THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Dirty Truth About Passion w/ Mike Rowe

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Should you chase your PASSION or should you SOLVE a PROBLEM? Fill a NEED? Are you ready for the REAL DIRT with one of the SMARTEST and MOST PRACTICAL thinkers today about work in America? MIKE ROWE has been slogging it out in trenches, coal mines, sewers, and garbage dumps for a long time now as the host of DIRTY JOBS. There’s a RUGGED, DOWN-TO-EARTH and TRUSTWORTHY quality about Mike.  Coupled with the fact he can take any dirty job, tell a great story, add some humor, and hook you from the start, makes him one of the more unusual and compelling people in television for the past several years.   A self-described chronic freelancer, Mike has worked in more than 350 JOBS on his hit show.  But he’s also an in-demand Fortune 500 speaker, podcaster, executive producer, and author as well as a vocal advocate and CEO of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation that debunks myths and promotes the value of skilled trades in the workforce. Mike’s got some CAPTIVATING STORIES and SAGE ADVICE about THE NATURE OF WORK you’re going to want to hear.  Mike redefines why and how PASSION should be a part of what you do but probably not in a way you’ve thought of before. He has a great take on the value of HARD WORK and MASTERING SKILLS that leads you to a path to success, whether you work with your HANDS, your HEAD, or some combination of both. There’s also a big disconnect going on right now about the nature of EDUCATION and matching it up with meaningful work. Mike talks a lot about changing how we should REFRAME our thinking about both areas, and why we should always approach our work with a sense of HUMILITY AND CURIOSITY.  You, your children, and pretty much everyone you know are going to spend the better part of your lives working.  Doesn’t it make sense that you should give a lot of THOUGHT about what it’s going to take to be HAPPY and SUCCESSFUL in whatever you choose to do? This week’s show with Mike Rowe will start that important conversation you need to have with yourself. This one is really gonna get you thinking!

This is the Ed Milach Show. Hi everybody, welcome back. My guest doesn't need any introduction. First guy ever on the show with a deeper voice than me, rather intimidating. But I've wanted to talk with him for a long time because I've been a fan of dirty jobs. And then as I started to prep for the interview, a fan of the way he thinks. And his approach to life in business is something that I align with,

but also I wanna hear more about today. The reason he's on his dirty jobs is coming back, which I know a lot of you are excited about, 8 p.m. on Discovery Channel, starting the beginning of the year, and I know you're all gonna be tuning in. I've watched, I don't know, 8 ton. I haven't seen every show,

but I've watched a lot of them, they're compelling, as is the host. So, Mike Roe, thank don't know, eight ton. I haven't seen every show, but I've watched a lot of them. They're compelling. As is the host. So Mike Roe, thank you for being here, brother. Hey, man, I'd be lying to you if I said it was difficult. What I did was I filled up my brand new Ember coffee mug and I walked down the stairs and I clicked on a link and boom, Brave New World. Here we are.

Isn't it crazy? It is. It's unbelievable. Guys are age that can connect like this and the way people consume, we're talking about, you know, the audience size still blows my mind, the amount of people to consume content, you know, it's different ways now. And, and, and how fast it happened, right? You know, it, this is, in so many ways, this is just another example of people playing the cards they get, you know,

a year and a half ago, I was up to my neck and production and all of a sudden we're shut down. And then I'm on the phone with the president of a couple of networks talking about something called Zoom TV. I never heard of it. Zoom. I thought it was just like a verb or something. We do. And then here we are, you know, it's just, you know, pivot or perish, basically. Isn't that true? And you talk a lot about that in your work and it's interesting to me because I feel like the pandemic to some extent,

there's been all these negative things, but it really is like accelerated society by like 10 years. This was all inevitable anyway. We just worried up and got here. And but I was thinking about business. I want to, because obviously we're talking about hard work today and the jobs and your experience doing that and our culture.

But I was reading, I'm like, everyone always says, chase your passion. In fact, I've probably said that out loud before. And you're like, I don't know. There's something other than chasing your passion. You probably ought to be focused on if you're going to have some level of success. So I'll let you answer it your way. But what should we be chasing in your opinion? Well, look, that turn of phrase, you know, somewhere in fact

It's on that poster right behind me. You can't read it, but it says never follow your passion But always bring it with you and I'm artificially inseminating a turkey right there, which is a whole another story But part of what happened to me when when dirty jobs got into its fifth or sixth year and became Really a dominant show on on cable Something began to emerge from the totality of of the segments, right people were always asking what what does this group of people know that the rest of us have Either forgotten or just don't know? And so I started working on sort of a collection of alternative successories, right?

Like the whole notion of conventional wisdom is so often rooted in cookie cutter advice and bromides and tropes and platitudes. And it's only a matter of time until you see some photo of some guy in a kayak in a boardroom paddling through a glacier with some definition of persistence under it and all that. No, it's just like, okay. All right. So, so what's the dirty jobs take on innovation or teamwork or persistence or passion? And so you're asking me about in 2008, I did a special called the dirty truth where we

took a different look at some of these bromides. And somewhere near the top of the list was follow your passion. Most everybody I know who's had any kind of success is always eager to tell me about how they they identified that which they were most passionate about and then executed this this carefully concocted plan and put the ball through the hoop and boom, now they're passionate and happy and successful. And I just didn't see much of that on dirty jobs. I saw a lot of happy, successful, passionate people. Yeah, but I never met anybody who had taken the conventional road.

The people I met who were most passionate about what they did were people who started their journey not by trying to identify their passion, but by simply identifying the opportunity that was in front of them. Oftentimes, this involved a reverse commute. I'm thinking of the septic tank worker I met years ago. My name is Les Swanson up there in Wisconsin. He was a psychologist and he was a guidance counselor. Crazy. Right.

And then he walked away from all of it to clean people's septic tanks. And he was very passionate about his work. He loved what he did. But I just remember the day I spent with him standing up to my nipples in excrement and sweat and I'm just less. What are you doing here? You know, how did this happen? He said, Mike, I used to be a guidance counselor, I used to be a shrink and I got tired of dealing with other people's crap. That's crazy. So now he literally deals

with your crap. Correct. And so this idea that job satisfactionults from following your passion was something that I thought it would be fun to If not debunk at least challenge and so we did you know, I used dirty jobs to do it I use my foundation to do it But I'm always looking for people Passionate people who love what they do Not because of what they do but because of who they are. And because they simply chose to be passionate about the thing that makes them money. I would like 1,000% rubber stamp that. And when I first heard you say it, I'm like, I don't

know. I mean, that you're going to define something you're passionate about. They're not sort of think of even where I am right now, I'm pretty affluent neighborhood. And I'm thinking of the different people here. Most of them were not passionate initially about the industry they got into. I get into the financial industry. I wanted nothing to do with it. There's nothing about it that I thought, but I found elements of what I did daily I was passionate about. But it wasn't like I chased opportunity exactly what you just described. I think even if we stopped recording now for a lot of people, they're like,

I got to change my life. I'm passionate about cookies. So I've got to find something to do with cookies like, Hey, man, that's a limited scope to go build your life around, right? Or you know, maybe you'll find maybe and by the way, maybe your passion doesn't even have to be your vocation. Maybe you fund your passion with your vocation with the money you make in your vocation. True. Look, there is a, I mean, there's so many bromides around the notion of, you know, find something you love, you'll never work

in other day in your life and so forth. I don't think, I think the real enemy here is cookie cutter advice. I think that different people need to hear different things at different times in their life. College and going to college, for instance, might be exactly the right thing to do for a certain person, but if you're going to go out there and speak to the masses, well, you can't very well in good conscience

anyway, tell the whole country that the best path for the most people is the most expensive path. And yet, of course, that's what we do, right? We always trade, it seems, in these sweeping bromides. But you're talking about work and hobbies, basically in the same breath. And that is a fascinating topic, you know, it's vocation and avocation. There's a great poem by Robert Frost, which for me is the greatest American poet of all time. And he wrote a poem called Two Tramps in Mud Time.

Most people haven't heard of it, but it's, I bet your listeners would love it because it tells the story. Frost is cutting wood in his backyard and he loves to chop wood. He does it for fun and his passion for it is a big chunk of the poem, but out of the woods two traps emerge while he's cutting wood. And these traps, they've been sleeping in the woods.

They came down from the lumber camps and these men get paid to cutting wood. And these traps, they've been sleeping in the woods. They came down from the lumber camps. And these men get paid to chop wood. It's their vocation. And so the poem becomes this rumination between the narrator and these two men who are hungry. And they want to be paid to do what they're great at. But here's our narrator doing the thing that they're great at because he loves to do it. And so the whole thing leads up to this climax where Frost says something like, my right was love, but theirs was need. and where the two exist in twain, theirs was the greater right agreed, but yield who will to their separation.

And here's the good part. My goal in living is to unite my vocation with my avocation, so my two eyes make one in sight. two eyes make one in sight for only where love and need are one and work is play for mortal stakes. Can the deed be done for heaven and for future sex? So that's a, you know, a long and clever way of saying there are days where you better look at your work like play and their days where you better look at your play like work. And every successful person I've ever met, whether they know it or not, has figured that out.

That is so good. I know you're going to get that good that quick. I also think that some of these platitudes lead you to believe that you have to be motivated or passionate every day, whereas for me oftentimes the separator is what do you do on the days you're not feeling it. You know, the guys that you're interacting with, they get up on do it on the days, they're not feeling it. It's your habits, rituals, and disciplines when you're not on top of the world or passionate or motivated. I gotta assume that's even true for you too. There had to be days you didn't want to go shoot or didn't't wanna do the voiceover or whatever it might be,

but it's what you do on the days where you're not feeling it that separates you from the people who only perform on days they're motivated. Maybe the biggest lesson I learned, I learned in the Boy Scouts years ago, we had a scout master who was actually a retired drill sergeant, and he ran that troop like a paramilitary organization. And up until that point, the big character lessons that my dad and my granddad

tried to instill in me had to do with the importance of being willing and able to do a thing when you didn't feel like doing it. It was that basic, right, embrace the suck essentially, right? Well, this guy, Mr. Huntington, he took it a step further. And his basic thing was, look, most anybody of character will figure out how to do something in spite of the discomfort that accompanies it. Right? But the ones who knock it out of the park, those sick bastards, those are the ones who realize how to love it. They're the massacists. They're the ones who go, you know what? Like, I lost 35 pounds last year because it was just time it was time to do that

I was just on the wrong side of where I wanted to be and And I remembered my old scout master giving me these these lectures and I thought you know what it applies to hunger When I feel hungry, I'm not really hungry. I'm not gonna die I'm I'm not really hungry. I'm not going to die. I'm nowhere near starving. But when I feel like I want to eat, that's the thing that used to scare me. That's the thing that used to make me want to reach for the cookies, reach for anything. But you have to train yourself to want that feeling of hunger. Because when you have it, that's when you know, like in my case, I'm getting into some level of ketosis, and that's what I wanted to do, right? And so you look for the pain, you look for the adversity, you look for the hunger, and

when you find it, you give yourself a high five, because now you're getting somewhere. But my foot is a little bit bad part of not doing this live as you can't see my foot going a thousand miles an hour up and down like some puppy dog loving what you're saying because I because I do think that there's this problem even my entrepreneurial journey in my life like I caught that massacus is a really descriptive order it's like almost getting off on doing things you know no one else is willing to do right now. And I completely acknowledge that you're right about that. What about culture wise? You know, hard work, which is really what your show shows other than your show really isn't glorified anymore. Meaning, I mean, real work. I'm talking working with your hands. Like, watching an interview you did, I was prepping for this and like the depth of things that you describe, you're talking about how, you know,

that vocational technology used to be called vocational arts. And it used to be really respected. And then it just kind of faded away all together in the educational system. Now, everyone goes away to college to like learn and think and somehow we're gonna be an executive thinker somewhere. Right. But this notion of work every single day, working with one's hands has sort of become almost

disrespected in our culture. Yet, a lot of these guys, a lot of these women do very well financially a whole lot better than these thinkers that have three initials next to their name. My entire foundation is based on the premise that we need to confront the myths and misperceptions and stigmas and stereotypes that keep millions of people from exploring legit careers that require the mastery of a skill. We get people the skills they need and then we tell their stories because the path to a prosperous life that begins with the mastery of a skill is absolutely a critical narrative that we have forgotten about.

Our path to success, more often than not, when you read stories about successful people today, it goes back to what we were just saying about passion. We looked for people who were afflicted with this great passion and then we try and unpack the mystery of how they were able to with this great passion, and then we try and unpack the mystery of how they were able to broker this great passion into something that looks like success. This is the same thing you're talking about because if you're going to have a good way to do a thing, well, that by definition means that the other ways are bad ways or less good. And working with your hands used to be an integral part of the success story. But then it wasn't. And then we

weren't content to merely arbitrage it out of the successful formula, we had to make it the enemy. We had to do something to actually affirmatively disparage the path that we're not on because we're so concerned that we might have taken the wrong path, that we have to make sure that that doesn't happen. That's where you get expressions like higher education. Now, I'm a big fan of education, but since when did we call it? Why is one path higher? Does that mean the other paths are lower? Well, we don't really call it lower education. So we call it alternative education. We take community colleges, which saved my bacon, by the way. We take trade schools.

We take apprenticeship programs, and we put them all in this big squishy bundle of crap and say, this is what you do if you're not cut out for the higher road. Welcome to the lower road. And that's it's part of the reason why I often get sucked into the politics of our times because I'm not a political animal But work has become politicized and education has become politicized and Woe unto thee who tries to disentangle the two now when those two things get get married up like that to your point The war on work that we your point, the war on work that we see begins with the war on language. And so if you look at some of the rhetorical pretzels that some of the biggest companies

in our country today have twisted themselves and, too, it'll take your breath away. Corn Ferry, the big recruiting firm, has a giant list of terms that are no longer deemed acceptable internally. Words like ambition and drive have become problematic. Lockheed Martin of all places has identified work ethic itself as identified work ethic itself as problematic because for the same reasons that personal responsibility, these words have become like dog whistles, right? Why?

Well, look, the honest answer to that, it's a 300 page book, I can't get around to finishing, but it has something to do with the fact that we are trying to reimagine the path to prosperity. And we're trying to do it without some of the most basic notions upon which our country was built. The delayed gratification, a positive attitude, a decent work ethic, a heap in helping of personal responsibility, and the unapologetic willingness to get up early, stay late and take a bite of the s*** sand,

which when it comes around to you, and figure out a way to like it. All of that stuff is a really, really hard sell. And that's why my scholarship program rewards work ethic. We award work ethic scholarships a million bucks a year to kids who can demonstrate some measure of these qualities that we're trying to elevate. I've seen scholarship programs for talent, for athletic ability, and obviously for scholastic achievement. Great. But to affirmatively try and reward work ethic is my attempt to push back against the very

thing you're talking about. The work. I freaking love it. I'm so fired up right now because it's one of my favorite conversations I've had because I really feel like there's a little bit of a war on work. And even this week, there's one of the two parties trying to pass a four day work week all of a sudden. And as if, and this is the big thing, as if work can't be enjoyable, as if creating something, I love this notion, not notion, but fact that you brought to my attention, that it was vocational arts.

I said a guy fixed my car, which I'm incapable of doing. And I'm watching the brilliance of this man's mind compared to mine in this mechanical way of thinking. And it was an art. Yet, you would never describe it that way in our culture right now because he's got grease on his hands and he didn't shave this morning, right? And so his name's on his shirt, so he's not an artist. But if he was somewhere in a studio in New York with a canvas, he's an artist. And by the way, I respect and appreciate both artists.

But this notion, this thing you've said about higher education is so profound and so true. And if you have children you're listening to this. Or, you know, there's these two paths. I want you to talk about this for a minute. There's this path, let's be candid, where someone leaves they got a skill or a perclivity that could be great in a career. And maybe they work for someone for five or ten years, then they open up their own, auto dealership, their own mechanics shop, their own transmission shop,

becoming entrepreneur. That's one path in life that ought to be really considered by more people. And then there's the other one, which is the one that's really pushed down our throws. Both my kids are doing it. Go to college, they're not gonna get debt because their dad's rich,

but most people leave with a bunch of debt. They're 25, 26, 27 years old with their degree, and they're a barista at Starbucks. And they're living at their mom and dad's house with debt and their lost. And they were made this huge promise of what their life would be if they would just become educated. And none of it panned out because you don't get ahead with that. You get ahead with hard work and innovation and creativity. And almost like we're lying to these kids on top of that, I never say this on my show ever, but there's sort of this indoctrination

in a particular ideology that is widespread across these campuses that doesn't value the things that you've described. You speak about it better than I do, but share your thoughts about that with the audience. Well, my thoughts sound like they are your thoughts. A lot of parents today are deeply concerned about what's going on in schools. And again, I try and stay in my lane. I don't need any fights that I'm that I'm not currently in. But look, I don't know if this winds up in video or not, but if both. Yeah. So for the people who were just listening to this, I'm holding in my hand the micro works, work ethic curriculum.

It is about two inches thick. And inside of this, we're in 30 schools right now and technical colleges for the most part. And this is basically an attempt to inculcate the tenets of my sweat pledge, which everybody has to sign who applies for a work ethic scholarship, we're just trying to bring that to life and form a study guide so we can at least set the table with some of these basic tools and give people the chance

to incorporate them into the conversation. Because to your point, these things have not just been neglected. They have been identified as the proximate cause of our unhappiness. Work has become the enemy because it's so simple for people to say, look, if you're unhappy, it's not because of anything you've done or not done. It's your damn boss who's the problem. It's the work that's the problem. It's the grind that's the problem. It's the grind. That's the problem. You want to see the war on work. Well, look at Madison Avenue. How many commercials that air

right now basically reinforce the idea that you'd be happier if you were on vacation? You'd be happier if you were working less. You'd be happier if your boss weren't such a douche, right? There, we do it in a thousand different ways. If you close your eyes right now, and I say plumber, the first image to come to mind is a dude that could probably lose a hundred pounds that's got the giant sh** crack, right? He's the plumber. That's what we've been taught to think of.

You know, you just described the artist down at the auto shop as a grease monkey, because that's what we see. We see the unshaven face, we see the dirty fingernails, and we don't associate art with any of these things. Look, I'll riff on that too for a second because it is important. When we took shop class out of high school, we removed

from site entire vocations. We basically said to kids, can you imagine sending a more clear message to a kid regarding the aspirational components or elements of a job, then by removing it from sight. Now, we didn't just take shop class at a high school to your point. The first thing we did was we dealt with the language. The industrial arts just became Votec. Votec just became tech. Tech became shop. And once it became tech, tech became shop. And once it became shop, well,

then you just walk it around back of the barn and shoot it in the head. And that's what we did. That's how we got shop class on a high school. And we did that 45, 50 years ago and started pushing everybody into this other path. So that's where we are today. We're wildly disconnected

from a long list of critical jobs. I don't have to tell you this, you know, there are 11 million open positions right now as you and I are talking. 11 million. Now the vast majority do not require a four-year degree. And yet, we're still telling kids they're screwed without their paper. We're still lending money. We don't have the kids who are never going to be able to pay it back to train them for jobs that don't even exist anymore. Hence the F or mentioned barista living in mom's basement, wonderfully educated, but woefully untrained for a long list of jobs that actually exist. Right, that there's a demand for.

And by the way, everyone knows me very well in the show. I'm all for prayer, meditation, quiet time, relaxation. I'm also all for work. And I think the extremes in our culture are so polarizing. Work is now under attack. It really is. And the things like taking you know, taking it slower and doing those other things is elevated. I'm a guy who works like crazy.

So there's a necessity to rest. There's a necessity to prayer and meditation so that I'm recharged so that I can work. So it's not one without the other. And I don't know for you, but when you've interacted with, how many shows you done? Do you know how many you've done for dirty jobs? 350 jobs, probably 200 shows.

That's incredible. And is there something you thought, even you, about these folks, right? Working people. We'll just call them working people, which I don't know how in the world, that's not the most admirable thing you could say about somebody.

But is there something you believed that you now that you've done that many, you no longer believe? Like you just had an epiphany like, well, I just had this wrong. Well, yeah, the Greeks call it a parapetia, right? The moment in the narrative when the protagonist realizes everything he thought he knew about something was wrong, right?

Like, when Etappus, you know, the King of Thebes realizes he loves having sex with older women, that's called an anagnoresis, that's a discovery, and that drives the plot forward. And so he marries this older woman, Joghasta, and they have a lovely life. And then later, you know, he has a parapetia, another form of anagnaresis where he realizes this older woman he's married and had kids with is actually his mother. Now, when you realize the love of your life is your mom, it changes the direction of the story. And so yeah, I've had, I've had many, peripities in my life where I realized, man, everything I thought I knew about a thing happened

to be wrong. And a lot of what I talk about when people pay me to impersonate a speaker or, you know, address groups, I talk very personally about the things, not just the things I was wrong about, the things I was damn sure I was right about, and then realized how, just how wrong I could be. And dirty jobs is filled with those lessons. And to answer your question, the big one,

and this was so obvious, dirty jobs, a personal show is a tribute to my pop, you know, a guy with the seventh grade education who could build a house without a blueprint, right? It was a tribute to that guy. It was a tribute to skilled labor. It was a tribute to skilled labor. It was not a tribute, or at least not a deliberate one, to entrepreneurship, which is fascinating,

because I'd say of the 300 people we've featured on the show, 50 of them are multi-millionaires. There you go. Now, you'd never know it, because the people I feature on my show are covered with mud or grime or slime or crap or something worse. They don't look prosperous, but they are, because they are the exact people you described before, people who began their journey chasing opportunity, not passion. People who then figured out a way to get really good

at the opportunity they caught, then figured out how to love the thing passionately that they got good at, right? Those people, they don't just sit on their hands and keep making little rocks at a big rocks, they hire other people, they learn other skills. That welding certificate turns into a plumbing certification, which turns into a heating and air conditioning certification, which turns into an electrical contractor. And next thing you know, you got four vans and 20 employees. Those people are all over dirty jobs.

And when I realized that my own show was not really just a tribute to hardworking men and women who do the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us, it was in equal parts a tribute to entrepreneurs who took the reverse commute, who figured out a way to solve a problem that they didn't even know existed. And so, the show is not a polemic, but it is a much broader rumination on the nature of work than I originally thought it was. And it's part of the reason I brought it back 10 years later after going out of production. I stopped filming the show at in 2012, but the show never went off the air, ever. And after these lockdowns, with essential work in the headlines, so many people reached out to say Mike,

this, you had the granddaddy of essential working shows. Why don't you go back out into the world and show us what work looks like today. And I said, okay. Yeah, it's funny. It's amazing that we're now told what work is essential and what isn't. That's a whole other conversation. But I got I'm curious that I, is there one that you couldn't do? Is there the one here is like, this one I'm not doing, there's just no freaking way. Or was there the hardest one? I look, I mean, yeah, we can talk a lot about that,

but it'll have a lot more meaning, I think, if the listener understands the real parapetia that I went through before dirty jobs. You know, I impersonated a host in this crazy business for nearly 20 years. I had hundreds of jobs. I worked for every major network. I narrated hundreds of documentaries. And I had it figured out. Like my business model was based on touching everything like it was very hot. You know, I took three or four months off a year. I took my retirement early in small installments and just went to work when it suited me.

Dirty jobs was really the beginning of my education. When I was 42 years old, the beginning of my education. When I was 42 years old, my mother called me to be honest. I was working at CBS and I was sitting in my cubicle as hosting the show called Evening Magazine. And she said, you know, Mike, your grandfather just turned 90. He's not going to be a lie forever. Wouldn't it be great if before he died, he could turn on the TV and see you doing something that looked like work? And brutal, right? So what happens to me is very simple. I go into the sewers of San Francisco the next day

with a cameraman to host Evening Magazine from a place that my pop might recognize as work. The sewer does not let me do this. The rats interrupt me, the roaches cover me. Giant condoms floating down a river of crap cling to my rubber boots, right? It's giant, it's, it's ridiculous. Okay.

What I wind up doing instead of hosting the show is working with the sewer inspector. I spend an hour knocking rotten bricks out of the infrastructure and replacing them. And my cameraman fills it all, films it all. That, that scene ultimately led to dirty jobs. But what it really led to to answer your question was a completely new identity for me. Remember, the Aristotelian definition of tragedy is that moment in the narrative

when the protagonist realizes that everything he thought he knew was wrong and he comes face to face with the true nature of his own identity. I had been a host all my life up until that point. Everything I did in TV I did as a host, which meant I was good at creating the illusion of knowledge and competence in short bursts. That was my job, you know, to be a facile, prevaricator. In that moment, in the sewer, working with the sewer inspector, I became an apprentice. And all of the factual information about the sewer

that I would have loved to have shared with the viewer in my, in my hostie way came out in the course of a conversation with this regular dude who loved his job was passionate about his work and who took an hour out of his day to show me how it worked. In that moment, I stopped becoming a host and vowed for the rest of my career to be a guest, a cipher, an avatar. And that was the parapetia that changed my life. That's why we're having our conversation right now because at 42 years of age, I realized that everything I thought about my own career was wrong.

And so dirty jobs became a way for me to go to school in front of a few million people every week. And to learn from people who are doing jobs that most people didn't even know existed, in towns, most people couldn't find on a map. And so, you know, sharing that education, sharing my education with the discovery audience led to a level of success I had never imagined and then ultimately opened the door for a cause.

I had forgotten I cared about. And that's what microworks became. That's why I've got to work at the curriculum in schools today. That's why dirty jobs is back on the air. And that's why ultimately, it's very, very difficult for me to talk about any of these things without circling back to a measure of

abject humility Which was conspicuously lacking in most of my career. Was there a risk for you then Mike? Like you have this pretty good career doing what you were doing or if this didn't work out Could you've just gone back to what you were always doing? Are you taking a leap if this failed? You know, you might be 44 years old with a pretty big failure on your resume, and you've lost this momentum you had your other career.

Yeah, I had to quit. I had to quit a steady gig at CBS. I had to quit a show called Worcester scenario, which was on TBS and doing okay. Yeah, I had to abandon not just my existing career, but my existing model. Remember, I was in love with the romantic version of myself when I was 42, I'm a freelancer.

I got a pretty good toolbox, right? I can get hired by virtually anyone. I just wasn't looking for jobs that I cared about. I was just looking to stay busy. I squirreled my money away. I took my retirement and early installments. And I felt like I had it down, you know? But I didn't. Because, well, maybe I did, but then I got a little older, and then my pop got old, and then my mom called me, and then people called me on all my bull crap.

Like, I had a pretty good model, and it served me pretty well for a big chunk of my life, but then my life changed, you know? And this is the thing I think it's so easy for people to forget. We're not in a snapshot. We're in a movie. Everything is always changing, including us, right? We're always a little older. We're always getting more experience. And if we fall too deeply in love with our routines and and and our vision of ourself, then we risk, I think, maybe missing opportunities that come along. So this whole notion of me, you know, becoming a guest instead of a host, that

that wouldn't have happened on paper and it wouldn't have happened in most other environments. I had to be in the sewers, Ed. I was baptized in a river of sh**. I had to be thwarted at every turn from doing my job, the rat had to intervene, the roaches had to intervene, the excrement had to make the whole thing untenable. Only then did I look around and say, well, I can't do my job.

Maybe I can help that guy do his. Love it. I'm the visual of the giant condom floating down the river of crap will not leave me for the rest of the day. So I appreciate that. Visual. But I think there's a lesson in there

that you don't take credit for it. So I ask you. And that is that the show is really about you are a guest and they are sort of the star, you know, their career. But, you know, everyone here, what he just said, the greatest work of his life, the most impactful work of his life, all the other ancillary things that's come from it came from a leap he made when he had a pretty decent gig going on. And he doesn't ever talk about that. And most of the other interviews that I've seen him in and that's a lesson for so many of us. You know, it's easy to want to change when life's hell. It's easy to want to change your conditions when things are like just terrible.

But it's not so easy when things are pretty good and you're in a routine and you're getting some acknowledgement for it. It's not so bad. In fact, it's better than it used to be. It's a difficult time to say, no, I'm crumbling up again and I'm going to the next level. I'm going to try something new and that took guts and like for most people on the other side of that was probably an impact greater than the cumulative impact you had made in the first 42 years. I know you've got a lot of humility, but that's an absolute fact. Is it not? Look, I'll take credit where it's due, you know, I mean, for instance, the whole forest gumpian approach that led to dirty jobs is a completely unscriptable, unknowable thing.

I created that show and I got it on the air and I'm proud of it. However, 32 other shows have come out of dirty jobs. That last count probably more, 32. Now, I don't want the credit for those and I don't want the blame either, because you can't control, but a very short list of things, and you put your ideas out into the universe, you make your widget. I put a show out into the universe. You make your widget.

I put a show out into the universe. Some people looked at it and saw a reason to go to college. Otherwise you're going to wind up crawling through a river of crap. Other people saw the same exact show and took great comfort in the fact that we found dignity in every single vocation. It's not up to me to decide what you see in dirty jobs. It's not up to Smith and Wesson to decide what you're going to do with the Saturday night special that you bought. Are you going to save someone? Are you going to protect your home? Are you going to make a life of crime with this tool? What are you going to do? It's not up to Mark Zuckerberg to decide what I'm going to say to the

6 million people on my Facebook page. Am I going to use that space to push forward ideas that I think are helpful and useful to my species? Or am I gonna share recipes for casseroles and cat videos? Or am I gonna use it to just rant and rage you know against all the injustice in the world? I get to choose how to use the tools at my disposal. Mark Zuckerberg and Mr. Remington and Smith and Wesson and you know, they don't get to choose how the people use their tools Yeah, and I've been made hyper aware of that over these last couple of years

We all have access to the same basic tools what we do with them Well, that's a difference between people who can sleep at night and people who can't. That's so true, but it takes courage to do that, especially when you're again. You didn't have to do any of that stuff and people would just kept just loving you and move on with their lives, but you want to make a difference, you want to contribute. It's all about taking these risks. I'm here with a 50 millionaires though. So, is there anything with them? Success leaves clues, right? Was there something that you noticed in them that maybe the other ones didn't have or that you've just noticed in them that you'd impart on to people who want to be financially successful as they do their art form in their life? I think we've already

talked around it a little bit, you know? Don't let anybody take the art out of your vocation. out of your vocation. Don't let anyone do that. Don't look at whatever you think you're passionate about as the thing that leads you. Don't do that. It might, this is the real danger of following your passion. It might work. And when it works, other people look at that and assume, well, that's When it works, other people look at that and assume, well, that's the way to do it. It's a way. And sometimes a way is the right way. But there are a lot of people in this country, Ed, and a lot of people are singing out of a different hymn book and a lot of people in terms of becoming successful. It's not at all about following your passion.

It's like we said before, take the reverse commute, find the thing that nobody's doing, find the direction where no one's going, and go in that direction, and then figure it out, embrace the suck. There's not much new to say. This is the essential problem, you know, with conversations like this one. We, with conversations like this one. We, because we've had some success in our own life, we would like to be able to say something that really connects with the fat part of the bat that can make millions of people nod their head

in quiet agreement. We wanna help turn a light on someplace. But I'm afraid really, if we're really committed to staying in our own lane, then the only thing we can really talk about as an expert is ourselves. It's our own journey, it's our own path, it's our own parapetia, right? It's our own realization, you know, about what we thought we knew. I think you agree. By the way, I agree with you. And I also agree with you on the notion that I've just, especially now that I'm in my 50s, the things that I really was sure I was right about, that I was just dead wrong about, creates a sense of humility in me. By the way,

I'm curiosity. Like, what else am I wrong about in my life? However, there are clues and there are trends. For example, you say it more clearly, but in hindsight, I've interviewed a couple hundred entrepreneurs on the show, not everyone's been on the show has been an entrepreneur, but you know what? Most of them, you know, they got wealthy,

solving a problem and chasing opportunity, almost all of them. They word it differently than you do, but that's a clue. But there's another one. I want to unpack for a minute, because I've not heard you talk you do, but that's a clue. But there's another one. I want to unpack for a minute, because I've not heard you talk about this. And it's a theory that I have. One of the reason I admire people that can,

that art form I talked about the gentleman who's fixed my car. One of the reasons is I lack that gift, talent, proclivity, and understanding. I just lack it. I think it could I become a car mechanic? Yes, would I have been a great one? Probably not. Reason, it's not lended car mechanic? Yes, would I have been a great one? Probably not.

Reason, it's not landed in my giftedness talent or skill set. And I think one of the other elements is solving a problem, but I also think it's playing to some of your natural, what you wanna call giftedness or talents, whether it's your intellect, your humor, your deep voice, your nurturing ability, problem solving, mechanical skills, whatever it might be, most people are wired with two, three, four of these things. Actually, all people are.

And I do think one of the success principles is probably that they utilize some of those talents or gifts in their vocation in the service of other people. You've clearly done that. Do you agree with that when you go back, kind of look at these people with these dirty jobs and also even within your own life? Well, I think whenever you feel like you're playing the cards you got, well,

then you feel smart. Like these are my gifts, these are my tools. This is my toolbox. And now it's incumbent upon me to do the best work I can with the tools that I have. That's when I feel like a grown up. But it's a different conversation to develop a new tool. That takes a different kind of a mindset.

The reason I think the humility is so important to entrepreneurs is because, well, you just said it, you can't be a curious person and not be a humble person, because if you're curious about something by definition, it means you don't know the answer. And if you can't admit that you don't know the answer, then you like humility. So you can't be curious and arrogant at the same time. And unfortunately, I guess you can, because I know some people who are or who claim to be, but I don't believe you can be a genuinely curious person without being a genuinely humble person. The reason this is important, and I'll compliment you, you, you just said it, you're, you have a healthy self-esteem, obviously, but you're not threatened by the fact that they're people in your life who can do things that you can't do, right?

That is important, right? You're able to value what your mechanic does in part because you can't do it. Now, the fault in our stars, and a thing that I think a lot of people struggle with is, and I'm just gonna generalize, which I hate to do, but I think this is basically a true thing to say. We resent all too often that which we depend upon. And this happens because when we are confronted with people

who can do things we can't do, well, we perceive it as a threat or maybe just a reminder of our own incompetence. Now I walked in my office, you know, I flipped on the lights. I did not pause to say my God, what a miracle. I hooked up this internet connection. I clicked on the link. I was not properly gobsmacked when we actually entered the room, right?

This thing we're doing right now, and it is a freaking miracle, right? It's a miracle. This morning, I took care of business in the upstairs bathroom, flushed the toilet, and watched it go away. You don't think that's a miracle? It is a miracle. Now, here's the interesting thing.

For all that to happen, I depend upon an electrician. I depend upon a plumber, I depend upon a skilled workforce to allow me to do all of the things that I now take for granted. But what happens when the toilet doesn't flush? What happens when how frustrated do you get when you can't get a good internet hookup? How crazy do you get when the electricity goes off for a couple hours, never mind three, four days like it did where I live last year.

When you lose power in a place like Marin, it's only a matter of a day or two until the residents are shaking their fists at the linemen who are up on the pole trying to fix the problem because they're so frustrated that they don't have power. What they're really frustrated by is the fact that they are reliant on somebody. They have come to depend on someone and we resent the fact that all of a sudden we can't take care of our own power, we can't take care of our own power. We can't take care of our own plumbing issues.

This is why work is such an important thing to talk about because all work is connected. It's not about blue collar or white collar. Screw the collar of collars. That doesn't matter anymore. What matters is what happens when you elevate certain jobs as essential. And then in a de facto tacit way, label all the other jobs as non-essential. You tell 40 million people they're non-essential for a year or so. Well, guess what? That's where we

are right now. This silver lining that I think, one of the silver linings that might come out of these crazy lockdowns is the reality that there is no such thing as a non-essential worker. Everybody's essential to somebody, even if it's just themselves. So that's a whole lot of hippy-dippy philosophical stuff. I want to say something to you about this important. I want to get this out because we're going to be limited on time. And I want to acknowledge something on you.

First off, what you say, want to unpack one thing. People like to be around the most. And I think the happiest people, how they tow this nuance between humility and confidence. People that are overly confident that lack humility, they're not curious. They don't learn. They usually burn out at some point and crap out.

People with a ton of humility and are humble with not a lot of self confidence, they don't usually get around to do in a whole lot. So it's this nuance between those lines and I think you toe, I'd like to think I'm working on toeing that line. And I'm gonna finish with a question about humor but I wanna acknowledge something about you, I was waiting to tell you this

because I just think people should know this about you. When I first started to become a more public person, I was at a resort, I won't name it, it was in Hawaii. You were there. Maybe you could flash back, you know, how many times you've been as a very, very nice resort. And I was there with my wife, and I had just become a public person and navigating that as an introverted person and wondering what that would be like. And I just want to acknowledge something, you and I didn't meet, but we walk by each other several times. But by the time those five days were over, that entire resort loved you. And you were so kind and generous and humble with all of the people there, the people that worked there, the servers, the waiters, the guests that were sitting at the bar having a drink that you

walked up and just sat down with and talked with for a while And I want you to know it made a massive impression on me upon me because I said to myself if I'm gonna become a well-known person I want to treat people the way this man treats people. This isn't a private moment the cameras weren't on you I just want to acknowledge that about you this thing about humility that you're describing is true about you And I have actual real life evidence about it because I watched it for about five days from a distance and many, many times. When I've been in public and it becomes a little bit

overwhelming and you know what I mean? When you're having dinner and people coming up to a table or whatever, I've reflected back on how you handled yourself at that place. And kind of a small quarters of these resorts, people figure out, oh, Mike Rose here, you know exactly what I mean. So I just want to acknowledge that with you. That's the, that's the kindest thing anybody has ever said to me in an interview. I appreciate that because look, it goes, I was learning a lesson. I know the resort you're talking about,

haven't been there in about eight years. I missed that place. It's terrific. But I was learning a really important lesson around that same time. And the lesson was the correct answer to this question. Who's your boss? And when you're a freelancer, as I had been for many, many years, my boss was the person who signed my check Sometimes it was discovery. Sometimes it was Ford. Sometimes it was CNN. It was a lot of different people

But when dirty jobs actually hit That's when I realized I work for the people who watch the show. I work for the people who serve me the beer. I work for the fellow guests who are around who might know me. And if you're ever looking for a simple hack to get out of your own head when you're feeling put upon because somebody comes up to you in a restaurant at an inopportune moment, you know, you just ask yourself, who's your boss? There your boss. You know, there your boss. You know, it's a privilege to work in the public eye.

It's not a burden. And if you have a chance to, you know, to move that needle, it is useful to remember from time to time who you actually work for. I remember you and I've been, I have enough friends that are well known where I've seen the difference too. So I just wanted to let everyone know that about you. Last thing, one of the things I've observed in you is your humor. And I feel like that's a hack to get through life better,

to see the funny and things. And I also think that probably helps you connect with people. So I'm just curious, like, if you've always been funny, always found the funny, or is that like, I mean, it's me selling overly dramatic, like, are you kind of conscious of that? And because I think that disarms people,

one of the things you have to do on your show is, you're there, I mean, I don't know how many days you shoot, two or three days, or one day you actually shoot, you have to connect with people that you're doing this with. All business, all people are connecting, and we're always making people feel something.

So if we're just conscious of I'm always making people feel something, ask yourself what are most people feel when they're around you? With you, it seems like even in the interview, I'm going to see this, this is really wonderful sense of humor. That conscious, do you do that as a strategy, as it is just who you are and are even aware you do it? Well, I think the humor that exists inherently on job sites is impossible to overstate. It's always there. You know, and it's rarely captured on television because television is a lie.

You know, we don't do a second take on dirty jobs because the second take is a performance. And the third take is just another version of another performance. So the, the, the, the humor that comes out of the show is in large part already there. And my job is just to get out of the way and let, and let people be themselves because most people are looking for the funny. Personally, I, I never looked at myself as a comedian, but I do appreciate a good joke. And I like to think I can tell one. But the more important thing for me on that show was to try and do and say the thing that I would do or say if I were watching

the show with my friends, right? It's a difficult thing to articulate, but if I had control of the remote and we were all sitting together in a room watching a show that I was in, and I could pause the show and then turn to you and tell you what was going on in my head right there or share some sort of insight. Then I think that would really be valuable. And so the only really smart thing I think I did within dirty jobs in an attempt

to make people as comfortable as possible, was a eliminate the second take, but be the method that allowed that to happen was a behind-the-scenes camera. So what you see on dirty jobs, in many cases, is a documentary camera. The crew is there, and they're shooting the show like a normal TV show. But as you know, you know, batteries die and planes fly over and all sorts of things happen that get in the way of an authentic experience. Production, in other words, is the enemy of authenticity. And so you need it because you have no show without it, but if you have too much of it, then you're just in your own way. And so my way around that was to hire a guy

to document the making of the show. So every time we had to stop down for any reason, I could turn to that camera and I could tell the viewer exactly what was going on in real time. Now, that did two things. The first thing it did for the viewer was create a feeling that they were a fly on the wall and seeing the truth of the day and in fact they were. But the other thing that I didn't understand exactly how important that would be and the answer to your question is that

the person I was talking to, the person who was being featured, the person who I needed to be comfortable enough to really be themselves, when they saw me reveal that level of vulnerability and disclosure to the viewer, they got super comfortable. So first of all, we feature people who are doing the thing they do every day all day anyway, and we're doing it in a way that really embraces what we would say in the documentary, you know, the big nature documentary world is the submissive posture, right? It's me, it's like when the small wolf runs into the big wolf, the small wolf, he don't fight. He just lies down and shows his belly and says, look, I get it,

you're big, I'm small, you can eat me, I hope you don't, but let's just get all that out of the way so we can go along and have our day. And that's what I would try and do with every episode. I would try and assume a submissive posture early on, be humble, be vulnerable, let the viewer see it, but most importantly, let the subjects see it. And then we could have an honest conversation and then you can be funny. Not because you're funny, ha ha,

but because when you're comfortable enough to be yourself, whatever funny thing you got going on is gonna come out. So dirty jobs was never enough to be yourself, whatever funny thing you got going on is going to come out. So dirty jobs was never meant to be a comedy, but it's funny. It's funny because it's real. Funny. I hope that everyone rewinds the last like three minutes there and listens to that through the prism of your own career.

Your vulnerability makes people comfortable. All of the stuff that you just described there, I'm thinking of sales, I'm thinking of board meetings, I'm thinking of family, and obviously I'm thinking of dirty jobs. I'm thinking of family, and obviously, I'm thinking of dirty jobs. I enjoyed today so flippin' much. I knew I would, because I've always just admired you

since that time eight years ago, but now they get to know you better and experience your wisdom, and I really, really enjoyed today. I know my audience did too, so thank you Mike. Very much. I enjoyed it too. It's flattering, and it's always nice.

Look, they're there two basic groups of people, right? There's the choir that you preach to from time to time. And there's the masses. And you never really know who's out there and you never really know who's listening. I get the sense, I get the sense that you know who your audience is. And I hope I said something useful to them. But you my friend feel like you feel like somebody in the choir that I could preach to from time to time. I would love that. I may be at that resort together soon together.

You never know. I could pick a worse things. You know what? I did go back there after a hurricane. You probably remember about eight, nine years ago, they had a hurricane and I helped work on the place and put it back together a little bit. Yeah, I'm due for a redux for sure. Okay, you're feeding the softball to me. I hope everybody's due to see dirty jobs because it's back. Discovery channel, 8 p.m. You guys get back and support the show and

enjoy it and let's celebrate hard work and celebrate these great working people through Mike's effort. So, Mike Roe, thank you for being here today. And everybody else, share the show, fast growing show in the world for reasons because you guys share it. And today's no exception, a lot of insight, a lot of depth, a lot of information, a lot of notes,

and hopefully a lot of entertainment. So, God bless you all, max out. This is the end my let's show. You