That Time We Made it to 100

This is episode number— wait for it— 100 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Kevin, my man. Cheers, bro.

Cheers.

Bring it in.

We made it.

Whoo, it is— I, I felt— I feel like I'm sliding into home here, man.

I, I tell you what, this is, um, this is pretty cool.

Yeah.

I mean, when, when you and I started this thing sitting at Deacon Baldy's, um, talking about what this thing might—

could be, which is unjustly closed at the moment.

Yeah. They closed. Okay, so those of you who don't live around here, uh, Deacon Baldy's is a food truck, um, park. And but, but the Deacon Baldy's side of it is a bar. And, um, since they don't sell food, they shut them down. They shut them down.

So, so we're here for you, Deacons.

Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, we're sitting there and we're trying to figure out, okay, what are we gonna do? Is this, is this something viable?

Yeah.

And we were kind of like, let's just give it a shot.

Yeah. What's it going to hurt? Worst thing that could happen is no one listened.

Which was a very viable option.

Yeah, it was. For everyone.

Yeah, for everyone. Well, I'll put it this way. I don't think my wife has listened to a single episode.

Yet?

Yet. All right.

That means we can talk about her all we want.

Oh, absolutely. Your wife's actually listened to one episode, I know.

Oh, I know. Yeah, I know. She sneaks in every once in a while. I think she just wants to make sure I'm behaving. Let's just, let's just be honest. I mean, like, that is, that is a thankless job right there.

Oh, she's not gonna get the result she wants.

No.

So, no, but yeah, so man, 100 episodes. I, I tell you, that's just 4 shy of 2 years.

Mm-hmm. And we'll do a little, we'll do a little victory lap on that one too.

Yeah, I think so too. But one of the things I want everyone to, to know is with this being our 100th episode, we put out there on Facebook and Instagram and stuff that if you were to have gone and subscribed to our YouTube channel, which we're trying to kind of build up a little bit.

Yeah.

Doing a lot better with that. But if you go ahead and subscribe, that we would put your name into a drawing for $100.

Yep, I'm gonna send you some money.

That's exactly right, and we're gonna do that. We're gonna randomly have a list that I'm not gonna show you.

There's several pages of it here of people that subscribed, and we have a fair random number generator that's gonna give us the winner at the end of the show. So hang in there. Don't worry, this isn't gonna be a long one. We're just here to party and celebrate 100-ness.

Yeah, that's right. Uh, you know, I, I just wanna spend some time talking through 100. Like, that I was talking to my brother on the way over here, and he was like, seriously, 100? I was like, I know, I know.

Yeah, I tell people that now, and they're like, dang, how long you been doing this? And I'm like, well, just 2 years. I mean, it's not— I mean, like, that's not a long time to do something, let's be honest.

It's not, except for something that people expect you to fail at.

That, and, well, it's difficult to do something consistently for 2 years. You know what I mean? Like, some things you can do for 2 years without trying. Like, you can be a parent for 2 years without trying, like, because the kid exists.

Right.

So you're not going to stop being a parent. But like, if you go to the gym like every Wednesday for 2 years, yeah, that's somewhat of an accomplishment.

Sure.

You're probably not going to get great results, but you went to the gym every Wednesday for 2 years.

Right.

That's consistency.

Sure.

I mean, that's showing up.

Right.

And so it's— it is. I mean, like, not to, like, you know, pat our own backs or anything like that, but like, it's hard to do something that long Yeah, consistently.

Yeah, I remember, um, I don't know, it was probably episode number 15, 16, somewhere around in there, and I was telling my wife, hey, I'm headed over to Craig's house, we got a podcast tonight. And she was like, y'all are still doing that?

I thought this was just a fad.

Yeah, that's ex— that's exactly what she said. I was like, what do you mean you're still doing that? She was like, I thought you'd get like 5 episodes in and decide you didn't really want to do it anymore.

Yeah.

And I was like, no, we still enjoy doing it.

That probably says more about what she thinks about me than what she thinks about you. I think Craig would have pissed you off by now.

I just think she thinks I'm a quitter. Oh, well, maybe there's that.

So, showed her.

I'm not a quitter because you think I'm a quitter.

That's right.

I am not a quitter.

I'm not. I'm gonna make you quit thinking that about me.

That's right. Well, so, I, I mean, obviously there are things that I think we've definitely accomplished.

Yeah.

And I think that there's some things that looking back, we've, we've gone, okay, we had to change this, we had to change that. Things that we've, you know, learned along the way.

We've definitely— we've, we've done the Ross pivot. Pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot. We've, we've made many turns on the stairs.

Yes, we have. Yeah. So I'm curious, I mean, what do you— what are some things in your mind that have either not gone the way we expected them to, or just things that we've gone, okay, we've got to change that?

Yeah, I mean, like, when— from, from when we got started, I mean, we were, we were basically in my living room.

Yeah.

Um, I mean, I mean, we— not basically, we were in my living room.

Yep.

Um, recording the show. And if you go back and I— we even had like some old YouTube videos up from when we were doing the show in there. Um, and I, I didn't really— when we got started, I never really saw a need to get out of that space.

Yeah.

And to kind of have a, a spot that was just our own, because in my mind it was like, this is so simple.

Yeah.

Um, it's just going to be easy. But like, you know, being in the house and doing it in the evenings, we were, you know, having to negotiate, you know, my family and their schedule and all these kinds of things. And so, you know, making the transition out here now to where we have like our own space, our own studio, um, to bring in in guests so it's not like that awkward, like, hey, I'm going to bed, and people like passing by in the video in the background.

Which we literally had multiple times. Like, your wife was like sneaking back to like get to the bedroom. Like, we can see you're totally in the shot. Like, we can see every bit of your sneakiness.

You can do this move all you want, we all see you. That's right. Yeah, so I mean, just from when we started, in my brain it was like, this is so simple, we can do it like this, this is no big deal. It be— and it didn't ever really become a big deal, but it just made it so much smoother and easier to have a space where guests could just come to.

Yeah.

Um, and I, I think that's really helped the quality of the show. I mean, even though like we've just got a few finishing touches to do in here to finish the room off, I mean, it could— it's pretty much done. Pretty much done. Um, for, you know, For argument's sake, it's, it's a fully functional room with air conditioning and noise cancellation, all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah.

Um, even though occasionally you hear the dogs chasing wildlife or the horses that are hungry. Yeah. You know, every once in a while they'll come stick their nose in that window right there.

Yes, they will.

Um, and just let us know like, hey, I'm here. We're hungry out here.

Don't forget me.

Um, but I mean, that, that was a big shift, I think.

Yeah.

Um, So, and then I— we also learned a lot doing our first live show out at the Thistle.

Yeah.

One, we learned that you don't use the studio mics for a live show. No, that's bad.

That— well, if you were to go back and listen to any of those episodes, good luck, because I don't really think you can hear anything.

Not on that one in particular. Yeah. So, and I think it will— and like our whole audio situation has changed over the course of 2 years too. Yeah, we've upgraded our gear and, and changed platforms a couple of times.

Yep.

So there's a big learning curve there. I mean, like, I mean, like, I, I tell people all the time when I meet them that, like, hey, you, you probably ought to start a podcast. And I've probably dogged Tanya Manley about that several times. I mean, she would be a great podcast host. She would have a lot of fun stories to tell. Um, but you just kind of got to get started and just do it.

Right.

Um, and that's the hardest part.

Oh, it absolutely is. A couple of things. I was listening to Unlocking the Magic. You remember our friends Bruce and Connie?

Yeah.

They were on the show way—

One of my favorite. We got so jazzed about having them on. That was a big deal for us.

It was a huge deal for us.

It still is a big deal.

Yeah, absolutely. Just today, I was listening to their latest podcast, and Bruce was talking about— I tell people all the time, if you want to go start a podcast, go start a podcast, but don't just do it because other people are doing it. or because, you know, you think, oh, someone's doing this about that, maybe I could do that as well. It's just find the thing that you enjoy.

Yeah.

And talk about it. And if you enjoy talking about something enough, people are gonna listen. And I think that's one of the things that, um, over the time I've really valued is spending time here in the studio just talking about homes.

Yeah.

And talking about the businesses that surround doing things around your and stuff. And yeah, and I think to begin with, I didn't really know how that was gonna work because as we started talking about it, it was like, okay, who are we gonna get? Like, we know this person, we know that person, we know that person. Now it's like we got people contacting us saying, can I, can I, can I be on your show? And so I think that's one of the things that's kind of changed for us is this kind of a known quantity sort of, of of, yeah, that's, that's a big deal. And we don't necessarily feel like a big deal, but you know, it's—

At all.

At all, at all. But it's grown. And part of that is you talked about upgrading our gear. Um, we found more old iPhones.

Yeah, we—

because we've gone through all kinds of iterations of trying to figure out how we're gonna do video. Yeah, because People are saying that video is the new radio.

Yeah, it is.

There was a song about that a long time ago.

You have to think, when you start having platforms like Spotify, who have been an audio-only company now for a long, long, long time, are now making the move over to adding video to their platform. Part of that is because Rogan's moving over there.

Oh, yeah.

and he's, he's got to have video in order to make his platform work, right? Um, it's not to say that it wouldn't work if it was just audio, but like, they're doing it because he's coming over. Um, and it's going to open them up to other shows wanting to put their content on their platform. Yeah, like, you know, as soon as video is available, we're going to be putting our content on Spotify. I mean, if, if we're allowed to, why wouldn't we?

Um, yeah, absolutely.

So You know, and so there's not just that either. There's other platforms that are saying like, okay, we're going to start adding video as a viable uploadable content management system.

Yeah.

For our platform. You know, you just got to, you know, part of this and you don't want to like bend to the trends. Yeah. But like, that's not really a trend as much as it is like this is another avenue through which you can get your content into the hands of the audience that you want listening to your, to your stuff. Sure. And You know, our, our platform just happens to be people that live in homes. It's a pretty big platform.

It is. Yeah. And, and I think that, you know, there, there are going to be people that listen to podcasts and they're like, listen, I— in order for me to listen to that, it's going to be whenever I'm not around this, that, or the other. So maybe I'm going to listen to it in my vehicle as I'm driving back and forth to work, or maybe, you know, in a, in a way that I can't watch video. Right. And then there are going to be other people that are like, man, if I'm going to listen to it, I got to watch it.

And so, which, by the way, I mean, if we learned anything about during this coronavirus deal is that commuters are a huge portion of our audience.

Oh, they absolutely are.

So, I mean, like, thank you, commuters. Yeah, appreciate you guys tuning in. Hopefully you can all get back to that good old commute back to the office.

Right. So speaking of that, let's take a— I'm curious, I mean, you're driving a lot.

Me?

Yeah, you're out driving a lot.

All day.

Have you, have you noticed that traffic is less right now or that it's about the same?

It depends.

Okay, on what?

One, on where I'm at.

Okay.

That's a big factor because, I mean, not to get into like local speak too much, but like there's a big difference between driving on 2920 and 1960. Mm-hmm.

1960 is always just a bear.

And so for those of you that don't know, there's like— Texas has these weird like farm-to-market road systems. Um, and so like there's FM 1960, there's FM 2920, and I didn't— I don't think 105 is an FM road.

Uh, no, it's a highway.

It's a highway. Yeah, but it, it runs kind of like—

yeah, those other 2.

FM 1488.

So those others.

Yeah. So if, if you can just envision this in your mind, 105 is probably the furthest north, northern highway. In between 105 and 2920 is 99. And then 2920, and then just south of that is 1960. These are like basically the main thoroughfares. And they— so as you progressively move further south, which is closer to the Metroplex of Houston, um, they— the, the traffic intensifies, right? So except the only, uh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Um, I can't think of it.

I got nothing.

Exception. The only exception to that would be in the afternoons at 2920.

Okay.

When there's not coronavirus.

Okay.

Because that's where everybody lives.

Yeah, it's a— it's more of a residential type of thoroughfare.

So like starting about 3:30 on a normal day, 2920 is just unbearable.

Okay.

Um, whereas 1960 might be moving as, you know, par for the course.

Okay.

Um, but right now, like, I was just down on 1960 today, and like, even though I was over by the mall Down there. Like, it felt like any normal day.

Okay, well, I, I had to drive into Houston, and really it was like Sugar Land area, but from where I live it's like a good hour and 20 minutes or so.

Which is not a long drive into Houston, y'all.

No, it's not. Um, so an hour and 20 minutes, and it— I, I checked it the night before and I'm like, okay, from my house, I mean, it's like 11 o'clock, it says an hour and 20 minutes. So I'm thinking it's gonna be an hour and 45, right?

Right.

So I get up the next morning, check, hour and 20 minutes.

Okay.

And it was mostly highway, like mostly interstate actually. And man, I didn't slow down once.

Really?

And it was in the morning. I left at like 8 o'clock. Which—

so that, that's, that's unusual.

Yeah.

I mean, like for non-corona, right?

It's, it's definitely unusual. So, and, and maybe it's that that's highway only versus, versus, uh, you know, some of the more residential business streets, you know. I don't know, maybe that's a difference. But anyway, I, I think that, I think that video has— it's one of the things we've wanted to do well from the beginning.

Yeah.

And we just continued to have problem after problem after problem.

And let me, let me just explain this to everybody real quick. So what we were trying to do at the beginning is basically record multiple video sources on separate devices. Devices. Yeah. And the problem we were running into is the videos were like 8 to 12 gigs apiece, right? And so like uploading 4 or 5 of those to like one source, good luck.

Yeah. And, and so you got to upload them all and then you got to import them all into a, you know, we use Adobe Premiere. So importing them all in there and then cutting them all up, I mean, it just took forever. Yeah, it took hours and hours to do that and it was one of those things that frankly, um, I was— I got to the point where I was like, I don't have time for this.

Yeah.

And, you know, a lot of times we were having these problems where our devices would run out of storage space or they would die. And so, you know, some sources we would have full and then other sources we would have like, you know, barely any, um, any actual video on there. And so we just had problem after problem after problem, but Uh, we have finally found something that has really worked well for us. And so hopefully, if you, if you've not ventured over to our YouTube channel, please do, because I, I think you'll find there's a lot of content. It's not just our shows, like we're cutting up different things. Like we just put up a, uh, a review of,

of that power nailer.

Yeah, the Ryobi, uh, 18-gauge brad nailer.

Yeah. And so, you know, stuff like that, we're gonna, we're gonna hopefully be kind of utilizing that a little bit more. So if you've not ventured over there, you ought to take a hop over to YouTube, go to The Homeowner Show and find us.

Well, not only that, I mean, like part of, part of the advantage of YouTube is we can cut up the video and put out clips of the previous week's show. And so like, if you don't necessarily have time to, you know, sit and listen to like an hour interview with, you know, one of our professionals or experts, you can go grab some of what we thought were the highlights of that week. And you can digest those and like, you know, 2 to 7 minutes, right? Um, clips, right? Um, which, you know, anybody can just— yeah, turn that— turn on that on. You know, you can listen to YouTube in the car. Um, which, which, by the way, man, do you know about like the subscription service to YouTube now? Yeah, where like you can listen to the audio, right, without the

video.

Yes.

Sneaky dudes.

I know. And, and like, if you, if you want to be in your car and just listen to it, you, you just, you can't turn your screen off, right? If you turn your screen off, it shuts down. Yep. So you have to be plugged in, otherwise you're going to drain your battery. Yeah. And you—

Because it's a double battery drain because you got the screen on and you're probably synced up via Bluetooth, right?

And on top of that, it's just unsafe to drive around with a video because your eyes are drawn to it, right? And so The only way you can get the audio only is if you pay for the subscription. That's a little jerks.

I'll tell you what I do is I just put it face down.

Yeah, that works.

I mean, because I'm not paying for that.

No, I'm not either.

I did like the free trial one time, mostly because I wanted to watch the Karate Kid series on YouTube.

Worth it.

Which is awesome. It's like, I think they're like fixing to hit season 3 of Cobra Kai.

Oh man, that's—

I haven't watched season 2.

Yeah, I've— I haven't watched any of them, dude. I need to.

Were you a Karate Kid fan when you were a kid?

Yes. Yes.

So like, how far— like, when— because here's, here's the deal, like, this is not homeownership, this is this one. So like, I was good up through Karate Kid Part 3.

Okay.

But like, when the next Karate Kid—

Mm-hmm.

I jumped off the wagon.

I, I didn't even watch it.

Okay.

Because I heard so many poor things about it that I was like—

I didn't watch it either.

I'm out.

So that was— I'm not dogging on Hilary Swank. I'm sure she was fine. Oh, but I'm just not interested.

Yeah, and, and I didn't even watch the remake. Okay, I probably should, but let me, let me speak up for the remake. Okay, it was good.

Okay, Jackie Chan. Yeah, I mean, come on.

I mean, you can't, you can't go wrong with him. And you got Will Smith's kid.

What's his name?

I don't remember. Will Smith.

What's the little Will Smith?

The little, the little one. Jada's boy.

I don't know, Jaden. Isn't it Jaden?

I think you're right. I think it is Jaden.

Um, anyway, it's, it's, it's a little bit older now.

Well, yeah, I mean, maybe what, like 5 years old? Something like that. That old?

But it's old-ish.

He's—

I think he's close to like 20 years old or something like that now. Yeah, dude, we're old.

Will Smith was the man when we were teenagers.

Yeah.

And now he's older than we are.

Well, that was bound to happen.

He's kind of always been older than we are, if you think about it.

Yeah, yeah, the math works out there.

That's right. All right, let me ask you this question. So what do you think are some things that, that we've done well over the last 100 episodes?

Uh, I mean, I, I think, I think we've done a real good job of bringing in a wide variety of guests.

Yeah.

And, and even though it's been a wide variety, everyone has been able to speak well into their field of expertise.

Yeah, we've even had some that are relatively young.

Yes.

In, in their field. I mean, some, some guys that— and gals that have been, you know, maybe less than a year into their field, um, but they've gone through the training. I mean, they've gotten their licenses, they've done the, the testing that they need to do in order to get their, their licenses and, and their certifications. And, and, and they've been able to provide us with some really good information. And then we've got other people that, that we brought on that have been doing it for years and years, you know.

Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's something that might be helpful for people to understand is like, we're not just like yanking Joe Schmo off the street, right? I mean, like, it usually And I don't even know if I've talked to you about this, Kev, but like it usually takes me about 2 to 3 months to like get someone on the show. Not because like they're so busy or anything like that, but like I don't want to invite anybody on here that I don't— that I haven't had a good conversation with, that I haven't seen the end result of some of their work, that I've gone through some of their customer reviews, that I've vetted them.

Yeah.

You know, and like we're probably not vetting like as thoroughly as some other shows. Yeah, but like, I think on average it takes us about 3 months to get a guest from meet to in front of a microphone.

Sure.

Um, before we feel comfortable about bringing them into the studio.

Yeah, I mean, we've—

there's been a few exceptions just because of them being like a known quantity, you know, like, like Bruce and Connie. I mean, like, oh yeah, we, we knew them from their show. They'd been on for themselves. Yeah, they've been doing their podcast for years by the time we invited them on. And so like they were a known entity.

Yeah.

Um, and it didn't take long, but I think even from like the time that we made contact with them to the time that we had them on the show, it was like a month.

Sure. Um, yeah. And, and one of the things you mentioned was a wide variety. And, and I think that that's something that's been, that's been good. It's not like we've had 14 electricians on the, on the show and 23 plumbers. I think we've had one electrician show.

Yeah, one. And one New Builds Electric with, uh, Courtney and Weston.

Yeah, they're the only ones.

And were you here for that one, or is that just me?

No, I was here for that one.

Okay.

Yeah, I was here for that one. Um, but you know, like when it comes to plumbing, like we've had Burke Family Plumbing, we had JC's Leak Detection.

Yep.

Which they're, they're kind of their own form of—

yeah, they're not technically a plumber, but they deal with plumbing issues.

Right. And but beyond that, we really haven't had tons of plumbers.

Yeah.

And so when you think back through 100 episodes and you think we've only had one electrician and one plumber, like, that's— that, that seems crazy. It, it really does seem crazy. And I think one of the things it does, and I think one of the things that's, that's exciting for our listeners, I hope, as you're sitting out there is going, there's a lot more content that we have. And I think that's one of the things early on we were like, I mean, I think we got— I think we got a dozen shows. I think we got a dozen ideas.

A dozen solid shows.

Yeah. And, and here we are a lot later. It's going— we got so many options.

Well, I mean, going back from when we started, I'm like, after you and I kind of decided like, yep, here's the starting date, here's when we're gonna do it, I kind of went through and made a list. And I made a list of topics and then I tried to align them with people. And I think, I think I had like 40.

Okay.

Uh, of— and, and like, but, but here's the thing is like, once the show got rolling I think we did maybe 15 of those.

Oh, so, so they wound up changing.

They went— yeah, big time. Yeah, big time. And I probably need to go back and find that list. Yeah, I mean, because there's probably some good ideas on there that we just never did. Yeah, or because kind of once you get rolling, I mean, like, you just, you kind of roll with the flow of— well, we do seasons and, and what's going on. I mean, like, because, like, we take— we, we try and do things seasonally if we can.

Sure.

Um, but, you know, it became evident really, really quick that like this, this, this was a deep well.

And I guess that's my point. I mean, we, we had a guy that, that's a full-time RVer on, right?

Yeah.

And, and it's like when you think about homeowner show, you— that's probably not the first thing that pops into your mind. It's not the first thing that pops into my mind. But to hear his transition from being a homeowner to full-time RV and what that looks like, and you know, there's a lot of stuff to consider through that. And, and when you talk about rolling with the flow, we would never really thought about it. We come across this guy, we start talking to him, it's like, man, we need to have him on the show.

Yeah.

You know, and I think there are other, there are other things out there. Um, and we were talking the other day, how have we never had a painter on the show?

I mean, like, there's some things that we come across, like, how we've not done an episode about that yet, right? Mainly because we're morons.

Um, or we just haven't met the right person.

We haven't met the right person. And that's what it is.

That's what it is.

Yeah.

Um, But, you know, I was thinking, we've, we've talked about our foundation and here in Houston, foundations are a huge problem.

Yeah.

And to have a foundation repair specialist, we've never had one of those on the show.

Well, we had the company that Lisa Agens referred to us about lifting houses up off the ground.

Yep.

We haven't made that episode happen yet. I know she's, she's waiting on that one.

Yeah.

And we want to do it.

Sure.

I mean, some— and like, honestly, like we've had— I mean, like, don't get me wrong, we've had people tell us like, nah, Sure. Not my thing.

Right.

You know, and it's like, it's been, it's been topics that we were excited about and we want to have that person in, but like, you know, we can't make them. No, we're not gonna.

Right.

And there's too many people that actually really want to be on the show. Sure. And, and, and talk about what they do and, and help provide you guys with really helpful information. Yeah. Uh, and, and so like, at the end of the day, I mean, like, our, our goal is to provide value for the homeowner.

Well, I'll say this as a homeowner and someone who feels like, okay, I'm okay diving into almost any project. I mean, I'm— I kind of know what my limits are, but, you know, I'll, I'll try a lot of different things.

Yeah.

Um, I've learned a lot.

Yeah.

Just, I mean, I just—

If nothing else, we could probably continue to do this show just for selfish reasons. Sure. Because, I mean, like, we, we genuinely do. And, and like a lot of people When they get ready to come on the show, they're like, OK, so what's the format? I mean, can you guys send me the questions in advance? And we're like, no.

No.

And it's not because we don't want to be prepared.

Right.

But Kevin and I really genuinely want to follow our curiosity with these guys and let them kind of lead us into what it is because they know things. They just don't realize that they know things that everyone else doesn't know.

Sure.

And, and we kind of get to discover that through conversation.

Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll give you a little secret. Whenever a lot of people walk into this room and they say, okay, you know, do you know what to expect? Have you listened to our show? A lot of them haven't, you know, which is fine. A lot of them have, but those that haven't, um, I'll say, well, listen, um, here's the thing. You're the expert. We aren't, right? You know things that we don't. So we're going to ask you things that you're the expert on, and so you're going to know the answer because you're the expert. And at that point, we're just gonna roll to something else that hits our brain.

And so, you know, which is what makes it great having 2 people in the room.

Sure. And we've, we've had opportunities where one of us or the other one is gone. It's just not the same. Yeah.

But either way, um, although, and like, I do want to kind of talk about some memorable moments. I think, I think if you and I were to share some of our more memorable moments on the show, some of them might be where you or I were, were gone.

Sure. I mean, yeah, I mean, I, I think one of the first times that one of us was gone was whenever you were off the show. Yeah. And I, I showed up and I'm like, Craig, Craig, Craig, Craig, are you here? Are you here? I mean, we had just opened the studio.

Yeah.

And it was nowhere near— I mean, we, we didn't look like this. We didn't didn't have a floor down, you know. And I was texting you, I was like, Craig, I went and knocked on your door, Craig, I'm calling you, I know you're here because your car's here. And, and finally you're like, Kevin, you're gonna have to do this by yourself, like, I'm sick.

I'm— I was, I was dying.

Yeah. And so it wasn't the 'rona though. No, it was other things. But, um, that was the episode that we had, um, the, the home organization ladies. And to date, that's one of our most popular episodes. And so it's one of those deals where—

It's, it's number 1 still.

Yeah, it's number 1. And so it's, it's one of those deals where a lot of things happen and, you know, you kind of roll with it. But sometimes, you know, you make the, the best out of a situation. And I think that's one of the things that I hope our listeners enjoy is just the You know, you never quite know what you're gonna get, you know. But I also think one of the things that, that we've done well— how many, how many podcasts do you listen to where it's like, I can't, the audio sucks? Yeah, the audio sucks on this. Like, it's—

Well, I will say this, like, that's, that's actually one of my pet peeves.

Sure.

Um, and it's not to say that, like, I'm, I'm judging you If you have bad— like, I get it. Like, if that's not something that you grasp and you're struggling with it, like, if your content's good enough, I'll probably hang in there.

Yeah.

But like, if, if, if the content is even like just a little bit below and the audio is down here, yeah, I'm out. I'm out. Yeah. And it really bugs my ears, but I have— I'm pretty sensitive to that kind of stuff.

Well, I, I maybe I am too, but But when I've gotta jack up my volume in my truck to, you know, 10 notches higher than I'm normally having it on, on a good podcast, it gets to the point where it's like, man, I'm— what's going on here? Yeah.

And so, because if you switch over to something else, oh yeah, it blasts you out. And like, you know, at some point, like, especially if it's a show that's been on a long time, I mean, like, Let's be— you all listen to your own stuff.

Yeah.

Like, and so like, just do that in your car. Not because you're being conceited and you want to listen to your own show, but to be courteous to the people who have decided to download your show, listen to your audio, and then switch over to a normal audio device like Pandora or Spotify or something, you know, even just regular music. And if it blasts you out, adjust something, right?

Fix it.

It's not hard.

No, it's, it's not, but it's a detail.

Send me an email, I'd be happy to walk you through it. Yeah, I mean, like, I could literally fix it for you in 5 minutes.

Sure. And you don't have to have super fancy equipment. Nope. Um, in fact, you know, iMovie or Windows Media Control—

GarageBand.

GarageBand is fantastic, you know. And, and a little bit of equipment, I mean, you can make it happen. So I do think that that quality is something that we've, we've strived for. Now, now, have we hit it every time?

Uh, there have been, there have been moments. There have been moments, but mostly with the internet.

Yeah, well, I mean, it is tough. I mean, those, those of you who, who listen to us regularly, you know that we're in the barn. We're in a— we're, we're in the Homeowner Show studio. However, the Homeowner Show studio is in the barn.

Is in the barn.

And the barn does not have its own internet source. It's coming from the house, right? And now there's nothing wrong with it, it's hardwired from the house.

Yep.

But sometimes there's issues.

It's not reliable.

So we do the best we can.

Yep. And so we might be having a guest soon that can help us with that. Really? Yeah.

Okay.

I'm pretty excited about that one.

Okay.

Followed up with her today.

Cool.

So anyway, awesome. Well, uh, which, which, I mean, like, I think that's something worth mentioning is like, like we have some stuff we're excited about that's coming up. Yeah. And like not just a little bit, right? I mean, like not, not a little bit excited, but like not a little bit of content, like a lot of content, right? We're like, I can't wait to get them in the studio.

Sure.

Like that's going to be a cool conversation.

Yes, it is.

Like we're working, like one, one of the things I'm working on right now is getting some school officials in the studio to talk about the upcoming school year.

And it's stuff like that that Where are you going to get that information? I mean, a lot of times you're listening to someone talk.

You can either come in and talk with us about it, or we're going to talk about you.

Right. So why don't you come and just have a conversation?

Yeah.

And, you know, we're trying to find those types of things like, what do you want to listen to? And we value your input. So, you know, send us a message. Our email works. It's info@homeownershow.com. Send us a message on Facebook or Instagram. Tell us, like, I'm interested in this. And I'll tell you, there have been a couple that we have said we'd really like to do something like that and we can't make it happen.

Yeah, I think of one in particular, like a guy named— my buddy Paul sent us a message about having a trash service come out and, and do an episode about, you know, how to dispose of specific things. Yeah, let me tell you how fun it is to get in contact with those guys.

No, and, and I— so I've tried I've, I've really tried. Like, one, one of them is like, how do you dispose of paint, right? For example, how do you recycle certain things? Well, guess what? Here in Montgomery County, how you do that is at a state-run facility.

Mm-hmm.

And in order to get in touch with those guys, uh, you're literally getting in touch with a congressman. I'm not joking. And, and, and there are people that work for him who they've got to get permission before they're allowed to have conversations like this.

Right.

And so, which we've run into with some insurance guys too. Absolutely.

Like if they work for— and like we have like guys that want to come in and talk about, you know, I'm not going to mention any specific companies because that might just get us blackballed. But like guys from like really big insurance companies that want to come in and do the show. But the higher-ups back at corporate won't let them. Yeah, they won't let them come in and talk about their stuff. And it's like, this is an opportunity for you to like talk about your products and services, right? Like, what do you do?

Yeah, I guess they're afraid of liability or something.

Insurance.

Come on, come on. Yeah, but like some of those things, we've just had a hard time making it happen. Doesn't mean we'll never make it happen.

We're gonna make it happen.

We're gonna make it happen.

That's right, we're gonna bully them into it.

Yes, that's right. But either way, I mean, if you've got something, send it to us and we will see what we can do to track it down. And, you know, hopefully we can.

All right. So in order to keep our promise that this is going to be a shorter episode.

Yeah.

I mean, because we're rolling up on 40 minutes here. Yeah. Let's, let's run through, let's run through some memorable moments. Okay. What's, what have been some of your biggest memorable moments?

Oh, dude, one of them has happened recently.

Uh-huh.

And that was the emu story.

We were talking about that.

We were talking about that yesterday.

You got my dad to retell it.

Oh, well, yeah. So, so we were together last night and with your parents, and, um, I mentioned it, and I actually heard a few details that I wasn't— I was a little fuzzy on. But man, I— some of that stuff, like, crazy things happen at your house.

I know.

Or at my house or at other people's homes, and it's like I enjoy hearing those types of stories and just laughing through them, you know? I mean, what are the chances that an emu walks into your yard and you blow its head off accidentally?

Yeah, it was an accident, y'all. Like, he feels really bad about it still.

Oh, oh, trust me, in him talking about it last night, he, he had this little sheepish look on his face like, I don't have a clue how that happened. Yeah, you know. So what about you? Memorable moment?

Uh, man, some of my more memorable ones, um, I mean, like, if I'm— I don't want to like pick like a favorite episode, but I think one of the more interesting ones that we did is, uh, and, and not that I was happy that you were gone.

Yeah.

But that when we had, uh, Haley Thayer co-host.

Yeah.

Uh, with Mel Stevens in the studio. Um, that was just a fun episode.

Yeah.

To do. And, and not only because it was It was just fun to do it, and, and Haley was a great co-host, and I, um, I hope we get to do that again soon, although she's, she's fixing to be mommy, so she's probably gonna be busy for, for the foreseeable future.

Yep.

Um, but, uh, she actually— her and Mel have become good friends since that episode.

What are the chances?

And have like actually done some stuff together outside of the Homeowners show.

They've met?

Yeah.

Okay, Haley lives in Seattle, Mel lives in Houston.

To be fair, Mel's son lives in— I think it— is it— see, I don't know if it's Seattle.

Close.

Isn't it really close to where Haley lives?

But does it really matter?

No, it's just cool.

They've met, right? That's kind of bizarre.

So, and I'm actually— I'm really hoping for that crossover Haley Thayer-Eric G episode, because when we found out that like he's in Portland, she's in Seattle, I'm like, this is close. You guys actually do business in the same area. Yes, you guys need to meet.

Yeah.

Um, so I hope, I hope he did reach out to her.

Um, yeah, I think, I think for me some of the more memorable moments are these aha moments, you know, moments where like I hear something from our, our flooring specialist, you know, Adrian Rojas, who he says something, I'm like, are you, are you serious? I had no idea. Yeah, completely befuddled at that. I had no clue that that was a thing. And so But that happens, right? I mean, there's plenty of things that I don't know. That's why we bring the expert in. That's why we're doing this show, so that you have the opportunity to know some of these things. And so for me, some of these aha moments I look back on and I'm like, man, that, that made me look at this

completely differently. Completely differently.

So, you know, I tell you what also could be fun is if we could somehow do story time with Ricky Neal and Tonya Manley.

Oh, gosh.

Like, if you could, like, somehow make that happen.

So, so what we would have is a cross between, uh, swing in the bedroom and the garbage disposal that turns on by raising and lowering the sprayer.

Yes.

In your kitchen sink. That is comedy right there.

And like, here's the thing, is like, we both know That those are not the only stories that they have.

No chance! No chance!

That actually could be a fun spin-off of The Homeowner Show. Story time with The Homeowner Show. Bring in some of our favorite guests, let them tell some of their worst stories.

Oh, dude. I'm afraid some of it would have to change the rating that we have on this show.

I've got one about a raccoon that would definitely change the rating of this show.

Goodness gracious! Yeah, that's crazy. Well, I, I honestly, um, I, I— some of the things I'm looking forward to, and, you know, changing from memories, things I'm looking forward to is just the opportunities that this show is going to allow us to, to get into the hands of our, of our listeners. Like, we've got some, some potentially some really cool partnerships that we're gonna have to be able to say, look, we're reviewing this product.

Mm-hmm.

And this is really legitimately how we think. And we've, we try to do reviews. We actually haven't done a review in a while, but, uh, we try to redo reviews and be real honest about them. Yeah. Um, but we've even done some reviews on some things that we don't own. Yeah. We've never, never used before. We're just kind of giving you what we've done the research on.

Here's the specs and here's, you know.

Yeah, we've done the research on it. Um, and this is what we would buy if we were to go out and do it. But we're gonna have our hands on some stuff that I think it's really gonna be cool.

Yeah, for sure. I, I can tell you one of the things I've been working on is like just a little side project is, uh, a power tool review.

Yeah.

Of, you know, pluses and minuses. I'm like, I want to do like a, a complete, you know, bird's-eye view of all the different lines, you know. And like, here's, here's what makes this product great, here's what maybe is not so great about this product. And like, you know, like just, just real quick, like bullet bullet points, you know, not to get real elaborate, but like, here's what's good about it, here's what's bad about it, and right, and here's all of them. Sure. And just, you know, put, put all that in one place on our website where people can go and, you know, and then we can update it over time. Because that, that's something that I think most homeowners end up investing in is, is, you know, at

least a couple of drills. Yeah, power tools and things like that. They can do small projects around the home.

Yeah. And part of the hard part about that is the research. Yeah, going through and trying to figure out which one is truly better than the other. Because, uh, you know, my neighbor's gonna tell me Ryobi's best, and then, you know, my friend that comes over, I see them, you know, they're using Milwaukee. I'm like, do you like that thing? They think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And yeah, those DeWalt people are like cultish, right?

Yeah.

And, and which even, even like Porter-Cable people are cultish.

I'm glad you mentioned that because I actually owe DeWalt DeWalt an apology.

Oh yeah, you do.

Because like, I was telling you about this, and we're not going to get too deep in this, just, I mean, brief, brief mention, DeWalt. So we did the show on power tools and we reviewed several brands, just, just again, like a quick overview of some of the ones that we'd had on a survey that we did on Facebook. And I had said that one of the problems with DeWalt is that while they made a really high-quality product, there was just nothing that made them stand out from the other products. And then like that very next week, I read an article about their new battery, and I was like, wow.

Slapped you in the face.

This is— and like, it's brilliant because it really solves the problem that a lot of them are trying to fix.

Yeah.

What they've done is they've done— they've created a smart battery that recognizes the difference between what it's plugged into.

Yeah.

And that battery can transition from 60-volt, which I think is bigger than just about any other battery out there.

Yeah.

As far as voltage goes.

Right.

I can't think of one that's bigger than 60-volt. Not that I know of. off the top of my head. There may be one, and if I find it, I'll correct myself. Yeah, but anyway, it can transition from 60-volt all the way down to 20-volt depending on what it's plugged into.

Yeah, and if you remember from that episode that we did, voltage is directly correlated to power, right? It's not related to how much, you know, how long the battery lasts— that's amp-hours, right? But specifically with voltage, you're talking about how much power. So you're talking about the difference between 20 volts and 60 volts, so 3 times the amount of power that those, those people that are so ingrained into DeWalt that say they're the best thing ever, they've been getting 20 volts out of their batteries for a long, long time. To jump that up to a 60-volt— yeah, the amount of power you get out of that that you can put in chainsaw, you can put into— yep, you know, a weed trimmer and different things

like that. Like, that's awesome.

And to make it interchangeable with all their tools, that's the thing. It's brilliant. Now, I mean, like, there's, there's a couple of downsides that we won't get into, but like It, it's, it's just really, really smart.

I mean, well, and so, and so that's part of our point here. In, in making some of these things known to you, you have a better opportunity to go out there and go, okay, do I want a DeWalt? Do I want a Milwaukee? Do I want a Ryobi? Do I want to, you know, Porter-Cable?

Yeah.

What, you know, Black Decker from Walmart? What do I want? I mean, and, and how do I know what's better than the other? Because at the end of the day Some of you may need that flex battery, right, for what you're doing. Some of you don't.

Yeah, you know, let me say this also. So they have a 60-volt flex 20-volt with a 12 amp-hour battery. That battery, the cheapest I've seen it, I think is $249.

$249 is probably a good price too, because we, we heard from someone just the other day that said that that thing would last how long?

2 weeks.

weeks, and he said he's using it.

And that was on his drill. Sure, but he's still—

but he's using that thing every day.

And these are guys that, if I remember right, these were the guys that were, uh, renovating apartment complexes.

Yeah. I mean, they're, they're not doing this on a, you know, semi-daily basis. They're doing it on a daily basis using that thing.

That's incredible.

It's absolutely incredible. So listen, we hope that you are enjoying the content that we're putting out. It's been 100 episodes. Um, many of you have, uh, have been with us from the beginning. I think of some of my buddies that have kind of stuck with us from the beginning. Thank you guys. Um, and, and those of you who are new to the show, man, we, we, we thank you for joining us, and hopefully it's been, uh, it's going to be a good journey for you. We've got a lot of stuff on the horizon, so stick with us, hang on to your seats, because, uh, you know, every week we're putting out new stuff and, and it's gonna be good.

Yep. So I guess, I guess it's time for the, for the moment That everyone has been, you know, waiting for with bated breath.

It is.

Who's gonna win the hundadollar?

Yeah, so here's what we're gonna do. We, um, there's a lot of ways you can generate numbers. You can put them in a hat and draw it out, but we thought, okay, someone's gonna say, uh, you, you know, yeah, you did something wrong, right? So random.org.

I'm over here and Kevin's over there.

Yes, I'm here.

Yeah, so, um, so we can't— all that to say, you can't see what I can see.

No, I have no idea. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm on random.org, and, and, you know, a lot of these places online will give you a random generator, and they— there is kind of a mathematical formula that they put into this. Supposedly random.org is different, and it doesn't have any sort of mathematical thing. It is literally a random generator.

I don't know how you produce randomness, but cool.

Well, it—

we should ask Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.

Well, it, it tells you on here. So if you go to random.org, you can read about it, but here's what I'm gonna do. In real time, this is happening right now, we've not done this before, I'm going to generate a number based on the number of people that we know have been put, have subscribed to our YouTube channel.

Yep.

So I'm gonna press that number right now, and our result number is 10. Who has number 10?

All right, and the winner is Daniel Dupoy.

All right, Daniel Dupoy, congratulations on $100.

Yeah, Daniel, if you can send us an email over to info@homeownersshow.com, or you can send us a message on Facebook. We just want to confirm that it's you.

Yeah.

Um, and where to send your prize.

Yes, we will get that over to you this week.

So thank you to everyone that subscribed. It was a great contest.

Yeah, we're probably gonna do something like this again. Oh, this is probably not the last time, um, that we do something like this, mainly because we want to, we want to thank you for listening and give you something hopefully to be excited about. Absolutely.

So, so keep up the good work out there sharing, folks of the internet.

Yeah, and, and to that end, if you have not already, please call to action for a moment. Go subscribe to our podcast on anything that you're currently listening to. Click the subscribe button. Go to the YouTube channel, subscribe there. There's actually a link in the show notes to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Go over there, click the bell. That way you get notified. Notified.

Notified.

Notified.

Thank you, GW.

Yeah, we are Creating new words tonight, and it's not me.

I didn't do it this time.

It's uh we're surprising everyone tonight. Um, but it's that way you get notified anytime we got new content up on the channel. So yeah, thanks sticking with us for a hundred episodes.

Hundred episodes, y'all.

Thank you. We got a hundred more coming. Yep. So well cool, man. Uh, we're. We're done for tonight.

Awesome. Congratulations, Daniel. Good luck to everyone next time.

That's right. So yeah, thanks for tuning in, and until next time, we'll see you later. See ya.