The School of Greatness - 403 Mike Rowe: What 300 Dirty Jobs Taught Him About True Success (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

"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

This is episode number 403 with Mike Rowe. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, 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. 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. The next episode that comes out will be the second half of this. We just kept diving in deeper and deeper. The insights I was learning, I just didn't want to stop.

So we continued. This was 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. 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. 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. 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. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, Mike Rowe in the house.

Good to see you, man. Nice to see you. Thank you for coming by my— Your house, actually. It's kind of like my make-believe office here in San Francisco. Most of the—when I'm in town, I'm usually on the other side of that glass. Right. Telling stories of the vast Bering Sea or whatever they put in front of me.

I like it. You have an incredible career history. You started out as an opera singer. Is that correct? Or early on you were in the opera world? The trick in your question is start it off. And it's funny. 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. Sure, sure. Right. Where did you really start? I mean, right now, today, at this point in my life, 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. Failing out of them. 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 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.

That's impressive. Well, he only went to the seventh grade, but he had the chip 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 i mean it didn't matter if it was a car or a house or or a watch 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, I appreciated the gene. You appreciated the work 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 enrolled in 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 the opera was a part of that. I had zero interest in singing, performing, or much less dressing up like a pirate or a Viking. 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. Experimental phase. Sure, sure.

But yeah, yeah, you know, the Baltimore Opera in 1985 or 4 for me. I was born in 83. Well, good for you. Not to date you, but yeah. Good for you. Well, I was just out of high school. Actually, just out of college. And I wanted to, you know, I wanted to get in television.

I wanted to get in. Why did you want to be in television? Well, because it looked at that point like something that would actually generate money. And so 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? Get famous here. Right. So how do you do this? 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 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 I learned, I basically memorized a short aria. I crashed an audition. I got into the opera. And I stayed because the music turned out to be

way, way more interesting than I thought. It's pretty cool. It's very cool. And it was a world-class orchestra and they're playing the hell out of Verdi and Puccini and all the greats, you know, and the girls. I mean, they're all dressed up like these French courtesans.

There's something about a girl who can sing well that is so attractive. It's the artist. Well, it's the artist's thing. Yeah. You know? And it's a passion thing. Yeah. You know, so the Baltimore Opera was right next to the Peabody Institute.

And so a lot of co-eds came out of that, you know, that curricula. And it was funny because there were 80 people in the rep company and 45 women and 35 guys. And of the 35 guys, you know, 30 had zero interest in 100% of the women. And of the remaining five guys who were straight, three were married. And the other one had a mole on his eyelid the size of my thumb. You were set. Thick black hair. You were set.

So, yeah, it just turned out it was just a wonderful time to be me in Baltimore singing at the top of my lungs. What is it about men that are so driven to do things based on where women are? 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. Why is our brain so wired that way, you think it's like, we will do the craziest things in my experience that we don't even love. It ain't the brain. Exactly. Oh, look, I, I, I think that, you know, men, men and women take, um, take meaning, uh, from, from different things. And obviously this is controversial, but just in a very, very, very general way, there is something in the reptilian part of our brain that wants to fix things, right?

And regarding my grandfather again, that manifested in a very hands-on, very obvious way. But I think there are other less obvious ways. We want to save you. very hands-on, very obvious way. But I think there are other less obvious ways. You know, we want to save you, you know. 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. Right. You know, feed the girl.

Build a bigger house. Bigger house. And that's just, that thumb has been in the small of our back since we had tails that's true and it's pushed us forward ever since crazy yeah man so do you still sing today in the shower weddings and funerals can you sing a little something or no what what what genre would you prefer opera well i Well, the aria that attracted my attention initially only got me because it was the shortest thing there was. And it was Puccini. It was from La Boheme.

And it was the coat aria. And really, the funny thing about it is when I memorized it, you know, the Walkman was around. You won't remember. No, I remember the Walkman was around. 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. The Walkman. Late 80s, of course. I got the record from the library and I put it on a

cassette player. And in the Walkman I listened to these sounds, just walking around Baltimore. Yeah. No idea what it meant. I listened to these sounds just walking around Baltimore. Yeah. Vecchia si mara senti, il resto al pianto scende, re sacri motio devi, le migrazia ricevi. No idea what it meant, but I just listened to it until it got burned in my brain. And the melody, vecchia si mara senti, il resto al pianto. So I'm like just walking around, but I can't hear myself because I got the headphones on.

I'm insane, right? I'm walking through Baltimore City. I must have sounded like 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 got to tell you, that was terrible. Really? Well, he didn't say terrible, but he said, you have no idea what you're singing about, do you? And I said, no, I don't, 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, why are you here? 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. I said, look, I just told, when I said hello, I said this guy, his name was Bill Yannuzzi. He was the guy who auditioned me. And I said, Mr. Yannuzzi, 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.

And he literally, he gave me the slow clap. And he said, you have a pleasing voice. You have a low register, which we're looking for. 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. And seven years later, to be honest, I didn't get much better. But I had a ball. 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 or when you jump into, uh, art in general. 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. Yeah. And there was a one-bedroom loft. I'm sorry, what's your brother's name? His name's Christian House. He's the top. He played with Les Paul for 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, who's the other guy that gets all the press now with the violin? Bell. Joshua Bell.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Is he a jazz guy or a classical guy? No, no, he's classical. Yeah, yeah. So he's a jazz guy but understated industry. Not many people

listen to jazz anymore. Or jazz violin. Jazz violin is very unique, yes. So he said, you know, here, $250 a month she'll let you crash up there.

And so I was living on here for $250 a month looking over'll let you crash up there. And so I was living on here for $250 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 were out dancing.

And these guys were so amazing. Well, look, that's, I mean, I think from what I've seen in the world, that's the epitome of masculinity is a Latin man dancing, right? There you go. Because I think, for me anyway, the most interesting men do, well, they're complicated. They're not the caricature of, you know, the chisel jaw dude. There's always something else going on.

And if there's something artistic or something, obviously dance is amazing. But, yeah, for me, it was the opera. You know, the first time I got a look at something that I had never associated. I mean, in spite of the story I just told you, the fortitude and the constitution that you find in men who have dedicated their life to singing the grand opera, I put it right up there with the best trained athletes in the world. Absolutely. You can't get sick. There's no sick. And if you do get sick, 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. They break through. It's extraordinary. And then they go back and they're asleep for 24 hours taking medicine. I've also seen guys.

He's still around. We don't know each other, but James Morris is sort of the base baritone version of Pavarotti. And that guy, we only met once briefly, but I knew a lot of people who knew him well. He was a legend. was a legend 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 it was just extraordinary and it made no sense to my brain at all except there was no denying it. The guy, he was doing what he was born to do and all the other stuff. It just didn't matter.

It's like the athletes that just drink the night before the game and party constantly, but they go out and they perform like gods. Yeah. It's crazy. I hate those guys. I hate it too. 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 doing it. You're not missing much. Yeah, I never really feel like I am. I'm going to have a sip here and there, but I've never been drunk. What is the biggest lesson you've learned from opera that you've applied to your life that you didn't know before opera? Um, 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 it in the Boy Scouts of all places.

You know, the big lesson, in my view, that every successful person eventually learns. And you could learn it young, you could learn it old, you could forget it and relearn it. But it's the idea of confronting a thing that makes you uncomfortable and then getting good at it. But then there's a third thing that most people don't do, which is find a way to love it. So that's it. You know, I mean, for me, I've always been very, very suspicious of the idea that following your passion will take you 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. 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- Well, it's workshop essentially, right? Well, I was ill-equipped. Right. Just because you were- No matter how hard you work, you weren't going to get good at it is what you're saying. I wasn't going to get good enough to be successful. So look, the lesson to answer your question is just

because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you won't suck at it. Right. And if you... Just because you're passionate about playing football doesn't mean you're gonna be in the NFL. Welcome to the podcast. Right. And I actually became passionate about opera two or three years in. But the truth is 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. 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. But don't be so damn

picky about what you apply it to. It's kind of like with personal relationships, right? 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 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 her, maybe you don't, then where are you? You're supposed to be miserable and unhappy the whole time? 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 there's this narrative that goes on in the world today. 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. 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. And no one else wants to do it. 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 by that, I just meant, you know, when you meet another professional athlete and you start talking about a training routine, you go right to the shorthand.

You get it. Yes. 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. Whether you're hanging upside down on the Golden Gate Bridge, 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? 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 peace, I think, that comes from knowing if, I call it the It's a Wonderful Life test, right? Another movie you probably don't remember. You were born in 1983. But if you're somehow magically pulled out of existence, like right now, what happens to the world? You know. What happens to the world? You know, what happens to the world? Poof, I'm gone.

You know, and dirty jobs never happened. Is the world going to spin off its axis? No. Right. Right. You know, what, you know, if poof, an accountant is gone, poof, you know, it's like, so you, you tend to measure, at least I do anyway, you know, can I, can I do something that's fundamentally going to, to change a thing?

Dirty jobbers do. All the plumbers call in sick for a week, party over. All the electricians call out for two days, riot. Game over. Right. Right. So, you know, 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. What was the most surprising person you met during the dirty jobs process that really shifted something in you or inspired you in a different way? Because you've probably seen the same type of stories, the same type of people for 10 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? No.

There were hundreds. I mean, we did 300. And of the 300 jobs we did, I can tell you, 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. Let me tell you what the problem is. So people pay me to do that.

And just to keep the conversation lively, I try and mix up the answers a bit. But all of my answers come back to what the Greeks called a peripeteia. And a peripeteia is a form of an anagnoresis. And an anagnoresis is the Greek word for a discovery. Gnoresis is the Greek word for a discovery. So Aristotle. Aristotle said the definition of a tragedy was the moment when the protagonist comes face to face with his true self. And I love that.

So for me, Dirty Jobs was a tragedy because going all the way back, hey, Freddie, what are you growling at? Come here. This is my dog, by the way. I didn't properly introduce you. She's growling at Tiffany. Tiff got close. Yeah, yeah. This is bring your dog to work day.

Are you going to be a good boy or what? Don't be an asshole. We talked about this. It harassed me in front of everybody. He's so good. Here we go. It's fine. The idea that an anagnoresis or a discovery can drive the narrative forward is classic.

But the idea that a peripeteia, which is a discovery that fundamentally changes the direction of the narrative, that's what I love. So, like, you know, when Bruce Willis realizes in the beginning of The Sixth Sense. You saw The Sixth Sense? Yes, I did. Okay, great. Because that came out after 1983. You know, he has an anagnoresis in the beginning of 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 parapetia when he realizes this kid is not crazy at all and he really can see dead people. Why? Because he's dead. And so when that happens, the entire narrative changes. So that's a long answer to your question, but for me, I had parapetias

doing dirty jobs one after the next. Really? Oh my God. Wow. So for instance, I talked about this years ago at one of those TED Talks. Yeah. Right? But it was, like, I've always deferred

to the primacy of experts. We're taught, right? There's an expert opinion on everything. Yes. And getting that expert opinion 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. And because Dirty Jobs was what it was, I was constantly getting angry emails from a whole army of acronyms, from EPA to OSHA to SPCA. Everyone, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they would all see something on the screen, and they would freak out. And is my dog growling? Can you actually hear? 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 over Tiffany. Why are you freaked out? She's been here the whole time. Hysterical. 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 got to – Tiffany, hand me that blue box over there. Give him a treat or something? No, it's not a treat.

This is the thing that makes a very high-pitched noise when he 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. Aw.

Look at the box. Come on, don't be an asshole. It's a good boy. So we go to castrate lambs in Craig, Colorado. And I call the SPCA and I call the Humane Society and I say, look, we're going to be castrating lambs on the show. I want to make sure we do it right because the last time we— You don't want't offend anyone, yeah. Don't offend anyone. And they were all upset because a couple months earlier I'd gone to a ranch outside of Houston and collected the semen from a bull called Hunsucker Commando

and artificially inseminated a bunch of cows. And apparently, it was great TV, but they were like, no, no, you're doing it all wrong. So I called and said, how are we going to 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. And over the course of a couple 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 don't know what we're going to do. Right. Because I never time lapse for two days. Well, I don't know what we're going to do. Right. Because I never did on Dirty Jobs. We always showed up. You know, there was no pre-production. There was no plan. Really?

Yeah, there was no second take. See what happens, yeah. Right. I mean, it was a very, very honest show. And the rancher was a guy named Albert. And he and his wife, Melody, they brought 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, except it's not a rubber band. It's a, it's a switchblade.

Oh man. He pops it open and he leans down and down, 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... What happened? My little show just turned into a, 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, on Dirty 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 ranching for four generations. This is how we do it. 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 nice. I'm like 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 put the lamb down and now the lamb is just, you know, trembling. And 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— The pain. Like, how long? How long is he going to be like this? He said, about two days.

Oh, my gosh. Meanwhile, the one he had just orally violated it's fine it's walking around looking around no blood why 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 land fulfillment or whatever they do and i'm just like you know something it was one of those parapetias where it actually clicks in your head. And the lesson on that day was beware of experts. You know, just beware of the idea that one size fits all. It looks so much kinder, but it's not. And so, you know, that was the day I started writing down.

I mean, I always kept a journal. But that was where Lessons from the Dirt really began to originate. And like I said, there were hundreds of them. Every time there was something new. 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 just show up as an open vessel would you do a ritual routine what would you do you know i had worked 15 years uh impersonating a show host uh prior to dirty jobs as well as a

journalist i had a lot of different jobs i was an inveterate freelancer committed to impersonating successful people on TV. As you know. As an actor. As an actor and as a host. Yes. 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?

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 it works. And so when dirty jobs— No one's taking a risk is what you're saying. Well, yeah, really, yeah, that is what I'm saying because if you green light – if you're an executive at a network and you green light 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 going to get fired. And you're not going to get fired because, well, look, who knew?

It worked there, there, there, and there. Right. 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 at all. There was no Swamp People or whatever, you know, all these Duck Dynasty shows, you know. That all came out of Dirty Jobs. Yeah.

You know, there were 32 shows that came out of Dirty Jobs. And in 2003, when we shot the first couple hours, 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 and 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, 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. uh, disassociated myself from the host model. Sure. 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, you have to do something. And I had become very facile over the years in, in creating the illusion of competence, but that's all it was. I used to call it the plaque approach, not the stuff in your veins or on your teeth, but literally a plaque on a statue.

So I used to host all kinds of shows where 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. Two sentences. 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... And so people would be like, well, that Mike knows everything.

Mike doesn't know shit. He knows how to read a plaque. Yeah, yeah. And so all of the ritualistic stuff from the hair, right? I mean, from hair and makeup, craft services, wardrobe, every single thing went out the window. You didn't have any of that. Put on your cap. That's it. Shirt, jeans.

That's it. And I would put on a cap, and the first thing I'd say to wherever I was, 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, 5 million people are going to 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. 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 a host or an expert.

I'm a guest. I'm an avatar for the viewer. And it's funny 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 to say, how do you prepare yourself as a guest? Well, bring some wine. Show up on time. Don't use your host's razor.

Don't flirt with his wife. Just be a good guest. Don't be an asshole. So it's actually a pretty easy process for you then. Just be curious and be nice and friendly. Be curious and don't be an asshole. And most importantly, try. My job ultimately on Dirty Jobs.

You had to taste everything on the plate, essentially. That's right. You had to be curious on the plate, essentially. That's right. You had to be curious enough to try a bite. You try everything. People always ask me, you know, was there a job you were not willing to do? Did you bite the nuts off a lamb? Of course. 100 times over.

That's all we did. 100 times? Oh, yeah. Biting nuts off. Well, there were hundreds of sheep. Oh, my gosh. So technically, you're talking, if there were 200 sheep, there would have been 400 testicles, if I'm doing the math right. So you had 400 testicles in your mouth.

Well, not a one. So go on. I already got the job. So what was there, a job that you were unwilling to do? The only jobs that I passed on were ones that I knew the network wouldn't allow us to air. And like? Well, a body farm technician. So you take a cadaver and you put it in the trunk of an old Pinto.

Yeah. And you drive the old Pinto into the Atchafalaya Swamp. And two weeks later, you haul out the Pinto and you take out the body and you do stuff to it. Yeah. And now you know what a body looks like that's been in the trunk of a Pinto in the Atchafalaya 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.

Yeah. And it was important to me on the show. It's too heavy. 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 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.

So a lot of entrepreneurs were built from Dirty Jobs who did the dirty work and they started it themselves. I'd say that 40 or 50 of the people that we featured on that show were multimillionaires. You'd never know it. They owned the farms. They owned the businesses. They were doing it. Yeah. Yeah.

They were just covered in many cases with other people's crap. Yeah. And so we don't associate success in this country with that particular optic. Right. Right? And so there was a lot about dirty jobs that was really very, very entrepreneurial in nature, uh, that kind of got lost in the, in the visual. I mean, like one 800 got junk is probably a billion dollar company, right? Huge all around junk. So yeah,

absolutely. Wow. 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 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. For me, it was Groundhog's Day in a sewer for nine seasons. I was an apprentice. Every day was the first day 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 what I realized by the end of season one was the – actually, 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 don't know how much psychology was at work but it's kind of interesting 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 45 at 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. 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. Yeah. It's interesting you said that because it sounds like you've learned a lot of skills over the years and it wasn't until you're 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 20s or early 30s 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. That's going to be the thing when you're 40 that's going to take it off. And I see that over and over for a lot of people I interview. Robert Greene, do you know that author? He wrote 48 Laws of Power. Yeah. And I see that over and over for a lot of people I interview. Robert Greene, do you know that author? What did he write?

He wrote 48 Laws of Power. He wrote Mastery, a book called Mastery. I think The Art of Seduction. Yeah. He's sold millions of copies of his books, and they've taken off. But he said he started as a journalist originally in his 20s. 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 these obscure, interesting books that he writes now that have taken off his career. 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. Yeah. It's great when a plan comes together. But it sounds like he's saying there was no guarantee that the plan was going to come together. Right. And, of course, there's not, you know, ever. All you can do is what makes the most sense to you. You know, people want to feel congruent.

And there's so many times in our life when we don't. And the question I always have is, well, when you don't feel congruent, are you going to panic or not? And nothing good ever comes from panicking. But lots of good comes from changing and mixing things up, which goes back to if you have a list of things you're willing to do, 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. 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 no one's going to hurt. 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. And some of them are different. Some of them are similar. are different. Some of them are similar. For myself, 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 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 that, to me, is a good thing because what I need to be able to do to satisfy my own romantic version of myself and to act in a way that makes me feel congruent, I need to affirmatively go the other way. And so I can't affirmatively go the other way until I understand where most people are going. So look, this is a form of hubris, really, and arrogance. And I know it. 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 nightmare of a half-terrier, half-asshole? Why? 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. It's so funny you say that because I kind of try to live my life a little bit that way.

So I guess I've been following in your footsteps as the jock football player. I was like, I'm not going to drink and go to the parties because I don't want to be associated as that guy. You don't want to be a stereotype. 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. That's right. Look, to be, and again, this is the trick about advice too, because the minute you start to say it like it's wisdom, then the minute you're assuming that what worked for me will work for you. And I truly have no idea. Everybody gets to figure out their own little mystical

azimuth. There are a lot of ways to get at it. But I'm still fascinated when I look back. Like QVC was the first job I ever had. How old were you?

In TV. I was right out of the opera, job I ever had. How old were you? In TV. I was right out of the opera, so I was 27. I was 27 when I actually crashed another audition. Yes. Got hired at QVC. And I heard this because you told it in your recent episode of your podcast. Oh, to Tim? No, on my podcast, yes. You were talking about

selling a pencil in your audition. And you made me want to buy... Your ad was so good. You made me want to buy the pen for whatever the pen thing is. The Red Mark pen company. With the cap and the... Yeah. Exactly. So I'm going to get your pen now. Well, thank you.

Because the money goes to the MicroWorks Foundation, which is kind of a nice thing. Sorry, go ahead. Well, thank you. Because the money goes to the MicroWorks Foundation, which is kind of a nice thing. Sorry, go ahead. Well, the point I wanted to make was I didn't talk about QVC. I was fired three times. And from 1993 to 1997, I left in 93. 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 thing I had to do, right? It was just like, oh, my God, what a hot mess 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 the reason that I was, the reason people liked me on QVC and the reason I had such a reputation

for being 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 same exact thing that the person before them was doing and the person after them is going to 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. Same thing on Discovery, right? In 19, or 2001, Discovery was still the province of experts and hosts, 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 was radical. The point is when I looked at QVC and for a while when I looked at Discovery, I used to curse their the provincialness of it, you know, and I used to curse the provincialness of it, you know.

And I used to say, ah, 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. put your foot over the line if you don't know where the line is. Yeah. And so the best thing

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

Step on the line a little bit. Just a little bit. It's really, really important. And that, you know, to the extent I have any maturity at all, that's one of the things. One of the big lessons. You know, when people put you in a box, 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 are no – when you can write anything you want, when you can say anything you want, when you can order anything you want. There's no starting point.

It's just like come up with something. That's it. Yeah. It's challenging. You can – But when there are rules and when there's parameters, then you can create within the rules, right? Or choices too. Yeah, choices. Yeah, within the rules, right? Or choices, too. Yeah, choices.

Yeah, options. That's right. I don't know about you. I love to eat, and there's not a single food. There's not a single food, with the possible exception of the lamb testicles we spoke of, that I don't affirmatively enjoy. When I go into a restaurant and somebody hands me a menu that looks like a copy of Worn Piece, I panic a little bit. Sure. Because there's nothing in there I don't want.

But now suddenly, you've just handed me homework. And I'm going through, oh, am I getting really three pages of appetizers? No. Really? Just tell me the top three options and I'll choose from those three. And to this day, I don't look at menus. I say, what is the chef

loving? What's fresh? There's not a thing I don't like. That's impressive. And I've had, that has so, I mean, and I eat out 300 nights a year. Yeah. It has radically changed my experience in restaurants. Sure.

Do not look at the menu. What do you recommend? That's good. And I've really, I've never been disappointed. I love it. I love it. What's a skill that you think that every human being should focus on the most, accumulating and generating? One skill we could all have.

Oh, man. Look, my answer is going to sound a little hackneyed. No. I mean, because, look, there are no new ideas. Right. It's all been done and said. But two ears, one mouth. But two ears, one mouth.

In proportion, if everybody listened twice as much as they spoke, I just have to think it'd be a lot less noisy. Yeah, absolutely. 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, that's just math. Two ears, one mouth. Yeah, simple. When in doubt, shut up. I like that. I like that.

I watched the, I believe it was a keynote speech you gave at SkillsUSA 2013 on YouTube. Could be. 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. Yeah. Guidance counselor in his room. Yeah.

And the poster said, work smart, not hard, correct? Correct. With a capital not. Yeah. And you said this was the worst piece of advice or the worst thing or something along those lines, like this is the worst sentence you've ever seen or idea. Yeah, I'll stand by it.

I think so. Why? And then what did you do afterwards? Well, if you remember. Oh, I remember vividly. You know, the parapetias we were talking about from Dirty Jobs, you know, the big granddaddy of all of them was this idea that, well, when the economy crashed in 2009 and the headlines all said, I mean, every single day,

you know, 9%, 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, really people were struggling to hire.

And it just made me think that, you know. But people with jobs or without jobs weren't willing to go do those jobs if they had degrees or if they had. I wasn't. Beneath them or whatever, right? I wasn't prepared at that point to say what the problem was. All I knew for sure was that there were two narratives going on in the country. Yes. 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. So what's going on? And I used to talk, I used to ask that question to every employer I met in all 50 states multiple times. And the answer was always the same thing. We simply can't find people who are willing to learn a skill that's in demand, hit the reset button, retool, retrain, and most importantly, relocate. I don't know when we became such a sedentary people, right? I mean, the United States is the United States because we went west. 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 in their zip code. And they feel entitled, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, look, again, probably in some cases, I think the millennials are an easy target and I don't want to pile on. So I don't know if they're all entitled or not. In general, yes. I just know that there is an expectation. 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 three-ton cactus, we had this conversation and we started talking about the worst advice in the world. And we were laughing about it and laughing about it. And I think he was the guy who reminded me of work smart, not hard. 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, you know, your scores are pretty good. And University of Maryland, James Madison, a couple of schools would be great for you.

You grew up in Baltimore, right? I grew up in Baltimore. And I said, Mr. Dunbar, A, I don't have any money. B, the only four-letter word in my family is debt. There can be none. It's simply not tolerated. We'd rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money. And finally, I don't know what I want to do. So why take on the debt? 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. 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. Mm-hmm. Grease monkey holding a wrench, looking down at the ground like some sort of vocational consolation prize.

And the caption on this poster said, work smart, not hard. 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 what you know about me at this point, you can imagine, I'm like, you're completely relegating a man like my grandfather who can build a house without a blueprint

into a guy who's going to be doomed to a life of war broke drudgery. Yeah. 15 hour work days. 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, Oh, 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 the worst advice in the world. Because I think we took it as a people. And people say it, you know, work smarter, not harder. Google it. You'll see thousands of pages.

That expression has become a platitude. The platitude becomes bromide. The bromide becomes bromide. The bromide becomes conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom now becomes this neat, pat, little expression. People say, look, we just made hard work the thing to affirmatively avoid in favor of efficiency. So why in the world would you promote efficiency or effectiveness at the expense of hard work? Mm-hmm. that working smart instead of working hard really is the epitome of wisdom. And in my opinion, we'd be precisely where we are right now. We'd have $1.3 trillion 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. 40 million? 40 million. I'm not talking about unemployed people. Unemployed, 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. Wow. And that's a much scarier number. 5.9 million available jobs right now according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics in 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 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 that are important, but don't require a four-year degree that are going unfilled. level jobs that are important, but don't require a four-year degree that are going unfilled. 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, lewishouse.com slash 403. All the show notes and the full video interview of both parts is back at lewishouse.com slash 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 lewishouse.com slash 403. 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. Outro Music Bye.