403 Mike Rowe: What 300 Dirty Jobs Taught Him About True Success (Part 1)

"Run toward the thing that makes you uncomfortable." - Mike Rowe If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/403 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 403 with Mike Rowe.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. So excited you're here. This is a channel for those that want to learn how to take their business, life, health, and relationships to the next level. If you're looking to be a peak performer in life, then you've come to the right place. And today, we've got an incredible human being on. His name is Mike Rowe. Now, I was just up in San Francisco giving a speech to a corporation up there for one of their day-long events they were doing. They brought me in to speak, and I got a chance to connect with Mike because he lives in San Francisco as well. So I went to his studio, and we sat down to what I thought was going to be an hour interview, which ended up being over a two-hour interview. So this is actually part one of two.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  The next episode that comes out will be the second half of this. We just kept diving in deeper and deeper. I mean, the insights I was learning, I just didn't want to stop. So we continued. This is one of my favorite interviews in his studio. We've got his dog, who makes an appearance in the interview as well, so you'll hear from his dog. And for those that don't know who Mike Rowe is, he's a TV host, a writer, a narrator, probably one of the best narrators, a producer, an actor, and a spokesman. He was the host of the popular TV show Dirty Jobs. He's appeared on shows like Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Oprah, The Tonight Show, and many others. And Mike's most recent show, Somebody's Gotta Do It, debuted in 2014 on CNN.

• 2:03Lewis Howes?

  And today, Mike runs the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, which awards scholarships to students pursuing a career. In the skilled trades. He's also the host of the popular podcast, which is one of the top 20 in the world right now called The Way I Heard It. And he is also on the Forbes list for the top 10 most trustworthy celebrities. And in this part one, we talk about the stories of people Mike met on Dirty Jobs that really shifted his perspective about life. Why working smart, not hard, is actually extremely bad advice. We get to listen to Mike sing a little opera from his early days as an opera singer. He brings it back on this episode.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  We talk about why having passion for something doesn't guarantee you'll actually be good at it. And why people with dirty jobs tend to be happier than most people who are doing anything else. That and so much more in this first half with the one, the only Mike Rowe.

• 3:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, Mike Rowe in the house. Good to see you, man.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Nice to see you. Thank you for coming by my.

• 3:14Lewis Howes?

  Your house, actually.

• 3:15Speaker 01

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

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Telling stories of the, uh, of the vast Bering Sea or whatever they put in front of me.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  I like it. You are, uh, have an incredible career history. Started out as an opera singer. Is that correct? Or early on you were.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  You know, the, the trick in your question is start it off and it's funny, you know, the older you get, the more you tend to look back and the more you look back, the more you realize that the place where you started is not really the place where you thought you started.

• 3:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Right?

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  Where did you really start?

• 3:53Speaker 01

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

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Failing out of them.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Right. I didn't get. Every people who see Dirty Jobs figure I'm like Bob Vila or like Joe Handy. I'm not. That's a, that's a recessive gene. Sure. And, and my grandfather, who got it in spades, was sort of an idol of mine growing up. So I very much wanted to do what he could do, which essentially was build a house without a blueprint. Right. Oh, that's impressive. Well, he only went to the seventh grade, but he had the chip, you know, that some guys have in the back of their brains that allows them to take a watch apart or a combustion engine. Amazing. And put it back together. He never once read the instructions to anything. He only went to the seventh grade. He just saw it, right? And it didn't matter if it was a car or a house or, or a watch.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  It, it was just simply a thing to be, to be taken apart and put back together. And I just always assumed that's what I would do and I, and I just didn't get the gene. And, and yeah. But you appreciated the gene. You appreciated the work, the artistry. I came to, yeah. I mean, I, I, I think I always had an appreciation. I had a fascination for it. And then when I got so frustrated that I couldn't do it, it was my pop who said, you know what? You can be a tradesman if you want. You just need a different toolbox. So that's when I, I enrolled at a community college after high school and I started studying things I had no interest in, which turned out to be the precise career I have today. So it was, you know, and, and, and the opera was a part of that.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I had zero interest in singing, performing, or much less dressing up like a pirate or a Viking, you know, but. But you had interest in girls. I did. And that attracted the girls? And I do, to be clear. Of course, yes. That's a change. It wasn't a passing experimental phase. Sure, sure. But yeah, yeah, you know, the, the Baltimore Opera in 1980.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Five or four for me.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  I was born in eighty three.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Well, good for you.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  Not to date you, but yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Good for you. Um, well, I was, I was just out of high school, actually just, just out of college. And, and I wanted to, uh, you know, I wanted to get in television. I wanted to get in.

• 6:24Lewis Howes?

  Why did you want to be in television?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Well, because it looked at that point like something, um, that would actually generate money. And so, you know, I checked the want ads every day and there's no listings for TV stars or reality stars. No listing for movie stars, no listing for, right? So.

• 6:42Lewis Howes?

  Get famous here.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Right. So how do you do this? You know, you're, you're, you're 24, you're living in Baltimore. And back in those days, the unions, which I'm sure you're familiar with. They were kind of closed in the sense that, you know, to be in the Screen Actors Guild, you had to have done, uh, Screen Actors Guild work, but you can't do Screen Actors Guild work. So there was this endless catch 22 of a tautology, you know, and I, and I, I finally learned that this union called AGMA that governed, um, the opera was a sister union to SAG. So if you could get your union card over here in AGMA, you could just pay your dues over here and poof, you're a TV star. So I, I learned an odd, I, I basically memorized a short aria. I crashed an audition. I got into the opera.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And I stayed because the music turned out to be way, way more interesting than I thought.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty cool.

• 7:34Speaker 01

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

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  And there's something about a girl who can sing well that is so attractive.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It's the artist. Well, it's the artist thing.

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  You know, it's, and, and it, it's, and, and it's a passion thing.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  You know, so the, the Baltimore Opera was right next to the Peabody Institute. And so a lot of coeds came out of that. You know, that, uh, curricula and, um, and, and it was funny because there were 80 people in the, in the rep company. And, uh, 45 women and 35 guys. And, uh, of the 35 guys, you know, 30 had zero interest in 100% of the women.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And of the remaining five guys who were straight, three were married. And the other one, you know, had a mole on his eyelid the size of my thumb.

• 8:35Lewis Howes?

  You were set.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Thick, black hair.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  You were set.

• 8:38Speaker 01

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

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  What is it about men that are so driven to do things based on where women are?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I think I'm not a social anthropologist, nor a historian, but as far back in time as I'm able to calculate. So it has been.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  Why is our brain so wired that way, you think? It's like we will do the craziest things.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  In my experience.

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  That we don't even love.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  It ain't the brain.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  No, look, I, I, I think that, you know, men, men and women take, um, take meaning, uh, from, from different things.

• 9:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  And obviously this is controversial, uh, but just in a very, very, very general way. There is something in the reptilian part of our brain that wants to, um, that wants to fix things, right? And, and, you know, regarding my grandfather again, that manifested in a very hands-on, very obvious way. But I think there are other less obvious ways.

• 9:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  You know, we want to, we want to save you, you know? We, we, we want to have an impact and we want to improve whatever situation we're in. So we make a bigger fire, you know, come back with a bigger carcass.

• 9:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  You know, feed the girl.

• 9:59Lewis Howes?

  Build a bigger house.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Bigger house, bigger, and, and that's just, that, that thumb has been in the small of our back. Since we had tails.

• 10:09Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And it's pushed us forward ever since.

• 10:11Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Man, so do you still sing today?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  In the shower, weddings and funerals.

• 10:17Lewis Howes?

  Can you sing a little something or no?

• 10:19Speaker 01

  What, what, what genre would you prefer?

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  Opera.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Well, I'll, the, the aria that attracted my attention initially only got me because it was the shortest thing there was.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And it was a, uh, it was Puccini. It was from, um, it was from La Boheme and it was the coat aria. And, and really, the funny thing about it is, when I, when I memorized it, you know, the, the Walkman was around. Sure. You won't remember. No, I remember the Walkman. No, you don't remember the Walkman. I was born in 1983, Mike. I don't know about the Walkman. I was like seven or eight, yeah, yeah. The Walkman. Late 80s, of course. I, I, I got the record from the library, and I put it on a, on a cassette player. And in the Walkman, I listened to these sounds, just walking around Baltimore. Yeah. No idea what it meant, but I just listened to it until it got burned in my brain. And the melody.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  So I'm like, just walking around, but I, I can't hear myself because I got the headphones on. I must have, I'm insane, right? I'm walking through Baltimore City. I must have sounded like a, a truly insane person. But I got it more or less in my head, and then I went to the audition, and the chorus master was like, "I gotta tell you, that was, that was, that was terrible." Really? Well, he didn't say terrible, but he said, "You have no idea what you're singing about, do you?" Yeah. And I said, "No, I don't." And he said, "Um, why are you here?" And, uh... You didn't want to tell him the real truth, which was the girl. But I did. Well, no, the real truth was the Union Card. Uh-huh.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  I said, "Look," I said, "I just told," when I said hello, I, I said this to a guy, his name was Bill Yanuzzi, he was, uh, the guy who auditioned me, and I said, "Mr. Yanuzzi, when I told you hello, I told you all I know about opera." And he laughed, and he said, "Well then, why are you here?" And I said, "Because I'm curious, and I would like to know more about opera, and I would also like to get my AGMA card, so I can buy my SAG card, and then maybe get hired to do something that makes some money." Hmm. And he literally, he, he gave me the slow clap, and he said, "You have a pleasing voice, you have a low register, which we're looking for." Right. You're young, which is a huge advantage. We can train you, we can coach you. On the downside, he said, "You suck, you don't know your ass from a hot rock." And he was right.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And seven years later, to be honest, I didn't get much better, but I had a ball. And, and I did, I, it's, it's amazing what you'll learn by accident when you jump into another language. Mm-hmm. Or when you jump into, uh, art in general.

• 12:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I started salsa dancing about 10 years ago. I lived above, after I got injured, I was living above a jazz club. That my brother's the top jazz violinist in the world, and he knew this woman who owned this jazz club in Columbus, Ohio.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  And there was a one-bedroom loft.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  What's your, I'm sorry, what's your brother's name?

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  His name's Christian House. He's a top, he played with Les Paul for 10 years and.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  So who's the other guy that gets all the press on with the Violin Bell? Joshua Bell?

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm not sure. He's a jazz guy or a classical guy?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  No, no, he's classical.

• 13:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. So he's a, he's a jazz guy, but understated industry. Not many people listen jazz anymore, but.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Or jazz violin.

• 13:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, jazz violin is very unique, yes. So he said, you know, here, 250 bucks a month, she'll let you crash up there. And so I was living on here for 250 bucks a month, looking over downtown Columbus, the Columbus Music Hall. And once a week, Wednesday nights, they would have, put a dance floor down downstairs and bring the salsa band. And I would go and watch, because I had all this free time on my hand, one hand, and I would go down and watch. And was just fascinated by all the Latinos who are out dancing, and these guys were so amazing.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Well, look, that's, I mean, I think, from what I've seen in the world, that's the epitome of masculinity.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  It's a Latin man dancing, right?

• 14:16Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Because, because I think, for me, anyway, the, the most interesting men do. Well, they're complicated. They're, they're not, they're, they're not the caricature of, you know, the chiseled jaw.

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  Manly.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Dude, there's always something else going on, and if there's something artistic or, or something, obviously, dance is amazing.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:38Speaker 01

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

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  You can't get sick. There's no sick, and if you do get sick.

• 15:09Lewis Howes?

  You're screwed.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  You you sing through it. I've seen guys go on stage with fevers who can barely talk, they're so hoarse. But when they sing, they just use a different part of their palate, they use a different part of their brain.

• 15:21Lewis Howes?

  They break through.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  It's extraordinary.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  And then they go back and they're like asleep for 24 hours, like taking medicine, yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I've also seen guys, there was a, he's still around and he, we don't know each other, but but James Morris is is sort of the the bass baritone version of Pavarotti. And and that guy, I, we only met once briefly, but I knew a lot of people who knew him well. He was a legend. He was a leg, the guy smoked Marlboro Reds. Two, three packs a day. Drank Scotch right out of the bottle and then walked on stage and sang with such beauty. And such, I, it was, it's just extraordinary and and it made no sense.

• 16:02Lewis Howes?

  No sense.

• 16:03Speaker 01

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

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  It's like the athletes that just drank the night before the game and party constantly, but they go out and they perform like.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:16Lewis Howes?

  Gods, you know?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hate those guys.

• 16:19Lewis Howes?

  I hate it too. I never, I've never been drunk in my life. Because I never had the skills or the talent that those guys had. And I was like, I need every advantage as an athlete to perform on the field, every little thing I can do. So I've never been drunk because I committed in college to not not doing it.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  You're not missing much.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I never really feel like I am. But I have a sip here and there, but I've never like.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  Drunk, you know, been drunk. Um, what is the biggest lesson you've learned from opera that you've applied to your life? That you didn't know before opera?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's a version of the first lesson that I learned in hindsight that turned out to be important. And that was, um, it was, it was run toward the thing that makes you uncomfortable. And and I actually learned it in the in the Boy Scouts of all places, you know? The big lesson for, in my view, um, that every successful person eventually learns. And you could learn it young, you can learn it old, you could forget it and relearn it. But it's this, it's the idea of confronting a thing that makes you uncomfortable. And then getting good at it.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  But then there's a third thing that most people don't do, which is find a way to love it.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  So, that's it. You know, I mean, for me, I've, I've always been very, very suspicious of the idea that following your passion will take you to the, to the desired result. And there are so many books, and I've seen so many interviews, on podcasts in particular, right? Everybody's telling about, here's the secret, here's what you need to know. It starts with you identifying what it is that's going to satisfy that, that's within you. And here's how you're going to get there. And so, all the things, all the steps that typically get laid out as a plan, so often become barriers to the very thing that you want to achieve.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  And it's all starting with, in my view, a very dangerous question, which is, what are you passionate about? Right? So, you know, the thing I was most passionate about, I just happened to be-

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's workshop, essentially, right?

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Well, I, I was ill-equipped.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Just because you were-

• 18:37Lewis Howes?

  No matter how hard you work, you weren't going to get good at it, is what you're saying.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I wasn't going to get good enough to be successful. So, look, the, the lesson, to answer your question, is just because you're passionate about something, doesn't mean you won't suck at it.

• 18:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  And if you-

• 18:51Lewis Howes?

  Just because you're passionate about playing football, doesn't mean you're going to be in the NFL.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Welcome to the podcast, right? And I actually became passionate about opera, two or three years in. But the truth is, I, I didn't have the chops, or the discipline, or the drive. I had enough passion to make me think I did for a while, but, look, you're in charge of your passion.

• 19:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:13Speaker 01

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

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  But don't be so damn picky about what you apply it to. It's kind of like with personal relationships, right? You know, there's, there's this idea that's been championed by maybe a million films and books, that says- Your happiness in a relationship will happen when you find your soulmate. And so what happens is you you embark on this snipe hunt. You spend most of your life looking for your soulmate. And during the period of time between your search and maybe you find or maybe you don't, you know, then where are you?

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  You're supposed to be miserable and unhappy the whole time?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Well, you're certainly not going to be as happy as you could be. And that's the thing that gets drilled into your head. So so there's this narrative that goes on in the world today. Uh, I'm generalizing, but in a very, very broad way. If you're happy in your personal relationship, it's because you found your soulmate. And if you're happy in your professional relationship, it's because you found your dream job. And if you're happy in both, it's because you followed your passion. And I think all of that is a big steamy pile of crap. The happiest people I know were very uncertain for a long time. And their decisions, I saw this on Dirty Jobs over and over.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  People ultimately wound up in their vocation because they looked around to see where everybody else was going. And they went the other way. And then what they were confronted with was, okay, there's an opportunity cleaning septic tanks. It's not my wish fulfillment, but it needs to be done and nobody's doing it. A year later, you're getting good at it. Two years after that, you got three trucks and five employees. Pretty soon, you're passionate about other people's crap. Because now you've made a pile of money and now you have two homes.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  And no one else wants to do it.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  That's right. So you've got job security. Nothing's going to be outsourced. And you're kind of, I used to say about so many of the guys I met on Dirty Jobs that they're all in on the joke. And and by that, I just meant, you know, when you meet another professional athlete and you start talking about a training routine.

• 21:35Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  You go right to the shorthand.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  You get it.

• 21:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  You get it. When you talk to a soldier or a marine who's been in action and you have to, you just get right to the part, right? And so people with dirty jobs, they get it.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  Whether you're hanging upside down on the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, spot welding, or whether you're just crawling through the sewers of San Francisco, knocking out those rotten bricks and putting in new ones, you get it. Right? And so the idea and the big lesson that came from working with so many of those people for so long was that by and large, as a group, they were happier than most of my friends. They were better balanced than most of my friends. And they had just the kind of, um, the kind of peace, I think, that comes from knowing, knowing if, I call it the, uh, it's a wonderful life test, right? Another movie you probably don't remember, because you were born in 1983.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  But, but, but if you're, if you're somehow magically pulled out of existence, like right now.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Right? What happens to the world? You know, what happens to the world of poof, I'm gone? You know, and dirty jobs never happened. Is the world going to spin off its axis? No. Right? You know, what, you know, if, uh, poof, an accountant is gone. Poof, you know, it's like, so you, you tend to measure, at least I do anyway. You know, uh, can I, can I do something that's fundamentally going to, to change a thing? Dirty jobbers do. They, all the plumbers call in sick for a week, party over. All the electricians call out for two days.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Game over.

• 23:15Speaker 01

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

• 23:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. What was the most surprising, uh, person you met during the dirty jobs process that really shifted something in you or inspired you in a different way? Cause you've probably seen the same type of stories, the same type of people. For ten years doing the show, but was there one person that you were like, wow, something actually shifted in me where I wasn't just, not that you were on autopilot, but just like, whoa, something different here?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  No, um, there were hundreds. I mean, we did three hundred, and of the three hundred jobs we did, I can tell you, you know, I, I talk a lot about this when companies, you know how they are, every now and then, somebody will overpay you to come and stand in front of a bunch of people.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  You know, let me tell you, let me tell you what the problem is. So people pay me to do that. And, um, and, and just to keep the conversation lively, I, I try and mix up the answers a bit. But all of my answers come back to what the, what the Greeks called a, um, a peripetia. And a peripetia is a form of an anagnorisis. And an anagnorisis is the Greek word for a discovery. So Aristotle, Aristotle said the, that the definition of a tragedy was the moment when the protagonist comes face to face with his true self. Right? And I love that.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  So for me, Dirty Jobs was a tragedy because going all the way back, hey Freddie, what, what are you growling at? Come here, this is my dog, by the way, I didn't properly introduce you, she's grounded Tiffany.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  Tiffany got close.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, this is bring your dog to work day, you gonna be a good boy or what? Don't be an asshole, we talked about this, harass me in front of everybody. Here we go.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  The, uh, the idea that an anagnorisis or a discovery can drive the narrative forward is classic. But the idea that a peripetia, which is a discovery that fundamentally changes the direction of the narrative? That's what I love. So like, you know, when, when, when Bruce Willis.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  realizes, uh, in the beginning of The Sixth Sense. Mm-hmm. You saw The Sixth Sense? Yes, I did. Okay, great, because that came out after 1983. You know, he has an anagnorisis in the beginning of that, that, uh, that film. When he meets little Cole and Cole is crazy because Cole thinks he sees dead people. And over the course of the movie, Bruce makes more discoveries about Cole. And eventually toward the end, he makes a big discovery. He has a peripetia when he realizes this kid is not crazy at all and he really can see dead people. Why? Because he's dead. Right. Right? And so when that happens, the entire narrative changes.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  So that's a long answer to your question, but for me, I had peripetias doing dirty jobs, one after the next. Really? Oh, my God. Wow. So for instance, um, I talked about this years ago at one of those Ted Talks. Yeah. Right? But it was, like, I've, I've always deferred to the primacy of experts. We're taught, right? The, there's an expert opinion on everything. Yes. And getting that expert opinion, uh, as a host on the Discovery Channel was always important because Discovery was dedicated to making sure all the facts that went out were correct.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  And because Dirty Jobs was what it was, I was constantly getting angry emails from a whole army of acronyms, from, from, from EPA to OSHA to SPCA. Everyone, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they, they, they would all see something on the screen and they would, and they would freak out. And, uh, is, is my dog growling? Can you actually hear it? Fred, what's the matter? Come here, bud. Come here. Scared or something. Come here. What are you all freaked out about? Why are you freaked out? Freaking out of Tiffany. Why are you freaked out? She's been here the whole time. Oh.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  It's terrible. What's the matter with you? Moving around too much, probably. Who knows? Hey, hey, you can chill out, all right? You know what? I gotta, Tiffany, hand me that blue box over there. Give him a treat or something? No, it's not a treat. This is a thing that makes a very high pitched noise. Oh, that he's- Only goes here. You see this? You know what this does, right? Look at the box. Come on, don't be an asshole. It's a good boy.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  So, we go to castrate lambs. In Craig, Colorado. And I call, I called the SPCA and I called the Humane Society and I say, "Look, we're gonna be castrating lambs on the show. I wanna make sure we do it right." Because the last time, we, uh- Don't offend anyone, yeah. Don't offend anyone and they were all upset because a couple of months earlier, I'd gone to a ranch in, uh, uh, outside of Houston and collected the semen from a bull called Hun Sucker Commando. And artificially inseminated a bunch of cows. And apparently, it was great TV, but they were like, "Nah, nah, you're doing it all wrong." So I called and said, "How are we gonna do this right?" And they said, "The right way to do it is you take a rubber band and you put it around the testicles of the sheep."

• 28:51Speaker 01

  And over the course of a couple of days, the testicles fall off. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, "All right, well, that sounds, it'll be interesting TV." So we go there to do the job. You have a time lapse for two days? Well, I, I don't know what we're gonna do. Right. Cause I never did on Dirty Jobs. We, we, we always showed up, um, you know, there was no pre-production, there was no plan, there was no- Yeah, there was no, there was no second take. See what happens, yeah. Right. I mean, it was a very, very honest show. And, and, and the rancher, who's a guy named Albert, um, and he and his wife, Melody, they, they brought the, the first lamb out and they put him up on the, on the fence post. And, um, Albert reaches in his pocket and pulls out one of those rubber bands, you know, like the Humane Society told me.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Except it's not a rubber band. It's a, it's a switchblade. Oh, man. And he pops it open and he leans down and he, and he grabs the scrotum. And he pulls the scrotum towards him and he clips off the tip of the scrotum. And then he pushes the scrotum back, exposing both testicles, which look like thumbs on a little lamb. And then he bends down and he bites him off. Oh my gosh. And then he spits him in a bucket I'm holding. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing, dude? Are you, this, what happened? That my little show just turned into a-

• 30:06Lewis Howes?

  What happened with the rubber band?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Right, it's like now it's suddenly a German porno or something. Like, what are you doing? So I say, I say, cut, cut, stop. You know, which I never say on Dairy Chops. And I, and I said, Albert, look, I get it. You've watched the show. You want to be sensational. You want to do something that's going to be all great for reality TV. You don't have to do that on this show. And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've been, I've been branching for four generations.

• 30:32Lewis Howes?

  This is how we do it.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  This is how we do it. This is how we've always done it. And I'm like, okay, look, I don't know what kind of operation you're running here, but you're freaking me out. Can we just please do it the way the Humane Society does? And he says, well, it's not very, uh, it's not very nice. Like, not very nice? You just bit the balls off a sheep, dude. Come on, man. Let's just do it right. So, so we start filming again. And Albert goes to like this tackle box and he comes back with these bands and, and his wife puts a little lamb up and Albert puts the band over and he put the lamb down. And now the lamb is just, you know, trembling. And this, this poor creature walks off into the corner of the pen and just kind of sits down. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, Jesus, how-

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  The pain.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Like, how long? How long is he going to be like this? He said, about two days.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, the one he had just orally violated-

• 31:26Lewis Howes?

  It's fine. It's walking around.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Looking around, no blood.

• 31:30Lewis Howes?

  What?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Not a care in the world. Back with his mom and they're like trotting off over the Rockies to pursue a life of religious lamb fulfillment or whatever they do. And I'm just like, you know something?

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  It was one of those peripetias where, where it actually clicks in your, in your head. And, and the lesson on that day was beware of experts. You know, just beware of the idea that one size fits all. The, it looks so much kinder, but it's not. And so, you know, that was the day I started writing down. I mean, I, I always kept a journal, but the, that was where lessons from the dirt really began to originate. And, and I, and, and like I said, there, there were hundreds of them.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Every time, there was something new. How would, how would you prepare yourself for the show then? Would you- Just show up as an open vessel? Would you do a ritual, a routine? What would you do?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  You know, I'd worked 15 years impersonating a show host prior to Dirty Jobs, as well as a journalist. I'd had a lot of different jobs. I was an inveterate freelancer, committed to impersonating successful people on TV. As you know.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  As an actor.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  As, as an actor and as a host.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  The reason most TV sucks is because it's the same reason most music sucks and it's the same reason most commercials don't work. Everything is focus grouped, right? And when you focus group a thing, you eliminate really bad ideas and really good ideas. And what you're left with is that soft, squishy crap in the middle. That's just how, this is how it works. And so when, when Dirty Jobs.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Know what's taking a risk, is what you're saying.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, really, yeah, that, that is what I'm saying because the, if you, if you greenlight, if you're an executive at a network and, and you greenlight an idea that is similar to American Idol or The X Factor or America's Got Talent, and it fails, a big, expensive, shiny failure, based on those successful ideas, you're not gonna get fired. And you're not gonna get fired because, well, look, who knew? It worked there, there, there, and there.

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:57Speaker 01

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

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  At all. This is.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  There was no Swamp People or whatever, you know, all these.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  All that stuff.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  Duck Dynasty shows, you know.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  That all came out of Dirty Jobs.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  You know, there were 32 shows that came out of Dirty Jobs. And, and in, in 2003, when we, when we shot the first couple hours.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  There really truly was nothing to look at on TV. So it was utterly non-derivative. And I give huge credit to a couple of individuals over at the Discovery Network, who really pushed that thing up the hill. It just said, "Look, at base, what Mike is doing on the show is satisfying curiosity, which is our mandate at Discovery. But he's doing it in a way that is very unusual and very, very transparent. And we like it. And a lot of people didn't. And so ultimately, to your point,

• 35:07Speaker 01

  the people who took the risk on the show inspired me to make sure, you know, because the show didn't look like other shows, I didn't want to look like another host. So to answer your question, I completely disassociated myself from the host model.

• 35:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  So there was no ritual. As a host, it's nothing but ritual. You stay up the night before, you get smart on the topic. You have to. You've got to Google me, you've got to read up on me, otherwise, you know, right? You have to do something. And I had become very facile over the years in creating the illusion of competence. But that's all it was. I used to call it the, I used to call it the plaque approach. Not the stuff in your veins, around your teeth, but literally a plaque on a statue. Right? So I used to host all kinds of shows where, you know, we were pulling stuff out of our butt constantly. And I'd walk up to the statue of Francis Scott Key, and I would read the plaque.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  Two sentences and...

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Or five or whatever, but I'd get it in my short-term memory. And then I'd turn around to the camera and I'd say, "Francis Scott Key, born in 18..." right? And so people would be like, "Well, that Mike..."

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  He knows everything.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Mike doesn't know shit. You know, he knows how to read a plaque.

• 36:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  And so all of the ritualistic stuff from the hair, right? I mean, from hair and makeup, craft services, wardrobe.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Every single thing went out the window.

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  You didn't have any of that. Put on your cap.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  Shirt, jeans.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  That's it. And I would put on a cap and the first thing I'd say to the, wherever I was, you know, like at that ranch farm, I said, "Do you have a cap? You have a business, right?" "Yeah," I said, "I'd be happy to wear it. You know, five million people are gonna watch the show." So it was, you know, that's the reason I started wearing caps and also just because, why not? You don't have to worry about what your hair looks like. Wear a cap. But, but really, what happened was every single convention of traditional hosting went out the window. And what I was left with was the realization that I'm not, I'm not a host or an expert. I'm a guest. I'm a, um, I'm an avatar for the viewer.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And it's, it's funny when you, when you set the table just a little differently, how all your subsequent decisions will become informed by that. So imagine the same question you just asked me, knowing that I was a guest. It would never occur to you, say, "But how do you prepare yourself as a guest?" Well, you know, bring some wine.

• 37:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Show up on time.

• 37:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Don't use your host razor. Don't flirt with his wife. Just, just be a good guest.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  A good person, yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Hey, don't be an asshole, right? So.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  So it's actually a pretty easy process for you then. Just be curious and be nice and.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Be curious and don't be an asshole. And, and most importantly, try. My job ultimately on Dirty Jobs.

• 38:02Lewis Howes?

  You had to taste everything on the plate, essentially.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  You had to be curious enough to try a bite.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  You try everything. People always ask me, you know, was there a job you were not willing to do? And, uh.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  Did you bite the, the nuts off a lamb?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Would, of course. A hundred times over. That's all we did.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  A hundred times?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Biting nuts off?

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Well, there were hundreds of sheep.

• 38:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So, so technically, you're talking, if there were 200 sheep, there would have been 400 testicles, if I'm doing the math right.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  So you had 400 testicles in your mouth?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Well, not at once. I mean, go on. I'm just, I already got the job. So, um.

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So was there a job that you were unwilling to do?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  The only jobs that I passed on were ones that I knew the network wouldn't allow us to air. And.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Like?

• 38:51Speaker 01

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

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And you drive the old Pinto into the Echapholaea swamp. And two weeks later, you haul out the Pinto and you take out the body and you do stuff to it.

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And now you know what a body looks like that's been in the trunk of a Pinto in the Echapholaea swamp for two weeks. Now that's a job. It's CSI type stuff. And while it's an important job and certainly a dirty one, there's very little opportunity for humor in it.

• 39:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And it was important to me on the show.

• 39:23Lewis Howes?

  It's too heavy.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  I just wanted, like, my experience growing up, whether it was factories or construction sites or fish boats or wherever, was there's great humor in hard labor. And there's great humor in entrepreneurship too, which I know is important to you and I, it's important to me too to say that a lot of people who watch Dirty Jobs looked at it and saw a straight up homage to blue collar work. And while it was that, it was also a love letter to entrepreneurship.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  So a lot of entrepreneurs were built from Dirty Jobs who did the dirty work and they started it themselves.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  I'd say that forty, forty or fifty of the people that we featured on that show were multimillionaires. You'd never know it.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  They owned the farms, they owned the businesses, they were doing it, yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were just covered in many cases with other people's crap.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  And so, you know, we don't associate success in this country with, with that particular optic.

• 40:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Right? And so there was a lot about Dirty Jobs that was really very, very entrepreneurial in nature. That kind of got lost in the, in the visual.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  I mean, like, 1-800-GOT-JUNK is probably a.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Billion dollar company.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Right? Huge, all around junk, so, yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, you know, I, for me, we can talk about lessons from the dirt for, for hours and hours and hours, but the big one on a very personal level was. Once I, once I got rid of the paradigm of a host or an expert and really committed to being a guest in people's places of work and an apprentice, that's probably the best, you know, I was a, it was, for me, it was Groundhog's Day in a sewer for 300, you know, for nine seasons. I was an apprentice. Every day was the first day of, of work. You had to be coachable. You had to be a student at the game. You had to be a good sport. You had to try everything. And, and what I realized by the end of season one

• 41:18Speaker 01

  was the, actually, my, my mother called me after watching an episode. She said, Michael, watching you is almost identical to watching, watching you and these people on your show is like watching you and your father when you were young and like watching your father and your grandfather to this day, right? Because they, my dad was, always worked as my grandfather's apprentice and I always wanted to, to help in that same basic way. And so, you know, I, I don't know how much psychology was at work, but it's kind of interesting

• 41:54Speaker 01

  when I look back at that show and realize that going back to when I'm 17 and flunking out of shop and getting a different toolbox, now I get the toolbox, right? And now flash forward, now I'm, now I'm 45. It's season one of Dirty Jobs and what am I doing on that show? Well, I'm singing, I'm hosting, I'm writing, I'm producing, I'm directing. I got a different toolbox and I used them as best I could. And ultimately, the only project that gave me any celebrity at all was the project that turned in to an homage to my granddad. So.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  You know Hakuna Matata, right? The circle of life and everything else. It's, it's, it's, it's always a kick, you know, to catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror. And, and see the men from whence you came.

• 42:50Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  That's gonna be the thing when you're 40, that's gonna take it off.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  And I see that over and over from a lot of people I interview, Robert Greene, do you know that author?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  What, right?

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  He wrote 48 Laws of Power, um, he wrote Mastery, a book called Mastery, um, I think the, uh, The Art of Seduction.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:34Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  That have taken off his career.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:57Lewis Howes?

  He's like, he needed each of those five year windows to learn a trade and to be able to apply it to what he's doing now.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great when a plan comes together, but it sounds like he's saying, I, there was no guarantee that the plan was gonna come together.

• 44:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  And of course, of course, there's not, you know, ever, all, all you can do is, um, what makes the most sense to you, you know, people wanna feel congruent.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  You know, and there's, and there's so many times in our life when we don't and the, the question I always have is, well, when you don't feel congruent, are you gonna panic or not?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  And nothing good ever comes from panicking. Sure. But lots of good comes from changing and mixing things up. Which goes back to, you know, if you have a list of things you're willing to do. That means you also have a list of things you're unwilling to do. Right. And if one of the things that are actually going to get you where you want to go happens to be on your unwilling to do list. You know. Hey, you should be willing to do it then. Yeah, assuming it's legal and and no one's going to hurt. Yeah. Uh, so. I think, you know, what's interesting about Green and what's interesting about Covey and what's interesting about Tony Robbins and, you know. A lot of really, really smart people have offered a lot of really cogent blueprints.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  And some of them are different, some of them are similar. For myself, I I value them only because. The thing that I'm enamored of is the reverse commute. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, it's the dirty jobs, you know, everybody's going this way, I'll go this way. Right. Now, if everybody reads Tony Robbins' book or Robert Greene's book. Yep. Or Stephen Covey's book, if everybody goes around completely mastering the seven habits of highly effective people. Then everybody's going to be going this way. Right. And and and that to me is a good thing. Because what I need to be able to do to satisfy my own romantic version of myself.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  And to act in a way that makes me feel congruent, I need to affirmatively go the other way. Hmm. And so I can affirmatively go the other way until I understand where most people are going. Sure. So, look, this is a form of hubris, really, and arrogance. And and I I know it, you know, look, a lot of people expect, people say this to me all the time. Why don't you have a German shepherd? Why don't you have a big golden Labrador Retriever? Why do you have this 14 pound? Scruffy looking. Nightmare of a, you know, half terrier, half asshole, you know, why? And and and the answer is because I know I'm supposed to have the big chocolate lab. Yeah. And so I don't want to have that.

• 46:44Lewis Howes?

  It's so funny you say that because I I kind of try to live my life a little bit that way. So I I guess I've been following in your footsteps as a as the jock football player.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  It's like, I'm not going to drink and go to the parties because I don't want to be associated as that guy.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  You don't want to be a stereotype.

• 46:59Lewis Howes?

  I don't want to be a stereotype. I was like, I'm going to learn salsa dancing. I sang in the choir in high school. I did the musical. I was like, I'm going to do everything that people think you're not supposed to do.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  That's right. Look, to be, and again, it's this is the trick about advice, too, because the minute you start to say it like it's wisdom.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Then the minute you're assuming that would work for me will work for you.

• 47:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  And I truly have no idea. You know, everybody gets to figure out their own, you know, little mystical azimuth.

• 47:28Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  There there there are a lot of ways to get to get at it. But I'm still fascinated when I look back. Like, QVC was the first job I ever had.

• 47:43Lewis Howes?

  And how old were you?

• 47:44Speaker 01

  In TV. I was, um, I was right out of the opera, so I was 27. I was 27 when I actually crashed another audition.

• 47:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Got hired at QVC. And so.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  And I heard I heard this because you told it in your recent episode of your podcast.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Oh, to Tim with with Ferris or on my own story?

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes. You were talking about selling a pencil.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  In your audition.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  And you made me want to buy your ad was so good. You made me want to buy the the pen for whatever the pen thing is.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  The red mark pen company.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Company with the cap and the.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:19Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. So I'm going to get your pen now.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, because the money goes to the MicroWorks Foundation, which is kind of a nice thing. But I think.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead, yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Well, the point I wanted to make was, I I didn't talk about QVC. I was fired three times. And from 1993 to 1997.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  I left in 93 and and from the rest of the 90s, I freelanced in entertainment and I really didn't talk about QVC at all because when I look back at it, I really did see it as kind of this this thing I had to do, right? It was just like, oh, my God, what a hot mess that that time was. But the more time went by, the more I realized how important those three years were, selling stuff I couldn't describe or understand. Or care about, probably. In the middle of the night, right? I mean, it was just, it was so amazingly valuable. And and the reason that I was, um, the reason people liked me on QVC and the reason I had

• 49:19Speaker 01

  such a reputation for being a, uh, uh, an anarchist, wasn't because I was crazy. It's just because I was a little different than everybody else around me. So you're unique. Yes, I was unique, right? And so you turn on QVC right now or eight hours from now, and the person there is going to be doing the the same exact thing that the person before them was doing and the person after them is gonna do. Same tone, same body language. The graphics look the same. Yes. Every single thing looks the same. And so I was, to be just a little different, made me outrageous. Yes.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Same thing on Discovery, right? In 19 or 2001, Discovery was still the province of experts and hosts, right? So to come on there as a guest instead, that that that was that was radical. The point is, when I, when I, when I looked at QVC and for a while when I looked at Discovery, I used to, I, I used to curse their, uh, the, the provincialness of it, you know? And I, I used to say, ah, they're, they're so rigid and they have such unforgiving rules, right? But the truth is, you need those. Yes. Because you can't. The structure. You can't put your foot over the line if you don't know where the line is. Yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  And so the best thing anybody ever did for me in my career was to give me rules and tell me, you must not, you must not break them. And I didn't go out there to, to shatter them by any stretch, but knowing they're there allows you. Just flirt with them a little, right?

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  Step on the line a little bit.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Just a little bit. It's really, really important and, and that, you know, to the extent I have any maturity at all.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  That's, that's one of the things. One of the, one, one of the big lessons, you know, when people put you in a box. It is, it can be very useful. Conversely, what any writer will tell you, the most horrifying sight in the world is the blank page. You know, when there, when there are no, when you can write anything you want, when you can say anything you want, when you can order anything you want.

• 51:34Lewis Howes?

  There's no starting point, it's just like come up with something.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  That's it. Yeah.

• 51:38Lewis Howes?

  It's challenging.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  You can.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  But when there are rules and when there's a parameters, then you can create within the rules, right?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Or, or, or choices too.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, choices, yeah, options.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  That's right. Well, I don't know about you, I love to eat and there's not a single food.

• 51:51Lewis Howes?

  You both.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  There's not a single food, with the possible exception of the lamb testicles we spoke of. That I, that I don't affirmatively enjoy. When I go into a restaurant and somebody hands me a menu that looks like a copy of War and Peace. Right? I, I panic a little bit.

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Cause, cause there's nothing in there I don't want. But now suddenly you've just handed me homework and I'm, I'm going through, oh my, you're getting really three pages of appetizers?

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Really?

• 52:22Lewis Howes?

  Just tell me the top three options and I'll choose from those three.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And, and to this day, I, I don't look at menus. I say, what's, what is the chef loving? What's fresh? There's not a thing I don't like.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  That's impressive.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  And, and I've had, that has so, I mean, and I eat out 300 nights a year.

• 52:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  It has radically changed my experience in restaurants.

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Do not look at the menu. What do you recommend?

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  I, and I've, I've really, I've, I've never been disappointed.

• 52:55Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. I love it. I love it. What was, um, what's a skill that you think that every human being should focus on the most accumulating and generating?

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  One skill we could all have.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Oh man, look, my, my answer is going to sound a little hackneyed.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, cause look, there's, there, there, there are no new ideas.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  You know, it's, it's, it's all been done and said, uh, but.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Two ears, one mouth. In proportion, if everybody listened twice as much as they spoke, um, I, I just have to think it'd be a lot less noisy.

• 53:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  And if you knew that you only got to say half of what you normally say, you'd probably be a bit more circumspect about what comes out of your head. So, you know, I, it's just, that's just math. Two ears, one mouth.

• 53:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's simple.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  When in doubt, shut up.

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  I like that. I like that. Um, I watched the, um, I believe it was a keynote speech you gave at Skills USA 2013 on YouTube.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Could be.

• 54:08Lewis Howes?

  And there was a poster that you showed the audience. You turned around. That was from your, I believe, senior year in high school counselor.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:17Lewis Howes?

  Guidance counselor in his room.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:20Lewis Howes?

  And, uh, the poster said, work, smart, not hard, correct?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  With a capital not.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:28Lewis Howes?

  And you said this was the, the worst piece of advice or the worst thing or something along those lines like this, the worst

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  sentence you've ever seen or idea.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll stand by it. I think so.

• 54:39Lewis Howes?

  Why, why? And then what did you do afterwards? Well, if you remember.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember vividly. Um, you know, the, the parapetias we were talking about from Dirty Jobs, you know? The big, the big granddaddy of all of them was this idea that, um, well, when the economy crashed in 2009 and the headlines all said, I mean, every single day, you know, nine percent, 10%, 11% unemployment. All we heard about were the number of people who couldn't find work. All I saw on Dirty Jobs was help wanted signs. Everywhere I went.

• 55:20Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  People were struggling to hire. And it just made me think that, you know.

• 55:26Lewis Howes?

  But people with jobs or without jobs weren't willing to go do those jobs if they had degrees or if they had.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  I wasn't.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  Above them or whatever, right?

• 55:33Speaker 01

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

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 55:43Speaker 01

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

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 55:55Speaker 01

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

• 56:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I don't know when we became such a sedentary people, right? I mean, we, the United States, the United States, because we went west.

• 56:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  We move. We stop moving. And a lot of people today, in my opinion, are not only expecting a job after college, they're expecting a job that pays them what they believe is fair. And they're expecting a job that exists uh in their zip code.

• 56:43Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, and they're entitled, they're, they feel entitled, right?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, I, well, look, again, probably in some cases, I I think the millennials are an easy target and I don't want to pile on.

• 56:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  So I, I don't know if they're all entitled or not.

• 56:58Lewis Howes?

  In general, yes.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  I just know that there is an expectation.

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And so, this is a very long answer to your question, but one day I was talking to a guy named Dave Morales, who um, he has a, he had a ranch in Congress, Congress, Arizona. And he was on the verge of going bankrupt and Dave realized that he had many thousands of giant saguaro cacti on his property. So he got into the landscaping business and started selling his cactus all over the country. And after a gut-wrenching day with Dave transplanting a a three-ton cactus, we had this conversation and we was, we started talking about the worst advice in the world. And we were laughing about it and laughing about it. And um. I think he was the guy who reminded me of work smart, not hard.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And that reminded me of Mr. Dunbar, my high school guidance counselor. And Mr. Dunbar in 1979 called me down to his office to talk about my future. And he said, uh, you know, your, your, your scores are pretty good and University of Maryland, uh, James Madison. A couple of schools would be great for you. He grew up in Baltimore, right? Grew up in Baltimore. And I said, Mr. Dunbar, I, A, I don't have any money. B, the only, the only four letter word in, in my family is debt. There can be none. It's simply not, it's simply not tolerated. Yeah. We'd rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money. And, and finally, I, I don't know what I want to do.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  So why, why take on the debt? Why go to the, I, I, I want to go to a community college and I want to take as many inexpensive courses as I can to get a better sense of. What you want. Yeah. Get a better toolbox, right? He says, Mike, that's a terrible idea. It's way beneath your potential. And then he pointed to the poster that you were talking about. And on the poster was a picture of a guy in a cap and gown, holding his, uh, diploma very proudly. And next to him is a guy who looks like, uh, every mechanic you've ever seen. Grease monkey, holding a wrench, looking down at the ground like some sort of vocational consolation prize, right? And the caption, the caption on this poster said, work smart, not hard.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  So Mr. Dunbar is basically saying, the diploma is going to allow you to work smart. The wrench will doom you to a life of hard work. And knowing what I've told you about my grandfather and knowing, you know, what you know about me at this point, you can imagine I'm like, you, you're, you're completely.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Relegating a man like my grandfather, who can build a house without a blueprint. Yeah. Into a guy who's gonna be doomed. Right. To a life of. Poor, broke. Drudgery. Yeah, 15 hour workdays. Yeah, yeah. And I just thought, you know, at the time, it, I was offended as much as a 17 year old kid can be offended. I just like, ah, what a stupid thing to say. I don't buy that. Later, I got, I got more offended. And today, I use that moment and that poster as an example of, of the worst advice in the world. Because I think, I think we took it as a, as a people. And people say, you know, work smarter, not harder. Google it. You'll see thousands of pages. That expression has become a platitude. Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  The platitude becomes bromide. The bromide becomes conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom now becomes this neat, pat little expression. Yeah. People say, look, we just made hard work the, the thing to affirmatively avoid in favor of efficiency. Mm hmm. So, I, why in the world would you promote efficiency or effectiveness at the expense of hard work? Both of them are very important. Yeah. But, so I, I began to ask the question, well, what, what would happen if an entire country took the advice? That working smart instead of working hard. Mm hmm. Um, really is the epitome of wisdom.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  And in my opinion, uh, we'd be precisely where we are right now. We'd have 1.3 trillion dollars in student loans. We'd have thousands of college graduates who can't find work in their chosen field. We'd have nearly 40 million men right now, as we speak, who are between the ages of 18 and 54, who are not in the workforce. Forty million? Forty million. I'm not talking about unemployed people. Unemployed, that's a, that's a much smaller number. Those refer to people who are affirmatively looking for jobs, but haven't found one. People who are capable of working, but have taken themselves out of the workforce. That's a much larger number.

• 1:01:49Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  And that's a much scarier number. 5.9 million available jobs right now, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the Department of Labor. 70% of which don't require a four-year degree. So, why are we lending money we don't have to kids who will never be able to pay it back?

• 1:02:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  To train them for jobs that don't exist anymore? We're doing it in part because we believe that hard work is the enemy and that smart work is the only way forward. And we believe that the key to working smart is to becoming smart. And we believe that the key to becoming smart is a four-year degree. And we know that the key to a four-year degree is borrowing as much money as necessary to allow the universities to charge whatever they can charge in this very competitive environment. And so it goes. That's why you have millions of available jobs.

• 1:02:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  That are important, but don't require a four-year degree that are going unfilled.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Now, if you enjoyed this, make sure to stick around for part two because we just got started. In this episode, we learned a ton, but in part two, we break down if you can have a fulfilled life without having to work hard, how to build a big audience without inflating your ego, and what Mike's done to build his audience. Mike's views on masculinity today versus what it used to mean, especially with the working class. The truth about whether Mike has been considered for vice president. And so much more coming up in part two. Make sure to tune in because the next episode is going to be hot. And if you enjoyed this one, make sure to share it out with your friends. LewisHowes.com/403.

• 1:03:29Lewis Howes?

  All the show notes and the full video interview of both parts is back at LewisHowes.com/403. So you can watch the full video interview and check out the dog who makes an appearance as well. Share this with your friends, guys. Post it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, tag Mike as well. He's all over the place. You can connect with him more and make sure to check out all the information about what he is up to, his podcast, back at the show notes at LewisHowes.com/403.

• 1:03:57Lewis Howes?

  03 I'm super pumped for you guys to listen to part two so if this is your first time here at the school of greatness make sure to subscribe over on iTunes and stick around for part two coming next until then you know what time it is it's time to go out there and do something great

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  you