Mike Rowe: How To Make $10,000 Per Month In 90 Days - No Degree Required!

29:06What are you scared of? You know, be honest. What are you really scared of? I'd say a lot of people would just be failure. Okay.

29:16Graham Stephan:Humiliation. Okay. You're scared of being humiliated and you're scared of failing. Embarrassment. Embarrassment. Absolutely. All great motivators. How does pursuing a life of comfort and ease protect you from those things? Well, it insulates you from feeling embarrassed or fearful. Sure. In much the same way, the ostrich insulates himself from the environment by sticking his head in the sand. You can get away with a lot of stuff for a while, and then you don't. And I think I think it's really tempting, and I've certainly made this mistake in my life more than once, but you look at your life like it's a snapshot.

30:03It's like, this is what I'm doing. But you're not in a snapshot. You're in a movie. And there's stuff happening all around you all of the time. The chickens are going to come home to roost for those 7 million men who have chosen this life. And it's not going to be good. And I would love to help them. My foundation tries to help them. You know, if you start with this idea that, look, I'm not going to do a thing that makes me uncomfortable, then okay. Check back. Let me know how it goes for you.

30:40Graham Stephan:In terms of your own career, I'm curious, it seems very accidental and somewhat random from the outside looking in, from opera to QVC to dirty jobs to narration. What habits did you employ that led to that success? I can't choose what I look like, how tall I am, my race, my gender. There's a bunch of stuff out of my control. But I can choose to be curious, and I can choose to be uncomfortable. And I got very lucky growing up. Those two things were always presented as wise choices. You know, if you're curious and uncomfortable, you're probably on the road to becoming, if not interesting, at least somebody who has some stories to tell, you know?

31:29So that was kind of burned in. The interesting thing, I think, for me, is the realization that curiosity has a partner, and the partner is humility. You can't be curious and arrogant at the same time. We're certain, right? Curiosity by definition means, I don't know. And I'm game to find out and finding out might humiliate me. It might make me embarrassed. It might make me uncomfortable. So if you really value curiosity as a virtue, then all the other things we're talking about kind of fall in line. And I was always curious. I still am. The humility for me was I was sure I was going to follow in my granddad's footsteps, the guy I mentioned earlier.

32:21And I spent a couple years as a teenager kind of working as his apprentice on a lot of different jobs. And just because I assumed I was so passionate about wanting to do what he did that I would have inherited the skills necessary to allow my passion to unfold. But of course, the handy gene is recessive. And it was a very early, really important lesson to realize just because you love something doesn't mean you can't suck at it. And conversely, just because you're not particularly interested in something doesn't mean you might not have a real facility for it. So when my granddad told me to get a different toolbox, he said, you can be a tradesman.

33:12You just need a different set of tools. You need to go a different way. That's what got me in entertainment.

33:17Graham Stephan:Now, one thing I really admire is how good you were on QVC and selling. And I'm so curious, what's the thing that you learned about selling that most entrepreneurs miss? If there were a host or expert playbook, it's to create and foster the illusion of knowledge and competence where it doesn't really exist. And the sales book is very similar. I know the features and I know the benefits. Therefore, I can explain to you exactly in great detail anything that you hand me. And in the course of that explanation, by employing various techniques, including a great level of empathy and enthusiasm, I can get you to yes.

34:03Okay, that's the basic idea. Tom Sawyer taught us something different. And I read that book when I was a kid. Tom Sawyer, you know, didn't want to paint the fence and basically conned his friends into doing it for him. My first night on QVC was extraordinary. but I'd never been on live television before. I'm sitting there in front of, you know, four robotic cameras. There is no training program. At least there wasn't in 1990. You know, if you could talk about a pencil for eight minutes, you were hired.

34:34Graham Stephan:That's a skill in and of itself. I mean, I wouldn't be able to talk about a pencil for five minutes. I bet you could. I don't think I could. Well, I can teach you how. How do you do it? You never say anything about the pencil that you don't follow with a reason. Every feature on the pencil has to have a benefit. So, okay, it's a yellow number two pencil with an eraser and that little silver thing that holds the eraser to the thing. Is it lead or is it graphite? Doesn't really matter, but you have to decide which one it is. and then you have to tell me, and then you have to explain that graphite from Madagascar is a far superior solution or alternative to lead because a lot of people still lick the tip of the pencil and that's a stupid way to get lead poisoning, right?

35:20So if you're going to tell me something about the product, tell me what the benefit is. Why is it yellow? Because you're busy, right? You open up your desk drawer. You don't have time to be rooting around for a beige writing implement. You want that yellow to pop out of there so you know right where it is. Why is the eraser as long as it is? Because after years of testing, we know that the life of that pencil sharpened incrementally, as the data shows it will be, will coincide with the life of the eraser, which employed statistically from time to time, as we know it will be, will coincide. That's why you get that little pencil down here and the eraser's been used.

35:59It's all perfectly engineered. Why number two? Why not number three? Why not number one? What's the difference? Well, number one leaves that big, fat, stupid skid mark. You look like a kid with a crayon. Number three is all too fine and wispy. You know, number two is the perfect. It's the perfect amount of Madagascar graphite for your yellow pencil. And you just talk, man. You just everything. That's crazy, though. Everything you say is followed by a reason.

36:27Graham Stephan:And how do you make it sound exciting without lying about it? Running a podcast is actually a lot more work than people may think from sponsor contracts, invoices, show notes, research docs. It piles up incredibly fast. A few months ago, we started using Claude to help with all of that stuff, and that is exactly why we are so excited to be partnered with them. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop a good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.

37:01Graham Stephan:And Cowork goes way beyond a chatbot. It's not just answering questions. It's actually doing the work. Real spreadsheets, formatted reports, organized files directly on your computer with no uploads and no cleanup. You could even connect it to tools that you already use, like Google Workspace, HubSpot, Notion, queue up multiple tasks, step away, and come back to all of them done. A fun fact, but we've actually replaced our entire invoicing system with Claude. Like, it used to take us forever to input everything manually, but now all we have to do is upload a screenshot, Claude's able to get it all done for us, and then draft an email that's ready to send.

37:36Graham Stephan:Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at Claude.com slash iced coffee. That's Claude.com slash iced coffee and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Thanks again to Claude for sponsoring this podcast. So I am always looking for little ways to save time. For example, every single day when I drive to the studio, I'll take a different route depending on whether I see a green light or a red light. Or whenever I'm listening to podcasts, I always do 2x speed just to save that time as well. We all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life, but if you're a business owner, how do you save time hiring?

38:10Graham Stephan:The answer is our sponsor, ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that lets you see the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash ICH. Plus, ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology helps you find quality candidates way quicker. Candidates could also tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. It's no wonder that ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter find a quality candidate within the first day.

38:45Graham Stephan:Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash ICH. That is ziprecruiter.com slash ICH. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. And how do you make it sound exciting without lying about it? Oh, well, that's a different matter. But I'll tell you what I did. I mean, before I fully employed the whole feature benefit approach to selling, I went to the Tom Sawyer's method. The first product they brought me, June 1990, was the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever. What the hell is this? I couldn't. It was midnight. I worked the overnight shift for years and it looked like a flashlight with a little red glowing ball at the end of it from which infrared rays were emitted.

39:33So what you would do is you would you would rub this thing on your arthritis or whatever hurt. And through some miracle. Right. Suddenly the pain is gone. Now, you put yourself in my place. I'm 27 years old. I'm sitting there. I'm about to go live. It's the top of the hour. And they bring me this thing with a little yellow, a blue card. It's got the item number, the price, a couple of easy payment options and a sentence describing what I've just shared. And then you have eight minutes. You have eight minutes to talk about this freaking thing. And I didn't even know if it was real. I thought it looked like something you would get out of the, you know, the machines on the boardwalk with the mechanical claw.

40:18Right. Right. It's just like, really, it's just stuff that hadn't sold in prime time. And they would give it to the overnight guys because they're on a three-month probationary period. And that's how you find out if you got the chops.

40:30Graham Stephan:And are you getting paid on a commission? Like the more of these you sell, they're just flat. It's a great question. It's a great money question. First of all, what I did is just say, folks, I'm Mike. I'm the new guy. Nice to meet you. If you're just joining us, this is the Health Team Infrared Pain Reliever. I've never seen one before. Um, and I'll be honest with you. I'm a little nervous because I got eight minutes to kill, but there's an 800 number on the screen. And if you call it and ask for Marty, the producer, he'll put you through and maybe you can tell me how the hell this thing works on the air.

41:04Lines blew up. Like people were on hold to tell me how to do my job. And I was like, oh, this is great to answer your question. No, back in those days, I don't know how they do it today. But you weren't paid on commission, but what they would do was send out these extensive surveys to the audience and they ask their most loyal customers to evaluate each host based on all sorts of things that didn't have anything to do with sales. In a way, it was the opposite of commission, right? Do you trust them? Do you find them amusing? Would you trust them to do this or that? It's like a lot of trust questions.

41:52Would you like to hang out with them in real life? So the bonus was based on trust and likability, not sales. So when I realized that, I hijacked my three-hour shift, and I didn't worry about selling at all. Because back then, the network was saying, don't worry about the sale. The programmers know what they're doing, and the items themselves are of quality. they'll sell themselves you know just talk about it but your bonus will be based on your likability and that of course was the recipe for a for a talk show so how do you increase trust and likability with humility i don't know what this is or how it works somebody call and help me

42:44Graham Stephan:somebody call and help me so people call with that exact item oh yeah say like oh here's how you use it. Did that increase sales by default? Well, not to the point. And this is the funny part of your question, I think. My first year bonus check exceeded my salary. I think they were paying me$50 ,000 a year in 1990. That's decent. That's pretty good. It's not bad, but more money than I'd ever seen. And it was my first TV gig, but my bonus was like 60. Wow. So it goes back to incentives, right? I was being incentivized not to sell the widget, but to keep the customer somewhat entertained. And because I was on at midnight and sometimes 3 a.m., I had the graveyard shift.

43:37Nobody was really watching me. So I was largely unsupervised. My boss would look at the tapes the following day. But nobody really knew what I was doing in the middle of the night on the air, four or five nights a week. And what I was doing was wildly inconsistent. What's the worst you ever failed doing QVC? I got called in once. It was a Sunday afternoon. I'd only been there a month. I was still in my probationary period. So I was sleep deprived. I'd been a total vampire. And the woman who was supposed to be on at like Sunday at 5 PM was under the weather, violently ill up in the green room. She couldn't go on the air.

44:23And so the guy that was on the air, he couldn't stay. He had like like a wedding to go to or something. So I lived just a few minutes from the studio and they called me to come in to fill in for this primetime shift. And when I got there, it was called the QVC Dollhouse. And the whole stage was filled with collectible dolls, like sitting up all over the place. I didn't know people collected dolls. I thought it was just the children. Well, I didn't think there were children up there, but I just was like, what do you mean the doll collectors? And, uh, you know, the producer told me dolls are the third most collected thing in the country behind stamps and coins.

45:05I think it's a big deal. I'm like, wow, what am I supposed to do? It's just, they're just like anything else. Just, just put them on your lap. Just pick them up. It's actually, he was like, don't, don't touch them, but they'll, they'll be next to you. Just describe them. Give them a little story, you know, like these little Victorian porcelain dolls that looked like they'd escaped from like a roadshow of little women or something. It was very strange. But anyway, to answer your question, it was easier than I thought. And everything was selling out because the doll collectors, they just sit there and they just, they buy them.

45:37Like, I couldn't not succeed. And they brought a doll, a nun doll called Sister Mary Margaret, like a two-foot doll dressed like a Benedictine nun with the glasses and everything else. And, I mean, it was just so crazy. She was standing next to me.

45:53Graham Stephan:And that was the popular one? I didn't know. I had no idea if it was going to be popular or not, but it was creepy. It was like an angry-looking nun. Is that how you described it? Worse. I went through a basic presentation, and I was making stupid puns. It'd be a bad habit not to invest in a little lady like this. It would be a... Oh, God. I had her over my head at one point singing the theme to an old song called The Flying Nun. I put a jewelry ruler in her hand, like those little six-inch rulers, you know, and I was smacking my hand with her hand and, you know, people were laughing and it was funny.

46:29And I was basically just trying to kill time. And we got to the end of the, uh, we got to the end of the clock, right. And they dissolve and to go to the next product, but the producer puts a new clock up on the screen. I mean, I have another four minutes to talk about this doll. I didn't have an, I'm a Presbyterian kid from Baltimore. I got, I don't know anything about Catholic nuns, much less in a doll form. And I have nothing to say. And the reason they came back to me is because we were in a queue, meaning all the order entry operators were taking calls. So they had to like vamp and wait for the calls to go down before they brought out a new product.

47:09So now I got this nun next to me for another four minutes. I got nothing to say. And I looked down at that blue card and the words, uh, the word musical is in quotes. And at the bottom of the card, it says climb every mountain. So I realized this is a musical nun, you know, and if you wind her up, I assume there's a music box in there somewhere. She plays climb every mountain. And I'm thinking, oh, this will be great. We can sing along. Like I'll do a sing along with climb every mountain. That'll what, what a great way to kill four minutes. so I take the nun off the stand and I, I put it in my lap and I reach for the winder, right.

47:52And her back and it's not there, which is weird. Like why, where else would you put a winder? Now I'm on a camera, I'm on camera, basically like this, you know, facing the thing. And my producer is freaking out because you're not supposed to touch the doll, especially, you know, if it's a nun, it looks all like she's between my legs. and I'm looking for this winder, which I figure has to be somewhere on her back, but it's not. But it looks like I'm giving the nun a massage of some kind. So he's in my ear like, dude, don't touch the nun. And there are 150 order entry people in front of me who are like riveted to their monitors because this is weird, dude.

48:33Like the new guy has a nun in his lap and he's rubbing her shoulders or something and we don't quite know what to make of it. And I got to find this winder. Now it's personal. So the DP, director of photography, all automatic switches from like this camera to another camera that has a tight shot of the nun in a light box. So this is the duplicate display nun where you get those long, slow tilts and pans of every little detail. So I'm off camera, but my mic is open and now I can conduct the search for this winder properly. And I find it, I feel it and it's sticking out. This is so jacked up. It's sticking out of the lowest possible part of the small of her back.

49:23It's basically in her ass, right? It's sticking out of the top part of the crack in her bottom. and I can feel it through the habit, but I can't, you can't wind it from the outside. Now I'm off camera. So I pick up the nun and now every, I mean, people are just freaking out and I take my hand up all the way up there, you know, and by the way, way more detailed than you would imagine. This is not even necessary. And I, and I get my hand on the winder, but I can't get any torque on it because her habit's too tight. So I, I turned the nun upside down and I push her habit down. So now her legs are sticking up in the air like this.

50:04And my face is like between her legs and I lean over and I start winding her up. Now the DP has been on this shot over here for like a minute, which is way too long, just tilts and pans. And I'm like, any minute now, folks, we're going to, We're going to wind up Sister Mary Margaret and we'll be treated to a special rendition of Climb Every Mountain, you know, off camera doing all this. But everybody, like I'm sitting on her head and I'm cupping her butt with my left hand and I'm winding her up with my right. And what happens next really wasn't my fault, but the DP didn't check his line monitor.

50:44All he's looking at is the preview. So he's seeing what the viewer has been seeing for the last minute, but he doesn't fully realize the level of debauchery that's unfolding on that camera. And he takes the shot. So I'm sitting there in this chair looking at the monitors in front of me and I see the dissolve happen. And I see what like a million people suddenly see in their living rooms. I'm sitting on a nun's head. My thumb appears to be somewhere in her bottom. I'm horrified by the image. Everybody in the studio just gasps and I freeze and I like yank my hand out and the nun falls forward from between my thighs and lands on the floor and starts to play climb every mountain.

51:39And in that moment, uh, I sealed my fate. And this is really, I shouldn't have told you the story, but when I yanked my hand out for reasons I can't even explain, I sniffed my fingers. It just, it's just a nervous, stupid thing.

51:59Graham Stephan:You got the particulate. I got the particulate. But that nun was authentic, man. So she falls down. She plays Climb Every Mountain. And they go to a break. Anyway, I got through the rest of the hour. And I knew it was bad. But when I got home, I had one of those old-style answering machines. You guys probably have never seen. I was like, you have 54 new messages. And somewhere in those messages, my boss was saying, so yeah, I caught the show this afternoon. Why don't you come on in tomorrow and, you know, pick up your check? So that was the first time I was fired from QVC for inappropriate relations with a porcelain nun.

52:41Graham Stephan:You say first time. I was fired three times. What happened to the other two? Why do they keep firing you? Because I was being paid to be likable, not to sell stuff. And so I would make fun of the products and sometimes the viewers. But I would always do it, you know, as kindly as I could and as honestly as I could. Um, and you know, things often went off the rails. I was a, um, what'd they call me a management challenge, but you know, it was the viewers who saved me like literally like after that incident, I went home, realized I was done and called a buddy of mine who I knew was on a shift later that evening.

53:25And I, and I told him what had happened. He on the air said, Hey, if you caught Mike's show earlier today. I hope you liked it. He won't be back. And we got a lot of letters from viewers who were like, oh, you know, that was really funny. That wasn't his fault. Give him a break. So my boss hired me back. And so I got another shot. But it was that kind of thing for three years, really. You know, I was banished to overnights. I really never saw the light of day again, but I worked the midnight to three shift and, you know, I didn't, it's funny, man. I didn't talk about this for years, but, um, some, somewhere around 99, somebody started posting old videos, VHS videos of me on the air, like cracking open a lava lamp to see if that was really lava inside, like breaking unbreakable plates just to see if I could, you know, all this crazy stuff that would get me in trouble.

54:29And then people started asking me about those videos. Like you can Google the cat sack right now, which is pretty funny. We had a sack. It looked like a grocery bag lined with Mylar and your cat would crawl into it. Do you have the nun video? That I don't have. My mom might have it, but I do have videos of me interacting with dolls in an odd way. The doll thing was like a leitmotif in those days in my career. But the real point is, I got a thousand stories and I can tell them if you want, but that was my first job in TV and I couldn't distance myself from it once I really started my career fast enough.

55:10But looking back, every useful thing I ever learned that served me well later, I learned in the middle of the night selling stuff on the QVC cable shopping channel, including Dirty Jobs. All the ideas for the show were suggested by viewers.

55:28Graham Stephan:When people come to you, what's the question you hate answering the most? So, and you have to ask it the right way. you have to ask it like you've been thinking about this for a long time and now you've got I already know what it is what's the dirtiest job that's it dude you know it's the same exact thing people come to me and they always like I've been wanting to ask you man who's your favorite guest you've ever had on the podcast I'm like dude I've had 350 people so many people on the show I could not tell you who my favorite is out of 7 years Or what's the best piece of advice you've gotten on the podcast?

56:10Graham Stephan:And then it's always followed up with, how do you like Vegas? How do you like living in Vegas? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always those three. In the same way, you know, choosing to be curious or uncomfortable, like, is a choice. Like, questions, it's a muscle. Like, and you can work it out. You know, I'm sure you've guys, I mean, you've done a lot of interviews. so you can, like, you know, you know when you're going down a road where it's like, I'm pretty sure the listener has heard this. I'm pretty sure they've heard this question. I'm pretty sure they've heard that story. Like, it's, it's a real, it's a talent to ask a question that hasn't been asked before.

56:49Graham Stephan:What should they be asking instead? If I were interviewing me, I would want to know how you got away with it. You know, How'd you get Dirty Jobs on the... I couldn't sell that show today in the room. I couldn't get it made. I couldn't film it. There's nothing... That show was so off-brand for the network at the time. And then it became the brand. I shot the pilots myself, and they rated very well, but they were put on the shelf because that wasn't the show that my bosses at the time wanted their viewers to like. What did they want the viewers to like? David Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Jane Goodall.

57:38The Discovery brand, which I still love very much at the time was really rooted. In a different version of credibility, right? Like they, like you have to decide what's persuasive and what do the viewers, what will the viewers respond to? And, um, at the time, you know, seventies, eighties, nineties, I think, I think most of TV was living in the age of, um, of authority where we took comfort in hosts who talked like this. they'd hit the mark and they'd say their line. We're like narrators who would tell you about the lone wildebeest traversing the vast reaches of the Serengeti. Like everything is measured.

58:30Everything is, you know, all those tropes of hosting were like really alive and established. Somehow, I came along at a time, I think, when the audience was starting to feel like, well, that level of authority is not really as persuasive necessarily as maybe something authentic. And then the question is, well, what's authentic? And if you're in that model of like hosting or reading news or something like that, well, all you had to do was figure out a way to to do the same basic job differently than everybody around you. And that's what Dirty Jobs really was, an attempt to say, look, maybe instead of a host, I can be a guest.

59:20Maybe the expert on my show is the guy you've never heard of doing some weird job out of sight and out of mind. Maybe he becomes the credible source of factual information. I become his apprentice. The viewer becomes the programmer. So everything about that show was designed to poke at the bear of existing expectations in nonfiction TV. Why did you like it? I found it fast.

1:00:01Graham Stephan:I felt like I learned something from it. Yeah, but you could have learned from every other show on the network. Why did you like Dirty Jobs? It was entertaining. Why was it entertaining? I think the comedy of it. Yeah, but also I think your narration of it was fantastic. Thanks. Now, speaking of all these jobs that you've done, where do you see the trends going in the future for people who want to get in the trades? Like, what's something that they should start today that 10 years from now is going to be high-paying, high-demand? But real quick, baseball fans, you think you know who's hitting a home run today?

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1:01:50Graham Stephan:Like, what's something that they should start today? that 10 years from now is going to be high paying, high demand? The unexpected answer is don't ignore AI. It's not going away. Understand it. Don't be afraid of it. I don't care if you're a welder or an electrician or a plumber. Don't let this thing get so far in front of you that you don't feel like you can catch up to it. Now, having said that, right now, AI is not threatening any vocations that my foundation is typically concerned with. So, it's not coming for the electricians or the plumbers or the steam fitters or the pipe fitters or the shipbuilders.

1:02:38Um, look, I would say if you're looking at a career in the trades, the most useful thing you can learn first is how to weld. Cause that's, that, that, that's like the gateway trade. We've got 3 ,500 people who have gone through micro works, probably, probably 40 % of them are welders.

1:02:55Graham Stephan:Why does it pay so much? At the moment it's a, it's supply and demand. It's, it's, it's really that simple. Um, and certain elements, there's a danger premium. There's hazard pay. Underwater welding is about the most dangerous thing you can do. Is that the most dangerous job? It's up there, man. I mean, you've got to talk about like the show I was just narrating, Deadliest Catch. That's dangerous. Crab fishing on the Bering Sea is dangerous. Lumberjacking anywhere is dangerous. What's the main threat in lumberjacking? The chainsaws themselves are just giant, coiled, razor sharp mechanical beasts.

1:03:35It's not like bears though, right? I don't think a lot of people are attacked by bears. Just in general. I mean, really, like if I were a bear, you know, and I saw a lumberjack with a chainsaw, I'd be like, you know what? I'm going to stick it. Another day. You know what? I'm a roots and berries kind of bear. Yeah. But no, I mean, look, you can be a couple hundred feet underwater. Like you're at real depth sometimes in a dry suit. You've got air being pumped in, compressed air. How much do underwater welders make? Again, it's all over the map, but there was a guy a couple years ago who I gave maybe$6 ,000 to.

1:04:15He filled out a work ethic scholarship, applied for money from my foundation. And his resume was great. His references were great. Everything about it was great. I couldn't give him the money fast enough. And I stay in touch with a lot of these people because I want to interview them later. They can answer that question. better than I can. Uh, but this guy fell off the radar. Um, I, I didn't know what, what had happened to him. His name's Jake. And, uh, anyhow, he, he came back on the radar a few years later and I called him just to, cause we were doing a new series of, uh, commercials for micro works.

1:04:58And I like to feature the people that we've actually assisted in these things. And, uh, I thought he'd be good. And I said, how's it going? He said, how's it going? I'll tell you how it's gone. You gave me what you gave me, uh, MIG welding and TIG welding for the first year I got promoted. Then I got promoted again. And then about 14 months in, I fell in love with this girl and I wanted to marry her, but I was still, you know, I was making maybe$70 ,000 a year. So I knew a guy who got me in an underwater welding program. And this it turns out I was pretty good at it. And so I did that for a year and was making about 130, 140 ,000.

1:05:40And then something opened up overseas, Gulf of Oman, a pipeline underwater, 315, 320 grand tax free. Wow. So he says, how's it going? I was over there almost three years. I got a million dollars in the bank. First kids on the way. I'll tell you what, though. Like, if anyone's going to make that kind of money. Oh, God. Like, please, take it. Like, I, you know what? Like, if I need a reduction in pay because some underwater welders, you know what I mean? I have no problem with those guys. So here's the better answer to your earlier question. And don't let me boomer out on your audience. But that guy, compared to any one of the seven million we were discussing before.

1:06:31who do you want to help? Yeah. Even if he makes$300 ,000 more a year than those, it's like, again, no lectures, no sermons, but man, it's, it's a, it's a scary uncertain time for a lot of people. I get it, but you know, to find men and women who are affirmatively, it's the bottom of the ninth. The bases are loaded. You're up by one. You want the ball. I want that guy. I want that. I want to do what I can to help those people. Because look, there are lots of scholarship programs out there. Jeez, for everything, you know, academic, artistic, athletic.

1:07:10Graham Stephan:So what should the role of government be in helping and supporting those people? Because it seems like at the same time, if there's too much of a safety net, it might discourage some of that risk taking. So this is the essential problem. If everybody was like Jake, or if everybody was like the 7 million who have just clocked out, I can answer the question and say, all right, as an elected official, I got to figure out how to fix a problem that could likely lead to some kind of existential thing. I'm not in that position. And the state of play is not that codified, right? So I'll tell you what I told the feds 15 years ago.

1:07:58I started microworks 18 years ago on Labor Day. I went to Congress 15 years ago and said, look, guys, I'm not an expert, but Obama had just announced 3 million shovel ready jobs. So this was in 2009. And you can find this online. I wrote an open letter to President Obama and I said, look, I love the idea that, you know, you're going to create 3 million shovel-ready jobs. But from what I've seen, it's going to be a hard sell to a country that's not currently super excited about picking up a shovel. Like you need better PR. You're going to need to explain what these jobs are. You're going to need to explain why they're valuable and how they can get you to a six-figure income quick, because they can.

1:08:44But you're going to have to sell that. You got to sell the jobs. You can't just create them and wait for them to be filled. And around the same time, I went to Congress to say, look, I don't think the ultimate solution to the skills gap is going to be.gov, but I don't think there's going to be a solution without it. So there's so many things you guys can do to reinvigorate the trades. And to the extent that my foundation can help, I'm at your disposal. It's funny, no one disagreed with me. I got calls from both sides of the aisle going, hey man, yeah, we take what you're screaming. Let's stay in touch, whatever.

1:09:23Two years later, I went back to the Senate, same basic pitch. Didn't go anywhere. Last week, I was in the Pentagon. It took 15 years, but they got back to me with an answer to your question, which was basically, here's what the government can do. They've launched their own site called buildfreedom.us. It has like 400 ,000 open positions there, many of which are AI proof, six figure jobs. They gave me$10 million for my foundation and I had a bunch of money saved up over the years. So we have millions of dollars earmarked for men and women who specifically want to learn a skill that's in demand.

1:10:03And the government is throwing gas on that fire and saying, as you look at all the opportunities in the skilled trades all over the country, don't forget about the ones in the DIB, the defense industrial base. Because I got news for you, man. The people who build our submarines, they're freaking out. They need 400 ,000 welders in the next seven, eight years. They have no idea where to get them.

1:10:30Graham Stephan:Should we be concerned about competing with other countries like China? Yeah. China built a thousand ships last year. We built three. And why is that? Is that a work ethic thing? Is that a cultural thing that maybe those skills are more appreciated over there? Or is it just like a red tape policy issue? I think that is a government question, you know, because shipbuilding is its own very specific thing. And those contracts can go to any number of places for a lot of reasons. And you could look at organized labor, unions, you can look at importing steel, you can look at all kinds of different factors that might make it a lot more efficacious to give the business to South Korea.

1:11:14China's not building our ships. South Korea is. So getting that industry back in this country is something this administration wants to do. They want to reshore. They want to reindustrialize. And look, just to be clear and not make it too political, I told President Obama 15 years ago, I'm like, look, man, I'm rooting for you. I want to see this work. I care about our country and I love the idea of closing the skills gap and making a more persuasive case for the trades. Seven months ago, I was with this president in Pittsburgh for this energy conference, along with 35 CEOs who basically run the country right now.

1:11:55I was literally in the room when those CEOs pledged$92 billion to Pennsylvania alone to build out data centers primarily in the next few years. and uh and when it was my turn to talk i said the same thing i'm like you know i'm rooting for this president i want to see manufacturing reinvigorated i want to see all this work brought back but and this is where i'm but you know i don't know if i'll be invited back but i said you're going to create two million jobs in manufacturing what about the 480 000 jobs in manufacturing right now that we can't fill. What about that? What about the fact that for every five tradespeople who retire to replace them?

1:12:41It's been that way for 12 years. Five out, two in. I don't have to be an economist to tell you that. That's not sustainable.

1:12:50Graham Stephan:So it seems like those are really good jobs to get into. Like what was it? It was like home inspectors and home appraisers. they're all aging out and no one's replacing them. Yep. Yeah. Look again, the guys who built my house, uh, there were seven people in the crew. The youngest one was 50 and that was 11 years ago. So, you know, every general contractor I know, and I know a bunch of them are agonizing over workforce. I mean, not to overstate it, but I mean, there is not a week that goes by that I don't hear from the leader of some consequential industry or company who is freaking out in the exact same way.

1:13:39I mean, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Ford, Jim Farley's talking about building automotive repair facilities within his own company. Lowe's has committed$250 million to workforce training. Home Depot's right behind him at$100 million. BlackRock's like on$150 million. This is how crazy it's gotten. America's Workforce Academy is a five-week pre-apprenticeship program on steroids, right? This is how desperate Meta is for skilled workers. They will pay you to go through the course, could be fiber optic, could be basic electric, all the construction trades. They'll pay you, cover all your expenses, plane travel, food, everything.

1:14:26Plus they'll pay you. And at the end of five weeks, they'll guarantee you a job. Guaranteed. And if you decide, ah, I don't want to work for Meta or I don't want to work on that project, you can leave with your certifications. So I think what's coming is a completely new way to think about vocational training. I think it's going to be like a Manhattan project type thing. It's going to just change the way we think about certifications, requirements, experience, training, and money.

1:15:07Graham Stephan:Based on that, I'm curious, what do you think we have too much of in terms of jobs or employees that are getting into an industry? I wouldn't second guess the market. Seems like everyone want to be a software engineer. And that was seven years ago when that became very popular. Now we have a glut of software engineers and AI seems to be taking quite a bit away from that. We're not suffering from too few influencers. We're not suffering as a country from too few American idols. We're not suffering. I mean, like you can go down the list of things, right? Again, it's basic supply and demand. Sorry to beat a dead horse.

1:15:48And with respect to Marco Rubio, who I think is doing a terrific job, But 10 years ago, there was a moment on the debate stage. As I remember, we had 17 candidates in the GOP. I mean, 17. And he was up there. This also goes back to, you know, what happens when an organization realizes its customers want something they don't want them to want. I still remember, I think it was Reince Priebus, the head of the GOP, going, look at all these amazing choices up here. You know, we have him, we have her, this doctor of color. We have this, we have that. So many, anybody but the guy in the middle. Right?

1:16:28It's like anybody, not that guy. Well, we all know what happened to that guy. But the point is, in the middle of that debate, I forget what the question was, but Marco said, and I'll tell you something else, what our country needs are fewer philosophers and more welders. And the crowd, a big applause line. And I'm watching. I'm like, oh boy. So, uh, like an hour later, I go on my social channels such as they were like seven, 8 million people there. And most of them were like, Hey man, did you hear that? He's singing your song. I'm like, no, actually it's not. It's not. I've, I've never meant to suggest that what's plaguing the country are too many philosophers.

1:17:12that's not the way to think about it you know what we need are more philosophers who can run an even bead and understand the mechanics of you know fabricating steel and we need more welders who who can talk intelligently about the stoics and about uh logic and reasoning and aristotle and Nietzsche and Descartes and Kant and like, why does it have to be one or the other? You know, that, that I think that's what I meant by, I think we're going to have to reimagine education because we're like stuck in this prison of two ideas where we got, we got too much of this and not enough of that. And therefore we got to get rid of some of this, but that's the real message of the skills gap too.

1:18:06Like, why do we still talk about unemployment as if it matters? You know, that Nick Eberstadt guy, same guy, the Men Without Work book, he says pretty persuasively, I think, that you'd be hard pressed to find a more meaningless statistic than the number of people who are unemployed. That's an artifact of the Great Depression. Because in those days, you know, if you had 12 million people out of work, you could create jobs and those people would take them. Today, the unemployment rate is what it is, but you've got 7.2 million open jobs. Most of them don't require a four-year degree. Then you've got this other cohort of 7 million men who are just not impressed or not interested.

1:18:55And so this idea that the number of people who aren't working are not working because there's no opportunity, it just doesn't hold up anymore. So that's what I'm just suspicious of anything that's like too much of this, more of that. That's fair. That's not how the pie works.

1:19:16Graham Stephan:What are the skills that everyone should know how to do? I'm talking changing a tire, being able to cook a steak, throw a punch. What are things that universally - That's a good start. all those things, you know? Look, I think... Plunge a toilet would be... Should every man know how to jump a fence? Well, it's not going to hurt you to know how to do it. You might get... For what purpose, Jack? Just like jump a car, maybe. I'm just saying... What are you running from, Jack? Maybe running to something. Who knows? Maybe there's opportunities and there's a fence in the way. You got to jump the fence.

1:19:51I think it's a testament to just overall, you know... That's more of a physical ability. Physical ability, which you'd probably agree that also is important. No, I mean, look, anything that bolsters confidence and competency is important. We made the point earlier, I think, that, you know, our frustration with the trades sometimes is rooted in our inability to do the work ourselves. So I don't know if there's a corollary between jumping a fence or throwing a punch or changing a tire with being able to change your brakes, you know, like, I can still change a tire. that like the mechanics of that haven't really evolved to leave me in the dark yet.

1:20:35And I think I know how to throw a punch and speaking of fences, man, quick sidebar, my favorite moment in dirty jobs. I don't know if you saw this one, but it was, it was one of the things we were able to get away with that you couldn't ever, ever, ever, ever do today. But I was, I was putting in a protective fence around a sinkhole in the middle of the forest somewhere that was like 90 feet deep and easy to fall into. And in the course of doing this, I had to remove a preexisting iron fence pole that had been hammered into the ground and I couldn't get it out. It just, it just wouldn't budge.

1:21:11It was like the sword and the stone. And so one of the rules on that show was never cheat. And so all I had was a shovel and a pulley and a rope. And I was determined to get this fence post out of the ground, this piece of iron that had been hammered in about three feet deep. It took an hour and a half of digging and nobody would help me, but my crew filmed it like it mattered. And it did, but nobody really knew it at the time. So there's literally a 15-minute segment in an old episode of Dirty Jobs where nothing happens at all except Mike tries to get a single fence post out of the ground. And I don't know if that in any way is adjacent to a decent answer to your question, but in the same way you ought to know how to jump over that fence, you ought to know how to build it and you ought to know how to deconstruct it.

1:22:10and if you're going to take the time on an international television show to illustrate how difficult that is, that's a very conscious choice to make, and I was so lucky to be able to make that case 20 years ago and to have that fight and to get the network on board and to have that as proof of the day that I had. It was very, very gratifying to look back at a scene that would never make it into any other show under any other circumstance. But it does, I think, rhyme in a way with what you're asking. It's weird and random, but it's also just adversity. Like we were talking about earlier. It was like you have the protagonist, you, and you have the antagonist, that fence that's three foot in the soil.

1:22:57That's exactly right. And you just kept fighting. And you also have, since you're throwing around the fancy literary words, you've got the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy hanging over the whole thing, which is that moment in any narrative when the protagonist comes face to face with the undeniable truth of his own identity. And in order to get to that place in a play, you have to be very patient through a number of what they call anagnorises, discoveries along the way. Same is true in TV. The reason most TV sucks is there's no patience for it. You just cut, cut, cut. Oh, the fence post is out.

1:23:36Now what happens next? In reality, what happens next is you're going to spend another hour and a half on that fence post, right? And so, well, why would we put that in a show? 20 years ago, I won the argument because I said, A, you're a nonfiction network, and B, this is a reality show. And those words back then both literally meant what they mean. They don't mean that today. They don't mean it today. You can't find a show on a nonfiction network that doesn't have a cut every three seconds. Watch them, any of them. Scenes, cut. Cut. can't do it.

1:24:19Graham Stephan:Speaking of the skills, what's the best skill to impress a first date? Are manners a skill? Yeah. Should you always open up the car door for her on a first date? Absolutely. Absolutely. What about remove a fence post? Look, you got to ask yourself, why is this fence here in the first place? What is it keeping you from? Well, I think it was Robert Frost who said, good fences make good neighbors. Famous poem called Mending Wall. It's a good one. Yeah. Where are you investing? I'm still basically all over the Wilshire. I've been, I mean, my investing career is complicated. Sounds like Jack. Um, no, I, um, imagine he's just like covered calls on Robin.

1:25:19No, I'm boring. Um, at least I was, uh, there was a book. Well, anything Jack Bogle wrote when, when, when he was running Vanguard, Burton, Malakiel, random walk down wall street, all of those i i got religion in 99 uh when through a crazy disastrous scandal um i lost everything and what happened uh do your viewers care about this kind of thing well we're mostly a finance podcast so oh people yeah all right well you buried the lead all right there you go Yeah, no, let's talk about money. I am an inveterate saver, as we've established.

1:26:08Until I got older, I didn't own anything. I mean, virtually nothing. I lived in hotels because most of the work I was doing was on the road. So some network somewhere was paying for it. I didn't own any clothing because the shows all came with some kind of clothing deal. You know, I didn't live. I didn't have a I didn't have a rental. I didn't own a home. I literally lived on the road and I had nothing. And I saved every penny I could. And did you invest it or did you just hold it? I invested it. As best I could, you know, I started investing when I was 22. I bought a house in Baltimore for like$48 ,000 and sold it a couple years later for like 70 and felt smart.

1:26:59I took that money and put it in the market broadly, low cost indexing, you know. and then I met a broker who became a dear friend and this broker worked for a big investment company they became kind of the golden child and quickly amassed a lot of clients and long story short we became very very good friends as a woman and she left the firm to start her own firm and, um, wound up building a house of cards that collapsed in the most spectacular fashion. Um, this, uh, the, this was extraordinary for me because I was living and working on the road and not, and not back in Baltimore. So I didn't have a front row seat.

1:28:02I was literally reading about it in the headlines. And the entire thing, when it collapsed, the firm that she launched had, I don't know how many investors, but almost all were doctors and lawyers. There were no other TV dudes freelancing in there. So everybody lost everything. What was she doing? Was she just paying herself, taking vacations? No, it was a little more involved. She had private investments and private opportunities, and she was using money that a lot of people assumed was still under the impromptu of a big firm, was in fact invested in some of these other ventures. I kind of knew some of this was going on, but the thing is over the years, um, I had made a lot of money with this strategy.

1:29:00I mean, I was, it's a very consistent bunch of money and for a freelancer who saved all his money. So I own nothing. I'm living on the road. I've got a nest egg that I'm super comfortable with about a million dollars.

1:29:16Graham Stephan:Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, I, we, we had done really, really well. And I, and I felt really, um, I mean, like I felt like I'd cracked the code. Like when my pop told me to get a different toolbox and get in the entertainment business, like the only way that makes sense is if you do it differently. So I had spent at that point, 15 years. I like, I never swung for the fences. I wasn't trying to get a hit show. I was hosting so many weird, random little talk shows and maybe a guest appearance on a sitcom or pilots and infomercials. See, the thing about QVC is they, it taught you how to audition. And I was, I was really good in the room.

1:30:05So I could book way more gigs than a lot of people I was competing with. And I did. And so I had a really interesting business model in those days. I kind of based it on this fictitious character that I still love called Travis McGee, who took his retirement in early installments. right so he was a he was sort of a detective called himself a salvage expert lived on a barge down in uh fort lauderdale called the busted flush that he won in a card game and this guy in these great books by john d mcdonald uh would come out of retirement every few months when he needed money to solve a case get back something that had been taken from someone he he would keep 50%.

1:30:53I'm telling you, it's funny because everything I thought about business back in those days was sort of based on that model. So I'm freelancing six months a year. I'm taking my retirement in advance. I don't have any encumbrances. I don't own anything. I got a million bucks in the bank and my secret weapon goes up in flames and I lost everything. So the good news for me was because my relationship went way back with the broker, I was able to go back to the original investment house and say, was there anything about this person that I should have known? Like, is there, and I had a lawyer. Everybody else was represented by a bankruptcy trustee.

1:31:48But I was different. I was outside of that group and I had a lawyer. And as it turns out, there were some things that the brokerage should have known and should have been a bit more circumspect about. So after two and a half years of crazy drama, I got my money back. Wow. You got it all back? Not all of it, but a chunk enough. And the crazy thing was at the same time, like my whole business model had collapsed because I lost my safety net, which is really kind of, you know, this is a, it's a very personal thing, but like what you find out who you are pretty quick, you know? And the thing is, like, if you're up on the tightrope and you look down and you see the safety net, you know, and you don't fall, like, nothing changes.

1:32:41It's just that the net's gone. It only changes if you fall. But I was just, I did something that I didn't think I would ever do after the third firing from QVC all those years before. I was like, I got a job, you know. I took a job hosting a show called Evening Magazine right here in San Francisco, which brought me right here into this recording studio 22 years ago because I felt like I needed to work. And I also took another job hosting a show called Worst Case Scenario. And all that, as soon as I took those gigs, neither one of which I really, really, really wanted, the case settled. So all of a sudden, I'm back here in San Francisco working at this job that wasn't really my wish fulfillment.

1:33:29I got my safety net back, but it would have been shitty to quit the job. They just hired me, and I liked the people. So I wound up staying with that job, and it was during that job that I came up with a segment called Somebody's Gotta Do It, which became Dirty Jobs. But to answer your question, while all that was happening, that's when I got religion with investing. And I went to low cost, highly diversified index funds with a little bit of international exposure, a little bit of REIT here and there. And I took the rebalancing very seriously. And I, and I, I did that and I, I read all the books and that's what I did for probably another 10 years.

1:34:20And, um, and I was a hardcore full on. It's like, look, Jack Bogle got it right. In the end, you might find a stock picker. You might find an advisor and they might turn you on to this, that, and a bunch of other stuff. But long, long term, when the dust settles, you run those numbers against a low cost, blah, blah, blah. And I think the average American is going to do a whole lot better over there. And I believe that right up until Dirty Jobs became a giant hit. And I started working in a different way.

1:34:59Graham Stephan:How did that financially change your life? Hey, by the way, really quick, if you want extra content just like this, as well as early access, and a bonus post show posted every single week, feel free to join as a channel member to get immediate access to all of that, as well as early access to everything else that we post, along with priority responses to all of your comments. So if that sounds cool, feel free to join. Would love to have you on board. Thanks so much. We'll get back to the podcast now. How did that financially change your life? Well, financially, it didn't. emotionally it did. The thing about me is that I've never lived beyond my means.

1:35:42And that was true when I was making$20 ,000 a year and$50 ,000 and a lot more and then a lot it never the the only thing i've done that's out of character in the last 60 years is i bought a house you know like a proper house and um yeah over time i've started to acquire some things but like no collectible dolls no uh no like you liked it yeah you're very you sniffed it i mean i i

1:36:16Graham Stephan:I collect memories. You got the particles. No, man, I really, I'm still enamored with that whole Travis McGee model. I still love that guy. I still love like his whole business philosophy and life philosophy. But the trade-off was after, what, 15 years of not really caring about the work that I did, I was more enamored of being in this industry and enjoying it on my terms than I was with the work. Consequently, I did lots and lots of things that I'm not terribly proud of. Dirty Jobs was the first thing I ever did on TV that I was proud of. And once that happened, the whole model went to hell. And then I worked 300 days a year.

1:37:13How did dirty jobs financially affect your life? you know, the first couple of years were not particularly wow. You know, it was like, you just, you've got to make a very specific type of deal to get a show on the air and you're not going to get rich at all from that deal. The only way you do well specifically on the show is if it's a hit and then they'll renegotiate with you. And that's basically what happened. And so when the show turned out to be a hit, it was radically unnerving. Like I, I'd never, I, I swung for singles and doubles. And so when the network finally got behind it in a meaningful way, they ordered like 39 episodes and I realized, Ooh, you know, I hate this deal I made.

1:38:07I got it. I got it. It's not a fair deal and I needed some help. So I wound up hiring this woman, an attorney, and she kind of took pity on me. She was a powerhouse with a really good firm, but she liked me and she saw something in the show. Maybe something different than you did when you were a kid, but she saw something universal in it. And she was very impressed by the fact that the viewers were so engaged that they were programming the show. She was like, that's rare. And I said, yeah, it is rare. And it's also personal. The show happened because my mother called me. I was right across the street here at CBS.

1:38:59Literally, you drove by it when you came in. KPIX. I was sitting in my cubicle, uh, in 2001 and my mom called me about my grandfather who I mentioned and said, he's turning 90 this Friday and I've got the perfect gift that you can get him. I said, what? She said, how great would it be, Michael, if before he dies, he turns on the TV and sees you doing something that looks like work. so the next day i take a cameraman into the sewers of san francisco and that's what starts dirty jobs but to answer your question um mary and i started looking at the show really really early and thought yeah there's a lot of exploding toilets and misadventures and animal husbandry But under it, this thing is a real powerful rumination on American work ethic.

1:40:04And can you build a business around that theme? Not around the show, but around the themes that are like pregnant in the program. And if you can, how would you do it and what would that look like? And the answer was, well, I don't really know, but part of it would be a nonprofit. Part of it would be a genuine attempt to shine a light on the industries that are making this show prosperous. And another part would be a scholarship program to help people get the training they need to do these jobs. If we do that legitimately, and this is probably a bit selfish, but looking back, if I'm being honest, I was like, I want a better way to promote the show.

1:40:57I want to be able to talk about more than, oh yeah, and Les Swanson, you know, went up to his nipples and just this giant container of crap. Or yeah, today we boiled a bison, you know, it's like, what's the point? So MicroWorks, the foundation, gave me permission to promote the show in a way that the network didn't really care about and in ways that most other shows weren't being talked about. As a result, a lot of big companies came sniffing around to say, hey, do you mean what you're saying? Because here at Caterpillar, here at Ford, here at Kimberly Clark, we wrestle with this every day. So we started making deals, good deals with big blue chip companies.

1:41:51They would support my foundation. I would speak on their behalf and not like a yellow number two pencil or a collectible doll. Like I did 300 commercials for Ford in six, seven years. I worked for some of the biggest companies in the country. They supported my philanthropic effort. Mary would make deals. And so I found a way to function, not quite as a pitchman, because my whole argument was still, it's like, look, man, your company doesn't need a spokesman. Your satisfied customers are your spokespeople and your own employees. What you need is a fan of your brand. So that's what I started selling.

1:42:38I started saying, look, Dirty Jobs is real. It's personal. I'm the spokesman for Microworks and nothing else, but there are a lot of brands I admire. And if I can find a way to talk on your behalf through the lens of the show that you know me for, that'll be authentic. And if it works, maybe maybe we can make some money and so we began to build this business around the ideas of dirty jobs and around the foundation that inspired it so it sounds like then the biggest financial impact on you were the actual brand deals with companies like caterpillar ford Yeah. I mean, it's not, I never really looked at it like, okay, you know, we killed it over here.

1:43:30This one out. It was, Mary talked me in to doing something I swore I would never do. And that was start an actual business, like hired people. I've had 10 or 11 people that, that work with us today. I never wanted that. I wanted to live on a houseboat, solve crimes, take my retirement in early installments and not own anything. And that worked great until I was 30, well, 42, really. Have you made more money investing or from your work? That's the answer I was getting at. The reason I can't tell you Ford versus Caterpillar versus Groundworks versus Pure Talk. I mean, I've been in business with a lot of companies.

1:44:16I'm still curious about the deal. And we're, you know, we do the best we can. And, but it's never about the money entirely. It's, I only partner with brands that share my sensibility, right? But to answer your question, yes. In the end, the dust settles. I take my chunk of the business and I invest it. What I'm curious about is because we love promoting financial literacy here and financial literacy mostly meaning exactly as you've described it, which is low cost index funds. I always like to say, as does Graham, that like, hey, you can make realistically, if you're not like a high earner, you're making like the average income or maybe a little bit below the average income.

1:44:57Your net worth will mostly be accumulated from your investments and not from like an active income, which we also discussed early on, which is like you can be making$300 ,000 a year. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're becoming wealthy, right? Because you're spending it all. But instead, like your wealth is truly built from buying assets, from buying investments. I didn't know you guys were that value oriented. Oh, yeah.

1:45:20Graham Stephan:That's all I do is index funds. You see my portfolio. It's 99.9 % of index funds. But we try to provide value in that sense. It's not financial advice because we're not legally allowed to provide that. But we like to talk about low-cost index funds. Listen. And cover calls. It's so funny. I'm going to contradict myself all over the place. But I'm not adverse to the average American that you described earlier. because in this case, I think that's the best possible advice you could give him. I assume you know Dave Ramsey? Yeah, of course. We've had him on the show probably three times. I've been on Dave's show probably three times.

1:45:56He's been on mine. We don't agree on every single thing, but we sure agree on that. And, you know, my dad and my mom raised three boys. My mother taught school for a couple years. My dad taught for 28 or 29 years. I don't think he ever made more than 50 grand a year. He's 93 now. She's 88. She's writing her fifth bestseller. You know, if he watches this, he'll blush. But, you know, it's the American dream. You know, there's simply no way you can't wind up with millions of dollars over time if you do what you're talking about. I know that to be true. Now, full disclosure, I am a proponent of all of that, but I did get to a point where I started looking at deals and opportunities that I couldn't get to, that I liked, right?

1:47:02That I couldn't get to through indexing. So I started to hedge and I started, I kept my indexes and I'm still a very conservative investor. but i did find a guy who does the thing you know and he's terrific and what does that mean does the thing and what does it mean to be terrific like what's he returning you is he just a financial manager manager a financial advisor sounds like he's hedging against a money overvalued market he has the breakfasts and and the dinners with the people you would love to interview and they talk all the time. He it's really at that level. It's just a question of, of access.

1:47:48I don't time. I don't buy anything that I have any intention of ever selling. I should be clear about that. I don't sell stocks unless there's a tax situation and it makes sense to harvest, you know? Um, but no, I'm, I'm still very much about buy it, hold it, rebalance your portfolio, but you do get to a point where now for me, the bigger, the bigger question is, well, how much powder really do you want dry in a market like this? And, and, and why, why do you want the dry powder? Do you want it dry so that when things truly crap the bed, And we see the 30 or 35 % correction that your portfolio only corrects 18, 16%.

1:48:41Is that why you got all that? Or do you just like a sale? Are you just waiting to go shopping in a 30 % correction? Most people I know, they kind of know it's coming. They, of course, don't know when. But how do you think about it? That's why cookie cutter advice sucks so hard. That's why it's so dangerous. What you guys do is so important, but it's also dangerous because I don't know who's listening. And if Mike Rowe circa 1990 QVC days is listening, I don't want to fill his head with anything other than patience, low cost indexing. I just wouldn't want to do it. But I'm older than I've ever been.

1:49:32And I'm well set. My charitable giving is locked in. My foundation is solid. I will never spend the money that I've earned. So should that change something? You know? We get to decide. We get to decide. What percentage dry powder do you keep in your portfolio? I'd have to call my guy. Is that how it is for you? Who does the thing? No, it's not that. It's, well, you know what, ma 'am? To my, I am not as focused as I was. And maybe you used the C word earlier, man. It's the only, aside from character, the only other C word that really matters is complacency. and uh look the mistake i made years ago was rooted in trust and judgment and i i can't tell you i've learned from it i've learned that i don't like when it goes sideways and i've learned that there are several ways that i can hedge along the way and feel and feel better about assuming more risk.

1:50:46But for me, the exit door has always been the same. I'm living right now like I make maybe a couple hundred grand a year. I own four pair of pants and like five shirts. And most of those I stole from wardrobes on various shoots. I have a nice house, but I don't, I drive a Ford Bronco. I've driven Fords all my life. Are you intentionally frugal or is this just what comes naturally to you? Yeah. It seems like you don't like owning things. I hate it. Why? Well, in the words of Tony Robbins, I believe the more things you own, the more things own you. There you go. Where are you going to put them? In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, it's just stuff.

1:51:29You know, you got a bigger house now because you have more stuff. You got to put your stuff somewhere. We have so much stuff. We have to go to, you know, private storage to put our stuff. We just have stuff. But it seems to hear naturally like this.

1:51:43Graham Stephan:It didn't seem like you just listened to Tony Robbins. No. Oh, that clicked. No, I came by it. I'm selling everything. All right, that's it. I came by it, honestly. My dad is very parsimonious. But the trick is, it's like comfort. You know, if you have to teach thrift, if you have to teach it, and you have to convince somebody right? That they should hold their nose and endure it. You know, it might work. It might, but long-term it, it really doesn't. It's more like the seals, right? You know, when they talk about adversity, it's, it's not enough to endure it. You have to embrace it, man. You have to embrace the suck.

1:52:29And then really, I think I said it earlier, but I, but I believe it to be true. The code to crack is not the code that allows you to endure adversity or discomfort. It's the code that permits you to love it. Like really genuinely like it. And how do you crack that though? How do you get to a point of wanting to seek out the hard stuff? You reframe it. It's not hard. A lot of people would say, look, it's really hard to be able to afford my dream car and then affirmatively not buy it, but instead take that money and put it in a low-cost indexed fund. What do you say to that person? You know, it's like you can hold your nose and do it and chalk it up to forbearance or discipline or some other thing that frankly is a tough sell in a world where nobody wants a lecture or a sermon.

1:53:35Right. Or you can say, look, man, you need to rewire your whole deal. Like, what do you associate winning with? When do you feel like the smartest guy in the room? And this is like, I'm not a shrink, but a lot of that comes down to living on the outside of cool. And growing up, I had no problem doing that. I was a Boy Scout, an Eagle Scout, not cool, but it gave me an incredible insight into all these things. You know, the Boy Scouts were the first guys who made me raise my hand and make a promise. It mattered, you know. So, yeah, early on, I stopped caring about what most of my friends thought.

1:54:30I sang in a barbershop quartet, dude. How uncool.

1:54:33Graham Stephan:But you're a good singer. Yeah, but if you're looking to get laid, right, you know, you don't put on a straw hat and hang out with a bunch of - That didn't help. It has to have helped. Actually, it did. It did. I mean, that's the thing. It's so unique. We're talking about skills. I don't think it has. I could be wrong here and correct me if I am wrong. I don't think it has so much to do with your interests. I think it has more so to do with your approach towards your interests and your demeanor. Like if you have a certain level of candor and you don't care about things, you'll say things that you want to say, speak your mind, do the things you want to do.

1:55:11That's the best possible thing you can do in terms of attracting people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, you say it. You're getting nipple deep in poop and fecal matter. Yes. Take the reverse commute. Be surprising. Not for the sake of being surprising, but that's the trick. Look, if you want to be truly authentic, you can't focus group the room and decide, okay, based on the research, here's what girls find authentic. Do this, this, this, and this. You'll just be another guy who wrote another book and maybe you'll sell some, maybe you won't. But that's not what authenticity is. It's something else.

1:55:51And it's really hard to identify. I fumble around this a lot when people ask me, it's another great question, who do you work for? Who do you really work for? You start asking people that who sit here, you'll be amazed what you hear. Some will say Jesus Christ. Some will say my wife. Some will say the man who signs my check. Some will say the sponsors. Some will say what I typically say, which is the audience. I worked for the audience. I never really worked for CNN or Discovery or for really anybody who ever paid me. That was just a sort of a direct transactional thing. I work for the people who watch me and listen to me.

1:56:40And so if you believe that to be true, then how do you not annoy them? Well, if you work too hard to please them, they'll hate you because they'll see it as pandering and they'll see them trying to do a thing that you think they'll like. And they'll like it for a while, but ultimately it'll chap their ass. Now, if you ignore them, right, they'll take that to heart too. Nobody wants to be ignored to that level. so all of it comes back to dating all of it comes back to you know why do you admire the people you admire why do you like the comedians you know like who's your favorite comedian tim dylan chris d 'alea is funny tim dylan is freaking funny here's what i think about tim dylan i don't think murphy eddie murphy at his heyday yes i'll send to tim whatever you're gonna say i don't think Tim Dillon is concerned with amusing anyone other than himself.

1:57:49And I think when he does it, people love him and they go along for the ride. Now, I don't know if that's how he really thinks about it, but my hallucination with all my favorite comedians, when I watch them doing their thing, I don't think they're directly trying to make me laugh. I think they're trying to amuse themselves in a way that if I can relate to it, I've just become a fan. And that's the closest I can get to what's persuasive. If you're trying to do a really meaningful podcast that could seriously impact the way a person invests for the rest of their life, what's your duty of care? How can you balance the challenge of being persuasive and honest without painting with too broad a brush and unintentionally causing some consequence because the person listening at this particular time didn't need to hear what you were saying.

1:58:56They needed to hear something else. Because you'll never know, you have to constantly kind of check yourself, I think. And I think a good host, a good comedian, a good singer, a good performer, a good podcaster, they're all going to wrestle with the relationship with their audience in some way. if you are a young man and you feel lost and this is typically i know associated with like the manosphere red pill space but this is definitely an issue that a lot of people are facing they feel no purpose in life they don't work a job they don't have a relationship if you're that person you're listening to this right now if they were to follow the micro method of how to get purpose in life what to do how to make the right decisions for themselves who to listen to how to find a mentor what is needed to live a good life.

1:59:56Let's just say if you had to be dogmatic, what would you say? Well, that's a lot, dude. But again, with all the codicils and caveats baked in with the broad brush and so forth, I'll tell you that I wrote this thing about 12 years ago called the sweat pledge. Everybody who applies for a work ethic scholarship has to sign it. It's hokey. It's controversial. It's uncharacteristically earnest. But it's not negotiable. You have to sign it. Twelve simple statements of belief that I genuinely feel helped me enormously along the way. If you don't like something on the sweat pledge, which is not unusual, it's cool.

2:00:43we can still be friends and everything, but you know, this particular pile of free money is probably not for you. So the answer to your question is, is really what's on the sweat pledge. Like the very first tenant, just for instance, it says, uh, I believe I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive. I walk the earth. I live in America above all things. I'm grateful. So if you believe that, then the next 11 won't be too hard. But if you don't believe that... Everything gets a little wobbly. And so the guy you just described, I don't think believes that because you can't feel lost or put upon or victimized if you fundamentally feel grateful.

2:01:45And if you can't feel grateful because of the miracle of your existence, if you can't look around the world at all the other countries and all the other governments and all of the other attempts to create a civilization and feel grateful that you were born into this one. But I just start there. like if you if you literally can't wake up and go my god this can you freaking believe this can you believe it 10 fingers 10 toes i'm walking i'm thinking i'm singing you know i got it like if you just can't take a rational inventory of your blessings then uh you are susceptible to all the things you've described.

2:02:42I've just never met anybody able, who's able to feel sorry for themselves, who fundamentally feels grateful. I 100 % agree with that. And that's the first thing that I usually tell people if someone confides in me or, hey, I'm going through something. I always say, hey, look, it's really hard to feel sad for yourself and gratitude at the exact same time. It's not hard, it's impossible. And when I practice gratitude, because I still do this quite often, actually. I make sure it's never anything that I could be susceptible to be removed from, to be parted with. So for example, like I don't even go so far as like, hey, I have 10 fingers and toes because I could lose one.

2:03:23You bet. You know what I mean? I never, 100 % never say I'm so grateful that like I make X amount of money. Of course I am, but that's not what I'm going to attach my gratitude to. Like I want to attach to something, like I'm grateful that I exist. You know what I mean? that I have the parents that I have or had the parents that I had, that I was born and raised in the way that I was. Look, man, I wish that were a new idea. I wish we could take credit for it. What we can do is say that's not popular right now. It is not popular. I mean, this country just turned 250 and so many people are just twisted up.

2:04:03They can't feel good about it. They can't enjoy it. they've, they've bought into an idea that they're living in a, in a state of corruption. And that's not to say there's, we've got plenty of corruption to talk about. You want to talk about money, talk about fraud. I can't think of a more important thing to fix in the country than the squandering of taxpayer money, honestly. But I, it's just, it's, it's a choice, you know and it's a choice and if you can't if you can't take a minute like to really reflect on i don't know the american dream do you guys talk about that on the show much yeah one question that we used to ask every single guest on the podcast i suppose we could ask it to you as well if you are broke between the ages of 25 and 40 you have no kids no physical or mental disability whose fault is it it's 100 mine it's my fault if i'm between 25 and 40 and i'm broke no physical mental disability no kids yeah usually we get a range where people would say oh maybe it's 70 that was the most resolute answer i think we've ever yeah the sweat pledge is not for everyone But that's another, you know, tenant on there.

2:05:26I mean, it's, it's, my past does not equal my future. I am not, I am not the product of my circumstances. I'm the product of my choices. Now, I get it. It's easy to say, especially at this point in my life, given all the things that we've talked about. But what's more empowering? Like, what do you really want to tell somebody? Like, if you can really change somebody's state, do you want to convince them that they're in the condition they're in today because of their circumstances or because of their choices? because it's very difficult to change your circumstances and it's impossible to change your past.

2:06:15But your future has nothing to do with that. You are free to do all kinds of things. Now, to our earlier point, some of those things are going to make you humiliated. Some are going to be hard. Some are going to hurt. Some are going to make you just question everything. They're all going to make you uncomfortable. uncomfortable. But if somebody's trying to live their life with a playbook that says discomfort is the enemy and that your circumstances are to blame, how would they ever get out of it? It might take some personal responsibility out of the sting of the moment.

2:06:56Graham Stephan:Why do you think people don't want to hear your answer to that, though, that it's their fault? Well, I mean, you'd have to ask them. I think, look, nine out of 10 times, it's not the message. You know, it's the messenger. And I think maybe there's a lot of people who don't find me terribly persuasive, happily. Some do. But again, nobody wants a lecture. Nobody wants a sermon. And nobody wants to hear from a 60-year-old guy who's closer to the end of his career than the beginning that this is the way you've got to do it. Little camper, suck up and eat your peas. Nope. They don't want to hear it.

2:07:35It's exactly what we were talking about before, which I think is going to be the most, for me, the most important thing we've talked about, which is what is persuasive? When is it persuasive? To what degree does the messenger affect the message? I'll tell you when the scales fell from my eyes and I knew that we had entered a totally different time in this country. I could tell you the exact week. It was 2015. It was summer. And I went and did an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. Killed it. Great crowd. Big audience. Delivered my message. It was very much a microworks message, reinvigorate the trades, et cetera, et cetera.

2:08:24Three days later, same exact conversation with Glenn Beck. Now, I went home at the end of that week and opened my computer and started looking at the socials, see what's up. Holy shit, man, I can't tell you. My buddies on the right completely lost their minds when they saw me sitting next to Bill Maher. They just lost their minds. And my buddies on the left, their heads exploded when they saw me sitting next to Glenn Beck. Nobody talked about what I said. Nobody talked about the fact that I reached millions of people in both of those audiences with a message that was important to me and I think may be important for the country.

2:09:11nobody was interested in the message. They weren't even interested in the messenger, which was me, which was weird because these people follow me online. What they were interested in is the proximity of my interlocutor. And that was a problem. How could you sit next to that son of a bitch? How could you sit next to him? How could you normalize? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that, to your question, that that's the world that guy's living in. You know, everything is toxic. Well, not everything, but half of everything is toxic. So, you know, those are the times. You know, you must be this tall to get on the ride, you know, and we are.

2:09:58We're on it. and now you have to think about who you're sitting next to, not just what you're saying. At least that's what you're told. I don't have the energy for it anymore. Do you think we've become more divisive? More divisive than what? The past. Like 1865, 1861?

2:10:19Graham Stephan:I would probably compare it to 20 years ago. No. Nope. I think the country was in much graver shape in 1860. I think at the height of the civil rights movement, we were really fractured. I think, oh man, I think there are many, many, many, many occasions where things were much worse than they are now. What's different now, honestly, is access. I can pick up my phone if I can find it, and I can tell you all the trouble in the world, man. It's right there. It's right there on your phone. We have a constant diet, endless reminders of how divided we are. That guy I mentioned before, Todd Rose, end of average is great, but the one you want to read is called Collective Illusions.

2:11:20And Todd, again, his think tank excels in private opinion research. So he spends a lot of time trying to figure out what you really think. Not what you would say in a poll, not what you say when you're interviewed, but what you really and truly believe, right? And Todd reckons the biggest enemy we face in this country right now is the threat of the manufactured consensus. like the idea that 80 % of all the content on X is generated by 20 % of the people there. And what you learn when you ask people, whether it's their investing thesis or whether it's their views on sex or, or immigration or down the list that goes, you can't trust them.

2:12:15You can't trust them to tell you the truth about how they really feel. And that's a shame. But the good news is that what comes out with all his research is how much we are not divided and how we have just been constantly reminded and told that we are. Look, and I think that's super encouraging. There's another book that makes the case really well too. It's called Everybody Lies. And in this book, the author gets the keys to the kingdom of Google data, and he gets to look at the details of every search conducted over the last however many years it was, five years. There's hundreds of billions of searches, right?

2:13:01And the thing is, you can't lie to Google. When you go online to find something, you have to ask it specifically what you want. And if you can step back and like triangulate all that data with the demographic information of the person who's conducting the search, as well as their ethnicity and where they live and their economic strata, all that stuff, they have all that. When you start looking at what people truly think about a thing based on what they search for, you get a completely different template of who we are as a people and a country. And it's not being reflected virtually anywhere. Yeah, I would completely agree with you on that.

2:13:51So be of good cheer. It's not great right now, obviously. People are twisted up, but it's not real. It's not as real certainly as it was in 1859 and 1860. How do you know how honest to be? Are you only ever maximally honest? No, I lie a lot personally. I mean, not a lot. How do you determine when you're going to lie versus when you're not going to? I don't consciously lie about anything consequential that I know of.

2:14:29But beyond that, you know, lies of omission are probably more telling than overt stories.

2:14:37Graham Stephan:Is there anything you omitted from the podcast so far? This podcast? Oh, sure. I mean, we've only talked for, what, two hours. I've omitted a lifetime of truths. You know, look, think about, this is amazing, man. This is, I mean, this podcastlandia, you know, I mean, it came along at such an interesting time. actually, I take it back. It didn't come along. It was birthed as a direct result of endless soundbites and surfacy scratchings and curiosity being teased but never fulfilled. You can't do this. You couldn't even do this on Charlie Rose once upon a time. You certainly can't do it on the evening news.

2:15:24I don't know where the truth ultimately resides, but I'll tell you what I said to Joe Rogan last year was, you know, anybody can come on a podcast for a half hour and show you the version of themselves they would like you to see. Maybe even an hour, hour and a half,

2:15:44two. After hour two, for better or worse, you get at something that I don't think most public people, whatever, you know, they haven't been, at least until recently, they haven't been used to revealing the kind of thing you can get in a long form conversation. So the positive news is like for the audience, that's great, man. There's a lot of truth out there to be had. The problem is they're 5 million podcasts. And now I think a lot of the anxiety that the guy you were describing before might feel. At least maybe I'm projecting, but it's annoying, man, how much I don't know. And it's just a fire hose of information and a lot of it's really good.

2:16:36Just can't get to it. What's something that you wished that we asked you? I wish you'd ask me about my mother. What about her? It's none of your business.

2:16:48uh i'll tell you about my mom uh you know i to the extent that i have a business and a career i've spent it talking about work ethic and trying to shine a light on you know the people i meet who i who i admire and the people in my life who have impressed me and have prospered as the result of being uncomfortable and mastering a skill that's in demand, right? That's what I do. And I'm okay at it. And I do it a lot. But my mom is a writer. Her name's Peggy Rowe. And she wrote every day for 60 years. All she dreamt of was being a New York Times bestselling author. And she's a good writer. And she wrote unauthorized biographies about strangers she ran into she'd write him every single day well that's her now calling me she can wait

2:17:48Graham Stephan:you could tell her that she could say hi on the podcast that would she's like you never my mom comes in hot i wouldn't trust it um but i mean i watched her give up on her dream after maybe 30 years of writing. She got published in like newspapers and magazines once in a while. You know, she writes stories about horses, which she grew up with and people write those stories in these little horsey magazines, but she kind of gave up on, on being a published writer, but she never gave up on writing every day. This woman wrote when she was 79, she wrote a short story to me because she was pissed off that I didn't take her phone call.

2:18:33and she had something funny she wanted to tell me. So she wrote this story about losing her big blue purse at the local Walmart and the crazy hilarity that happened in the wake of my dad, who can't hear so good, dumpster diving, trying to find this purse and all those crazy. So it's a funny story. And I read it on my phone and posted it on Facebook. And then I flew off to do some dirty jobs or whatever. And when I came home, the story had been read 70 million times, 70 million times. And so among the many calls that I got were publishers who were like, hey, your mom's a terrific writer. I'm like, I know.

2:19:21And one of them said, get her to write 20 or so stories like that and just put you in them, right? So we have a hook, you know? And I called my mom and said, hey, you're not going to believe this, but I think I got a publishing deal. All you got to do is write, you know, a couple dozen stories like that. Just put me in them. And she says, Michael, you know, I have two other sons, right? I'm like, mom, give me a break. We'll deal with my brothers later. Do what the publisher says. She goes off and she writes 20 some stories. I'm not in any of them. They're all about my grandmother, her mom. The book is called About My Mother, and it was about growing up next to her parents and the impact that they had.

2:20:05And the stories are freaking funny, but publisher wouldn't touch them. Long story short, I printed 10 ,000 of them and put them on Facebook, and they sold out in a week. Publisher called back and said, okay, all right, we'll take it. about my mother on her 80th birthday goes out. Simon & Schuster takes it, goes to number six on the New York Times list. Number six. She's written four bestsellers since then. One every two years. So like today sitting here and driving over, I was talking to her. And you think it's like you got your business down, you got your whole, you got your stories down, you understand whether it's the foundation, like I got it.

2:20:56I cracked that code. And right in front of me the whole time is the ultimate work ethic story, the ultimate story of patience and discomfort and persuasion and stubbornness and disagreeability and integrity. It was my mom. Of all places, my mom, a woman who finally gets what she always wanted at 80. So, I don't know, investment advice, life advice, writing advice, nobody's got a playbook, not really. All we can do is fumble around and look for the best examples we can find and be as honest as we can. And share the stories you have.

2:21:49Graham Stephan:That's incredible. I don't know how we top that. Yeah. Well, I mean, you still got a lot of notes on your phone there. What else were you thinking? Well, speaking of mothers, my mom, growing up, us as a family would watch a lot of Dirty Jobs. My mom had a huge crush on you. How huge? I mean, enough to probably bother my dad. Interesting. But I don't actually think he cared. It was kind of like a joke. like me and my brother would always go, Mom, Mike Rose on the TV again. What's funny though is he says this to me and I say, wait a second, your dad kind of looks like you. Yeah. A little bit. There it is.

2:22:27Except your voice is a little deeper. And I looked it up and I think you're like exactly 15 days younger than my dad. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's freaking awesome to hear. Could you FaceTime your mom? What would she do? You know what? Yeah, yeah, I probably could. Yeah. I'd like to meet this woman what's her name? I don't know if this is a good idea her name's Ann how long you guys been doing this? seven years yeah seven years unbelievable they're in Hawaii right now in fact I'm gonna go meet them he's flying out after this to go to Hawaii what island? Maui oh she better pick up this is the this is her opportunity she could be at the pool and I hope she's enjoying her time if so Well, if not, call her voicemail.

2:23:15Let me at least leave a message. Oh, actually, no. Better yet, let me make a video for you. Yeah, yeah. Hey, Mom. I have someone who wants to speak to you. Anne, are you kidding me? Where you been? I can't believe I've been talking to these guys for over two hours, and you don't show up. There's no appearance. Hype up my dad. Say something about him. He's a good guy. Your dad, here's the thing. He's no micro. But he's a good guy. Stay with him. Just give it another 10 years or so. One of these days, you and me, our time will come. But for now, stay with the old man. You heard it here. Amazing.

2:23:56She's going to love that. We'll see. You actually do look a lot like my dad, which is just also insane. We'll put a photo right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be able to see the resemblance. Dude, it's, I mean, I can't tell you how weird it is to be like walking through SFO yesterday as I was. And I mean, it's still super gratifying to meet people, you know, who, who liked the show and they say, they say nice things, but to meet, you know, how old are you guys? 27, 36. 27, 36. Yes. You're 27, man. That, that dirty jobs went on the air when you were five. it was like this is like this is what one of the first tv shows i watched like i that's why i'm having a hard time remembering it as clearly as grandma's but i watched basically every episode

2:24:46Graham Stephan:as a family we watch like reruns and everything i would watch it with my grandma it was one of her favorite shows and her and i would sit there watching this she probably had a little crush too oh i bet i bet you drove a lot of middle-aged women crazy well dude i mean what what is going on with the with the female of the species like why why would it why i'm covered in other people's crap like 90 of the time you know what's the voice it's got to be i think it's the voice but i also think it's the demeanor i think that it's like your your lack of concern for whatever's going on you know you're as they say like you are the the calm sand or rocks at the you know crazy waves crash upon and you just sit there.

2:25:32Like I was 42 when, when I pitched that show. Now, had I done it when I was 32 or 27, I would have been able to do it for a lot longer. It wouldn't have hurt nearly as much, but you know what? It would have, it would have consumed me. It would have, I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

2:25:55Graham Stephan:How so? I'd had 15 years of living like Travis McGee, I was very comfortable in my own skin. Like I had enough time to figure out for better or worse who I was. And even though my whole business model went upside down, I was in a very like sanguine place when I was 42. When I realized that show was a hit and that it could be a big hit, if I tended to it, I felt like I was able to make a really grown-up decision and just decide, look, you have a clear way forward, but it's going to require you to take the pie in the face. It's going to require you to stop being some version of a host, and you're going to have to be the apprentice.

2:26:50You're going to have to be the guest. So you're going to have to step back from all of that. And you're going to have to live on the road for a couple of years, more than a couple, as it turned out, you know, like 300 days a year. So it was uncomfortable, but dude, I mean, if look, if it took us over two hours to get to this place, then it was worth it because every single bit of misery, discomfort, all the concussions, the contusions, the stitches, the broken fingers, the crushed toes. Like, that show was violent, and it hurt, and I was away from people I loved a lot. Wouldn't trade a minute.

2:27:32When's the last time you put yourself in serious discomfort? Counting today? Sure. No. Sitting across from this guy for two hours. Well, you know, serious physical discomfort, I'm shooting tomorrow all day outside in Las Vegas. it's going to be 107. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to hurt. Um, but look in relative terms, there's a long list of stuff I did on dirty jobs. I'll never do again. You know, I'm never going to test a shark suit. I'm never going to go in an opal mine again. I'm never going to do things that scared the absolute bejesus out of me. You know, was there anything you wouldn't do?

2:28:15The only thing I ever passed on, uh, I passed because I I couldn't see how there would be any opportunity for humor. And the job was a body farm technician. What's that? CSI stuff. Like, what does a body look like that's been in the trunk of a Pinto for three and a half weeks, right? You need to know that if you're going to really investigate myriad crime scenes. So what you do is you get a pinto and you put a body in the back of it and you put it in the Atchafalaya swamp for three and a half weeks. And then you pull it up and then you look at it and start poking around. Like you, that's a real job.

2:29:02And so body farms are these places where human cadavers are subjected to any kind of circumstance you can imagine and plenty that you can't. for the purposes of experts coming in and evaluating the situation. I just didn't know how I could make that lighthearted.

2:29:25Graham Stephan:You know what's so weird is that I remember hearing a story about this a few years ago where a family sued because their grandparent accidentally got mixed in and was blown up. I kid you not. You can, we're going to. That's of all of the things. But that's her mind. She was blown up. But for science. It was for science. Dude, that is not science. We know what happens when things get blown up. Yeah. Like when I, when I checked the organ donate, I'm like, this is not what I had in mind. Yeah. You know. They were testing some explosives. It was the terms and conditions on the new Apple update. That's what it was.

2:30:04You always have to read. I'm going to show the article here because I believe they rightfully sued. That literally sounds like, oh, we got all these extra bodies. Like, all right, let's just go out to the desert. Let's go out to BLM land. Let's blow her up. What the heck? Get a load of this. Yeah. Check this out. Are you filming? Hey, how many people in your audience typically listen all the way to the bitter end?

2:30:29Graham Stephan:21%. Yeah. That's not bad. It's pretty good. But it's actually, it's more if it's audio listeners. It's probably like about 50 to 60 % on audio. Yeah, same with me. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Why is that? Why does the audio listener have a deeper commitment? It's because of the different situations that the viewer is in. If you're watching the podcast, then realistically, you're going to be sitting on the couch or watching it on television. You're going to be in a different place. Or it just gets recommended and people say, oh, let me click on this. They watch the first minute and they bounce. The continuous needs of a viewer are a lot lower if they're just listening.

2:31:07They'll just be at the gym. They'll be in the car driving, commuting, something. Who do you listen to? Who do you like? Tim Dillon, I would say. I love Chris D 'Elia. I mean, the thing is, I went on such a huge podcast and like education binge for about five years that I felt like I read a lot of the things that I kind of needed in order to like be closer to self-actualized than I was, make enough progress there. And so I just did that for five years. Like I read a lot and I listened to like a bunch of like modern wisdom, Diary of a CEO. I don't even know every podcast, Joe Rogan. Who started this?

2:31:46Graham Stephan:I would say we both did. It was Jack's idea initially. I had a YouTube channel talking about personal finance. Yeah. And I did that since 2016. And then Jack and I started working together in 2019. And in 2020, he comes to me with the idea of starting the podcast. And I said, sure. We had a dining room table at the time. and we would just put the mics on the dining room table. At first it was just him and I and then we thought, let's get our buddies in here. Were you locked down at the time? Yeah. Yeah. And so we got our friends. And so we started that and it started to get decent viewership. Our friends were like YouTubers or they had some sort of like fan base that we could also tap into.

2:32:27But yeah, then it ended up growing and we did focus mostly in the beginning on finances, but then as time had, I mean, you can only talk so much about low cost index funds and the same thing over and over. So it's like, okay, I guess Dave Ramsey can. Like he still has his fan base and all, but we decided to branch out and get a little bit more into like weightlifting or we talked to doctors on the podcast. We talked to psychiatrists. We talked to Eastern Western medicine, a bunch of people. It's so funny, I think how, and by the way, not to hijack the interview, but you guys come on mine sometime.

2:32:58Graham Stephan:Yeah, that would be really fun. And you film in Santa Monica, right? Yes. Yeah, come by. Yeah, we'd love to. No, that'd be great. I'm only doing one a week, But typically I'll come down and like do, you know, seven over four or five days. And it's really taken a crazy turn. I just had a J.D. Vance on. Yes. Which is bananas. And so I'm not really sure where it's going, but it started so differently. Like I was writing these eight minute historical mysteries, like in the style of Paul Harvey's old show, something you didn't know about somebody you do and you get to figure out who I'm talking about as I'm reading you the story.

2:33:37And that's how the way I heard it started. And then same thing. We were locked down and my producer's buddy I went to high school with and we're like, you know, my man, it's hard to write good stories, especially short ones. It's easy to bullshit for an hour. And so people started listening to us talk about the stories that I had written. And then I started to bring in guests to tell me what I got right and what I got wrong, like actual experts on the topic. Right. And then it just kind of became, you know, this very similar to this, but it's a weird world. And I didn't get into it on purpose, but I just don't think it's something you can ignore.

2:34:18Graham Stephan:Yeah, I think what would do really well for you, and this is something I've wanted to do as well, is you do a dirty jobs, but like a podcast version of that where you have people who come on who talk about their careers and what they're doing, but in podcast format. And you just back and forth and you listen to their story. How do you be a sheep shaver or just random careers that do well? And you get their story. That I would love to hear. You know who did a pretty good take on that was Theo. Yes. The garbage truck guy was awesome. Taxi driver. He did one as well. Yep. Yeah, you're right. I should probably make it a little more targeted.

2:35:01Graham Stephan:I would be targeted, but focus on the education and just screen people who are good on camera and who just talk well. And usually on a phone call, you could have a producer or something weed through the people and get the ones who are just good. Yeah. Who are funny, kind of interesting. You know, I think at the time when I, I did kind of look at that and think about it, but I felt like maybe it's dirty jobs light and maybe I don't like real fans of that show. So believe me, the minute I started to step back and not let the shark actually bite me through the suit or whatever it was, people were like, oh, okay, you're getting lazy.

2:35:43And I thought that would probably be the ultimate capitulation. But screw them.

2:35:49Graham Stephan:I would just call it not as dirty jobs or not so dirty jobs or something like that. Not as dirty jobs. Not as dirty. I think it depends on your answer to the question we spoke about earlier, which is who are you working for? Which you said the fans. The audience. But then again, or the audience, but then again, you just said screw them. Which I don't actually think you truly mean that, of course. Well, there's the audience who listens to your show. And in my world, there is the great unwashed, like the masses. And it's hard to separate them too directly, but you have to. You have your audience, and then you have this giant ecosystem.

2:36:32What would you be most interested in doing? Well, for me, I actually really like the format and I would like to be doing more of it, not less, but I'm still in the same business model that I've always been. And that, that model is me and Mary keeping half a dozen plates spinning. so i'm the guy at the buffet that filled his plate and then saw the prime rib at the end it was like oh that's really good but i gotta throw something off the plate you know what i mean so if i assume this is a big rock in your world right so you know the way i heard it gets its share It's doing great, but it's as described.

2:37:21I go down there for a week and I get a month's worth of stuff out of the way, maybe more. And then there's speeches, and then there's books, and then there's endorsement deals, and then there's a TV show back in production. And then more than anything else, there's the foundation, which has become like the sun in my solar system. So everything is connected. And I don't know how to make the podcast any bigger than it is without walking something else behind the barn and shooting it in the head. And I don't really want to do that yet.

2:37:58Graham Stephan:I think you could take your existing format, but turn it into dirty jobs adjacent. And I think it'll do really well. You know, you're probably right. And the lowest hanging fruit is just to go back and talk to like where are they now like the sheep castrator yeah who used his teeth bring him on to see what's up what's new and i'm back do it again all right oh find a sheep that needs it done bring them in but no you don't even need him you have the skill that's true do it every tuesday and if there's anything we could help with by the way like i I love anything podcast related, like anything strategy, title, thumbnail, guest format, like all this.

2:38:41Graham Stephan:I love it. You know what? I'll hook you up with my producer, Chuck, who we've been working together for years. And, you know, he's an old dog. He could use some new tricks and so could I. You know, I kind of Forrest Gump my way into this as well. But look, it's fun and it's the future. And I really do believe it's the place where people will come to find the truth, whatever that is. Yeah. Until AI just wipes us all out and takes over the podcast. Hey, have you listened to Andreessen on Rogan? Yes, I did. Like last month? Yeah, the recent one. I would recommend that to anybody who wants a, I guess, a slightly more bullish take on what might be happening.

2:39:25you know, back to that manufactured consensus thing. That's, I think something's going on in this country where 75 % of the people are basically holding a negative view about AI and data centers. And in China, it's 85 % positive. And the senators I've been talking to, including the VP are like, Oh yeah, there's a giant campaign driven by bots and all kinds of fake material that has inundated TikTok and other platforms that is designed to sow a level of uncertainty around that topic in this country. and um i don't know if it's true or not but but but a lot of people are saying that you're looking at a manufactured consensus right now around that topic and we don't we don't yet quite understand

2:40:22Graham Stephan:there's so much out there though that could be easily manipulated and like half of it's just marketing and the other half is just like oh this this group over here doesn't like this group and they could run ads or they could promote like reddit i believe is like half bots oh my god and the front page is completely just manufactured stuff to get an idea across well look the thing that worries me more than anything is is also the thing that encourages me i think the greatest scene in the matrix is when cypher is eating that steak and he picks it up on the fork he's like i know, I know this is only in my mind, you know, I know that it's not real, but after, after 10 years of this bullshit, I want to stay right here.

2:41:09Cause it tastes, tastes delicious. I think that a big part of AI is going to be about, I think it's going to usher in the age of the umpire, the authenticator. Like we need a ref and we're going to need to know if that steak is real or not. It doesn't mean that we're going to reject it if it's fake, but we're going to need to know, at least some people are. In fact, we may have already been there, like the whole impossible meat thing, right? The impossible burger didn't work, you know, but it might've had it tasted better. And we're just not going to know, you know, what is it, like 20 of the songs in the top Spotify?

2:41:56AI. That's not the creepy part. The creepy part is they all have artists attached to them with faces and Instagram pages with hundreds of thousands of followers. Now, do you care that the song you're, you know, jamming out with was AI or not? I don't know. But what about the picture on the wall. What about that Picasso? Turns out it's not. Do you care? Some people will, some people won't. Right now, there are five scams on Facebook alone with me in them. And Morgan Freeman has the same exact thing going on, where a brand aligns itself with me. Somebody puts words in my mouth, and I announce that Yeti is turning 50, and the first 100 callers get a cooler packed with their favorite beverage.

2:42:48Giant fishing expedition, right? Facebook can't get them down. They just can't make them go away. So there are scams now with like DeWalt and big tool companies and very familiar brands with familiar faces. And it's just all bull crap. So my worry is that the default position online is going to become not why, why do you believe it? But why would you believe it? Like, why do you, why do you start with the assumption that, oh, you know, that might be AI? You'll just get to the point soon where it's going to be, I have absolutely no reason to believe that anything I'm looking at is real. I mean, I, I.

2:43:39Graham Stephan:That's why we need an authenticator online, like some sort of badge or like some sort of like x has that like x has like the readers added context or the community notes that says this always this is super of course not always it's pretty accurate it's gonna be like a psa though yeah some grading company out there who just says hey we put our stamp on this is a hundred percent real but you know what's funny man i was just in this booth narrating uh the last couple episodes of deadliest catch for this season And I had the same conversation with the producer. It's a big storm on the Bering Sea, big, big waves, you know?

2:44:15And I'm like, so what are you going to do to let the viewer know that you didn't mess with this? Like, that's your whole trust. Your whole thing is like, you're getting, and he's like, I've already talked to the network. And yeah, they're like, we should, we want to put up not a simulation. No AI was used in the making of this. I think you're right. I think that's, I think that's what it's going to come.

2:44:39Graham Stephan:Pretty soon your voice could just be AI and then you license your voice out and then they don't even need you. Have you seen Speechify? Yes. I mean, that's it. Like voiceover, I made my living in voiceover years ago. Anonymous, like non-celeb voiceover work, you make a great living. Those days are over, man. Non-celebrity voiceovers are finished. And somebody just sent me a file. they said narrate um my oh it was a wedding speech as mike rowe doing an episode of deadly sketch and i listened to it and i swear had i not known what it was and somebody said here's something you did like nine years ago do you remember i'd be like i don't remember but obviously i did it that's it it's that good yeah and it's still early innings yeah is there any chance we could do one last thing since you're here yeah i think it'd be really funny to have something like here on the ice coffee hour today we have mike roe and then like some like uh you know voice of deadliest cat sure host of dirty jobs and now guest on the ice coffee hour or something like that you want me to do it i think that yeah something like that just you don't have to like i mean i suppose you could look into the camera as you say it well since they asked me real nice.

2:46:04Next on Iced Coffee Hour, Mike Rowe stops by for three hours to talk about all of the trouble in the world. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll thrill as he talks to Anne, a secret admirer who somebody knows all too well. Oh, God.

2:46:24Graham Stephan:And then last one, if you could just say hit the like button and subscribe. Hey, you know what you do after you hit the like button, you subscribe. It's basic. Hit the like button, then subscribe. Did he still say smash that like button or just hit it? Obliterate it. Obliterate it, man. At least leave nothing but just a hollow smoking crater where that like button used to be. All right, then. Oh, by the way, you still rolling? Yes. Work ethic scholarships available at microworks.org. We literally have like$20 million. It'll be linked down below in the description. Just click the link right there.

2:46:56Click it, baby. Click it and lick it.

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