The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 209: Oops, I Did It Again

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

The true story of the most consequential pig in the history of Silicon Valley, or for that matter, the world. Followed by the true story of the most consequential pig in Mike's career – the one he put on a pedestal fifteen years ago, that went on to become the unofficial mascot of Dirty Jobs. Then, a most unusual redux, as Tom Frank returns to set the record straight, and explain in no uncertain terms why a brown garbage bag is a poor substitute for a leather vest.

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Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it. Episode number 209. It's called Oops. I did it again. The subject of this week's chapter is a guy who ushered in a brand new technology along with a brand new way to work. His contribution to the technical age is unmatched, in my opinion. And the fact that none of it would have ever happened without the monumental sacrifice of a single pig was a fact that I simply could not ignore. His story is followed by another true tale of another transformational entrepreneur. This one, a guy we featured on Dirty Jobs 15 years ago named Bob Combs. Bob was also made famous by a pig, and Bob inspired me, among other things, to make the pig the unofficial mascot of Dirty Jobs.

To help explain this weird link between these two seemingly disparate entrepreneurs and the pigs that made them both famous. I've done something I normally would not do. I have invited back last week's guest. I refer, of course, to the delightfully controversial, sometimes inappropriate, but always brilliant. Tom Frank. As we learned last week,

Tom Frank is a very busy career consultant to dozens of CEOs currently trying to navigate their way through the many traps and pitfalls of Silicon Valley. And he's not stingy with his advice or his opinions. Among his many, many vocational forays, Tom ran the entrepreneurship program at the University of Michigan for several years and established himself as a guy who actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to startups. He's also an old friend of mine who made the rather extraordinary decision to hire me instead of Ryan Seacrest many years ago back when I was doing my best impersonation of a game show host. and he was doing his best impersonation of a Hollywood producer.

Suffice it to say that no guest on this podcast has inspired more comments and questions than Tom, and after last week's appearance, I thought it best to simply keep the conversation going. So what follows is another spirited game of Connect the Dots, along with some self-absorbed naval gazing, and seriously, some of the best advice I've ever heard for anyone considering, the pros and cons of starting a new business. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I invited Tom back because last week, he thought he was here to discuss the chapter you're about to listen to, not the chapter we actually posted before he appeared on the show. Thus, I thought it only fair to give him another crack at the subject at hand. In other words, Tom Frank is back because, in the

words of that still popular Shantus, Britney Spee, years. Oops, I did it again. And it all starts right now. Do do do do do do do do. Dumb. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse. and it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process

faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. And it helps people like me find, the people who can function in a non-traditional work environment like microworks. In other words, ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too.

Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. way to hire. Chapter 31. Bobby brings home the bacon.

At the Grammy Awards, Brittany Spears forgot to thank the pig. No one called her on it, but looking back, the facts are clear. Without that pig, Brittany would have never sold a hundred million albums. No way.

Likewise, Stephen Spielberg would have never gotten Jurassic Park to the big screen, and Neil Armstrong would have never walked on the moon. Yet, None of these people ever acknowledged the pig. Bobby, on the other hand, he thought about that pig every day. Why wouldn't he?

Thanks to the pig, Bobby died with a net worth of $3.2 billion and a product that had changed everything. Fundamentally, Bobby was a tinkerer and a risk taker, but not necessarily in that order. When he was 12, he built a box kite, strapped it to his back and dove off the roof of Grinnell College in Iowa, just to see if he could fly. Turned out, he could for about 30 seconds. There was also the time he took a propeller, welded it to the back of his sled,

and hooked it up to an engine from an old washing machine. Turned out, motorized sleds don't fly either, but they do go faster than normal sleds. Much faster. Bobby was a tinkerer, you see. a risk-taker. But not necessarily, in that order. And not just as a boy. When he was 21, he volunteered to procure the guest of honor for a fraternity luau. Under the light of a harvest moon, low and fat in the Iowa sky, the young physics major regarded his options, grunting and rooting around in the muddy pig pen. There were so many to choose from. The farmer wouldn't miss just

One swine? Would he? Not twelve hours later, the guest of honor was turning slowly over an open fire, roasting to a crispy golden brown with an apple wedged in its mouth. By all accounts, it was a very successful luau. But the next day, a moral hangover weighed heavily upon Bobby. What had he been thinking? The pig had not been his to take,

and yet he had taken it, as the son of a preacher, he should have known better. And so, Bobby returned to the burgled pig pen, confessed his crime to the farmer, and offered to compensate him. If the farmer had let bygones be bygones, who knows what our world would look like today. But, of course, the farmer didn't,

because stealing a pig in Iowa back in 1948 was like rustling cattle in Colorado a hundred years earlier. It was larceny, especially in Grinnell, where any physics major could have told you that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. Like the good Christian he was, the farmer forgave Bobby's sin, but he still had to press charges. Even though the sheriff liked Bobby, he still had to arrest him, even though the dean of the college admired Bobby, he still had to expel him. As for the preacher who loved his son, well, there was nothing he could say in the face of such obvious guilt, and so he said nothing.

But not everyone believed that the reaction to Bobby's crime had been equal or opposite or even just. Grant Gale, a physics professor at Grinnell College, came to Bobby's defense. He implored the dean, the sheriff, the mayor, and all the good people in town to rethink the penalty for purloined pork and find a punishment that fit the crime. In the end, the farmer dropped the charges. The sheriff backed off, and Bobby's expulsion was reduced to a one-semester suspension. For some students, that might have translated into a four-month vacation, but not for Bobby, because in the midst of Grinnell's Great Swine scandal,

Professor Gale had received a very interesting package in the mail, a package that contained two prototypes from Bell Laboratories, sent to him by a Grinnell graduate. The professor was intrigued. He used one of the prototypes to demonstrate the flow of electrons through a solid in what turned out to be the very first college class ever offered in solid state. electronics. And the other prototype? That wound up in the hands of a suspended senior who liked to

tinker and take risks, but not necessarily in that order. You see, if Bobby hadn't spent endless hours tinkering with that prototype, the first transistor produced by Bell Labs, there would have been no small step for Neil Armstrong because Apollo 11 would not have had an on-board computer. For Steven Spielberg, there would have been no Jurassic Park because there would have been no computer-generated imagery. And for Britney Spears, there would have been no Grammy Awards because there would have been no auto-tune. The exact details of how Bobby transform the modern age would fill a book, a book best written by a physicist, or someone who really understands how the universe works. But this much can be explained by me.

Without Bobby's willingness to assume risks, all of his tinkering would have been for naught, because if you think diving off a roof strapped to a homemade kite is risky, try launching a startup in Silicon Valley before the Silicon's even there. That's exactly what Bobby did back in 1968, and even though you might not know his name,

you know what's inside. inside your coffee machine, your electric razor, your car, your remote control, your kid's favorite toy, your Fitbit, your laptop. And of course the smartphone, you can't leave home without. It's the very same thing that Bobby was tinkering with during his fortuitous suspension from college. The same thing they're still tinkering with today. At a company called Intel. That's the legacy of Robert Noyce, a man who liked to tinker and take a little bit of, risks, but not necessarily in that order. But let's not forget, Bob's silent partner,

a 25-pound suckling pig whose impact on our lives began with the brief appearance at a long-forgotten luau in America's heartland. A pig whose sacrifice gave us a tiny piece of silicon, we call. The microchip. Forty years after Robert Noyce put a pig on a spit and transformed the world, one year, before I put a pig on a pedestal and transform my blue jeans, another Robert was doing things with pigs that could not be ignored. And so, they weren't. This Robert became the most popular character we ever featured on dirty jobs, and those pigs of his, they finished the job that legions of tourists and gamblers could not. For 50 years, Bob Combs drove his ancient pickup truck up and down the Las Vegas

strip, loaded it up with uneaten buffet food from high-end hotels and casinos, and returned to his modest farm in North Las Vegas. There, in an otherwise normal backyard, he shoveled the spoils into his massive cooker, a towering, rub-gold-Bergian contrivance that transported the smorgas board into a giant stew-pot located three stories above the ground. It wasn't high-tech, but it worked. Before long, the grub was reduced to a viscous, beige-boleabase. Bob told my field producer, Barski, that the smell reminded him of a bakery. He'd built the entire contraption himself with parts cobbled together from local junkyards, and so tons of uneaten people food, waste that would have wound up in the landfill,

ended up filling the troughs on his farm, thanks to Bob, a city that traffics in excess, suddenly had a conservation program worth bragging about. I accompanied Bob as he drove that ancient pickup truck down from the cooker to the troughs, with boiling slop sloshing over the roof, down the windshield, and onto the hood. Barski's eyes widened as hundreds of ravenous pigs descended upon the leftovers. I can still hear the crescendo of squealing and sloth. blurping that accompanied this wild and gluttonous scene. It was epic. Just epic. To this day, people ask me about Bob Combs. I tell them that he was a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Old

McDonald, the living embodiment of everything dirty jobs had set out to highlight. A modest, good-humored man armed with an extraordinary work ethic, a man who had found a new angle and thrived in a business with very tight margins. As grain prices rose squeezing all of the farmers around him, Bob kept drawing from his endless supply of leftovers. It was hard work, to be sure, but it was good for his business, good for the environment, and very good for the city of Las Vegas. But when we first met In 2006, Bob was a man besieged by an army of angry acronyms. H-S-U-S, EPA, OSHA, as well as his neighbors who wanted to close his operation down because his pig farm smelled like a pig farm.

Las Vegas was booming, and a pig farm wasn't what hundreds of homeowners wanted so close to their brand-new homes. They didn't care that Bob had been there for decades. They didn't care that Bob was providing a valuable service. The only thing they cared about was the smell and making it go away. Developers fumed, committees formed, petitions were circulated, and hearings were held. The pressure to close down Bob's farm was unrelenting, but Bob held fast, and I'm glad he did, because after that Dirty Jobs episode aired, the developers tried a different tack.

They pulled their resources and offered to buy Bob's property. They offered him, a staggering sum, $75 million. Bob passed. Bob, I said, what are you thinking? It's $75 million. Bob replied, yeah, but what would I do with my pigs? I don't know, I said. Kill them? Eat them?

You're going to do that anyway, right? Bob didn't have anything to say to that, but it occurred to me later that his real question wasn't what would I do with my pigs. It was, what would I do without them? Bob Combs had put his pigs on a pedestal years before I came along. He knew what mattered most to him. It was the work, you see. Work that would have ceased had he taken the money. Work that defined him, even though he was approaching his 80th year, work that he was simply not ready to abandon. I kind of like the smell, he told me. I guess I've gotten used to it. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all

the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the the bottle, the poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at netsuite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there trusted by over 43,000 businesses.

With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or chat, GPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at net suite.com slash mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at net suite.com slash mike.

That's net suite.com. So what are the odds that you sent, Tom, the proper chapter and some sort of accurate overview of what you hope to accomplish with this on Precended Redux. Well, I would say that the percentage of me sending him the correct chapter both this time and the previous time, one MF and 100%. I will be accepting your apology any time now. I will apologize, check, because I could not find the chapter, the Robert Noyes email. The problem is, I have the real book.

And I could have sworn that when you said, we're using you for the next chapter, that I flipped the page and it was Robert Noyes. Right. Yeah. That's what I figured happened, that you looked at the chapter in the book rather than what I sent you. Yeah.

I've come to the conclusion, though, that the whole point of having me back is this is part of Mike's plan to ensure that I read the entire book, not just the chapters where I mentioned. Well, it's the only book I... He'll just casually be like, hey, why don't you come back for chapter 43 and, oh, You'd be great for 48 because it's really just Mike making sure that I read beyond myself. And I really appreciate that. Hey, man.

It's not a pop-up, right? So it's a bold new adventure for you in reading, comprehension. And look, thank you for coming back. You're here for a couple of reasons. We're humbled and frankly gobsmacked by the response to your appearance last week. my vast audience, as you kindly describe them, I don't think have many opportunities to avail themselves to the kind of sage counsel that a career coach would dispense. So once we corrected this whole life coach thing and you established yourself as a career coach, we had lots of people asking,

lots of questions hoping to pick your brain. Secondly, I just wanted to clear up the confusion because knowing you as I do, I imagine you took a pretty deep dive into a completely irrelevant chapter, but I also need to compliment you for just so casually dismissing my reference to Charles Manson, who I thought we were going to talk about, just so casually pushing it to the side as if I hadn't said anything at all, and then taking over the conversation as only you can do. So for all those reasons, you're back and we're grateful. Well, and I thank you for that. And I'm appreciative of your efforts to sort of clarify the confusion about what I do, because Yesterday I had the privilege of being on a globally broadcast panel for Yahoo Verizon Media

where they thought they would be getting my career advice. And would they get instead? Well, no, instead there were comments about would they have a life coach on talking about this? So, and I wanted to screenshot it and send it to you. Because far be it for me to do everything. in my power to build your career up and have you casually like tissues just rip mine to shreds and let it shift off the deck for Freddie to chase into the woods. So the worm has turned.

Folks, if you if you haven't listened to last week's completely spontaneous and unapologetically unscripted conversation between myself, Tom Frank and Chuck Klaus Meyer, go back and listen to it now. It's called the Po-Pourri is about to hit the fan. and Boyd did it. I don't honestly know, Tom, in terms of expectations, what I should be managing here. We've never had somebody back to back before, or as Chuck would say, bang, bang, with referring to his occasional back-to-back meals. You're like a bang, bang, here on the podcast. And so there's no pressure, but I'm not going to pretend to have an agenda because now that I know you're prepared, in a way, I think I'm just going to sit back and see how much of my job you can actually do. for me. I think what Mike is saying

dance monkey dance. Yeah, no, I get that, Chuck. But you know, I've got to admit, I'm a little bit gun shy because now that I've made the tragic mistake of going to your Facebook page to read what some of your many fans have said,

I told you, don't go there. Don't do it. How could I not do a shout out to the person who said I was the worst guest ever? Because I insulted Mike and am I so dense as to not understand gentle guests that the only reason why they listen is because Mike is so fantabulous. So there won't be any bang because this gun is gun

shy right now. Well, look, here's the, here's the dirty truth about this podcast in quotes. Like the idea was, I would have on interesting guests who would allow me to take a deeper dive into the biographical nature of the subject that we feature in the story that precedes my accidental memoir. What's happened instead is Chuck has just taken it upon himself to interview me week after week on this podcast. And it's not really the format that we're committed to, but it's kind of what's, it's kind of what's been happening. So as a producer, I'd love your thoughts on the degree to which the self-absorption at hand is actually detrimental to whatever it is you think we might be trying to accomplish.

Well, I'm pretty sure that Chuck's the most popular part of the show after reading all of the comment. So I don't think either one of us are going to be on season three or four of this show. That's my big takeaway. I will tell you one other thing that pertains to Chuck. After the clever spirit animal bit last week, I was so bold as to go online and tell your listeners, they can do this. You can take a test actually online to determine what your spirit animal is. Not that I wasn't flattered by bird of prey. I was horrified by my actual result.

All right. What is it? Would you like to venture just a wild guess what my spirit animal is? According to the official, what is your spirit animal test? Well, first of all, what sort of rigor does this test consist of? Nine questions pertaining to whether I like Earth better than water or whether I resonate with air or fire or whether I like large crowds or prefer to hide in Bob Barker's dressing room with a bottle of vodka. But the point is, they're really deep probing questions. I will tell you, you were correct that my spirit animal flies, but rather than being a bird of prey, apparently I'm a butterfly. Oh, no. I was going to say a mosquito. Who knew that a butterfly could even be a spirit animal? Or a life coach.

Yeah, or a life coach. So I was devastated. I was looking for lion or tiger or, you know, Oh, dragon. Yeah, dragon. I got butterfly. It could have been worse. It could have been caterpillar. I was going to say, you know, I won't be here. next week, for sure, regardless of what you all do. But I would encourage you both to take the same test and maybe also share with listeners what your real spirit animals are. So no one has to make any

conjecture anymore. All right. That's not a bad idea. But let me say in defense of this test, you're in the business of rebirth and reinvention, right? You're helping people find their true identities with all of your collective wisdom. In much the same way, a butterfly transforms from the cocoon through the various stages and ultimately takes flight. I mean, it's not completely without merit, this notion that your spirit animal represents the journey that you're attempting to take your overcharged clients upon. That's gorgeous, but really, I'm just trying to keep them from getting fired. So that's about me.

Let's talk about you. I'm not going to have 300 angry people saying, why do we talk about that guy again? Let's actually try and do something that could be at least remotely journey. main. Let's talk about Robert Noyes, a famous CEO. I'd love your thoughts as a guy who is coaching CEOs now. Like every day. I mean, forgive me for underplaying this last week, but you're actually, you're all over this. I mean, I did a little deeper dive on your company and what you've been doing and who you're talking to. And you're at this like every single day. The advice business is kind of amazing. What would you have told Robert Noyce? And what would you tell the current big cheese

at Intel if they came looking for advice? First of all, I would like you to tell me why you chose this story. Because I am a fan of Tom Wolfe. Tom Wolfe wrote an essay years ago on the nature of goodness, why people do good things and how the motivation for doing good has a lot of, evolved over the last century. Long story short, he argued that today, if a child is caught shoplifting, the parent will scold them and say, look, this is a bad thing to do because it's injurious to the shopkeeper. And if everybody behaved in such a way, polite society would evaporate. A hundred years ago, the same parent confronting the same child under the same circumstances would say this is a bad thing for you to do because you're going to hell if you do it.

And so the way we teach ethics had evolved. And I read all this in one of his many great essays, and I just went looking for more wisdom from Tom Wolfe. And what I found was this piece, this 9,000 word piece written years ago about The Pig in Grinnell, Iowa that ultimately changed the course of Silicon Valley. And I just thought it was terrific. And so for me, as a plagiarist, I was simply trying to get 9,000 words down to 1,000 and turn the whole thing into a mystery. And that's why I wrote it. Do you know what I think is interesting? You may or may not know this. There are numerous similarities between you and Mr. Noyes. You both came from families with parents that were involved in education, strong articulate mother, strong father, families

of boys. You were both boy scouts. You both sang in choral groups. You both performed in dramatic endeavors. And you both have prominent noses. Although yours has arguably

been repaired recently, so I don't know. Maybe that's where he's big in easeags. But there are a lot of similarities between how you both raised. You know, he had a paper route. He had jobs from when he was a kid. So the reason why I asked, I mean, I love the pig story, but I was curious if you were aware of how maybe he resonated with you

because there are so many strong similarities. Well, no. And thanks for pointing them out. With regard to self-absorption, clearly I've got it, but so much of it resides on a subliminal level, I don't even think I'm aware of why I'm doing half the things I do. But the other reason I wrote it Tom, is there's a passage in this essay where Wolf talks about him building these jet-powered sleds and things and taking all these crazy chances. And I just, as I read it, you know how sometimes when the prose is really, really good? And this is an obvious thing to say, but you see it in your mind's eye with such clarity that almost takes your breath away.

And I could see this kid experimenting on the farm with the implements at his disposal. and his propensity to tinker. Maybe that did rhyme a little bit with last week. We were talking about curiosity and how you either have it or you don't. And if you genuinely have it, then you're going to go in a completely different direction. Tinkering and curiosity to me kind of go hand in hand. And so I think I was just enamored of his life as a boy and really interested in the unintended consequences of trying to make a a sled go way faster than God intended. Well, his contributions are arguably more impressive than

either yours nor mine nor chugs. Really, the last comparative that resonated with me was his senior year, he received something called the Brown Derby Prize, which is given to the senior man who earned the best grades with the least amount of work. And if that doesn't have micro written all over it, I don't know what does. Well, okay. In the interest of everything rhyming, there's a bit in my version of the story and a much longer tranche in Wolfe's when he talks about the power and the influence, not just of your average peer group, but of a fraternity. The influence of a fraternity, right?

It's something I can't speak to because, as you know, with the exception of the Boy Scouts and the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet singing in America, I've never joined anything. But you were a member of some fraternity, and I wonder what your thoughts are on fraternities today and whether or not your boys will venture into one, if indeed they haven't already. Both of my sons were members of fraternities, not mine, but I was a member of my father's fraternity, beta theta pie. I had an interesting experience with that.

You know, I pledged in Mississippi because that's where I started off for college. and didn't have a great fraternity experience because all of my expectations of brotherhood and camaraderie, it was mostly just shooting guns and drinking. And that's not bad, but didn't really foster that sense of community, I guess, that I was expecting. When I transferred to the University of Cincinnati, I reluctantly affiliated with the chapter there, those individuals are still the best and most loyal friends that I have in my life. And so I think that fraternities now get a bad rap like everything else because unfortunately there are incidents of hazing or kids making stupid mistakes and I don't excuse any of them. But I think if you can find any kind of tribe where you find that sense of community,

whether it's a Lions Club, Rotary, I don't care. how old you are, the Boy Scouts, being part of a community is something that is a lifelong gift, if cultivated properly. My guest today, Tom Albinis, is an American giant, and I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business. of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it.

They sourced locally grown cotton, and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant. You're not just buying a high-quality sweatshirt or t-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive the wash. You're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high-quality staples, hoodies, teas, denim, built to be worn year after year at American-giant.com

Mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American dash giant.com slash Mike. American Giant American Made. American Giant. American Made. Like I say this a lot. You know, when people pay me to impersonate a speaker, I do talk about the Boy Scouts and I talk about Skills USA and the 4-H club. And I say the same basic thing. As long as there's a code, some kind of oath, look, that stuff's so easy to make fun of. But it does matter. You know, that's why our foundation has a sweat pledge.

You actually have to sign something and you have to raise your hand and be counted. So once you do that under whatever the rubric is, and then one of your buddies tells you to go out and steal a pig or help a little old lady across the street or fill in the blank, right? You're going to be more inclined to do it. I think you can make the case that Intel wouldn't exist right now if there weren't a fraternity in place in Grinnell, populated by young men who persuaded Robert Noyes to do a thing that he might otherwise not have done. And so, way leads on the way, as it always does,

it's fun to revise the past, but what have you done in your life? I mean, where would you be today? What have I done? What have you done with your lifetime? Wow, this is a totally different podcast. No, actually, we'll get there. But when you were talking about the Boy Scouts, I don't know if I've ever even told you, you know, I exited at the Weebelo level.

And you want to know why? Because you pronounced it Weebelo instead of Weeblow? Well, no, first of all, I had the world-horse Pinewood Derby car. But they promised us that the big sort of season finale was going to be that we were going to make leather vests. And I wanted a leather vets, man. And this was like late 60s, I don't know, maybe early 70s. I was just going to be rocking that leather vest. And I got to our Scoutmasters, and she handed us all a bunch of those brown grocery bags and said,

now we're going to cut along this pattern. And we're going to just keep crinkling up this grocery bag and decorate it until it feels like leather. I'm like, I'm going to wear a grocery bag around the neighborhood. Scouting is not for me. So you had a very different experience. I'm sorry, Mrs. Brinkman, but you ruined my potential future scouting experiences. But you know what? One of my fraternity brothers is still a big mucky muck in the scouts.

And he's, you know, his kid to grown, but I see his photos from the jamboree every year. You got to love those organizations. And I do think that the sense of community that looked to Bob Noyes to steal that pig, that was just kind of part of what people always expected from Bob, not stealing pigs, but we've got an idea, turn it into a reality, you're the guy that's going to figure out how to get this done. Get it done. Right.

Except this is 1948. The Boy Scouts in 1948. The Boy Scouts in 1979 when I were in them were very, very different than the Boy Scouts today. Is that your new program when I were in them? From a guy who nearly wore a paper bag that looked like leather. When he was a wee below. When I refer you as we were from now on. So when you were in them.

My point being that it's easy to paint the fraternity organizations or the overall thing with a very broad brush, your results may vary, right? Your specific fraternity may vary. My specific Boy Scout troop in 1979 was run by a former Army colonel. We had a boxing ring. We had mandatory shooting lessons. There wasn't a week that went by when somebody didn't go home. home with a bloody nose or a sprained finger. It was not a safe space. And I can't even imagine

what the situation must have really been like back in Iowa in 1948 coming out of the war. I mean, it's just a world of possibilities and randomness and seemingly unconnected things coming together. Sometimes a pig is just a pig, so you take it because your buddies want you to. But then, flashing forward, you're worth $3.2 billion. You created a microchip. And I think it's fair to say that it doesn't happen without the pig or the fraternity or a whole lot of other things. How do you feel about the fact that he went back the next day to express remorse and that remorse wasn't met with good for you for, you know, having better judgment, but we're going to be as punitive as possible now that you have basically confessed? I take it all the way back to Tom Wolfe.

In the essay that introduced me to him, way before the right stuff, way before. Bonfire of the vanities, the one I described to you, that's what he was talking about. He was talking about stakes and he was talking about consequences. So you still got credit in 1948 for going back apologizing and genuinely being sorry for it, but it didn't absolve you of the consequences of your action. These were hard-ass people. These were righteous people. There was so much of that in forming the community.

And so, I mean, I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote it, but I am fascinated by the fact that in our parents' generation, there was a time when you could make amends where you could atone, but you would still pay. And virtually everybody in that community was on board with that. So he was going to pay a very steep price. It was Grant Gale, a teacher, not unlike the teacher in my book, who kind of swept in, did an end. run, found a workaround, and saved that kid, not from his actions, but from the consequences that would naturally follow. That doesn't happen today. That's not a narrative we read about today, but it informed Bob Noyes's whole life. Indeed. What's the CEO take today on atonement, vulnerability versus consequences? Well, I mean, first of all, you know, Bob is referred to as the

mayor of Silicon Valley. And Bob was not a showy guy. Bob built a house up in the hills that nobody could see. And it wasn't the castle on the hill. He did apparently secretly spend a lot of money on landscaping for his own enjoyment, but he was not generally a look at me guy. A lot of the management principles that he instituted are still alive and well in Silicon Valley today, I'll be at some of them in sort of a precious way. He worked at a beat-up desk. He believed in a casual work environment. He was not a fan of hierarchy.

The first time that I became a CEO, one of the big lessons was the most junior person in the organization has to be able to raise their hand and say, I think there's a problem with this without fear. Otherwise, by the time the problem gets to the corner office, it's a big, ugly, worst problem. Bob Noyes was a pioneer in a lot of that because, you know, like every entrepreneur or many, he also had to go seek money. And originally he went to the East Coast. He went to the dandies and the people that were used to having limousine drivers, tall hats and a lot of protocol.

That was not who this guy was. And I think a lot of the things that he pioneered weren't just sort of the brilliant technologies and what became Intel, but it was a philosophy. which is probably grounded in Grinnell, Iowa. This is how you treat people. This is what you expect or don't expect. I'm sorry. Someone's vacuumed my bathroom right now.

Oh, it's okay. We had a leaf blower in a couple weeks ago. Don't worry about it. And someone's been backing up near your house for the last two hours. Yeah, I know. Well, okay. Look, the reason why I like working with CEOs is I like working with people who are curious. and who are people who are humble enough to say, I don't know the answer.

Because smart people will always go figure out or find the answer. They will not front. And there's a lot of the imposter syndrome that goes on in Silicon Valley where it is very important to look a certain way, act a certain way, hang with certain people. And I don't have a lot of patience for that rhetoric. So I think Bob is a great, great example of somebody who did it within the boundaries of a system, but he did it his way. And his way was straightforward.

Don't you think also, though, there's some merit in acknowledging what Shockley did, right? Noyes worked for Shockley at Fairchild before he left the East Coast, before he left the establishment in order to forge this new, call it a casual Friday's approach to what would become big tech in the semiconductor industry. But he needed that experience at Fairchild in order to inform this whole California promise. He also needed, what's his name, Chuck? Remember, was Kirby or Kilby? It was Jack Kilby. Kilby, yeah.

Who did Texas instruments. I mean, I don't know how much you know or care about it, Tom, but, you know, Kilby was working on the same basic problem as Noyce was. And they never really knew each other, but they shared the Nobel Prize. Yeah. Right? And what a lot of people attribute to some kind of hive mentality, there was just so much focus on making things small. And so, you know, Kilby was working with, I think, Germanium.

Germanium, right. Yeah. And noise is focused on Silicon. And, you know, we all know how that ends. We don't have Germanium Valley today. But my point is, when you're giving advice to a CEO, a man or woman who literally has the potential to completely change the trajectory of civilized life as we know it, you've got to be mindful, too, of the time that we're in and where they're coming from. because to me, there's as much stale, wrong, broken, and predictable with Silicon Valley today as there was with the East Coast establishment back when Fairchild was Fairchild.

So I guess if there's a question, it's how do you know when to encourage disruption versus compliance? Well, you know, I've never been a big fan of compliance. I think the environment that we're in now has a lot to do with the money. And it's become too formulaic. And it's literally, you know, when we used to go pitch TV shows, we would put on our costumes, we would go to all the studios. It's a performance act. The same is true of Silicon Valley, only now you put on your blue vest, your little zip-up vest and your t-shirt. and you go and do the same type of performance art.

The real disruptors need to stay away from the obvious sources of capital. That's number one, because the obvious sources of capital will literally give you the, we invest in people, we care about you, it's all about you, until your company starts to succeed. and I literally told somebody that on the back of my business card I was going to write, I'll keep you in the chair through the B round because financing happens generally with like the A round is the first money that you get. The B round means you're making money in your real company and now people are going to throw in more.

But that's also the point where all the people that have put in the money that were your new best friends start to look around and they're like, oh, wow, if this is going to be a thing or if this is going to really be disruptive or go public, then we need to bring in Barry or Mary or Sue to run this place. And founders are quietly shunted off. So in terms of advice for young founders, I ask them a lot about their cap tables. I want to make sure that they can maintain as much control as possible for as long as possible. Because as soon as you seed control, you seed control. And the first time that there's a bump in the road, I'd like to say that your new best friends are going to say, how can I help you get the wagon over the rut?

But they're going to say, oh, one too many people in the wagon, and they're more than likely to leave you out in the desert. So that's an important part of it. I was actually on a call with the venture capitalist right before this podcast. And I said, you know, the biggest difference for me is that I also like to work on real problems. Okay. What's really going on with your CFO? Why are you having this supply chain break? Because I've probably experienced the problem.

And the joy in this comes from being able to use my own hard knocks to hopefully help somebody avoid a few. And there is a real gratification in that. It's hard not to get excited when somebody gets $20 million after you've rehearsed with them until midnight about how they're going to ask for it. Dude, you move the needle. I don't care whether you're producing a TV show, counseling a CEO, whatever your thing is, when you get feedback, meaningful feedback that you can actually quantify, that to me is one of the single biggest things that's fundamentally missing from so many people's lives. They're not getting the feedback. Never mind the feedback they want.

They're not getting feedback at all. Okay, stop. I don't want that woman writing mean things about me because we talked about me too long again. Let's bring it back to how you, Bob Noisse, are so similar. I got one better. You mentioned TV. Yep. All right. to bring it back to me, the reason I loved writing this book was I could rip off Tom Wolfe ever so gently, tell the story I wanted to tell, and then ask the question, not what does Bob Noyes have in common with me, but what other Roberts do I know? Or more broadly, how does the pig, like, if I'm going to take the position that the pig saved Silicon Valley and got Britney Spears a Grammy. Yeah, that one was a little bit of a push. That's right. But, you know, look, you don't know where the line is.

Whitney. But okay, we'll circle back to Britt in a minute, but it's the pig. You know, so Dirty Jobs is a TV show. It's my TV show. And the mascot of that show is a pig. So if Bob Noyce can sort of change the world by killing a pig, what did you think of the other Robert in the story? Robert Combs, the pig farmer, who really became the most beloved figure on Dirty Jobs, whose business seems to be the complete and total opposite of a Silicon Valley venture. but who nevertheless was fairly prosperous in his devotion to his poor sign charges, if you will. I see them as being way more similar than different. Number one, Bob Combs' approach to using all of this leftover food and repurposing it into literally creating food is arguably as innovative, if not more so, than a microchip. The other thing is that they were both huge advocates for hard work, strong work, and do it yourself. And that's what real entrepreneurs have in common, whether it's a pig farm or it's a mega, multinational global silicon concern. I would see them as kindred spirits, and I would bet you a dollar that if the two of them

sat down for a coffee or a beer, that they would probably end up being fast friends. I still tell the story. I mean, times have changed, and Bob, to this day, has sold his farm and finally moved on, but he must be closer to 90 than 80 now. I knew him when he was 80. And after that episode aired, people think I'm making this up, but you can find it. He passed on a $75 million offer to simply just move a little further out of town because the real estate developers were really up in arms because his pig farm smelled a lot like a pig farm. But he literally looked me square in the face and said, what would I do with my pigs? I mean, you're going to eat him anyway, Bob, for God's sakes. But it didn't make sense to him to barter away the thing that I believe

became intrinsic to his own identity and emblematic of work as he understood it. He couldn't let it go, not for all the money in the world, which fascinates me to this day. I feel like. I feel It's been way too long since I've talked. It has been. Since people are tuning in to listen to me, I feel like I need to say something. I want to ask you, Tom, about your style. You know, I've heard Mike describe what you do as giving advice to them. I heard you use the word advice.

But that's not really what you do when you coach someone, is it? Is it more of the Socratic method when you speak with people? Look, I hate using the word coach. I mean, it really sort of recoil. I like to get involved and help people solve problems. So I would say that the thrust of what I do is really sort of diagnose what problems are going on and what is in my little black bag or recommendations for how to help them solve those problems. Sometimes that's getting past the imposter syndrome.

I've had it, man. I have had this big corner office. I had no idea what I was supposed to do first or next. Sometimes it's learning what's going on in the background, figuring out how you should set your priorities. It's all of the things, but it's specific to the individual. And so it's more similar to the way you work with an athlete and that you connect in with the individual's strengths and you figure out where they need to do more push-ups or run more sprints because there's no such thing as a fully formed at-birth executive that gets it all. all right. So I guess what I do is that I go in like a coach in the sports sense and try and figure out, okay, which of your strengths are we going to work with today, where your weakness is, and what

problems are we going to solve. If I'm not working on something real and specific and meaningful to the organization, I'm of no value regardless of what you call me. Chuck, how do you feel about that answer? Would you like to talk some more or is it is it my turn now to really weigh in. I feel humbled. I want to talk about the pig guy, though. So here's a thing. Here's a thing, though.

Sorry, Mike, you'll have to wait. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel, and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a

career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants. Thanks to a number of effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl, with a seat, to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly

after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirates.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirates.com. Soon may the noble man come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. The other pig guy. I want to talk about Robert Cokes. No, but guess what? The company his sons run, it's a recycling company.

So that's iterative. That is entrepreneurship and it's iterative because I guarantee you that they have applied everything that they learned working with their dad to come up with better recycling solutions. That's what's exciting about entrepreneurs. wars, that's what transcends Silicon Valley or Death Valley or wherever you're going to be

is that drive to be a problem solver and to be iterative about it. And they have far more in common, as I said, than disparity between the two of them. Now, I don't know if you know this about Bob, but he, he's the kind of conservationist that doesn't get a lot of love in this, in this day and age. He's more of a Teddy Roosevelt kind of thinker, you know, the way he approaches the land. And his commitment to conservation in Las Vegas has won him some awards, but it's completely overshadowed by the stench of the pig farm. That's what drew me to him. What fascinated me was when he, just very casually, that first day we met, I asked him what he thought about environmentalism vis-a-vis the green movement. And he didn't tell me what he thought about the green movement.

He told me what he thought about the color green. He was like, green, what a stupid color? And I said, what do you mean? Green's a nice color. It's the color of spring. It's the color of renewal. He said, oh, bull crap. Green, he said, green's a color of money. Green is the color of envy. Green is the root word of gang green. What a stupid. What a stupid color to rally behind. Why not yellow? The color of the sun, which gives life, or blue, the color of the ocean from which all life emerged, or brown. What about brown, he said? The greenest people in the world are all covered with shit or mud or something brown. Brown is fundamental. Brown is the color from which all things green grow. That's the color we should be

behind. Well, I went back three months later and did a special called Brown Before Green, where I took his whole philosophy and put up an alternative narrative to people who cared about the planet but might not want to follow in lockstep with Al Gore or Leonardo DiCaprio, no offense, right? This Dirty Job Special, and I'm telling you this because I really want just your take on the serendipity of all this, but that special aired the same night that David Zazlov, my boss, now arguably the most powerful man in media. Yeah. Hey, Facebook friend.

Shout out, David. That special aired the same night that the Discovery Channel launched Planet Green. The Dirty Jobs Guy does a special called Brown Before Green when an entire channel is launched called Planet Green. And it happens because a pig farmer pulls me aside one day and tells me. me as the CEO of his own little venture that green is a stupid color. His whole worldview, Tom, was based on the fact that logic has to follow, right? Way leads on to way. And if you don't start with the fundamental belief that Brown is a better unifying hue, then you're going to go off the

deep end. If there's a question in there, it would have to do with what's fundamental in terms of what your CEOs believe. I'll pick you up before you end up, you know, in the bottom of the outhouse. Here's the thing. One of your strongest attributes other than obviously Chuck, because really we all know Chuck's propping up this whole empire. But one of your strongest attributes is you find gross generalizations offensive. So you may have a point of view that is black or white, but you create space for

gray and you have very low tolerance for people who insist emphatically that it's either A or B. And your methodology for helping people see how maybe they themselves could see that it's not either A or B is much more effective than pundits or politicians or other people that advocate stridently to persuade me that it is A or B with whatever their methodology. You prefer to set the intellectual trap and then let the proverbial pig crawl into it themselves. Or onto a pedestal. Or onto a pedestal.

You said this last week regarding Dick Clark. You said what made him the best boss you ever had is because he gave you enough rope to either build a bridge and get to where you want to go or hang yourself. Yep. Right? That, I believe, is one of the reason we're friends. We disagree on all sorts of stuff.

But fundamentally, the thing, and I'm just blowing shameless sunshine now, but the thing I do admire about your coaching business that isn't a coaching business, but rather a career consulting endeavor, is that you don't dispense cookie cutter advice. You don't deal in bromides. You don't trade in tropes. And you don't pander with platitudes. See what I did there with the alliteration? That was lovely.

Well, what I was going to say is when I was running the entrepreneurship program at the University of Michigan, I got in trouble for that. Because these kids would come in and they'd be like, oh, I've got this great idea. I've got this startup that does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would just say, that's a stupid idea. And I'd be like, what? And then I'd be like, you're totally wasting your time. And then I'd be like, have you heard about this thing called Google? Why don't you Google your idea and see how many other people have done this?

And the university came back to me and they were upset and they're like, you're in a learning environment. You know, you're supposed to be encouraging these kids to be like learning and growing and making mistakes. And I'm like, no. I said, if I can stop somebody from making a stupid mistake, I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to just sort of cater or kow, you know, if one more person said, I've got a startup when what they had was a PowerPoint presentation, you know, I was going to light the building on fire. So, and hand to God, you have no idea how many of those individuals who are now adults and have many successful careers, reach out. I get unsolicited thank yous twice a week from people who I just told it like it was when they were struggling around their solution for some completely unnecessary problem in college. And this is not to say that you're not allowed to, like, I love failure.

Failure is awesome. It's got me a lot of places. But too much handholding, too much sort of let it be all this kind of stuff. I just don't think it does anybody any favors. It's the same way with my coaching. It's like you're either going to fire that person or you're not, but you're not going to come back here and complain to me that, you know, they missed their numbers for the third quarter in a row. Like, tell that to your wife or somebody else. No one ever said, Chuck, about Tom Frank, he was just a little ambiguous on the point.

Yeah. Or we just weren't quite sure where he was coming from. Right. And, you know, among my many regrets was I was never able to make it to Michigan to speak to your class. I loved what you were doing up there, and I would have loved to have come in and discussed the dirty truth of whatever it is, because no matter how we come at it, for me anyway, we always wind up in the same basic place, which is good advice for him, could be terrible advice for her, and it could be given at the same time.

You're in the micro business, not the macro business. Like, good advice is micro. Good advice is the thing an individual needs to hear. here at a specific moment in their life. Whether somebody is telling Bob Noyce not to steal the pig or Bob Combs not to sell his farm or a CEO, not to throw a bunch of money at an idea that's already pooped the bed a dozen different ways, right? It's the same thing in our little foundation. It's like the reason we got $1.7 trillion in student loans, I think, is because we've been telling everybody the best path for the most people is a four-year degree. That's great advice for

some people. It's awful advice for a lot of other people. Well, no, but I mean, look, we live in a world where everybody still is allowed to pursue their dream or not pursue their dream. And yes, there are programs in ways that we make it easier or harder for everybody. But at the end of the day, it is, I appreciate you calling some of those things out with regard to student loans. My own son is considering going to law school. And we had a very serious conversation where I said, how are you going to pay for this? Why do you want to be an attorney? And grilling him like I would anybody else. He's looking at schools he can afford. He's looking at a way that he can manage this for himself. And I wish everybody would have those kinds of conversations really to sort of

proof what people think they want to do or why they want to do it or why it makes sense before they find out on the other end of that that they are going to be burdened forever and indefinitely by the pig they stole when they signed the paper when they went to their first day of class. Not bad. Split metaphors, but I know where you're going with it. And I like it. Where's that loud guy with all the dirty stories from last week? Oh, he's still here. In fact, I swore we would land the plane before an hour this week. And I know you got stuff to do. So we're like 50 minutes in. Chuck, I don't know. There's something with that Brown Derby Award that I wish I would have put in there. Why was it awarded? A person who got the highest grades with doing the least

amount of work. Right. Right, which is like the epitome of work smart, not hard. Yeah. Right. Work smart, not hard is a bromide. It's a platitude. If you Google it now, you'll find hundreds of pages and you'll see swag with that phrase burned into it. It's just become this thing. And what I was trying to get at earlier is like all good things that get taken beyond their logical conclusion become bad things. So now work smart, not hard, which was somewhat good-naturedly lampooned by the Brown Derby Award, has become conventional wisdom. But of course, it too is awful advice to anybody who thinks they can somehow get away with not working hard, I think. Sometimes I feel like all Horatio Alger get off my lawn kid with this stuff. But what do you think about that? What is the right balance

in this incredibly technical age between efficiency and effectiveness between working smart and working hard? You know what? I got my first job when I was 12 years old bagging groceries. And even though we laugh or tease about my career path, a solid work ethic is the only thing that has allowed me to basically have the freedom to do what I wanted to do in my life. I see no deviation regardless of whether it's an entrepreneur or it's a pig farmer or it's the person who cuts up my pig who I'm friends with at the grocery store. I still think that the basic common themes of hard work, pride in your work, wanting to do a good job are transcendent. The dirty secret of Silicon Valley, this isn't where all the smart people are. this is where a lot of the lucky people are. And it's amazing how no one really gives any air time

to your point about what if he hadn't stolen the pig, but nobody really gives any air time to those things that happen out of blind, dumb luck that have catapulted certain people up to the echelons where people start to revere what comes out of their mouth. And even though initially if they're like, oh, shucks, not me, eventually they start to eat their own pig feed and believe that what they have to say is important.

Luck plays an enormous role in everybody's life and their careers, but I truly believe nothing's changed since the beginning of time. If you ask me to bet on two individuals, I would immediately try and figure out who the hard worker was, not who the smarter one was, and that's where I would place my bet. Man, that's great. What's the difference between luck and privilege? These days the line is blurred. So I think luck is sometimes finding a good mentor, somebody who wants to take the time to help you get smarter, faster. I think privilege is having connections so that you can cede yourself into organizations where your career trajectory goes on to autopilot. It's amazing how much nepotism there is in the Valley now, because all of my friends that went on to become famous executives and namebrate,

and companies, every single one of them, all of their kids now work for those same companies. That's privilege. They may be great workers and they grew up around it, but there is definitely an enormous clubbiness that goes into everything associated with venture and entrepreneurship and the fields in which I tread. I think luck is meeting somebody great who can help your life. privilege is your dad knowing who that person is and writing the email that introduces you. Luck is having a teacher like Grant Gale who takes pity on a talented kid who happened to live

at the height of rectitude in a place called Grinnell, Iowa, who was doomed to suffer the consequences of, albeit a felonious act, but one that he didn't deserve to be crucified for. Luck is walking on to Bob Combs farm one day, trying to get a show called Dirty Jobs off the air and having this old farmer put his arm around you and say, green is a stupid color. And I'll tell you why. You can't script any of that. And when you forest gump your way upon it, that's when things get fortunate.

Yeah, but guess what? Bob wanted to tell you that. And Bob, because Bob thought he was imparting something to you, that wasn't. Bob trying to persuade you or anything else. Bob thought that was actual wisdom. And I know you talk a lot about teaching because of your parents on this show. But honestly, if every single person took a few minutes to think about what could I teach someone, we would be in a much better place as a country because you don't have to make some big glorious philanthropic effort, teach somebody how to do something that they don't know how to do that you do. I mean,

And I think that's how we, now I sound like a Pepsi commercial. I'm sure your fans are going to yell at me for that too. Whatever you do, don't teach. I'm sorry. I'm never reading your comments again, but your fans hold you personally responsible for everything from global warming to the failed launch of new Coke. Listen, ma'am, let me tell you something about this piece. I'd like to thank Mike's guest this week, Rom Trank. Let me tell you something about those six million people over there on Facebook.

I don't agree with all of them, but I work for every one of them, man. In the end, they are the most reliably accurate focus group ever. Asking that group of people what they think of a title for my book or a book cover for the book. They chose the cover of the book. Bob Combs, as a story, was brought to my attention. by a viewer. And so for me, I have a very strange relationship with fans of this podcast because they're also on the Facebook page. And I was late to the social media party, but back when Dirty Jobs started, Discovery built me a chat room. And that's the place where I would go to commiserate with

viewers of the show. So I don't know. If you want to bend this into some sort of advice for your next client, feel free. But you tell him, Mike Rowe works for the people who watch his shows. I will. And when I learned that, I realized it really didn't matter who signed the checks. What matters is what those knuckleheads say over on Facebook. You ignore them at your peril. I'm just glad that there are a few guys that appear to be looking for love.

I'm going to put my ex-wife into that chat right after this show. I want to go back to the advice thing. You keep saying advice, and it doesn't sound like that's what you do. You said it when you were talking to your son about college. You said you grilled them like you would anybody else. That's what coaching is. It's grilling. It's asking the tough questions to get that person to their own place where they can solve the problem

or you help guide them to solve the problem they're having. Am I wrong or am I totally? You are 100%, Chuck. But the only thing I would add to that is also then expecting them to do the work. and if they do the work, I'm still there. If it's just a lot of talk, I'm see you later, Charlie. Before I turn this back to Charlie, the grocery bags into which you jammed the groceries, your first job, right?

Yep. Do you find anything at all coincidental about the grocery bag that you struggled to turn into a leather vest as a we below? But you know what? That first boss's name was Butch Sutherland. He owned that grocery store. a mom and pop grocery store taught me valuable lessons, one that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a walk-in trimming romaine, but he taught me a lot of lessons about life. So,

again, hold on, I got to write that down. In a walk-in trimming romay. I don't want to walk. I don't want to spend the rest of my life on a walk-in trimming romaine. I'm making sure that means. Well, I'm pretty sure it won't be anything I say after you tell me that we've stopped because apparently we don't stop. No, there's no stopping on this podcast. But there is the glide path, which we are now officially on. Chuck, are there any comments you can share that would make Tom's very, very fragile, id and super ego bounce back a bit? Does anybody like this guy? I did find one comment that was particularly kind, and it's from a lady who signs this

only took one acid trip. She says, I just finished listening to this podcast, episode 208. I'm a 69-year-old middle-aged woman and I feel like I just had an acid trip and giggled my way through this discussion. Thanks, Mike, Chuck, and here's my favorite part, and the other guy. Extremely amusing. You know, let me know. So that should make you feel good. Come back to be a guest on the Chuck Klausmarra podcast. No, no.

One thing that was funny is, you know, obviously I heard from a number of friends who listened to it. But what they all said to me is they forgot how I laugh through my own stories so that I'm incapable of telling a story without entertaining myself, first and foremost. That's the best. That is the best. If you're entertaining yourself, we're going to come along for the ride, for sure. Thank you. Your ex-wife sent me a note saying, my God, you too.

I mean, honestly, Michael, you too, you and Tom, I knew the stories, she said. but I still sat there, head cocked, enjoying every word as your combined wisdom washed over me. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but you get the idea. Well, your partner in crime sent me a text on Saturday before this whole thing came out, and that's the only reason why I agreed to do this again. As we say in the business, to both of you, your insincerity is very genuine. If you can fake that, don't tell him how far you can go. I'll take a truth teller any day of the week.

Chuck, do you have anything else you want to add? How do you feel about a lightning round? It was the best part of last week's. Let's go. You know, sequels are always doomed, but let's do it. All right, here, so let's try to be brief. There are two questions that relate to the story. One, in the story, Bob Colmes says he did not want to retire even at the age of 80.

So will you ever retire? And if so, at what age? I look at retirement a bit like the samurai in that I believe I retired already many years ago. Lightning round, Mike. Just saying, the samurai goes into battle already thinking he's dead. That's right. I retired before Dirty Jobs when I started ripping off Travis McGee's model. So I've been retired, but never busier.

And I hope to stay that way. I'll stop asking people for money at some point, but hopefully I will not stop helping people regardless. Nice. Nice. All right. How many Britney Spears songs can you name? Tom, let's start with you. Toxic.

Baby hit me one more time. My dad's a bad man. I don't know if that's a song. Mike, can you name any Britney Spears songs, not previously mentioned? I'm proud to say that I don't think I can. Is hit me baby one more time the same as oops I did it again? No, that's a new one. No, it's, yeah.

Oops I did it again. All right. So you named one. Good. Hey, what's the drunkest you've ever seen, Mike? Oh, geez. What's the drunkest I've ever seen, Mike? Well, honestly, the answer to that question would be I probably wasn't seeing clearly myself

under those circumstances. So Mike's a man who can hold his poison if he were to so embody. Thank you, Tom. That's kind of you to say. The only two instances... You're not going to reciprocate because I know the story. No. No. He was still awake when you were really drunk, so... Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of big nights, but we already talked about both of them in passing last week.

Clive Davis's crash party was a big one because that party just never ended. All right. Here's a fun one. What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen the other do? Oh, God. Chuck, what's a... What's the dumbest thing that Mike has seen you do or you've seen Mike do? Oh, God. Mike has seen me do a lot of dumb things. I feel like I'm the dumber one.

No doubt. You need a coach, honey. I sure do, Tom. Are you available? I don't know if you can afford me because you do work with Mike. Well, it could be worse. I could work for Dick Clark. You know what we used to do, Tom?

that was that was equally stupid. I, for whatever reason, started flicking bandanas. And I'd get the end of them a little wet. Yeah, yeah. They'd crack in the air like a whip, like a 22 caliber. Yeah. I got weirdly facile. Like I could flick a fly off the cap of a, you know, a water bottle.

I could flick them out of midair. I would, I got preternaturally accurate with, flicking this thing, and it made a loud sound. And Chuck was so impressed with it, he would just stand there. And I would flick the area about half an inch from his nose, usually at a party in front of people. And people didn't know what to be more impressed by. The fact that I could make this thing crack like a rifle were that Chuck trusted me so much. I'd flick a cigarette out of his mouth. I'd flick a playing card out of his hands. And then one night, I got almost close.

And suddenly, there was this giant bloody mark on his chin. And we haven't really been the same friend since, but, you know, we had a good run. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Mike and Chuck relationship in one anecdote. I trust him and then get really hurt. Yes. Right. And, you know, every Chuck needs a mic, every Mike. every mic needs a chuck all right chuck anything else for god's sakes uh there's plenty more but

you know what i just want i just want to get out of here i i got to be let's just face it's been way too long so uh if you want to buy the book buy the book wherever you can buy the book otherwise come back here and hear the next chapter next week gentleness or call me be back with us once again i've read the whole thing and i can read it to you tom can tell you all about it Hey man, kidding aside, thank you for making time again. It's been so much fun catching up with you this way. I can't believe how many old friends who I just don't talk to nearly enough, I've been able to talk to thanks to this ridiculous podcast and nothing more gratifying than this.

Honestly, really great. Congratulations on what you're doing and all that crap. Thanks. Happy to see you both always and forever. Chow for now. No, no, wait, wait. How do people get in touch with you again who are desperate for advice that isn't cookie-cutter but want to somehow relate with a butterfly spirit animal?

How do they do it? Why do you sting like that? Tom at ascendcoach me.com. Coach me, says the guy who hates the word coach. Honestly, you're so complicated, dude. Or just look for me apologizing on the global Yahoo career change. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Tom Frank.

Thanks, Chuck Klaus Meyer. Adios. If you've ever wondered what combat actually feels like, not the headlines, not the movies, but what it was like to be there. This is combat story. I'm A.J. Peschuti, a retired force recon Marine and scout sniper, and this show is for anyone who wants to understand the human side of war, through the people that lived it. I sit down with veterans from across generations and specialties, special operators,

pilots, infantry, law enforcement, and everyone in between. and we talk about the moments that stayed with them, the missions that went right, and the ones that didn't, and what it costs during and after. There's no script and no agenda, just real conversations between two people who've walked similar paths. We're not here to create content. We're here to provide context.

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