How ‘Dirty Jobs’ star Mike Rowe found success in trying, spotlighting America’s most daring trade work

The beauty of America’s workforce involves a web of various occupations, some of which are taken for granted, but TV personality Mike Rowe built an entire career on bringing forgotten workers into the spotlight.

The "Dirty Jobs" host shared on FOX Business’ "The Pursuit! with John Rich" that his respect for hard work first blossomed from his parents who were school teachers and his grandfather who was a skilled tradesman in Baltimore County, Maryland.

"He could take your watch apart, put it together blindfolded," he said. "He could build a house without a blueprint. He was that guy… He built the church I grew up in, my Pop did."

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Even though Rowe’s grandfather only completed school up until the seventh grade, he was a master electrician and all-around handyman by the time he was 30.

But since Rowe did not inherit the natural gift of working with his hands, his first ambition was to work with his voice as an opera singer. Rowe revealed his plan was to get into the Screen Actors Guild, acquire a union card and work in TV after "faking his way" into the opera in 1982 by memorizing the shortest Italian aria.

After eight years in the opera, Rowe auditioned for QVC where he was tasked with selling a pencil by talking into the camera for eight minutes straight. Rowe’s gig with QVC was followed by roughly 200 freelance jobs with various networks over the next ten years.

"I was pretty good at it," he said. "I got paid and I felt like I was doing ok like I had it figured out."

But at then-40 years old, Rowe remembered receiving a life-changing phone call from his mother who reminded her son that his grandfather was turning 90 years old.

"She says, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if before he died he turned on the TV and saw you doing something that looked like work?’" he repeated. "Imagine your mother hitting you with that?"

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Rowe said the next day he and his cameraman ventured into the sewers of San Francisco where he profiled a sewer inspector, and the footage that was both "so disgusting and so funny" eventually turned into "Dirty Jobs."

"It took me a while to sell it because everybody who looked at my tape said, ‘It’s a talk show in a sewer.’ Kind of," he laughed. "But it’s also a love letter to work."

"The key to ‘Dirty Jobs’ was to stop being a host and start being the guest," he continued. "That’s what I learned in the sewer… My job is to learn. And you can’t learn unless you’re humble."

Rowe said once he found humility, he spent the next nine years in the trenches of America’s most undesirable fields where his education really started.

"There was no second take. You got an honest look at the day’s work," he said. "And I didn’t know it at the time but I think the viewers were starving for something that was genuine."

According to Rowe, the American right to pursue happiness hasn’t changed his life but it’s defined it. He explained that taking a step back and allowing himself to be the failure in new experiences on "Dirty Jobs" was the best decision he made on the road to authentic success.

"I was paid to try, not succeed," he said. "And for 20 years before that my whole deal was success means getting it right. That’s a trap."

Currently, Rowe narrates and produces FOX Business special "How America Works" which showcases the same workers in jobs every day Americans turn a blind eye to. The TV star also founded the Mike Rowe Works Foundation which awards $1 million per year in scholarships to people who "understand the importance of work ethic, personal responsibility, delayed gratification, and a positive attitude."

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