Today's Guest

Kevin O’Connor has been hosting the Emmy Award-winning series This Old House and Ask This Old House since 2003. He is the host of the podcast Clearstory, published a book The Best Homes of This Old House, and has hosted shows for the DIY and History’s H2 networks. The show has inspired millions to renovate their homes and showcased the work done by home contractors around the country. Kevin shares a bit of his story, how he ended up on the show and some insider information any small business can use to grow.

Resources Shared

• This Old House
• Clearstory Podcast
• The Best Homes from THIS OLD HOUSE by Kevin O'Connor
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:

Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning On Main Street and this week we have a really special guest, the host of the smash hit and long-running TV show, This Old House, Kevin O'Connor. Welcome Kevin.

Kevin O'Connor:

Thank you very much. Good to be here, Gordon.

Gordon Henry:

Great to have you. So a little bit of a bio. Kevin O'Connor has been appearing as the host of the Emmy Award-winning series, This Old House, and Ask This Old House since 2003, so 20 years. Kevin is also the host of a podcast, Clear Story. He published the book, the Best Homes of This Old House, and he recently began hosting the TV show Team Rubicon, which is streaming on the Roku channel and is based on the real life veteran led humanitarian organization by the same name, Team Rubicon that serves global communities before, during, and after natural disasters and crises. We'll get into that. Kevin received a BA from the College of Holy Cross and a master's and MBA at Boston University. And prior to television, interestingly, he worked as a banker. He was at the Bank of America as a senior VP and Commercial Real Estate Group, and before that in Sports Finance Group at Fleet Bank.

Kevin's originally from New Jersey, now lives with his wife and three children in a home north of Boston. What should you, our listeners get out this episode? This Old House has become one of the most successful and long-lasting shows on TV. Really attesting to the deep interest Americans have in home improvement. Highlights the work of home improvement contractors. Let's hear Kevin's insights on what's happening in our building and home improvement trades. So Kevin, welcome to the show. First, just tell us a little bit about your background. Really fascinating how you made this switch from a completely different life, banker and how you got involved with This Old House?

Kevin O'Connor:

Sure. As you pointed out, finance was what I was interested in and enjoyed it quite a bit. Sports finance at bank Boston Fleet Bank was what was the majority of my career and that's where I was. When we sent a letter, we being my wife and I to This Old House magazine. I grew up watching the show with my dad and my brothers. My dad's in construction, I've got some brothers in construction, I'm not, but always had an interest in it. And so when Kathleen and I bought our first home, a 1893 fixer upper, two family, no working kitchen, bathrooms didn't really work, but sort of exactly what we were looking for. We were young, we were eager. So we started working on it, fixing it up and bumped into a couple problems looking to recreate some historical details. So off went the letter to a magazine. I don't know who does that anymore, who even did it back then, but we did.

Gordon Henry:

What's a magazine?

Kevin O'Connor:

Exactly. What's a letter? But remarkably This Old House, the venerable home improvement show was in the process of starting then in a new show, their sister show Ask This Old House, the premise being same expert craftsman going out and instead of doing a full year long renovation of a big old house, dipping into the mailbag, ringing doorbells and helping homeowners with small projects. So because the show was new and there was no mailbag, they turned to their magazine and they said, "Did you get any letters?" They got ours, they came out, they filmed, we did a little half day shoot. I had no idea what they were talking about because I didn't even know the show existed. But they said they'd bring Tom Silva to my house. I love the guy, watching him with his brothers on the show. And literally I thought that was it, Gordon.

They left, I came home from work in my blue suit. I put on some work pants, I filmed with them, they left. I cracked a beer. I told my wife that was pretty cool and went back to the office the next day. But three weeks later I got a phone call and in one very brief conversation and completely out of the blue, they said, "How would you like to host This Old House and our new show Ask This Old House?" It literally dropped in my lap just like that. And I expected it to maybe last a year or so, but I was young and I figured I could always go back to banking. So I said yes, and here we are 20 some odd years later.

Gordon Henry:

Amazing. I heard you say in a video that you weren't even in a high school play. You had no acting experience. So wasn't it a little intimidating to start out as the host of this big hit TV show?

Kevin O'Connor:

It definitely was intimidating, but I will tell you that because of the way it started in my house, answering the doorbell for a trades person who was going to try to help us fix our house, my job in that initial scene was to sort of tell the guys who came to the house what was wrong, ask them questions about what we could do to fix it, have them show me, and then try my hand at it. That felt very natural and it turns out that that's the host's job. Everyone on the show is a professional contractor except for myself, they all run their own businesses to this day. They've never taken on TV full time. They've kept their contracting businesses, but my job is to walk around the job site with them and extract their knowledge and share that with the viewers.

So was it intimidating being on a television show on camera? A little bit, but not nearly as much as you would expect since I was doing kind of what I wanted to do, which was go to work every day and ask these master guys not just about where we were, but also take some tips to get me through my own renovation at home. So it was a very natural, fluid type of thing. And to their credit, everyone who I worked with initially, they embraced me with open arms. They were very kind and made it very easy for me to adjust.

Gordon Henry:

And how has your life changed as a result, more like on the personal side? Do you walk into restaurants and people are asking you for autographs?

Kevin O'Connor:

It happens for sure. It's the most watched home improvement show still on television after 40 years. It's on PBS, it's on Roku, it's on YouTube. We all have social media channels. The corporate has a social, so it's out there for sure. But for the most part, the people who do come up to us, to me, they've got sort of a PBS mentality or home improvement show mentality. They're super cool, they're very chill. They're, "Hey, I just wanted to say hi." Or, "I love your show." Or, "You're the reason that I took on a renovation or got into the trades or I watched you with my dad." It's not teen boy, it's not Taylor Swift type level celebrity. It's a lot of dudes saying, "Hey, love what you do." And a lot of people saying, "Thanks for good information."

Gordon Henry:

Great. So let's talk a little bit more about the show. For those who've maybe never seen it, if there's somebody out there who hasn't seen it, just tell us what is the show about and why is it so popular?

Kevin O'Connor:

The premise is that we find a homeowner. They're always a homeowner, it's never institutional or commercial. It's a homeowner who has a house and they've got a problem. The family's gotten bigger, the heating system no longer works. The house is 40 years outdated, and we come in and they say, "This is the renovation we'd like to have done." We engage with them like any general contractor would, sign a contract. They're paying. But then we follow the process with the cameras and we have our experts work with the homeowners to solve all of their home improvement problems, fixing roofs, air, ceiling, improving efficiencies, renovating bathrooms and kitchens. And it is no drama, it's not sort of about moving the bus at the last second or all about throwing sledgehammers through walls. It is about sharing the best practices of home renovation from who I believe are the most talented, respected professionals in the world.

We only deal with professionals. As I said, I'm the only person who doesn't have a contracting company, and our goal is to give trusted, valuable knowledge. Why is it popular? I like to joke, because everyone's got a crappy old house they're living in and they need help figuring stuff out. And if they don't have one now when they're young, they will have one when they buy their first one, because it's probably all they can afford. But I do think beyond the practical information, I think people enjoy watching competent people excel at their trades. And there are many, many folks we know who watch the show who never pick up a hammer or paintbrush, but just watch because it's like a virtuoso watching these guys fix and improve things.

Gordon Henry:

So those guys who are on as the contractors we see on This Old House and Ask This Old House, Bob Vila, Steve Thomas, these guys are pretty famous in their own right now, right?

Kevin O'Connor:

Yeah, so Bob was the first host of the show back in 1979. He did it for 10 years and then he went on to his own show. And back then it was huge. There weren't many channels, and so PBS was one of the big four, and this show came out of the gate to great fanfare. So you always remember the first person who climbed Mount Everest. He was the first home improvement show host so people always associate his name with our show, as well they should. Steve took over for Bob after his 10 year run. He did it for 14 years actually, which is a long run. And then he went on to do some other shows. He's still actually a builder doing some contracting and stuff, and then me. But people may remember those names, but I will absolutely say that the stars of the show are the contractors. The tradespeople, Tommy, Norm Abram, who has since retired, but Roger, Richard, Jen, Mark Morrow. We've expanded the crew a bunch. These are the people that folks are tuning in to see, to watch them work and to learn from their expertise.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. And the show is based around Boston, isn't it? Where you live, is that correct?

Kevin O'Connor:

Yeah, it's our home base. Russ Morash, who you mentioned in the introduction was a producer at WGBH. He also started The French Chef with Julie Child, Victory Garden, New Yankee Workshop, also with Norm Abram, our master carpenter. So he's sort of the early godfather of how to television. They did it out of WGBH, which is our local PBS station here in Boston. We all live here. Contractors don't drive very far to work, half hour or so in the morning, so that's why most of our projects are in and around here. But we do travel. We're on the road, we try to do one local and then we try to do one away. We're currently doing one in Lexington, Massachusetts, which is in our backyard, but the second one is down in New Jersey in a town called Glen Ridge. And we've done them in just about every part of this country. Texas, California, Florida, Midwest, New England, Southwest, everywhere.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. And how is Ask This Old House different from This Old House?

Kevin O'Connor:

Mostly it's the scope of the project. On This Old House, we will spend eight to 10 months, we will do an entire renovation of a house or two, lots of complexity, big budgets. On Ask This Old House, the projects can be as simple as Richard Trethewey, our plumbing and heating contractor showing up to fix a leaky faucet or Mark McCullough or Mason coming to help you reset some bricks on your front stoop. It's much more practical. It's much more teaching about types of projects that homeowners might be willing to take on over the course of a day or a weekend. So its scope is more confined, but I would argue that the information is just as rich.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, no, very practical. I wanted to ask you about Clear Story, your new podcast or maybe I think second season podcast, which is from This Old House, and I think I read it sheds light on the surprising stories behind our homes. Can you tell us a little bit about the podcast?

Kevin O'Connor:

Yeah. Clear Story was an attempt to sort of bring a little bit more of a storytelling, intellectual take on some otherwise thought to be benign subject matter. For example, the first episode talks about water scarcity. We've got a great expert who has written a book on water scarcity, and we look at how it affects homeowners in terms of water conservation and stuff. And there's lots of amazing things that to learn. I can remember interviewing Charles Fishman, who was our guest on that particular episode, and hearing that we have just as much water today on this planet as we had a million years ago. We have no more, no less. And the reality is that we're not really running out of water at all. The problem is is that we tend to be having people going to places where the water isn't. And the challenge is getting water from where it is abundant to where it is scarce.

And that leads to all sorts of challenges, but also great opportunities. The city of Las Vegas, which had plenty of water from the Colorado River 70 years ago, but as it has grown and its neighbors have grown is now in a dire situation. But remarkably, we learned from him that every drop of water in Las Vegas, if you were in a hotel and you take a shower or flush the toilet or brush your teeth, every drop that goes down that drain is recycled and reused by the city of Las Vegas. So Clear Story is an opportunity to look at things like framing and migration and water scarcity, building in space, all these sort of heady ideas from a builder's view and dig a little deeper into them. The history of concrete, for example, and why the Romans did it so well and we're still trying to catch them, those types of things.

Gordon Henry:

Fascinating. Let's switch gears to talk about small businesses. That's why we're here on Winning on Main Street to talk about small businesses and what ails them and how to help them, especially home improvement businesses. So starting with a topic that is on everybody's minds these days, which is labor. When it comes to recruiting and retaining employees, what do you think small businesses should think about to bring in and keep their employees?

Kevin O'Connor:

Well, I think they should think about a couple of things. And the first one I would put out there is that they're at a huge disadvantage because of their size. It is very difficult to run a small business, and I think it's also very difficult to recruit people to a small business. You just have a lot of big sophisticated competitors who you are up against. So knowing it's a challenge I think will help sort of set people's mindset. But then in terms of recruiting and retaining, there are several things that are important, I would think from my experience. All of the folks on our show run small businesses. We've been dealing with small businesses both with our people as well as other subcontractors for the 40 years that we've been on the show, me for 20 years. Couple things for them to keep in mind.

I think it's important that they build a brand. And I know that sounds probably pretty simple or pretty obvious, but my twist on that is what is it that your brand is saying? Most people are probably building a brand to attract and recruit customers, but Gordon, how many times have we heard a small business say, "I have too much work, I don't have enough people to do it." And to that end, I would say that your brand building and messaging should potentially focus on recruiting employees as much as customers. Because too much work, too few people, I don't think you necessarily want to go and spend all of your brand energy getting more work, you may want to think about more people. And to do that, I think it's important that companies tell folks why they do what they do as much as what it is that they do, because employees are looking for certain things.

And so that's another important thing that I think companies have to do. They have to understand what people are looking for. The list is pretty short, no matter where you look, it's always good pay, but it's also things like they want interesting and engaging work. They want career advancement and career advancement typically means that they want mentorship and exposure to technology, so people have to be thinking about that. And I think it's important that small businesses are always trying to expand their talent pool. They always need to be thinking about where can they potentially find other employees. And oftentimes those are not in the most obvious or direct places that they may think.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, good advice. Let's talk a little bit about remote work. May or may not apply to a home improvement situation, but since COVID especially, everybody's talking about remote work, flexible schedules, where do you see that all headed? Is it accelerating? Is it abating? Where is the world going with remote work?

Kevin O'Connor:

Well, I don't think it's ever going back to where it was pre-pandemic. I do think it's fluid and I don't think we know for certain, but for the immediate future and potentially the medium to long-term future, I think the need to provide flexibility and remote work is going to be essential. There are a couple statistics out there right now that you can see in reports. There is about 20% of workdays currently being done from home. And if you compare that to what it was pre-pandemic, that number was about 5%. So that's about a fourfold increase. Look at you and I, here we are with our living rooms or offices in the background. I do quite a bit of this as I would imagine you do as well. And what's remarkable about that uptick in work from home is that while those work days have jumped to 20% from home, productivity has increased as well.

And that has really led to a lot of companies who I think were maybe a little nervous about it, actually embracing it. So much of that I think is here to stay. It is difficult for the small businesses who are in the trades, for example, where the work goes on site. It's not as easy to take a laborer's job and make it remote. So that's a big challenge, but I think small companies ignore it at their own peril. I've had discussions with folks who run these companies and what they've tried to do is they get paid by the hour, so 40 hours is 40 hours, but they've tried things like compressing the work week, nine, 10 hour days, four of them, four and a half of them instead of five of them, for example. Allowing people different times to start the job.

If you have a new child at home, if you're raising a young family, being there to support a spouse early in the morning could be critical. A lot of folks who I work with are leaving at exactly the same time as the buses are picking up kids from school. So thinking about those types of flexibility and how you can help your employees deal with those, I think are very important. So at this point, I would say remote work is here to stay in some form and small businesses have to think about how to provide flexibility for employees. And as I say, if they don't, it's at their own peril.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Now This Old House obviously focuses on the trades, construction and home improvement trades. Where do you think the trades are right now in terms of growth, contraction, appeal, lack of appeal? Particularly, are younger people saying, hey, that's the industry I want to go into?

Kevin O'Connor:

It's been a rough decade or so in terms of image for the trades, probably longer, probably more like 30 years. There has been a sort of concerted message across this country putting a college degree above a technical degree or technical experience. We have been struggling with that in our business in the construction trades for a very long time. I think it's a little unfair, and I think it's a little misguided, but there's also some merit to it. There is some real data that says a college degree or advanced degrees can result in more lifetime earnings and such like that. But the good news is is that I think I feel like the pendulum is starting to swing a little bit the other way. There are some statistics and some anecdotes that I think support that.

Over the last decade, you can see that college admissions on whole is down about 15%. And at the same time, apprenticeships by companies, companies who have decided to bring young people into the company and train them on site, those are up by about 10%. And so that's a big change, and I think that's actually good. And then we've got the student debt debate that's going on. A very broad realization by many people, students and parents that you could end up leaving college with a lot of debt, which could be a big problem. So I think the momentum is sort of coming back to the trades and I think there's some statistics out there. I'll share with you one very powerful story, at least I think so. There's an institution down in Pennsylvania just outside of Philadelphia called Williamson College of the Trades. We've been down there to profile them on our show. I've become friendly with some of the folks down there, including the head of school, and they just finished graduation and their recruiting period.

So students go there for a two year associate degrees, they get an academic curriculum, but they also get hardcore training in skilled trades, boiler maintenance, electrical, masonry, these types of things. There are about 70 plus seniors in the graduating class. At the end of the year, companies come for the job fair to recruit them. Get a load of this, well over 200 companies pay the school for the privilege to show up to recruit these young men who have been trained in these trades. Think about that. They know that there are only 70 plus graduates, so they know that two thirds of these companies that will show up and write big checks for the privilege are not going to walk away with a graduating senior, but they still come because their services are in such high demand.

And a well-trained technician in these various fields are highly sought after. The school is free to the students, they board there, it costs them nothing. So they graduate with no debt and oftentimes graduate with five or six offers, and every single one of them is employed on graduation day. It is remarkable, and I think it's just a small anecdote to show the interest in those fields if trained well and connected with companies. There's a shortage, there's a huge shortage, and companies are trying to connect with them.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, no, I think it's a really fascinating debate and one that I share your enthusiasm for the career opportunities in the trades because so many kids, as you say, come out of school with debt and not only debt, but also a lack of marketable skills. They learn this stuff in college that they can't really apply and make much of a career out of and so the earning potential for that person may not be that great. And meanwhile, you come out with a trade type of degree or capability and you can immediately get to work. You start earning money, you don't have the debt as you said. And also it can't really be so easily either off shored or replaced by AI or some other machine. I mean, it's pretty hard for a robot to fix your plumbing and that's maybe changing, hopefully changing the way people are looking at this.

Kevin O'Connor:

And the other thing that I would add to that list, because I think it is the right list, it's also one of the fastest ways to owning your own company.

Gordon Henry:

100%.

Kevin O'Connor:

You as a tradesperson can apprentice and can work for somebody, and within five or 10 years, you could be the owner of the company and have three, five, or 15 people working for you. And so people who are interested in building a path to business ownership, it is a great path to go on.

Gordon Henry:

So if someone were listening to this perhaps and had a kid and they were thinking, "You know, Kevin? I buy into what you're saying, I want to move my kid in that direction." Would you suggest they go to the college that you reference? What should they do to think about this?

Kevin O'Connor:

Well, they're not going to get into the college I referenced unfortunately, because there's a huge waiting list, and there's just not enough of them out there. A couple things that I would recommend. There's nothing wrong with college or a higher education degree, just like there's nothing wrong with an apprenticeship or a technical degree. So the first thing I would say is treat them equally as you talk to your kids. They both have value and respect, and one is not lesser than the other. And then the next thing is to find out whether it's a good fit. Because quite honestly, I loved working with my hands. I always spent my spare time, with a dad in construction and brothers in construction, I always spent my spare time building things. But I was more cerebral and the history major and the finance major was more my speed. It's served me better, and that's okay.

But I think it's important that young people feel like either path is a good respectable path, and then it's important just to say, give it a try. Get out there. They can work for a summer. They can work over Christmas break, summer break, whatever it may be. Give it a try, because it's a very different skillset. It's a lot of hard work. It's physical work, it's demanding. It's not for everybody, but for some people it makes all of the difference. And being exposed to it can make a light go off. And being told by someone who they value, like a parent or a mentor, being told that it is a respectable path can be the thing that pushes them over the edge.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, great. I wanted to ask you for a second about technology adoption in small businesses. As you know, our parent company Thryv, we make a CRM for small businesses. It's 100% oriented towards smaller companies, up to about 25 employees. And it really is the lifeblood, the way they take their appointments, stay in touch with customers, issue payment, invoices, and estimates, basically run their business on the computer. And my question to you is really around technology adoption in small businesses. Is that starting to happen more and more? Do you see these small companies running their companies using more technology?

Kevin O'Connor:

The ones who survive are. I think it is absolutely the most critical thing that needs to be done. And the thing that separates the successful growing companies from the ones that are going sideways or contracting. For a couple of reasons, productivity is the lifeblood of companies. Basically, my definition of productivity is being able to do more with less. Doing more with less is essential to solving the labor shortage. If you have too much work and too few people, you need to figure out how to get those fewer people able to produce more work for you, and embracing technology is key. In terms of recruiting people to your company, when I say that folks are looking for a career advancement path, one of the top things that they're looking for is exposure to technology. For better or for worse, old guys like you and I have an analog memory of things as well as maybe embracing the digital, but our kids, everything is digital, everything is technological.

They know the computer, the phone, they know coding. They're going to know AI better than us. And so if your company doesn't have a technological outlet for employees, they're probably not going to stick around. And if they don't embrace technology, I just don't think they're going to win the productivity battle and small gains in productivity can have huge consequences for companies over time. And generally small companies, and particularly companies in the trades have lagged when it comes to productivity. So that's sort of a negative against them, but it's also a big opportunity for growth, to embrace productivity. And I think one of the top ways you do it is by embracing technology.

Gordon Henry:

Agreed. So you just launched a new show called Team Rubicon. I'm interested in hearing about that. And it's a veteran led volunteer organization that helps respond and rebuild after natural disasters. Talk to us a little bit about the organization.

Kevin O'Connor:

It's a remarkable organization, I have to say. It was founded back in 2010. A very small handful of veterans, five or six or so who were well-trained, highly skilled. The lead person, Jake Wood, was a marine sniper so you can imagine the level of confidence and training that he and his friends had. And when there was this disastrous earthquake in Haiti, they felt the need to respond and to help out and literally found their way into the country by crossing over the border. Started working, created this outlet for veterans to volunteer after they were out of the service. That has now grown from that handful of people to 170,000 volunteers, which include veterans as well as civilians like myself. And what we do is we deploy all of the time all across the country in response to natural disasters. A flood happens, a tornado happens, a hurricane happens, houses are flooded, wiped out, destroyed, regular citizens, and your neighbors are having bad days, the worst day, Team Rubicon sends volunteers in.

They tarp roofs, they muck out houses, they tear down drywall, they get the house secure so that the homeowners can start rebuilding and get back in. And so what we've done on This Old House, we bumped into them many years ago as we were doing some rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey in Houston where they were rebuilding as well, we kind of connected and we've waited this long to put the marriage together. And now we've got a show detailing what Team Rubicon does on a regular basis. So I deploy with them. You are well-trained, you are busy. It attracts people who really like to be active. There's no shame in writing a check to a volunteer organization or disaster relief, this is for people who want to actually lean into it and put their shoulders into this work. And so it's a 13 part series. It's all dropped on Roku. It could be streamed right now, and people could see what this remarkable organization is about.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, I was just reading about it and honestly, I did not know about it before getting ready for this podcast, but it is incredible what they do. They've deployed, I've read, over 500 operations, including Haiti, Pakistan, Burma, Sudan, Ecuador, Greece, Turkey, The Bahamas, and all these hurricanes we always hear about on the news, Irene, Debbie, Isaac, Sandy, and a slew of tornadoes. It's massive and it's just awe-inspiring. How is the organization funded? Is it literally just guys like us writing checks? Is there something bigger that funds the organization?

Kevin O'Connor:

It is all charitable donations. So there are corporations who support it. There are folks who write $15, $10 a month checks over the course of the year. It's all volunteers except for a very small paid staff at headquarters. So people like me are trained by them, and then we are deployed and we do all of the work on a volunteer basis, we don't get paid for it at all. And it's got a lot of support from corporate sponsors as well as individuals. I was just talking to the CEO because we were doing a media hit within a couple days and Ford, for example, Ford Motor Company, has just stepped up their sponsorship in a big way monetarily, but also sending some of their great pickup trucks, which are hybrids, so gas and electric trucks that can run our FOBs and our shower stations.

So we get that type of support. But I've heard it described, my favorite description that I've heard Gordon was it is like a national volunteer fire department. There are Team Rubicon members, we call ourselves gray shirts, there are Team Rubicon gray shirts in every state in many neighborhoods, and they're responding to the big events like hurricanes down in Florida, but also small events, doing wildfire mitigation on the West coast or Pacific Northwest, doing flood cleanup in small towns, a whole bunch of different things. There are gray shirts standing by ready to help out in your community if something goes wrong and there's a natural disaster. It's a remarkable concept.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, that's really awe-inspiring. We'll be back in just a minute with Kevin O'Connor right after the break. Don't go anywhere.

Speaker 2:

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Gordon Henry:

And we're back with Kevin O'Connor of This Old House and a really fascinating journey Kevin's been on with This Old House for 20 years. Kevin, as we said at the beginning, This Old House has been around since 1979. Is it going to just keep going forever? What's the future of This Old House?

Kevin O'Connor:

I like to think it will. I don't want to be the last host of This Old House. I hope there's another young curious person who comes behind me. It's an ensemble cast. We've transitioned from the first host to the second host to the third host okay. Norm Abram, who was the master carpenter in there from very first show from 1979, started working with Tom Silva five or 10 years into it. Norm is now retired. Tommy is still going, but we've expanded our crew to some young people, Nathan and Jen and Ross and Heath, our electrician, are out there working. Our goal is to continue This Old House as far into the future as we possibly can. Not everything lasts forever, but up until now, I think we've done a pretty good job of sticking to our knitting, doing what we do best, which is trusted information about home improvement from experts.

And we've tried to embrace all the new platforms. We're streaming on Roku, still on PBS, you can watch us on YouTube. You can look at Tom Silva's TikTok handle, which has got a million followers. That 73 year old carpenter with a million TikTok followers. So my hope is, Gordon, that it continues and that in the not so distant future, there's another host that's replaced me and has kept the whole thing going. I will say a very, it's hardly a humble brag, but we had the privilege last year of winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of the Emmys who brought the whole crew out. And it was fun for us because it was a little bit of a reunion and a get together for us, but it was only the third show in history to ever receive an Emmy, A Lifetime Emmy. And the other two shows were 60 Minutes and Sesame Street. So we felt like we were a pretty good company. We were proud of that.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, that's terrific. And then finally, what's in your future? You've been doing this, as you said, 20 years. You've now got the Team Rubicon going, are you just going to continue to expand this kind of O'Connor Empire on TV, or what else?

Kevin O'Connor:

It's definitely not an empire. I'm a team player. I'm a This Old House guy through and through. Team Rubicon was done by the producers of This Old House. And so I'm in collaboration with them. We've got a lot of stories to tell, a lot more houses to work on. So I'm going to keep doing that. I do the speaking and I do this type of stuff all the time. But the goal for me is to spend the next five, six, seven years, whatever it is, making sure that the franchise is in good shape and bringing in some young new faces and doing exactly what I just said earlier, which is keeping the whole thing going.

So it's a privilege for me to do it. I never wanted to be in TV, honestly. And if someone else had come knocking that day and said, "Do you want to do this or that?" The answer would've been no. This is probably the only show that I would've said yes to. And after all these years, I still really enjoy doing it because of the way we do it and who we do it with. So no plans to go anywhere yet, but if I'm lucky, that will happen at some point and there'll be a new host taking over for me.

Gordon Henry:

Terrific. Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us. I know you're super busy with all these projects going, but I think our listeners really enjoyed hearing from you and getting your perspective on home improvement and small business and everything you're doing. So, thank you. And I want to ask you for those who are listening, who may want to either right to This Old House to ask them a question or get involved with Team Rubicon, where should they go?

Kevin O'Connor:

So Team Rubicon, I believe it's teamrubiconusa.com or .org. It's a nonprofit, but you'll find it, Team Rubicon. You can donate very easily, but you can also sign up. You can do the training online and get yourself deployable. It's a remarkable organization. You will meet amazing people, folks who want to get up early and work hard if that's your thing. So that's pretty easy to track down. And then thisoldhouse.com, we've got a submission page for folks who've got questions. Throw them in there. You're going to be in a big mailbag.

Gordon Henry:

I can imagine.

Kevin O'Connor:

There's five, 6,000 coming in a month and we can only answer a few. But yeah, go ahead, throw it in there as well. And everyone on the crew has got social media, so I've seen our guys responding to individual fans questions on Instagram and Twitter and all that kind of stuff.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. Well, again, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really great to have you here.

Kevin O'Connor:

Gordon, it was my pleasure. I really appreciate the invite and it was nice chatting with you.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, and I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman and coordinators the Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it, it helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com/pod. Until next time, make it a great week.

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