Mike Rowe: How to Land Six-Figure Opportunities Doing “Dirty Jobs” | Career | YAPClassic

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People just don't believe you can make six figures working with your hands. They're 8.7 million open jobs. Most of them don't require four-year degree. What they require is training and the mastery of a skill that's in demand.

“A lot of people know you from your very, very famous show called "Dirty Jobs."”

"Dirty Jobs" became a hit in 2006. By 2008, it was the number one show on cable. There were 12 million people looking for jobs. But the crazy thing was on "Dirty Jobs" everywhere we went. They saw help one of those jobs are real.

And not vocational consolation prizes for people who can't do the other thing. How do you feel about following your passion? Just because you love something doesn't mean you can't suck at it. Follow your dreams. Follow your passion.

The trap with that is...

Youngimprofeters, the best careers are not always built by chasing a perfect dream.

Sometimes they're built by getting honest about where opportunity, skill, and hard work can actually take you. In this replay, I sit down with Mike Row, Emmy award-winning TV host producer, narrator, podcaster, and the creator and host of "Dirty Jobs." Most people know Mike for spotlighting tough jobs and the people behind them.

But what makes this conversation so powerful is learning how he thinks. Mike's career is full of unexpected turns, hard earned perspective, and insights that challenge a lot of common career advice. In this episode, we dig into experiences that shaped him and the mindset that helped him build such an unconventional career path.

Enjoy the CF classic with Mike Row. Mike, welcome to Youngimprofeting podcast. Thank you. Do I still qualify as young? I mean, profiting, I understand, but I'm not sure the young thing still applies, but

I'll take it. Well, you're definitely profiting, and you're young at heart. I know that for sure, and I interview people of all ages. I'm really trying to get your wisdom, and I know you've got so much to share today. A lot of people know you from your very, very famous show called "Dirty Jobs."

But I found out that you had a really extensive career before that, and you did so many different jobs in the '90s, so it talks us about all the different experiences that you've had that led you up to "Dirty Jobs." I grew up in a little farm outside of Baltimore. My granddad lived next to us, and he was a magician, not a literal magician, but he was

a tradesman. He only went to the seventh grade, but he could build or fix or fabricate anything from scratch. I'm not even kidding. He could take your stereo apart behind you there and put it back together blindfolded. He just had that chip.

So as a boy, I grew up with a front row seat to all kinds of different work, all kinds

of trade work, and just an incredible work ethic, both in my dad, my granddad, and my mother,

by the way, who just finished her fourth book at 87. The woman is written every day for 67 years now. But the point is, I got really good cards as a kid. We didn't have a lot of money or anything like that, but I just had a great example of what worked, looked like, and a really great exposure to the trades.

“And I was pretty sure I was going to follow in my pops, footsteps, that's what I wanted”

to do. The handy gene tragically is recessive and the things that came easily to him didn't come easily to me. It was my pop who suggested that I could be a tradesman. If I really wanted to, I just needed to get a different toolbox.

And that's what I realized that being a tradesman is really a state of mind more than a mastery of a specific set of skills, it's both obviously. But I think today, a lot of people really think about being in the trades in a very narrow way. It's very much a state of mind, and when I got it around my, when I accepted the fact, honestly,

that just because you, just because you love something doesn't mean you can't suck at it.

of really great mentors, and the way I just kind of was able to force gump my way into

“the TV business was was a real blessing, and it started with the attitude of touch everything”

like it's hot, don't swing for the fences. It's not about home runs in this game. It's about singles and doubles, and do as much work as you can in as many different categories as you're able. And so I got a liberal arts background, a healthy sense of curiosity, and consequently, I tried

a lot of different things. And the ones that stuck, I doubled down on. And before long, I had my toolbox in order. And yeah, I was singing in the opera.

I was doing infomercials. I was guest starring in sitcoms.

I was doing pilots for talk shows, and God, I wasn't terribly proud of the work, but I wasn't ashamed of it either. And spent probably 15 years, probably doing maybe 200 different jobs in the entertainment business before dirty jobs, even, even came along. So there's a weird, but bright line on my resume that I would call before dirty jobs,

and after dirty jobs, because really everything changed in a huge way once that show hit. Yeah, and you were getting so many experiences, you were doing so many things.

“And I read somewhere that you were really treating TV as a mercenary, right?”

And that you weren't worried about the quality of work. You just thought of it as work. So talk to us about having that kind of a mindset and how that actually helped you when it's such a competitive world to be, and you became really successful, where so many people struggle to find success as an actor and things like that.

Well, it helped me for as long as it helped me. And then it didn't. And that's the thing, really. I mean, the thing about advice is that I've lived long enough to know that the best advice I've ever gotten only applied at the time I needed to hear it.

And I don't know who's listening to this conversation right now, necessarily, or really what they need to hear. All I know for sure is that I live two very different lives in the course of the career that I've had. And both were fun, and both were necessary, but neither could have happened contemporaneously.

So the mercenary thing you read about was probably me talking about my foundation today, and how I squared this kind of bloody do-goterism with the business of actually making a buck in an industry that is, in fact, very mercenary.

“And in those conversations, I typically say something like, look, I think there's a missionary”

position and a mercenary position in all things. And I think both those positions are somewhat underrated. But prior to dirty jobs, it was all mercenary. I was a freelancer in every sense of the word. By the way, do you know the etymology that where freelance comes from?

No. I didn't either. And when I learned about it, it really resonated with me. The word is actually medieval. It refers to a knight who served no lord or no king.

His lance and other words was for sale. He was a freelance. Not an inexpensive one, but he was free to work for anybody he wanted to. And that attitude combined with the tools and the box, my pop told me to assemble a willingness to relocate whenever necessary.

Those things really informed the first 15 years of my career.

And I loved that life, you know, I loved looking at every job like it had to be getting in a middle and an end. I enjoyed doing the best work that I could. But I also loved knowing that I wasn't going to be tied to any particular project the way success demands.

And so I carved out a really fun niche in the entertainment business where I owned virtually nothing. I was working on multiple projects at the same time. I had clothing deals, for instance, with like American Eagle and Nordstroms and different shows had different deals.

So I didn't really own any clothes except the ones I picked up and whatever town I landed

I was working for American Airlines at the time doing a traveling show. So I had a free pass to travel anywhere in the world. I wanted to. I had deals with hotels, you know, and so I was like a no mad for 15 years. I flew wherever the work was, I did the best I could on the job.

“And I mean, not to sound too cynical about it, but honestly, in those days when I was in”

my late 20s and 30s, I was affirmatively looking for work and ideas that had been so so poorly conceived that no amount of execution could possibly save them. And so that's the, that's the thing nobody talks about in Hollywood. There's so many ideas and so many of them are bad. And if you, if you associate yourself with these ideas that don't turn into hits, but

do a good job working on them, you'll get a good reputation and you'll get hired. For virtually, I got hired a lot. I got hired for a lot of things I auditioned for.

And I never really got punished for the fact that most of those things didn't actually work

long term. And so by the time I was 35, I realized I'd been taking my, my retirement in early installments. I've been traveling a lot, working maybe seven months a year on projects that didn't really matter too much to me. But I didn't care because at that point in my life, it, it all made perfect sense.

I'd made enough money to save and become frable. And I had enough time to enjoy myself and so for a long time, I, I thought I'd crack the code and I was, and I was pretty satisfied with all that until I was, yeah, and then until you got famous, basically, with dirty jobs. So I was actually pretty surprised to find out that you actually were the one who pitched

dirty jobs to different networks and you're the one who came up with the idea.

I had always thought you were just like the host of the show.

So talk to us about how you got the idea for dirty jobs and, you know, what, what was it like to actually bring that to market? It was very strange. And again, you know, I don't want to take too much credit in the sense that I don't want you listeners to think that this was my wishful film and that I had a plan and that through

patients and hard work and determination and persistence, I was finally able to realize

“this plan that that would make for a good book, but that's honestly not what happened.”

What happened was I was 42 and I was living that freelance life and everything was great. I had moved up to San Francisco to work temporarily as a host for a show called Evening Magazine, which is one of those local shows that comes on after the news and I was the host of this show and it was a pretty good gig. I would go to wineries up in Napa and I would go to museum openings and I would basically

host the show every night from these different locations. It could be anywhere and I had settled into the job and my mom called me. I was sitting in my cubicle at KPIX here in San Francisco and she called to say Michael, your grandfather, turned 90 years old yesterday as you know and you know I was just thinking he won't be alive forever and wouldn't it be great she said if before he died he could

turn on his television and see you doing something that looked like work. So remember my pop is the guy you could build a house without a blueprint he's the guy

“he can he was a tradesman's tradesman and I laughed a lot when I think about what he must”

have thought you know when he saw me singing in the opera or we're selling things in the middle of the night on the QBC cable shopping channel or we're doing all of these jobs you know that I had been doing that I didn't really care about that made absolutely no sense to his

brain so my mom calls and you know kind of gives me this good nature challenge as she always does

she still doesn't fact but she was right you know I'm like why does why does evening magazine always have to be hosted from a winery or a museum or we're opening night at a theater something why can't it be hosted from a factory floor or a construction site or a sewer and that was the question I asked my boss back in 2002 I said I want to host tomorrow night's episode from a from a sewer he said I said I don't care do whatever you want nobody's watching the show anyway

so I I took my camera man I went into the sewers of San Francisco and what happened down there

down there was that I was basically unable to do my job between just an endless river of crap

that kept knocking me over and rats the size of a loaf of bread and millions of roaches that completely covered us to be so disgusting and so impossible to be a host that I I stopped trying and instead I just asked the sewer inspector who was down there sort of as my guide if I could help him do whatever it was he was doing he was replacing the bricks in the wall that was basically his job so my camera guy filmed me working alongside this sewer inspector and our

conversation was captured on the video when I looked at it later I thought you know there's something

“here it's kind of interesting to learn not from a host or from an expert you got to remember”

discovery back in 2003 2002 I mean reality TV wasn't even a thing they they were all about Jane good all and and Richard Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau and these in these experts and these scientists and they would put them on television and they were voices of authority I thought when I looked at this footage of me working with Jean Cruz the the sewer inspector back then it was like why why does the authority figure have to be the host why can't they just be

a regular person and if that happens then what am I if I'm not the host and the answer was well maybe you're an apprentice or a guest or an avatar or a cipher of some kind it might not seem like a big distinction today but back then it was it was huge and this idea like after 15 years of impersonating a host if all of a sudden I could work instead as a guest and find a dynamic where I could spend time with regular people doing real work you know would anybody watch that

that that was the question well holy crap man I put that segment went on the air on evening magazine and the response was telling it wasn't that people said God that was enjoyable people were horrified they were trying to eat dinner you know and I'm crawling around in a river a crap and it was totally inappropriate for that show in fact I was fired ultimately for putting

“that on the air but the feedback that I'll never forget came from hundreds of viewers who just said”

hey Mike if you think that was dirty wait do you see what my dad does or my my pop or my brother my cousin my mom my sister my niece my nephew wait till you see what they do why don't you come and blah blah blah you know drive the food truck at the zoo or replace the lift pump in a pumping

chamber to waste water treatment plan so forth and I just thought I'd never seen that kind of reaction

to anything I'd ever done on TV it wasn't thumbs up or thumbs down that didn't matter it was like hey come and let me show you what I do and that was the moment for me I thought man there's something here and even though CBS let me go they let me take the tape with me and I got their permission

“to try and sell a show I called it somebody's got to do it back then it was just based on this”

this one segment that I had done but I mean everybody said no by the way I took it to every network every place you can take a show to sell it the only people who didn't say no were discovery and they didn't say yes they just said look we'll take we'll let you do a pilot like three episodes they hired me to be sort of the discovery guy they wanted me to go on expeditions around the world and see the Titanic and climb Kilimanjaro with experts and I was totally into that and they let me

narrate pretty much everything they did for about 15 years there but this thing we called dirty jobs was not supposed to be a hit it wasn't supposed to be a series it certainly wasn't supposed to be a franchise and as sure as hell wasn't supposed to launch a 38 different shows you did

all those things happened and as as they started to happen I realized for the first time in my life

that I was actually working on something that I did care about and I began to take it way more seriously and that's when I stopped taking my retirement in early installments that's when I went

and we were overwhelmed again with the same response only this time it was thousands of letters that's when everything changed because my mom called and told me to do something that looked like work I love that story and you just mentioned that like you don't love to give advice but I've

“heard you give some advice where you say don't chase your passion chase opportunity and I think”

when you first were thinking about this dirty jobs concept you were really chasing that opportunity

of the fact that you were getting such a great reaction from people and it was exciting and then that turned into your passion so I just love to hear a bit about that for all the young people listening how do you feel about following your passion you know I so much of what eventually came out of dirty jobs was an alternate compendium for living and it was somewhat contrarian I had I'd seen and I'm sure you and all your viewers have to these successories right they hang on walls everywhere

you know they say things like you know stay the course and it'll be a picture of you know some guys maybe rowing in a shell or kayaking and or maybe sailing a big ship and or maybe something about persistence or determination or or passion to your point you know that's a big one follow your dreams follow your passion well at some point during dirty jobs when it really blew up

I started to realize that the people I was working with almost always had a different take on

conventional wisdom so you know stay the course is a great example it makes great sense to tell somebody to stay the course if they're going in the right direction if they're not it's probably

“the worst thing in the world you can tell them to do never quit never give up you know the the”

book shelves are filled with books written by very successful people who ultimately attribute their persistence to their success and the trap with that is not that it's on true it's that it's not always true in fact it's not even true a lot it's true enough to sell the book that says never quit you know but it's the same thing that will keep you standing at a slot machine for days on end it pays off enough and so I started to think look there's got to be another version

of every bit of conventional wisdom I've ever heard that's also true but merely applicable at a different time to a different person under a different circumstance so to answer your question if

“if the subject is passion and the topic is your dream well I'd wade your most people listening”

right now have been told from an early age just as I was growing up to follow your dream

and to never give up on your passion and to be resilient and to be a stubborn in this regard right

and and boy sometimes that that is great advice but my god the evidence to the contrary is voluminous we've all seen American Idol and we've all heard you know Beyonce and lady Gaga and share and all the rock stars of our days say look never give up on that dream I've heard him say it when they're standing they're clutching their grannies you know and yet what's the real lesson from American Idol the real lesson isn't the winner it's the thousands of people

who audition and it's the many many many hundreds of those people many of whom are in their early 20s who realize that incredibly they're they're not going to be the American Idol in fact many of them realize to their wonder and horror that they can't sing at all and they realize it on national television as they're standing there watching their dreams crumble around them watching their passion drain out of them when they realize like I said earlier just because you love something

doesn't mean you can't suck at it and conversely just because you don't feel passionate about a thing doesn't mean you can't change the way you feel about something we're not like that's stuff is not written in the stars it's not decided for us were it otherwise then I would have followed in my pops footsteps I would be a contractor today I'd be a general contractor and modest the aside I'd better be a good one I'd be building homes and I'd be working maybe as an

not how life works and many times we'll wind up with with hopes and dreams that don't compliment

our skills and so why do we always default to this idea that says well you just have to get more

skilled you just have to find a new way to master the thing you want to master I mean that's

“fine and well and good for some but there are plenty of other people I think who ought to be told”

hey why don't you think differently about what you're passionate about I I get a lot of push back in this conversation holla because because it sounds like what I'm saying is screw your dreams I don't care about your dreams don't follow your dreams I'm and then it's true I am saying all those things and I and I say them every day uh many times the people who apply to our scholarship program but I'm not saying your dreams are important what I'm saying is your dreams are way too important

your passion is way too important to follow you don't follow a thing that's important if you identify a thing that's important you take it with you you put it in your pocket and you say okay I'm a passionate person and I'm passionate about learning how to build homes but if I can't if I can't crack that nut am I really gonna spend 50 years beat my head against the wall where am I gonna change my course so look it that's a hard thing to do on your own and and that's

“why it trends are important and that's why books are important and that's why the unexamined life”

is a tragedy you you you you have to kick your own tires and sometimes you just have to pick up the phone in your cubicle so your mom can tell you no not that way this way try this instead wouldn't it be fun if your pop could see you doing something that looked like work she didn't call and say hey you know what you should think about doing is maybe changing the topography of the discovery channel by taking reality TV at its literal definition and reimagining yourself

as a guest instead of a host and she said that I would a hung up honor and told her to stop drinking so early in the day but all she said was do something that looks like work it was just the right thing for her to say at and just the right time for me to hear it at 42 at 42

“had this happened to me 10 years earlier I wouldn't have been able to handle the the success”

of a show like dirty jobs I just wasn't mentally prepared for it yeah so you never know I just love

the realistic approach that you take just to life and careers and I feel like it's really smart because I see it all the time people think they're going to become TikTok stars or Instagram stars or celebrities and actors and actresses and they waste so much time and they end up just not doing any work because they're waiting for like that big opportunity and they don't realize that it's all the hard work and the opportunities that don't look sexy that are actually going to

get you to where you want to go and it's back to cookie cutter advice unfortunately you know I just we all need to hear what exactly what you just said at some point in our life but we don't all need to hear that at the same time because we're on a trip this is a journey and it's it's very I just had this conversation with my mom again not to drag her back into it but but it's really apropos this woman wrote every day for 60 years I'm not even kidding her dream was to become a

published writer and she gave up on that dream after 40 years of beating her head against the wall

but she never stopped writing she kept doing it because she knew the work she found a passion in the work

her dream of being a bestselling author was out the window right until she turned 80 and then she sold a manuscript and it went to number four on the New York Times bestseller list it's on the wall behind me over there I don't know if I could see it but there it is that's amazing yeah and then two years later she freaking did it again wow and then I'm just going to show you it I mean if you want the persistence wrap this is the story she's 80 and she writes a book

called about my mother she's 82 and she writes about your father that thing also top ten then she writes vacuuming in the nude and the other way to get attention which goes to number one and then she just wrote her fourth oh no not the home true stories about life in this retirement community I don't mean to turn this in a commercial for her books what I mean to say is

wanted it it it it actually contradicts and makes my point at the same time based on that I said mom so what do you tell a writer who comes to you and says do you have any advice because it's it's it's a very heavy thing if you encourage somebody to do it you did the odds are very

good they're never going to get published and they're going to spend 60 years making little rocks

at a big rocks but if you discourage them then you're this sweet little America's grandmother who's going around killing people's dreams how do you how do you square that as she said oh Michael you know what I do I tell them that I encourage them the way somebody in the crowd of a marathon might encourage a runner I just stand there and I applaud as they go by and maybe I offer them a sip of cool water you know to make their journey a little more pleasant in that moment

but that's all I can do as somebody who finally got to do what she wanted to do at 87 all I can do is encourage you at whatever point you are in your race that you know you better be

enjoying the race because there is no guarantee that you're going to hit the finish line

so you better be haven't fun right now and so there's something in that yeah App King as App Media has grown we've gotten more and more applicants for every role which sounds great

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indeed sponsored jobs yeah fam i'm all about doing health free sets i'm on a health kick this year i tried juice classes cutting sugar completely even intermittent fasting but they didn't stick for me it's because they were just too hard to follow too strict and so i was on the hunt of a way to

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that's zoc do c dot com slash profiting zock dot dot com slash profiting again that's zock dot dot com slash profiting and thinks zock duck for supporting this message so i want to switch gears here i want to talk about skilled trades and you know we're here talking about how it's really hard to become a famous actor famous podcast or whatever it is you know i really pushing young kids to do that you were actually pushing young kids to keep the lights on keep the water running in america

and you've got this foundation the micro foundation you've done like over i think 12 million dollars

in scholarships just absolutely amazing and on your website you say that america has declared a war on work and the casualties are all around us so how is america made work the enemy well and a lot of ways i think one way is we've told kids that job satisfaction is a result of their ability to make their dreams a reality it kind of starts with that and so you put this incredible

“burden on a kid to say look if you want to be happy with your life you need to identify right now”

the thing that's going to make you happy and then we'll embark upon a plan to borrow vast sums of money in order to get you the proper credentials that will permit you to pursue this goal right that's that's baked in it's kind of like you're not to digress but it's it's like a soul mate you know if you're out there looking for your soul mate that's like looking for your dream job it's really hard to find you know better to find a job and then craft it into the thing you want

better to find a good and decent person you can trust and then and then find a way to love him or her right it's i know i'm saying the same thing this slightly different way but we've got it so inculcated in in the minds of this generation that they could be the next america

“idol all you have to do is want it bad enough so yeah to that i do say bullshit i'm sorry”

but wanting a thing is not enough so the first order of business is to get a more realistic set of expectations then you have to take an honest look at the opportunities that exist again i'm not saying ignore your dreams i'm just saying take a breath and just push them aside for a minute and look

around to where the opportunities really and truly are right now they're 8.7 million open jobs

most of them don't require four year degree what they require is training and the mastery of a skill that's in demand that's not my opinion that's just the way it is other facts worth thinking about are the 1.7 trillion dollars in student loans that are currently on the books that's a fact it's a fact that most of the people who hold that debt don't even have a degree that debt includes people who got halfway through a college experience and through their hands up and said no well

yeah you can walk away from the university but you can't walk away from that debt it's a fact that many people who did graduate in their chosen field are either not working at all or not working in their chosen field and that debt is real to them too so i spent a lot of time saying look that amount of debt didn't happen by accident and that amount of open positions in our country many of which are in the skilled trades that didn't happen by accident it happened because we told

a whole generation that you can have whatever you want if you want it bad enough and then we took

“shop class out of high school maybe you're too young to remember shop class but i'm sure some”

of our listeners do i mean when i was in high school sure you took music and you took English and math and all the normal stuff and but then you could walk down the same hallway and stick your head in a wood shop or an auto shop or a metal shop and even if those things those pursuits weren't your dream even if they weren't really a ventrist you could at least see them you could at least know that oh that's what work looks like

thing they're actually really important and we're not going to have much of a country

“if that skills gap isn't filled but it didn't matter we we took shop class out of high school”

and over 40 years or so we just drilled it into our heads that that trade schools and the kinds of jobs that a trade school education can lead to are somehow subordinate to a Tik Tok influencer or a successful podcaster or a successful TV host or an accountant or of somebody on wall street or down the list it goes so we're in the fix we're in right now because we've been

lending money we don't have to kids who never are going to be able to pay it back to perpetuate

dreams that aren't going to be realized so what does that mean to me that goes back to the missionary position which I had not I had not thought about really until dirty jobs

“became a hit like a real hit in 2006 and then by 2008 it was it was the number one show on cable”

when our country went into a recession a bad one and that's when all of this started I saw the unemployment numbers every single day at its worst there were 12 million people looking for looking for jobs but the crazy thing was on dirty jobs everywhere we went we saw help one at science and so I would have these conversations with you know a lot of small business owners who would welcome me and my crew into their place of work and we would sit and we would talk

after filming all day long and it was always the same story you know when I said what's your

biggest challenge it was finding people who are enthusiastically willing to either hit the reset button and learn a skill that's in demand show up early stay late you know it was just I just heard it constantly and then the bureau of labor and statistics came out with this stat that really freaked everybody out they were like they're 2.3 million open positions in 2009 that employers can't fill even though you got 12 million people out of work you've got all of these jobs many of which are a

straight path to a six-figure income and nobody wanted them so micro works started as a as a PR campaign for those jobs it turned into a trade resource center fans of dirty jobs helped me build this online destination where anybody could go and look at the opportunities that existed in all kinds of different trades and then it became the scholarship program you mentioned we award work ethics scholarships we do a few million every year and they're only for trade

schools and again there's there's nothing wrong with a four-year education I have one actually it it served me well but in 1984 two years in a community college in three years in a university cost me $12,900 same exact course load today in the same schools is close to 90 grand wow it's just no longer tenable and so today micro works it's still a PR campaign for a bunch of good jobs that people aren't excited about but it's also a scholarship fund and it's also become

and I don't know how this happened but I woke up one morning and it was it was the sun in my solar system it was the thing that had had been there longer than any other thing I'm working on three different shows I got a podcast I got books I got to be I've got a great business and a fun life but my mother still makes fun of me now because she's like oh Michael your grandfather would be so proud of you this is the thing in your life this is the this is the thing that makes you

“not an asshole yeah it's awesome what you're doing honestly it's awesome what you're doing”

for so many kids it's awesome how you are basically trying to change culture in America because a lot of this is just our culture and what we value in terms of what is an acceptable job right so when you are on dirty jobs what were some of the stereotypes that you saw about blue color work and dirty jobs that you feel like we're just so inaccurate that you want to share with people

a great question consciously it didn't occur to me for a while because the truth is I had become

this is you know not to put myself on a couch but it was it was really interesting you know as a

“teenager I knew where my food came from I was always on a farm at some point helping bring the”

food in I knew where my energy came from I was very close to people who worked in the minds people who worked in the oil fields I had a real appreciation for the miracle of flicking a switch and actually seeing the lights come on and flushing the toilet and watching the crap go away I was like I was gobsmacked by that as a kid and what happens in life you know if you're we get busy we all just get busy and it's so easy to lose your sense of wonder

and appreciation for the the miracle of our infrastructure the miracle of affordable electricity

and really the way that we're all similarly addicted to smooth roads and indoor plumbing and right heating and air conditioning and all that stuff so I only mentioned it because by the time I was 42 I had lost all of that on a personal level you know I just I just wasn't in touch anymore with a lot of people in the trades the way I used to be and I had been freelancing

“the way I described for all those years and to be honest I was kind of arrogant I think”

in the sense that I I thought I had truly cracked the code I had figured it out and I was comfortable in all of that well my mom makes that phone call to me and I go in the sewer and then discovery orders it and then it turns into this hit and then the honest answer to your question is that that's when my education started when I was 42 43 years old and what happens is if you if you spend 200 nights a year flying around working with dirty jobbers and small business people

who are doing this kind of work usually out of sight and and out of mind you you learn more then you think you'll learn it's not just about oh what what is that job how how does that work it's it's more like well who who who is that who is that guy and and why is he doing what he's doing and the answer to your questions if you're if you're actually curious and if you're me then when you start to get reconnected to these things that that you know are important

it I mean the sounds on characteristically earnest of me but but it's true it it made me grateful in in a way not just for my job or for my career it it literally made me grateful to know that Gene Cruz is in the sewers making play society possible in San Francisco and that Bob comes is running his pig farm outside of Las Vegas in a way that's not only environmentally friendly but but potentially a model for a lot of other farms and and I just found myself genuinely

“engaged and interested in a lot of things that I that I had forgotten about and that's what brings”

you to the the fact that good God why are there so many stigma's and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions around this work why for instance are people so skeptical and and and dubious that you can make $180,000 a year welding today I know dozens of people who do in all different types of welding I know plumbers who make $250,300,000 a year plenty of them some have come through

my own foundation so when you say what kind of myths you know I think the first one is that

people just don't believe you can make six figures working with your hands well you can make a lot more than that people don't believe there are any opportunities in the trades for women that's insane companies are falling over themselves now to hire young women who want to learn these kinds of of skills there's a long list of of things that inform our ideas and and prejudices you know that that whole varsity blues scandal that didn't happen around trade schools

that happened because parents were completely convinced that it was their job to do anything they had to do in order to get their kid into the right school so these ideas are with this these beliefs are with us and like most dangerous beliefs they're not wholly untrue there's truth in

is going to be the most expensive path or that this whole category of jobs it does require people

“to get up early and stay late and work hard are in in some way subordinate to these other jobs”

I I would just say that if we want a balanced workforce and believe me we need one then we have to stop thinking about you know blue collar versus white collar yeah the color of collars it is who cares that ship sailed we're entering a new era and it's going to be defined by AI and robotics and it's going to be defined by you know what I used to call the muddy boots architect people who can work with their hands and think what they're brain and are willing to do

both that's really where the opportunities are in my view today not all of them but those are the ones that have been underserved push decide and as a result I get not a week goes by where I don't get a phone call that I would call chilling I got a call not long ago from a guy who runs an organization called blue forge alliance just bring any bells no okay so the blue forge alliance overseas something called the American submarine industrial base that base is a collection of

15,000 individual companies some large some small but all of whom collectively are responsible for building half a dozen nuclear powered submarines over the next decade Virginia and Columbia class these things are mind-boggling the tech the skill that it takes to build one they're longer than the Washington monument is tall in fact they they build them vertically which is a trip to watch point is this guy calls and he says yeah so they advertise on my podcast full disclosure now

but he says look we need to hire in the next nine years 100,000 trades people

100,000 now that's incredible I mean there's already a skills gap and every major company

in this country who relies on skilled labor is currently struggling but I hadn't heard a number that big yet and this guy says to me you know we've been looking all over the place for these trades people do you know where they are and I laughed and I said well yeah actually I do I I know exactly where they are and he said where and I said they're in the eighth grade man they're in the eighth grade and so what's happening in the country right now is that companies

are beginning to realize they need to make a more persuasive case for a whole bunch of good jobs

“that are really important to all of us and they need to do that in junior high and high school”

on the other hand right now in real time as I'm talking to you we need to make a more persuasive case for those eight and a half million jobs currently exist which is all a long way of saying I don't know how many people who are listening to this thing should be working in the trades

but I can tell you that the opportunities are absolutely real and there's never been a better time

to at least kick the tires in that world and and and see if it makes sense to your brain because we've helped twenty two hundred people get the training they need and and their stories their stories are way more persuasive than my own and I hear them every day yeah yeah fam have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't it happens to the best of us and in business that adds up fast because when somebody is ready to

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to get across in this podcast is that all of us are so focused a lot of us like I'm an online entrepreneur I have a social media agency I have a podcast now work I have this podcast I obviously have three businesses and I'm an online entrepreneur but I excel at those things I'm a great marketer it's

always come really easily for me but I have peers that I've seen that for example like

want to be a doctor I want to be a lawyer and they've been studying for you know their tests and they just keep studying and they keep studying and they can never pass the test and they can never pass the test and then they end up just studying and never working is what I've seen like a lot of people fall into this pattern and to your point what we were talking about way earlier in this conversation it's like it's okay to pivot it's okay to like stop and think

what other opportunities are out there that I may have not really dreamed about doing but are really lucrative and skilled traits I had Cody Sanchez on the show a couple times Jeno who she is

“I don't tell me well she's awesome she's somebody you should know because it's kind of like”

in your world and she talks about boring businesses and she's all about finding and buying boring businesses main street businesses and so she'll teach people how to you know value a business and kind of take it over and to stop worrying about just having a sexy business you can buy a roofing company and become a multi-millionaire or a window cleaning company or a landscaping

to be online can make you a lot of money so I'd love to you know hear some stories from you

in terms of real entrepreneurs that are doing incredible work that you've met either on dirty

jobs or maybe the students that come out of your scholarships and what they've been able to achieve and how becoming an entrepreneur in this space is actually a really great financial opportunity my god there's so many please hook me up with Miss Sanchez I well I well she's awesome yeah I love to meet her but I'd love to know too before I answer you how I mean you just described what you do in a in a pre broad-based way but like if if you really distill it if you had a

business card what would it say what's it come down to for you vocationally I scale personal brands I guess is like my my main thing monet personal brands sure scale personal brands okay

“so I would go back to like I think one of the very first things that came out when we started talking”

which was my pop if he were still around would say oh this woman this hollow woman yeah she's say she's a tradeswoman clearly and if you pressed him he would say well think about how she approaches work she has many different clients she advises them in in different ways depending on their needs she's a jobber you know she probably has short-term contracts with some longer term contracts with others she's probably paid on her results at some point you know at

some point you're gonna say well if I grow your business to this degree you know how can I participate or are you purely time and materials I don't know no wrong answer either way but those are all questions that that trades people with an entrepreneurial bent will ask themselves so I look at myself I think much the same way you do in the sense that I do a lot of different things

“but I'm I'm really not trying to define the work by any one thing that's why I went out of my”

way to say I don't know when it happened but for microworks to become the the sun in my solar system

was a big deal because that had never happened before even when dirty jobs was at its peak that was

never the main thing that was a big thing but my relationship with Ford was was bigger actually for a while and then with caterpillar and then publishing and then speaking and so I I realized you know what you're let the plates spin you know every now and then one's gonna fall and shatter but who cares you know you got a lot of plates in the air most of the jobbers I know most of the trades people I know think the same way some some some jobs are gonna be pretty pretty lush others are

going to be a nightmare you just you just don't know but you're going to move on from one to the

“next to the next anyway and so that's just a long way of saying I think one of the things really”

missing from the conversation today whether you want to be an influencer or whether you want to be a plumber the question is are you an entrepreneur do you think like a freelancer do you even like the whole notion of a gig economy you know because the gig economy that's under siege today freelancing is under siege here in California you know it's a it's a it's a real thing there's a thing called AB 15 it's a it's an assembly bill that turned into something called the pro act which is currently

in Congress and there's a giant effort in this country to discourage people from freelancing they want more employees they that's the relationship that you know a lot of people are being pushed into and I think it's kind of tragic because it kills their entrepreneurial spirit so to answer your question I I got I got to call the other day from and this happens all of the time because early on in micro works there was nobody but me to tell anecdotal stories of dirty jobbers and things

that I had seen you know but what's what's happening now and and the reason the foundation is so robust is it for the first time I'm able to go back five or six years ago to check in with somebody who we helped and ask questions like so how's it going and what I do is I bring a small

crew with me and I've been recording the answers to that question oh my god the stories are amazing

there was a guy Jake who wanted to be a welder and he filled out the work ethic scholarship

it's kind of a hassle you got to make a case for yourself you have to write a an essay you have

to make a video you got to give me references all the things you do in real life it's amazing how

how many people get scared away by that but the people who don't are serious and this guy I

“wound up giving him I think maybe $7,000 and he got his welding certificate when I check back”

the story was well I'll tell you what I did my question was are you still welding he said well yes and no I took the welding certificate meagantig welding I got hired by a couple of automotive companies and that went great and then I met a guy who wanted me to underwater weld and so I learned how to underwater weld that's a whole different set of muscles and that's like $300,000 a year you're in a big dry suit you're a hundred feet down you're working on pipelines

and all sorts of stuff that that's amazing and then he got hired to do that in the golf of Oman and in Saudi Arabia so now he's making pretty great money with no taxes and then he comes home a year later and he's looking around he's like well I think I'm gonna buy a van and I'm gonna hire my best friend who's a plumber because welding and plumbing go go hand in hand and pipe fitting of course and I got a pipe fitter involved and bought another van and then they got an electrician

and then they got a couple of HVAC guys and now Jake has three vans seven employees he's doing about three and a half million dollars a year and nobody tells that story because nobody's quite sure what the story is is is it the story of a welder is it the story of an underwater welder is at the story of an entrepreneur I mean this is these are the small businesses that make our country work and so many of them wind up coming into existence because somebody mastered a skill that was

in demand as opposed to saying God all my life I've you know what I've just I've dreamed of welding yes I've got plenty of stories like his in my foundation but dirty jobs is the I mean it's the

granddaddy of essential working shows shot through with an entrepreneurial spirit and I could I could

just talk for hours about all of them not all of them that's that's that's a bit rich we did 350 different jobs and all of them are important some are critical some are small businesses others were independent contractors others were big companies with an employee focus it was a mosaic but I'll tell you what shocks people to this day and they just straight up don't believe me when

“I tell them but I swear it's true if you go back and look at old episodes of that show I think the”

exact number was 41 41 of the people we profiled were multimillionaires and you would have never known it because they were covered in crap were something worse because they they just didn't look like the modern version of what a successful aspirational entrepreneur looks like but they're there and their stories are amazing and yeah it's a privilege to tell you yeah this is obviously an

entrepreneurship show and so I'm always telling people get a skill and then you can scale start an

agency like that's the easiest way that you can start a business and it reminds me like as we're talking getting a skill in the real world with you know a trade skill once you learn that skill and you figure things out maybe learn under somebody else's dime see how their business works you can slowly start to build a business and basically just bootstrap it and everybody has this like conception of starting a business that they need to have a product and they need to raise money

and they need to do all this stuff when you can just like start small learn a skill and evolve and there's so many millionaires and multi-millionaires that get started in that way

“way leads on to way and part of what I think we've we've lost is is patience we want to see a”

playbook we want to understand you know exact if if I do this this this and this am I going to get to where I want to be and it's reasonable it's just not accurate it just doesn't happen that way and this is my complaint you know aside from what I think is a preponderance or a proliferation of cookie cutter advice it's just this tendency among successful people to look back and say

in fact it's fun to do but it presupposes the idea that the people who are reading your book and

taking your advice are you and and of course they're not they're not I like I said the phone call I got from my mom I got exactly when I needed it and the 15 years I spent freelancing I wouldn't trade for anything I loved it but neither would I trade where I am now and really I mean I'll take my own advice even though I couldn't master any of the trades I was interested in that that my pop explained were beyond my my grasp I don't know if I've mastered anything necessarily but

I've become fairly facile at the things I get paid to do so I don't waste anybody's time I know how to narrate I can write I know how to I know how to do what I'm good at and and so once you find that out and maybe you've seen this in your own business but you know I've done I don't know

“probably seven shows starting with dirty jobs that are all out there but the truth is honestly”

they're all the same shell I just changed the title every few years dirty jobs somebody's got to do it people you should know returning the favor six degrees even some history shows I've worked on they're all a version of me tapping the country on the shoulder and saying what about her what about him get a load of that look at what they're doing over there that's my brand to the extent that that can be a brand that's my trade you know and that's why I ask you before you know how do you how

do you really see yourself and and that you know at the risk of contradicting myself that that that is some advice that I would offer you know to really to anyone it's really like take your own inventory and be really honest with yourself and ask yourself how do you how have you been defining yourself because because who you are and what you do it becomes more crystallized when you when you hang a label on it for better or worse and so for me it was useful for a while to see

“myself as a host and and to see host in the credits okay that's what Mike does he's a host and I'll”

work for a bunch of people being a host but the truth is I would probably still be doing

that kind of thing had I not had that that that moment in the in the sewer the Greeks call it a a parapetia it's a it's a moment in the narrative when when the hero of the story or the protagonist realizes that everything he thought he knew about himself was wrong and it's like those are the moments that I that I find myself most interested in in in in people's lives not when they realized they were on the right track but when they knew they were on the wrong one

and like if you're really interested in storytelling and you start to look for parapetia as you'll you'll find them everywhere you remember the six cents yep that's a great example of a modern parapetia you got Bruce Willis spoiler alert right but you got Bruce Willis and he's a psychologist and he's helping this little kid who sees dead people you know and all through the the movie their relationship you know develops and and and Bruce is very fond of this kid but he's crazy obviously

“he's mentally troubled and that's what Bruce Willis believes and that's what informs everything he”

does and then in the final act of the movie he realizes this little kid really can see dead people and therefore he realizes in that moment oh shit that's why he can see me I'm dead I've been dead the whole movie right so like when you realize you've been dead the whole movie or when you realize you're you're actually not really a host you're not really the thing you've been seeing when you look in the mirror and it's true I think honestly of all of us we are who we see in the

mirror but we can decide to call that reflection whatever we want and that makes it difference so

if my buddy Jake sees himself as a welder period he's never gonna go on to run a mechanical

contracting company and if I see myself as a host period then hey look Ryan C. Crest had a pretty great life but that's not the life I want I don't want to be a host not forever I I wanted to

you're a lawyer or or are you something else are you sure you're a brand consultant or me maybe

“that's exactly what you ought to be right now maybe that makes sense maybe everything's firing”

on all cylinders but a year or two it probably won't be and you'll probably be looking around going oh god somebody moved my cheese right something changed I want to I want to mix it up a little bit well what are you gonna do how are you gonna mix it up I would say maybe one of the ways is to uh just to think about think about a different business nerd this has been such an awesome conversation Mike I really enjoyed it my last question to you before I ask a couple kind of close

out questions is really like how do we think it's all gonna change like I know you started your foundation in 2008 so much has changed since then but what needs to happen so that some of these stereotypes go away so that we see more young men being employed and things you know are changed

“for the better the happy answer is we need to carpet bomb the country with”

myriad examples of guys like Jake and women like Chloe Hudson and other scholarship recipient who's

living basically the exact same life people who are thriving as a direct result of mastering a

skill that's in demand to make the skills get close and to challenge the primacy of a of a four-year degree we need to make sure that parents and guidance counselors and everyone in every state has a steady diet of examples of the very thing I'm talking about and the good news is those examples are out there my job in the missionary side of things is it is to do a better job of of sharing those stories the the more cynical part of me says what needs to happen for the ship to truly

turn around and for the blue forge alliance to find the hundred thousand trades people that they need and the next nine years is unfortunately things need to get a little worse before they get better

“going splat is is never fun but sometimes that's what needs to happen for for people to really think twice”

about the value of the Ivy League maybe they need to see the Ivy League affirmatively discriminating against free speech maybe they need to see the leaders of certain universities be found guilty of plagiarism which they clearly were maybe maybe these bad things need to happen in some ways to create some kind of wake-up call inside that institution maybe in order to understand that the only way to to really live in harmony with nature is to

control burn to clear the forest from time to time to to do the thing that's uncomfortable to watch and to get that through our head maybe the palisades need to burn maybe Santa Monica needs to burn maybe I hate to say that you know but but maybe we don't get enough skilled workers to build those submarines until we get into some kind of hot conflict and we realize you know something the aircraft carriers that we used to believe were the pointy part of the spear are now on the bottom of the ocean

because they have no defense against hypersonic missiles submarines do but oh my god we didn't know that but now we do and I hope it's not too late but I hope we start to think differently about the definition of a good job before those kinds of things go splat I don't have a crystal ball

but I'm basically a glass half full kind of guy and I know that from where I'm sitting I can see the

ship starting to turn I have seen more and more people step back and think a little more critically you know about the opportunities that exist and the way they might interact with their own sense of dreams and passions and hopes and so forth but all we can do is what we can do and it's quixotic you know but I I've been tilting it when mills my whole life and push in the rock up the hill I wait that's not quixotic that's sesame and whatever it is all we can do is what we can do

now if somebody's interested in your scholarship program is there any sort of age limit or you know how can they get involved or find out more about that there's no age limit um I'm is in fact I'm I'm more excited when I when I get applications from people who have hit the reset button at 35 and 40 years old and want to go back and right just kind of start from scratch I did it

we're we're talking about men and women who are just coming out of high school or or a part

“way through college and realizing that they want to change the road they're on if you're that”

person what you do is you go to microworks.org and you just click on the apply button and you apply for a work ethic scholarship no guarantees but you know the scholarship game is simple there there are lots of different scholarships out there by the way some focus on athletic achievement others on academic others on art there's scholarship for everything ours are for work ethic and the skilled trades so if if a four-year degree is in your future I can't help you

but if you're open to any of the other jobs that require a different kind of education

I'm your guy check us out we're here to help amazing Mikey provided so much guidance

I feel like people are gonna love this episode you're just such a great storyteller and you've got such a great heart so I just appreciate all your time I and my show with two questions I ask all my guests the first one is what is one piece of actionable advice are young and profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow well again I would contradict myself if I actually answered that directly but I will say I could because I don't know what leads to profit especially like tomorrow

if you mean that in the literal 24 hours sense it took me 42 years to figure out my career right so I don't know about tomorrow but I will tell you this there's nothing new to say about failure I'm sure everybody who's ever come on your podcast has has talked about failure is just learning failure is that's where we learn how blah blah so I want to say that but I I will make a case for the importance of being uncomfortable if you're willing to be uncomfortable that's a step in the right

direction because this comfort doesn't necessarily mean failure it really doesn't mean anything other than are you willing to be uncomfortable and actually it was my old scout master who who told me this you know and I I hated him for saying it at the time and I didn't believe him for a long time but you will hear that you know character has a lot to do with a willingness to be uncomfortable but what I'm saying is slightly different you know it's great to be willing to do a hard thing

or to agree to volunteer for a difficult thing that's that that's well and good

“the next level though is to figure out a way to like it and that's what that's what Mister”

Huntington said to me said look man if you if you want to go somewhere you know it's not enough to simply endure being uncomfortable you have to find a way to like it and look forward to it that's what dirty jobs was for me it was uncomfortable I took a pie in the face in every single episode there were broken bones and I'm seared off my eyelashes and my eyelid I mean it was just it was painful it was painful but the navy seals say the same thing you know embrace the sock

look forward to it take a cold plunge it's good for you and it's miserable but you feel great afterwards there's so many things you can do little things to reintroduce yourself to to the kind of discomfort that that usually leads to some good I love that and what would you say is your secret to profiting in life and now this can go beyond financial just what do you feel like is your secret to a successful life well a couple things come to mind but I'm going to go

with the word you used earlier because I love it and the word is pivot it has to do with changing your course but still still being persistent it has to do with a word you don't hear a lot about

“any more which is initiative got that's and talk about which in short supply that's what every”

employer I know is just it's just dying dying to find people with initiative but I'll go back to

pivoting you know I've always known it was important but it wasn't until the lockdowns

that I saw just how clarifying that was and I mean it was pivot or parish it was adapted or die and how many businesses went out of business because they just sat around waiting to be told what to do where they just got into that okay two weeks to flatten the curve art I wait another two weeks I'll wait two more meanwhile life is happening right in front of you I remember

good for you guys I mean your whole pipeline of content relies on people going out into the world

“and working and we can't go out in the world now and she said look I know I know we're freaking out”

over here any ideas and I had just read an article on this thing called zoom I'd never heard of zoom

I thought it was just some you know some some adjuited for something like zoom whatever but I but I looked at it I'm like wait a minute people are talking people are having like meeting this thing is connecting people in a totally new way I said what if we what if we call the crab boat captains from deadliest catch which I've been narrating for 21 years and I like what if we do a zoom call and record it and what if you put that on at nine p.m. as a show at a time when

we're all literally like in the same boat what if you go to crab boat captains to talk about what's happening in the lockdowns and get their take on it so we did it and we were the first zoom show to ever air in prime time and that that happened about a month into the lockdowns and then after that I was like look I don't care what it takes I'm gonna put this show back in production I got my old crew together and we went out into the world and we started filming a new season of dirty jobs

that show went out of production in 2012 we went back in a production in 2020 and you know I'm proud of that not because it was particularly great although frankly I thought was pretty good I was proud because my my crew was so anxious to pivot and then that work was willing to pivot and I was

“desperate to pivot and and being allowed to pivot when you feel like that's what you got to do man that's”

that's freedom 101 and being willing to pivot even into something uncomfortable that's life yeah

Mike this has been an amazing conversation where can everybody learn more about you everything

that you do I know you've got a very popular podcast the way that I heard it tell everybody where they can find you the way I heard it is probably but playing right where this podcast is playing you know Spotify app or wherever people get podcasts I talked to people I find interesting every single week I write a lot of short stories mysteries that we put on the podcast that turned into a show and those have been a lot of fun as well the shows are all out there I'm still narrating

a bunch of stuff dirty jobs is still on every day on the discovery channel God bless them working

“on a new show called People You Should Know that'll be coming to YouTube and there's a website”

with my name and it called Mike road.com and and of course I don't know 9 or 10 million people

somehow or another on Facebook and Instagram still tend to care what I say so I'd be honored if you join them and most importantly mycroworks.org you know we got a big pile of money there I'm desperate to give away to people who want to learn to trade so if that's you go get some amazing Mike thank you for all that you do thank you for coming on the show and for everything that you do for the world thanks for having me