks from Camel City Mill. They've sold half a million pairs so far. They have thousands of five-star reviews and the best testimonials for socks I've ever seen at camelcitymill.com. Go there, check them out, pick up a bundle, save an extra 10% with promo code ROW. Real socks, real good socks, made in these United States. CamelCityMill.com, code ROW. Do you think humankind fully appreciated the significance of seeing that rocket return and that arm grab it and?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Not even remotely.

• 51:46Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's super cool, but like, what does it really portend?

• 51:51Speaker 03

  If, it's not if, it's when. When SpaceX is successful with that and that flies. If you just measure it by how many pounds or kilograms of satellites are going to space, we are already on an exponential curve that's about to get a lot more exponential. And when you think about more satellites in space, why does that matter? But the result is, it's almost like you could argue with compute and AI, right? More compute, it just, things start to get exponentially better. Imagine if we were able to look at any spot on Earth and we had 24/7 live video of any spot on Earth. Right? Being able to monitor changes to agriculture, to crops, natural disasters. There was recently the fire right near here. We could have been monitoring that in real time, knowing where to deploy firefighters,

• 52:35Speaker 03

  preventing terrible missile attacks, wars, things like that.

• 52:38Mike Rowe?

  Flinders on Everest.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Exactly. In real time monitoring them, right? That is where we could eventually get to with systems like that.

• 52:45Mike Rowe?

  Do we want to?

• 52:46Speaker 03

  I think we definitely want to. I think it makes the world a safer place. I think that it's not just a defense play, it's a science and exploration play. If you think about understanding the galaxy, being able to inspire humankind. For me, growing up here in the LA area, my favorite memories as a kid, we're driving out with my dad to the middle of the Mojave Desert, launching model rockets that we built ourselves. That inspired me. And if you think about the space trades and what brought people together, like, it is truly inspirational.

• 53:15Mike Rowe?

  You are such a geek, dude.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  I know, I know, but it's good. It led to starting Apex, so I'll take it.

• 53:21Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  Thank you for the compliment.

• 53:22Mike Rowe?

  You're welcome. Star Trek or Star Wars?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Star Wars, gotta say.

• 53:26Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Not a big Star Trek guy. I know, I know.

• 53:29Mike Rowe?

  I'm no judgment, I'm just so, I always ask the question.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  No matter what I answer, it's controversial. There's like, there's no win. Right? That's like one of those questions where no matter what I say, it's a lose-lose. That's why you're a good, you're a good host.

• 53:40Mike Rowe?

  Oh, and I gotta, I mean, Cinnamon is a surname, I mean.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Well, we invented cinnamon. Cinnamon's man-made, so you know, my family invented it, yeah.

• 53:47Mike Rowe?

  Terrific, good for you.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

• 53:49Mike Rowe?

  After you perfect one of the most beloved spices in the history of the species, you know, why not change the spices we understand?

• 53:56Speaker 03

  That's right. Gotta start with a hard one first, right? Spice.

• 53:58Mike Rowe?

  What is Apex doing to get satellite manufacturing to whatever's next?

• 54:07Speaker 03

  We manufacture satellites. And I say that somewhat facetiously. For the last 70 years, satellites have been handmade. Think of cars before the Model T.

• 54:16Mike Rowe?

  Bespoke.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  Truly bespoke. Like, I'm gonna go sit down and I have my little shop and I'm gonna go bend metal and connect these things and make you a wheel and it's a car. Enjoy it.

• 54:26Mike Rowe?

  It's a project.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  We are actually manufacturing that. Like, I would argue for 70 years, satellites have not been manufactured until Apex.

• 54:33Mike Rowe?

  You mean like Henry Ford manufacturing?

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 54:35Mike Rowe?

  Like assembly lines?

• 54:36Speaker 03

  That is exactly what we have. The only other company I've seen actually do this is SpaceX, and they've done a phenomenal job with Starlink. But that's just communications. We, our platform, supply everything else we talked about. Earth observation, missile tracking, all those other applications. We actually manufacture them at scale. We have a, and this is not an assembly line with robot arms and automation. I don't believe that that's the right answer for this. We have a software-enabled manufacturing line. We employ real humans. We train them on how to do it. We're able to grow the workforce and actually bring these people together to build something that's truly meaningful and impactful.

• 55:15Mike Rowe?

  Your factory's in LA?

• 55:16Speaker 03

  It's in LA.

• 55:17Mike Rowe?

  How many do you employ?

• 55:18Speaker 03

  We're at about 350 people.

• 55:20Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  A year ago, we were about 100 people.

• 55:23Mike Rowe?

  That's a.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  A year before that, we were about 40 people.

• 55:26Mike Rowe?

  A year before that, it was you.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  It was no, we weren't even a company, right?

• 55:30Mike Rowe?

  You and your dad in the desert.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:32Mike Rowe?

  Wow. Okay, so what's the inciting moment where Ian Cinnamon goes, "Yeah, Dad, the rockets were awesome, but I think, I think I'm gonna go all in on this thing." Like, did you, did you have to raise your own money? Did you go out looking for, you know, venture capital? What are you doing at 33, dude? Jeez.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  So when I first came up with the idea for Apex, I was actually working at a company called Palantir, a big software company.

• 55:58Mike Rowe?

  I would start.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  Not a space company, software, right?

• 56:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  I had sold my prior company to them and when I.

• 56:03Mike Rowe?

  What was that called?

• 56:04Speaker 03

  It was called Synapse. We were doing actually AI, a little too early for the AI trend, but you know.

• 56:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, early adopter.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  Early, yeah, maybe too early, but you know, didn't quite make out with the big bucks that all these crazy fundraises today. But as I was at Palantir, I saw the shift happening in the space industry. I saw governments, commercial companies, having this strong desire to say, "I just don't need one bespoke satellite, I want 10 or 100 or 1,000." And I saw the struggle with all these companies who had built it in a bespoke way, grasping for straws, asking for help. And my thought was, I don't want to go compete with these companies who are currently supplying. Let me enable them. Let me supply them with the key parts of the satellite, the platform, and let them bring their secret sauce and come together as a team and go meet this need. We raised venture money for it.

• 56:53Mike Rowe?

  You're making the chassis.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. That's exactly how I would describe it.

• 56:58Mike Rowe?

  Huh. Okay, the implications of this are, I mean, vast, obviously. Is the goal to ultimately drive down the cost of what the satellites can deliver and just make it more accessible to more people?

• 57:16Speaker 03

  It's manufacture a lot more of them, make it way more affordable, and bring the quality up. One of the problems with space right now is if you look at, rockets are not the only thing that fail. When rockets fail, big explosion. Satellites in space, it's, it's tough to build them. The failure rate's pretty high. And the best way to reduce failure rate is not to over engineer it to be perfect. It's to build a lot of the same thing. And know exactly where those problems happen via data. Instead of saying, hey, I'm gonna spend ten years and make it perfect.

• 57:47Mike Rowe?

  Right. Back to the rocket launch, back to. If you wait for the thing to be foolproof. You'll never get off the ground.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. It's like, uh, it's paralysis, right? It's like, oh, it must be perfect. It's like, no, just let it not work perfectly.

• 58:05Mike Rowe?

  Do you reckon that kind of paralysis or some version of it? Is at work in our country? Like across the board at a Broadway? Do you feel like we're being stifled in some ways?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  I think it depends on the industry, right? You see some industries where, you know, I mean, look at Facebook now. Meta's like tagline was move fast and break things.

• 58:26Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  They would say, go do that.

• 58:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  I think there's other industries where it's a risk on mindset and there's some where it's not. I'm a believer that the most innovation happens when you have that higher risk posture. And you tell your employees and you tell your team. You can't have it all. It can't be risk free and move fast and be super cheap.

• 58:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  Let's pick two. Let's say, let's have it be a high quality product we could deliver really quickly. There might be, you know, there's gonna be risks there. There's gonna be problems, but you have to just acknowledge that. And if you go in and you're upfront with your customers and they choose where they go on that spectrum. I think you could end up in a really strong position.

• 59:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, the car thing really is a great analogy in all those spaces, right? I mean, it's a hunk of steel and it's traveling at a speed that would be catastrophic. Were it to collide head on.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:18Mike Rowe?

  With another chunk of metal.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 59:20Mike Rowe?

  Experiencing similar velocity, but. But we're gonna put in everything from ABS brakes to airbags to restraints. We're gonna do so many different things. But in the end, not to be too dark about it, but. There is a human calculus. We know. Tens of thousands of people, actually.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:39Mike Rowe?

  Are gonna make the ultimate sacrifice for the privilege of getting from here to there.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  Right, and we're, we made that decision, that's okay.

• 59:46Mike Rowe?

  And it's so baked in to the transaction, we don't even think about it. It's a price we collectively pay as a society. Why then doesn't that acquiescence uh, apply? When we see other forms of, to your earlier point. I mean, no one died in this thing.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:10Mike Rowe?

  But people are still clutching their pearls.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  Even got injured, to my understanding.

• 1:00:13Mike Rowe?

  Right. But they could have.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  They could have.

• 1:00:16Mike Rowe?

  And if they would have, and now we should talk about that. And it's like, it's just such an odd disconnect. Our willingness to assume risk here.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Mike Rowe?

  But not here.

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  I read an article the other day, the, my understanding is the Hoover Dam when it was built. I think it was over ninety people perished in building it.

• 1:00:34Mike Rowe?

  Yes, imagine a project today.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Right. Would that be greenlit?

• 1:00:39Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  I don't, or maybe, but without that risk tolerance, right? It would cost a hundred times as much and. It's weird to see, but what is the, what is the trade off there?

• 1:00:47Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  I don't know what the answer is.

• 1:00:49Mike Rowe?

  Listen, not to get political about it, but if we're. If Newsom were, were, were here, I would ask him about that high speed rail. What, what really killed it? Was it money?

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:58Mike Rowe?

  Was, was it the desert tortoise? Was it, I mean, like, there's gonna be a long list of reasons why that couldn't happen.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:06Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 1:01:06Speaker 03

  I would love to hear what the, what the number one reason is. Oh, boy.

• 1:01:09Mike Rowe?

  So then what are the reasons in your industry? Like, why haven't satellites been manufactured before? Why are you the first one to do it?

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  So it comes down to really incentives and business model. And because satellites are notoriously difficult to build. The way that most people purchase them is what they call cost plus. So I'll go to you and I'll say, Mike, I want a satellite. They'll say, okay. And we negotiate and what the negotiation is, is. I'm gonna pay you for your time plus twenty percent.

• 1:01:41Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  So the more hours you spend, the more you reinvent the wheel, the more bespoke you make it, the more money you make. And that's been how this industry has worked for decades. What we go in and we say is, if you want a satellite, there is no negotiation. The prices are on our website. We take Apple Pay. Truly.

• 1:02:00Mike Rowe?

  You can Venmo me for my satellite.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  I have had a customer come to our office, take a credit card.

• 1:02:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  And literally put a five thousand dollar deposit on a three and a half million dollar satellite.

• 1:02:10Mike Rowe?

  It's like that.

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  On the website.

• 1:02:12Mike Rowe?

  It's the scene in Clear, Clear and Present Danger when Harrison Ford basically buys the helicopter.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 1:02:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  Which is.

• 1:02:19Mike Rowe?

  With his gold card.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yep, that's exactly, exactly right.

• 1:02:22Mike Rowe?

  So bananas, dude.

• 1:02:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Mike Rowe?

  All right, so what does success look like? Like, what are you shooting for?

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  So we want to be, and I think we're on a track to do it, I really do. The largest supplier of these satellite platforms, the chassis, as you call them. For any application. As more satellites launch, I wanna be. The platform that everybody uses. It's not, do we need a satellite? It's which model do we need? And to pull that off. It's going to be a matter of how do we scale our manufacturing? And the demand is there, the customers are there. We right now have to keep up with that crazy demand that we're seeing. And that's all about how we employ and train the workforce. To work in conjunction with the software enabled systems that we built. Have hu, it's humans, it's not robots, building these things.

• 1:03:12Mike Rowe?

  All right, let's talk about the humans. How do you recruit them? Where do you find them? How do you inspire? I mean, it's pretty badass. You're working on some cool stuff. But who are you really looking for and what are their requisite skills? And how do you skill them up? How do you train them if they don't have those skills?

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  So we have two major groups with it. We have a lot of different types of employees at the company, but two major groups. One is engineering. And on the engineering team, they're designing the satellites. And then we have a production team that's gonna go build. The engineering team, we really spend a lot of time honing in the right culture of the company. And we say we want three types of skills. One, people who come from the traditional aerospace industry. They've been building satellites for ten years. They've worked at the big defense primes, they know what they're doing. You combine that with people who come from what we call new space. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, SpaceX. Where they come in and they say, we wanna move really fast, we have a high risk tolerance. And you bring those two types of people into a room and they do not agree.

• 1:04:17Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  But we have one more special thing we bring in. Very, that's folks like myself, who do not come from a space background. First principles thinkers who come in and say, why are we even talking? Why, why is this even on the table? And when you put those three types of people in a room together, they do not agree. They yell, but the outcome out of that is magical. So what I like to tell people is a lot of people say, well, I can only go work for Apex if I got an aerospace engineering degree. I'm like, that is the opposite of the truth. We people who are working, helping on the engineering team, who come from finance backgrounds, who come from like all, all different shapes and it's amazing. And then on the production team. We started out by saying, we need people who just know how to build satellites. That means aerospace production technicians who are gonna come in and do it right.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  But as we build our software tools that make it so that we are, have the traceability. The kind of manufacturing prowess to really scale up.

• 1:05:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  We're able to employ folks who come from maybe a automotive production background. Or automotive tech background. And then folks who haven't even been trained on that and we could go help train them up. And my favorite thing is every Monday, I talk to our new hires. Sometimes it's a few people, sometimes it's fifteen, twenty people. And I ask every single one of them, why did you join? And they all have slightly different versions, but the answers really all coalesced the same thing. And they said they are inspired by how quickly we move and the types of things that we do.

• 1:05:42Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  And that to me is like the secret sauce of the types of employees that we bring in. They love the pace, they love the innovation. They might have come from a background, they were literally repairing cars. And now they're building satellites.

• 1:05:54Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  That are going up and protecting America, protecting our allies, imaging Earth, helping farmers, like. There's something, and it's not like, oh, I worked on this and maybe in ten years it'll go to space. It's, I worked on this and, oh, it's launching in a month.

• 1:06:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  It's off to Japan next week, it's off to wherever, like.

• 1:06:12Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's why I asked earlier, like this, the, so much of industry feels.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  We're hiring.

• 1:06:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's, that's where I'm getting, going ultimately, but I mean, this, people are frustrated. Because they're in compliance and they're not getting rewarded for being compliant. That there's no incentive for plotting along, like back to our other analogy, if we lowered the speed limit.

• 1:06:36Mike Rowe?

  To thirty instead of fifty-five.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  Save lives.

• 1:06:39Mike Rowe?

  And and let's say that let's say that saved ten thousand lives. Well, are we gonna have a celebration at the end of the year?

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:48Mike Rowe?

  Or are we gonna be like, it's really not pleasant driving thirty miles an hour. And so I'm just not gonna do that.

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:54Mike Rowe?

  Homeostatic risk. That's what it is. It's a it's compensatory risk. We all like you and I have a different risk equilibrium.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:07:04Mike Rowe?

  And it's fascinating why we do that. But it's doubly fascinating as to why safety protocols, for instance, will have an unintended consequence. And encourages to assume more like the safer we are, the riskier we want to be.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  Right. It makes us almost say, well, now I want to break the speed limit. I want to go drive faster.

• 1:07:24Mike Rowe?

  You made me wear the helmet. I think I'll corner a little tighter.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Yes, cuz I got the helmet on.

• 1:07:28Mike Rowe?

  Right. So like I just think you're I think aerospace in general is the epitome. Like the best example of where that payoff comes. And I'm glad you're doing what you're doing, but I'm really glad that it's inspiring people. Because if the work isn't meaningful.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  Then there's no point. Right? Like we what I tell everybody is we're building a generational company. I want to be running Apex until I might only be thirty-three until I'm too old and they wheel me out of here. And the next generation takes over.

• 1:08:02Mike Rowe?

  So you don't want Elon to buy the thing?

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Oh, God, no, no.

• 1:08:05Mike Rowe?

  You're not selling?

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  No, I've been through that. We're absolutely not selling. We're gonna go build a hundred billion dollar plus company. We'll take a public along the way. We'll keep growing.

• 1:08:13Mike Rowe?

  You'll let me know prior.

• 1:08:15Speaker 03

  Of course, of course. Yeah, you know, get a little stock.

• 1:08:18Mike Rowe?

  Great.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  We'll teamwork here, teamwork.

• 1:08:20Mike Rowe?

  Making the dream work.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:08:22Mike Rowe?

  So what then? If you can flash forward and imagine in five years, what are you doubling, tripling, ten Xing the number of satellites?

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yes, so I'll give you a stat.

• 1:08:33Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  Last year, the US government, so not Starlink, not that, but US government, launched about two hundred satellites. US government satellites.

• 1:08:43Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  In Los Angeles at our factory in LA, which you're always welcome to come visit.

• 1:08:48Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  We are capable of building over two hundred satellites per year. We can build more satellites than the entire US government launched last year.

• 1:08:57Mike Rowe?

  What do they cost?

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  You ready to buy one right now? Do you have a checkbook? Let's go.

• 1:09:01Mike Rowe?

  I did. Jay does one. Well, I'm just asking because

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  It's on the website.

• 1:09:05Mike Rowe?

  Secretary of State is on his way.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 1:09:08Mike Rowe?

  So he's got access to.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  US government's bought quite a few of these, so let's just say, you know, they've already bought many. They start at three and a half million and the most expenses is about thirteen and a half million.

• 1:09:19Mike Rowe?

  So on average, then you're making two hundred satellites a year at roughly seven million dollars. Yeah, man, I I would I would like a

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  We want to make a lot more than two hundred, but here's why. The Chinese government announced plans to launch over twelve thousand satellites in the coming years. Twelve thousand government Chinese satellites. US government launched two hundred.

• 1:09:45Speaker 03

  Think of the catch like think of how many we need to go make to catch up, and that doesn't include allied nations, commercial companies. Defense is one thing, but there's so much more than just that.

• 1:09:54Mike Rowe?

  Well, defense is the very point of this as well. It touches everything.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  It does.

• 1:09:58Mike Rowe?

  Like, that's a good place to land the plane is where we started it. I mean, that stat is so alarming with China, but my first thought was, you know what else happened? They made a thousand ships last year. We made three.

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  It's not.

• 1:10:12Mike Rowe?

  Three.

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  Every domain. And that is why inspiring people to say, I want to come build these. I want to manufacture these. It's meaningful work. It's exciting work.

• 1:10:22Mike Rowe?

  Apex dot com?

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  Apex space dot com.

• 1:10:24Mike Rowe?

  Apex space dot com. You're hiring now.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  Come for a tour, come buy a satellite. You could go. We'll put you in the clean room. You could go build it.

• 1:10:31Mike Rowe?

  Hey, look, I'm I want to get these guys and these cameras and I want to come and I want to

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  We're gonna make it happen.

• 1:10:35Mike Rowe?

  I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to rub myself all over.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  And then I could blame you if it doesn't work.

• 1:10:41Mike Rowe?

  Sure you can.

• 1:10:42Speaker 03

  This pesky guy came in. Not my fault.

• 1:10:43Mike Rowe?

  You can do that anyway. What a pleasure, man. I so appreciate your time. I know there's a lot of big brain people walking around, so. Are you doing a panel later today or did you already do your thing?

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  I'm not. I'm, uh, this is it. I'm right here. I'm here just for you.

• 1:10:56Mike Rowe?

  You came here for me?

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  This is the only reason I'm here, just to be here with you.

• 1:10:59Mike Rowe?

  He's got the coolest name of the whole assemblage and what a story, what a company. Pleasure to meet you, man. Thanks for knowing what you're doing.

• 1:11:07Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:11:08Mike Rowe?

  And he's thirty-three. He's thirty-three. That's good for him. Thanks, man.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Thanks, man.

• 1:11:14Mike Rowe?

  Really, really fun.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile. Then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Not four.

• 1:12:05Speaker 02

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  And not three.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  Definitely not two.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  We need five.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  All you've got to do is leave a quick

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Even if you hate it.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  Five star review.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

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