Millionaires in Cars Getting Coffee With Mike Rowe
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Nine out of ten ideas pitched in Hollywood are so fundamentally bad that no amount of luck or talent can possibly turn them into anything other than the turds they were destined to be. I'm self-reclaimed frugal millionaire. I bet you're not as frugal as me. Are we going to do a frugal off right now? Like anything else, it takes on its own inertia. And once you get used to not possessing things, it becomes intoxicating.

I was a scrimper and a saver and a hustler and a freelancer. And then Dirty Jobs came and it was a miscalculation. It wasn't supposed to be a hit. So you got a financial strategy from a fictitious character.

What's up, guys? George Campbell here, and today I'm super excited because I'm on my way to pick up the dirtiest man on TV, the one and only Mike Rowe. Mike is a writer, narrator, producer, recording artist, Emmy award-winning TV host, New York Times bestselling author, and the CEO of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, and his true calling, I think, is storytelling. He's going to share some stories today as he joins me for another installment of Millionaires in Cars, Getting Coffee.

We're going to talk about money, how he spends it, what he's frugal on, what he splurges on, his journey of bouncing back after losing almost everything, and his new film that takes him to the heart of Washington, D.C., and I watched it. It was so good. So before I pick him up, I got a dirty job for you to do. Okay, not that dirty, really. Pretty clean, pretty easy. Just hit those like, subscribe, and share buttons as we get started. No hard hat required. All right, let's pick up Mike Rowe.

Mike, welcome. Permission to enter? Come on in. I know it's a little low for you. All right. I fit great. How are you doing? Tesla. What do you think? Well, this is so fun. So is this like a product placement thing or is this your actual car? No, I wish they sponsored me. This was just, you know, I'm a millennial tech nerd and I thought, let's try this out. I don't even have a key, Mike. I'm going to be honest. I got to start it from the remote start failed.

You know how to start an electric car. Can you hotwire it? No, but if it were a combustion engine, I could overhaul the whole thing for you. This is so nightmarish that I can't even get my own car. There's nowhere to put a key, Mike. It's the story of my life. It's what it is. Well, you know what it reminds me? I just watched Something to Stand For. Excellent, by the way. I'm glad you liked it. And you trying to start the Bronco, this is my version. This is it. I don't know how to start the car. People have been tossing me the keys to...

Vehicles, I have no business operating for the last 25 years. What do you do in that case? I start it up and do my best. But like, you know your way around an engine, I imagine. I flipped a bulldozer over once, dude. Oh, you have no, you're just winging it. No, people point cameras and they're like, oh, he'll be fine. They see like a tan manly dude and they go, this guy, he'll figure it out. Of course he knows how to operate a back up. But when they see me, they go, this guy can't start a Tesla to save his life.

Yes, that is accurate. Are you into like classic, are you a car collector at this point? I'll be honest with you, I don't collect anything. Are you a minimalist? I was for a long time and then I finally broke down and bought a house. Oh, it's hard to be a minimalist with a house. What with all my money.

Yes. So I had to do something with all my vast wealth. Where do I do with this? And the financial advisor said, I don't know, put it in the house, Mike. No, I bought it. I spent most of my life, I mean, like most of my professional life from 26 until 42, I didn't own anything.

Because you were just so busy. You're, you know, traveling, filming. You're like, well, I own things. It's just more to manage. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't like raising a family. And I had clothing deals like with American Eagle. Yeah. And Eddie Bauer. And I was also working with a hotel chain. So I basically, I lived in hotels for...

about 10 years. And I didn't own any clothes because I would just go to a new town and just go to the... You just owned nothing. I owned nothing. You stay in the hotel, you get the clothes, you move on. You were nomadic. My God, it was a simpler time, George. You were like a rich nomad. No, I didn't have any money then. I had some. I had some. I was making money. But more importantly, I was working...

whenever I felt like it. Oh, yes, that's a luxury in and of itself. Well, what happened to me was I was singing in the opera in my early 20s, and I auditioned for QVC one day. Oh, yeah. This home shopping thing. Yeah. And I got hired. I never should have been hired. I bet you sold the heck out of some products. I don't know what that stuff is in there, but, boy, it's just neato. I mean, QVC had 4,000...

4,000 products in its inventory. And I didn't know what any of them were. I was on in the middle of the night. That's how they trained you back then. They just put you on the air. In the middle of the night. And you would work your way up to a better slot. The prime time. Well, that was the promise. I never did. I stayed there at midnight to 6 a.m. for three years. But then again...

I didn't actually sell the products. What I did was my first night, I looked at the camera and I was like, hi folks, I'm Mike. I'm the new guy here. I don't know what this is. It's a health team, infrared something. There's an 800 number on the screen. I said, if you call that number, ask for Marty. He's sitting right in front of me. He's a producer. He'll put you through and maybe you can tell me what the hell this thing does. That's amazing. So,

You know, it's the middle of the night, so all these drunks and reprobates and, you know, people are sitting at home with nothing better to do. They start calling me. Just like, all right, the guy said to call, I'll call. Yeah, I kind of turned it into a weird talk show. But the thing is, man, looking back, I learned everything I needed to know.

about working in television, I learned at QVC because it's totally live. There's no seven second delay. If you can do that, you can do anything. Well, if you can fill eight minutes at a time talking about a product you've never seen before. Thank you, if you know prep.

They're just like, it's a pain relief thing. Well, they say, look, it's on you, right? So if you want to be prepped, come in two, three, four hours early. Go through the stuff in the show. Do your research. You were not interested in that. That wasn't me. That wasn't me, George. Wow. And here you are today. QVC can't afford micro today. Actually, they did $9 billion last year. Oh, my gosh. They can probably afford it. I take it back. Okay, Daddy Warbucks. But look, my point was, that crazy...

made me really good at auditioning. And so when I decided to actually try and get into the business, I booked a lot of stuff. Nothing really good. I wasn't looking for hits. I was just looking for

you know, something to do for a week or two and then take a week or two off and then come back and do it again. That's a strong start. Well, you know, this is this segment is called Millionaires and Cars Getting Coffee. And the idea is we talk to, you know, everyday millionaires, people with influence. And we go, how did you build the wealth? And what are you doing today? And kind of hearing the journey. And so I know you have an incredible story where you almost lost everything.

Oh, I actually did, yeah. And here you are today, you know, and you seem like a man of simple taste. High quality taste, but simple. Can I say that? Is that fair? Are you a millionaire? Yes. Here's the thing. I am self-proclaimed frugal millionaire. I bet you're not as frugal as me. Are we going to do a frugal off right now? I'll frugal your frugal. When's the last time you used a coupon? That's one point for George. Yeah.

So what are things that you're still like, I'm still frugal on this area. I refuse to spend X money on it. Okay. Okay. So I've never bought a new car in my life. Wow. I only bought the house I'm living in now because I did have a financial advisor who said, look, you're just...

just being an idiot. You're not being wise with this money. Right. I'm a renter. I don't want to own anything. I never have. Do you see it as a burden to own things? It's just more to maintain and store and keep up with? I do. Actually, Anthony Robbins said, the more things you own, the more things own you. And I believe that's true. Like anything else, it takes on its own inertia. And once you get used to not possessing things,

it becomes intoxicating. Oh, yeah. So it's like the opposite of a collector. I went through a few years where I wore it like a badge of honor. You own nothing. Nothing. It was your own pride in a different way. Yes. Yes, that's exact. Well, look, you can assign whatever level of meaning you want to assign to whatever topic. But there's minimalists who think I'm better than those who have things because I've learned to conquer the stuff. To be fair, that was me. I did lord it over people.

Like, haha, you have all your stuff, I got nothing. You never catch me on hoarders. Am I better than everyone? It wasn't just with material things either. Like, after that whole QVC thing, when I realized I was a pretty good auditioner and I could book stuff, I had a lot of friends who were in the business and they were all swinging for the fences. Everybody swings for the fences in this industry, right? It's the only way to make it, it seems. Well, everybody was like, look, I want to be famous, I want to have a hit.

I want to do all these kinds of things. So they get the agent and then they get the manager and maybe they get a publicist and maybe they have some success. But these bloodsuckers, George, these leeches, man. Who are the leeches? I mean, it's all the people who get paid a percentage of whatever it is you earn. And so I don't begrudge them. They're some wonderful people. That's how they make their living? That's how they make their living and that's actually how the industry works. But...

Selling the infrared health team pain reliever in the middle of the night with the help of drunk viewers taught me a couple of things. And one of the big things was there's always a reverse commute.

There has to be a way to work in Hollywood that doesn't require me to go to all the auditions and all of the traditional ways and hire all of the traditional representatives and do all of the traditional stuff. This doesn't speak well of me. That makes you so authentic. But when I look back,

That's deep.

So I started looking not for good ideas. I started looking for ideas that were sure to fail. And then I would attach myself to them. I'd do the best I could. And therefore, I was never blamed for the failure of the pilot sitcom or the pilot talk shows that I did or the infomercials. I touched everything like it was hot.

I avoided all encumbrances and I got paid for that and I saved all of my money and I invested it as wisely as I could and I didn't, I never bought anything.

And I was happy. And I was taking my retirement in early installments. Oh. Like my favorite fictitious character, Travis McGee, made famous by John D. McDonald in 22 Short Mysteries. So you got a financial strategy from a fictitious character. Not just a financial strategy, a worldview and a business model. McGee lived on a houseboat.

and like solve crimes. He would take a case and he would keep half of whatever he recovered. He lives on a houseboat called the Busted Flush that he won with that very hand in a poker game. And he keeps his money hidden away up in the bilge where nobody would ever think to look. I think of all the things about that character that most appealed to me, it was the idea that you could take your retirement in advance in installments

So he never thought of himself as a worker. He thought of himself as a retiree in his late 20s, early 30s, who would come out of his retirement from time to time. This is his encore career. That's right. This is just a thing he did to make money. He would go

save people who had been conned or swindled. Wow. So you looked at retirement that same way and said, what if I could get it early in installments by paying myself? What was your strategy to pull this off? Well, again, align myself with people

who will pay for my clothes, who will pay for my transportation. - Cover the expenses. - Cover the expenses. Like these gigs that I got, they weren't purely just freelance gigs, but they were shows with like 13 episodes of New York Expeditions for PBS, 40 episodes of No Relation for Dick Clark. Like I was always in the middle of a project like that. And when you're doing a project like that,

All your food's paid for. Your clothes are paid for. You don't have time to even go spend money. Exactly. But the second it's done, you do. And then you can decide, well... Is that what happens is people get that check and they go, oh boy, it's a famous story of Matt Damon after Goodwill hunting and they went out and bought matching Jeeps and they blew it all in this rental party house and it was gone. All the time, man. Have you seen that? You've seen the tale anyway. That's not going to be me. Early on. Oh, yeah.

I was super lucky. My parents were very, very frugal. I mean, parsimonious. Aggressive in their parsimony. They didn't spend unless they absolutely had to? Yes. My dad taught public school. My mom raised three boys. And we had no... Luxury was not a vocabulary. No, but neither was pity. And to be honest, neither was awareness. Like, for the longest time, I thought we were upper middle class because we lived...

We lived on a small farm and we had about eight acres attached to the house that wasn't really ours. The state technically owned it. And we had this amazing woods that was full of trails and wildlife. And, you know, for a kid with an overactive imagination, this is wealth. You have it all. My parents were genius at making us feel good.

not envy, they actually made us feel pity for people who were wealthier than us. - Ooh, to go like, those people are actually miserable. - Like I remember neighbors coming over with photos of their trip to Yosemite.

you know and we sat down and like oh god that looks that looks great and there's pictures of all these things the the branigans they were bragging about all their vacations bragging branigans and when they leave you know my mother like my mother and my dad would always have these conversations as if they were just out of earshot of us but they knew you could hear they knew we were listening and they'd say things like gosh

Isn't it too bad, John, my mom would say, isn't it too bad that some people have to fly all the way across the country just to see nature? Yeah, Peg, it sure is. But you know, a lot of people don't have beautiful woods right behind their house full of the same basics. That's a genius parenting hack. I like that. I'm going to use it. All right, we'll get back to the conversation in just a second. Before that, let me tell you about the sponsor of today's episode, Tello.

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most amazing digital dirty jobs I never want to do. So I'm very grateful for what they do. It gives me amazing peace of mind, helps me stay protected. So go to joindeleteeme.com slash George, and they're going to give you an extra 20% off any of their plans just because I sent you there. How nice is that? joindeleteeme.com slash George, or click the link in the description. All right, back to the conversation. Oh, look, this is actually the coffee part of the show. George? That's the one.

Wait, are you the owner of Elroy? Oh my gosh, it's such an honor to meet you. Oh, well, thank you. I'm here with my friend. This is from my YouTube channel. This is Mike. Hi, Mike. How are you? Your face looks familiar. Yeah, what are you going to do? He's got that face. Okay. Yeah, he's trying to get on TV, which is why he's on my YouTube channel. He's trying to make a name for himself. Oh, no, you're sarcasm. I'm a former musician, and I thought it would be fun if we sang a song together. And you're one of this public domain, I think. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, which means we're going National Anthem, you know, America. I don't know all the words. You don't know all the words to the National Anthem? I think I could nail that one. But you know how you get nervous when you're doing it in front? You've done it, I'm sure, in front of baseball stadiums. You ever get nervous you're going to screw up a line just because of the pressure? That is something to think about, man. It's the most un-American thing is to botch a word in the National Anthem. You mess up the words to the National Anthem. Yeah, that's a problem. But no, it's never happened to me. Because truthfully, I don't sing it all that often.

I'm sure you do. Every morning you wake up, it's like your alarm clock. Well, that's why I made a movie called Something to Stand For. Because we've forgotten. We've forgotten. It really was a movie that went, oh, that's what it's all about. Not the stuff you see in the media and the politicizing of these are the people that we need to be celebrating. These are the stories that make America what it is. I think so. As we become disconnected from society,

our country and the history that made it what it is, it's not so different than being disconnected from the farmers or from the sewage workers, people who are out of sight and out of mind. So for me, that's kind of been the leitmotif for the last 25 years. These stories all came from a podcast I do called The Way I Heard It. Amazing podcast. Go subscribe to that. And they were connected, really, in this case, by Independence Day.

So I just stitched them together with the trip to the Capitol because, you know, again, it's I used to take field trips all the time when I was in high school. I don't know if they still do those anymore. But when I was a kid in Baltimore, yeah, we got on the big bus and we went to the Capitol. We saw the monuments and we saw the statuary and it was super cool. And I hadn't been back in 50 years.

So, you know, that's in the movie too. What's cool is the reminder, you know, obviously I talk about personal finance. There's a lot of woe is me and complaining and America and the president and the inflation and the economy and I'm going to move to a different country because it's getting so bad. And this movie just reminded me, no, this still is the greatest country out there. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. And it still is the land of opportunity and freedom. And it's what you make of it. And I think part of the reason a lot of people misspoke

might lose sight of that from time to time is because you have to travel the world to really see the United States for what it is. You know, you can't simply compare New York to California or Kentucky to Tennessee. Sure, opportunity varies. States are different. But by and large, the idea of the country is

is what makes it unique. And it's just easy to forget. Yeah. I love it. But look, nobody wants a lecture. Jeez, and nobody wants a sermon. So the movie, hopefully in the same way Dirty Jobs did, entertains first and foremost. It tells a story. Right. And that's my favorite part. So I recommend everyone go check it out.

You're going to love it. And you're watching YouTube. So, of course, go watch something else that's good for your brain. Yeah, I mean, but not until this is over. Please watch the rest of this. Watch the rest of this. The best is yet to come, obviously. I've got some popcorn lightning questions as we wrap here. Are you ready for it? Bring it. What's the last thing you splurged on that you felt like, oh, wow, this is a big financial purchase for Mike that I wouldn't normally buy? I stayed in a really expensive hotel not long ago. But the $45 hamburger on the menu...

Was it Wagyu? And it had to be something crazy. It was, but still, for me, I just, I can't get past it. Just thinking about your ancestors and your parents going, you spent $45 on a hamburger? Right. But, you know, here I am. And by the way, somebody else paid for it too. That helps. Right. And you were still upset that someone else paid $45 for a hamburger. I'm in a $2,000 a night hotel room.

And I can't buy a $45 hamburger. And it still hurts. Still hurts. I think it just goes to though, look, you've got to assign, you get to choose, right? You get to choose what's valuable. For me, I was a scrimper and a saver and a hustler and a freelancer. And then Dirty Jobs came and it was a miscalculation. It wasn't supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be three one-hour specials

a tribute to my granddad who lived next to me on that little farm and who built the house I was born in without a blueprint, right? It was just a quick little thing for him. And I was just wrong about it. The first episode aired and we got thousands of letters from people not saying, oh my God, that show was great or, oh gosh, you're so funny or whatever. There were letters saying, wait till you see what my dad does.

You think that's dirty? What do you see with my brother, my cousin, my uncle, my sister? Oh, everyone's telling their stories. Exactly. And that was the moment. It became the community's show versus Mike's thing. And dude, let me tell you something, man. When you get out of your own way, like I realized in the first couple episodes of Dirty Jobs that I wasn't really a host. I was actually a guest. I wasn't really the producer.

I turned everything over to the viewer and said, "Okay, fine. You tell me where to go." And I was so sure I knew what I was... I was so certain that I had the tiger by the tail and that I had figured it out. And I was just wrong, you know? And it was very, very humbling, you know, to crawl through a river of crap and realize that, yeah, yeah, you can work in TV, but not as a host. You're gonna have to be a guest.

And that for me, like once I accepted that it's just not quite what you thought it was, but it's adjacent. I mean, if there's a moral to the story, it's like, there's no shortcuts, man. - Yeah. - I wrote a song for Dirty Jobs. I wrote a lot of songs for Dirty Jobs. I wrote the theme song for Dirty Jobs. - I did not know that.

Now everyone who's got a job has got his dues to pay, working for that paycheck and getting through the day. But if you're bored or otherwise inclined to be a slob, grab some boots and lose that suit and get a dirty job. Dirty jobs are everywhere, just take a look around. Down the street or up the stairs or even underground. You don't need to borrow, beg, and you don't need to rob.

All you got to do is get yourself a dirty job with me. All you got to do is get yourself a dirty job once more. All you got to do is get yourself a dirty job.

Can't script that kind of bullcrap, brother. That is good content. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I know I did. Thank you to Mike Rowe for taking a break from his dirty life to join me in this relatively clean vehicle. Be sure to check out everything Mike is up to, especially his new film, Something to Stand For. It will put a little patriotic pep in your step, I guarantee it. And if you like this video, be sure to check out this next one to see what happened when I took Dave Ramsey for a spin and he made me a cup of coffee for a change. And let me tell you, it was better than I deserved.

Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.